Drupal continued/finished

Well, I've poked around Drupal, and it looks pretty nice. It pretty much just looks like a group blog to me. I guess I had never seen LInt as this collaborative effort before, but then again I'm not someone who would likely be contributing anyway.

From my end, I'm interested in anything that makes LInt easier to use from the perspective of someone trying to find information. The old/current LInt had a search function that was pretty much useless as far as I could tell. The "Do not include meeting minutes" weeded out some of the irrelevant information, but most of the time when I've tried to just search for something it's taken me way too long to find it. I know most things are hidden under appropriate links, but in most cases online I find searching to be easier so I go for that option first. I even use ctrl+F really frequently to search through pages to see if I can find the relevant information or not. Searching is key for a useful LInt.

That being said, I really hope the tagging system works out in our favor. The only problem I see here (which I think at least one other person posting on the new LInt has also seen) is inconsistency in tagging. Someone might use "Adult Services" as a tag, while someone might just use "A.S.," and I don't think they'd show up in the same searches or under the same tag headings. I think that's pretty much common sense, though, so it's not likely to be a big deal. (Well, we can hope.)

I do have to say that although I consider myself a LInt consumer more than a LInt contributor, I've long been in favor of a blog, wiki, or forum-type environment for circulation. We're a big department that doesn't often get to meet all together (and when we do, we can't get everything done that needs to be done). Maybe once we see how the new LInt works out we will see the advantages of an inviting collaborative tool and make use of such technologies more.

Thing 19 -- Drupal

Well, I've finished the 9 Things required of clerks, but I have to fill up the remaining hours so I've moved on to Drupal. The whole thing looks pretty useful and fairly friendly and after a cursory glance I don't have much to say about it either way. I have yet to be added to the new LInt so I can really poke around, but to be honest I'm not a LInt-contributin' kinda person so I've seen most of what I need to see here. The one thing I always hated about the old LInt was how un-searchable it is. It's really hard to find things on that site! But apparently Drupal structures things so they're easier to search (I think --if I read that correctly). I sure hope so.

Well, I guess I'll finish writing about Drupal when I actually get into the new LInt.

Thing 23 -- Evaluate 23 Things

I think my views on the Things were pretty clear as we went along, so I'm not sure what to include in this entry. I feel about the same way about these things as I did at the outset --lots of potential, but we need to be careful. I'm not sure how much it would help to reiterate my persistent skepticism here, so I suppose I won't.

I think the 23 Things experience could be helpful to a lot of people, but I think it's kind of redundant for some of us. It kind of reminds me of high school when they made us take typing classes, only to find that many students typed at 45wpm or faster (often 60 or faster). I (along with several others) ended up being allowed to play solitaire and do homework for other classes in this class because I got through all the typing tutorials at the beginning of the semester. It was nice of them to anticipate our potential need for typing skills in the real world, but we were already way ahead of them.

That being said, the Internet is not some new scary monster and I hope that these Things have helped to show people that.

If the Internet were indeed a monster, it might look something like this:


But really, it's more like this:

Quite possibly up to no good, but mostly fun and harmless as long as you don't do anything stupid.

Web 2.0 enthusiasm waning?

Thing 22 -- Keep on learning

I guess of all the tools we've used in these 9 things, the one I hadn't done for myself before was the Surveymonkey one (at least not from the creator's standpoint). I suppose I could say, then, that I'll be trying to keep up by doing what I'm already doing. I just got into Google Reader a few weeks ago and I use it to stay on top of video game-related news. I'm not sure what's required of me work-wise past one more blog entry, but I do know that I'll keep up with my existing blogs and use the mighty power of the Internet to stay in touch with far-away people. That's about it.

I'm not really sure what to say about this "keep on learning" aspect of Web/Library 2.0. I've always tried to keep up as best I can and I'll continue to do that.

I feel like this entry could be longer but I don't feel that different now from when I started this thing. Tools are good, blind enthusiasm is not, and the Internet is a weird place.

Thing 18--Survey time!

I finally got my survey done. I had fun with it, although I do see a great deal of serious uses for this. In my previous post about surveys as a means of data collection, I was concerned that we'd think we were experts and misread data. I can see how that would happen now, having designed a survey myself and frequently finding places where bias could appear. For example, when creating a rating scale, I was going by my sense of humor and personality in ranking possible answers. What I think is a higher-ranking response on a scale of 1-5 might not match someone else's ideas. That would be different for other people and in a real situation this could be very misleading.

That being said, for informal data collection I think it's great and Surveymonkey is really, really easy to use. Like I said before, I enjoyed Juanma's surveys and I think we could do something like that easily to keep us all on the same page.

Here you have it, my blog's very own Surveymonkey!


And, of course... Click Here to take the best survey ever! Quickly, before the pictures aren't there anymore or something (I didn't bother to host them myself, and it's no fun without the pictures, trust me.)

Oh, and read more about the creature in the first picture here. Creepy stuff.

Thing 18 --part 1.5

Surveymonkey's a bit broken, methinks. I went to log in and nothing happened. Then, t
thinking that maybe I'd entered the wrong password, I went to the "forgot password" link and it took me straight back to the homepage. Maybe this'll be straightened out by the next time I have time for the 9 Things. Also, I've run out of time. I'll deal with it next time.

So, nothing new to report then, I guess.