Not enough time to do it all

I've been greatly enjoying a number of podcasts by librarians over the past few weeks. Every night, while I stay up late with my infant son, I listen to them on my iPod. During my 25-minute subway commute, I also am tuned in to them. Over the past few days, though, I'm so eager to get caught up (yeah, like that can ever happen...I know) on conversations in the library community that I'm wishing I could read at the same time that I'm listening to podcasts.

On the train this morning, I was reading the "Technology Brief" (PDF) from the Participatory Networks report while listening to some music. As soon as I got to my stop, I switched from the music on my iPod over to a podcast by David Lankes on the report (MP3), who is one of the three authors of it. I know that multitasking is a myth but I sure would like to try it more often.

RSS feeds for College and Research Libraries

Does anyone know of a way to get a feed of the contents of College and Research Libraries? I realize that there are tools for converting HTML pages to RSS feeds, but I have a feeling that won't work too well for the "current issue" page of College and Research Libraries, which has a unique URL for each issue.

I'm going to try fooling around with the email alerts I can get from Wilson's Education Full Text database and see if I can convert the emails I get into an RSS feed (don't know how doable this is).

Of course, it would be great if ALA itself would offer RSS feeds of its journals. My aim is to add the feedbar as a sidebar to our library's blog for reference staff.

Any ideas out there?

Take a quick survey on OPACs

Dave Pattern is working on a presentation on OPACs and needs your input on a short survey. I just did it in under five minutes while playing Thomas and Friends engines with my four year-old son.

Discussion of VoIP for reference services

The subject of the next meeting of the Virtual Reference SIG will be the use of VoIP (voice-over internet protocol) software for reference services. Colin Bain from the Queensland University of Technology will speak about how his library has been using the Windows Messenger software to talk online with their patrons and answer their questions. As is usually the case with meetings of the Virtual Reference SIG, at least half the meeting or more will feature discussion and debate over the topic of the day.

The Virtual Reference SIG is sponsored by the Metropolitan Library Council of New York.

DATE: April 6, 2007

TIME: 10:00 am - 12:00 pm

COST: free

LOCATION: Newman Library, Room 415, Baruch College, 151 East 25th Street, New York, NY

RSVP: stephen_francoeur (at) baruch (dot) cuny (dot) edu

MORE INFO: http://vrsig.pbwiki.com/2007%20April%206%20Meeting

I'm back and social networking

I just spent the past two and a half weeks at home with my newborn son. As I've also got a four and half year-old son, I found myself while home too busy to keep up with all the posts in my Bloglines account. I feel like I missed out on a lot; I've skimmed the post headlines, but there were literally thousands waiting to be read.

One development that stood out in the crowd of posts that I breezed through was the Library 2.0 network that Bill Drew set up on Ning. I quickly created a profile for myself and then returned to plowing through unread emails in my work account. Shortly after setting up my profile, a number of librarians in the network contacted me via Ning who wanted to be added as my "Friends," which I gladly did. Some of the people I knew via blogging, others I had met, and some were total strangers to me. I also joined the Librarian Bloggers network, too, and witnessed the same phenomenon, which I found flattering.

One librarian, whose blog I've long subscribed to and referred my colleagues to, contacted me via the Library 2.0 network to let me know he was coming to NYC over the weekend and wanted to meet. I had to decline, as my home life revolves around family duties (and finding moments for catching up on lost sleep), but I was thrilled to see how my joining the network might lead to making new friends in LibraryLand. Over the years, my web site and this blog have brought emails to me from folks all over the world who were passing through NYC and wanted to meet me (when you live in NYC, you find a lot people you know from elsewhere happen to be in town). I have a feeling that the Library 2.0 and Librarian Bloggers networks will only increase such requests (something I welcome).

Lately, librarians that I know have also began to "chatter" with me via posts on my profile page or ones that I've put on their pages. I'm surprised at how easily I got into the swing of communicating via what is essentially a bulletin board.

Navigation seems a bit clunky in Ning, especially when you want to click to get over to another Ning network you're a member of. Bill Drew pointed out a way to do this: just click on your user name in the upper left corner of a network that you're a part of and you'll see in the upper right corner links to all your networks.

So what do I expect to get out the Ning networks? I think I'll likely find myself with a bunch of new librarian friends and with stronger friendships with librarians I already know (personally or virtually). Although I spend a lot of time online doing IM, using chat tools like Chatango, posting to blogs, reading blogs, contributing to wikis, etc., and have established a number of online friendships this way, I find nothing beats actually meeting my online friends in person. If you're going to be in New York and want to do lunch on a weekday, I know some great Indian restaurants around the corner from the library.

Scheduled downtime

I'll be away from blogging for a bit, as I'm staying home for a few weeks with the newest addition to my family, who was born a week and half ago. With two boys at home, it's a bit too hectic for me to post at moment. Back by the end of March!