Freedom of Speech

What is "freedom of speech"? Well, I suppose we could go into the right to speak one's mind, the right to protest, and the right to express thoughts and opinions that differ from those held by the ruling class. Those are all well and good, but I think I've found a better example...

The purest form of freedom of speech is expressed when somebody blogs about whatever they want becaue nobody is going to read it anyway.

... ironic, huh?

Well, I suppose that's it for tonight. I'd feel bad about leaving such an intriguing topic so suddenly, but since I'm pretty sure no one is reading there is no reason to apologize. Wait, wasn't that sort of an apology? Drat, I'd better stop before this gets

Taking out the Garbage

I had an interesting experience today at work, and it began with finding I had become a scapegoat. See, it is my custom to answer the phone cheerfully; I do this partly because it tends to make the whole conversation pleasant, and partly because I feel like everyone deserves at least one cheerful greeting a day.. Even my charms, however, were not enough to sweeten the irate customer from this morning.

From the split second that he knew a live, breathing person was listening on the other end, this person began a torrent of complaints, questions, and demands. It was such an intense outpouring of frustration, I had no chance to answer his complaints with a solution. Every idea I had was deemed wrong or stupid (although as it turned out, they were neither). I understand that sometimes a person just has to vent, but this stood out as going beyond the line.

After, I thought: "How often do we all do this?" We get frustrated at something in our lives and take it out on the nearest person. It doesn't all have to be as extreme as my example. It could be as simple as honking the horn to say "go faster or get out of the way", when we know that if we were not late for a meeting we would be content to trundle along behind. Or being curt to a salesperson when our feet hurt, the kids are misbehaving, we're tired and we don't want to hear that without the receipt it's store credit only.

Everyone deals with this kind of thing sooner or later, but the sadder thing is that we probably all deal it out as well. What have we become, such that we would rather make someone join us in misery than feel uplifted by their contentment? And, what have we become such that we would rather label those people jerks than acknowledge their hardships or our own lapses in courtesy?

Sometimes, people think I am too soft and that I make excuses for such behavior. Rather, I like to think that we can still hold people accountable for their actions without losing compassion. Because when it is our turn to step over the line, for whatever reason, the value of that compassion is immeasurable.

At the End of All Things

I find myself becoming maudlin here at the end of the Library 2.0 program... [sniff]...

But hey, life moves on. It was fun while it lasted, and I learned some great stuff! Some of it is more applicable to my personal life, and some I can see being more useful in a library setting, but I'm glad I know about the options. In particular, I found the lessons on the different Google applications useful, and the Flickr/MySpace lessons interesting from a social point of view (that's what comes of having a degree in psychology), but the lessons on YouTube and TravelBlog were downright amusing.

If I could have changed or added anything, I would have liked to learn more about how libraries might network information. Some of that was implied in the lessons (podcasts, blogs, myspace), but sometimes it's also nice to have things spelled out in a comprehensive lesson. To have one which just looks at ways in which institutions can mix and match their areas of expertise would be particularly relevant and useful. But other than that, two thumbs way up for the program!

Adios,
Sarcasm (Un)Lmtd.

Net worth of NetLibrary

... is rather on the low end for me. I like to read and I love to discover new books, but NetLibrary isn't yet broad enough to appeal to my tastes. For one thing, it is still new enough to lack all my favorite titles. That is not its fault, and time should cure that ailment. Another problem is the complete lack of ebooks. I love the silence of reading, and the complete freedom of my imagination to create images and voices for the characters. Audiobooks, then, have never been my favorite because by their natures they dictate the speed at which I "read" and the character's voices. So it was a little disappointing to find that the entire available collection is in e-audiobooks. Again, however, time should remedy the situation.

On the plus side, checkout and downloading is extremely easy. Even a technological neanderthal such as I can manage it without too much pain. I also liked the site's organization, which was pretty intuitive, and the impressive array of language options available (although this one doesn't really benefit me, since I'm not actually fluent in any other language).

When the pros and cons have been weighed, I find NetLibrary to have lots of potential, but it's not particularly useful for me at this time. I'll check back in few years, though, and see what the collection looks like then.

Podcasting. Is that a kind of fishing?

I got extremely confused at first by podcasts. I couldn't seem to find anything that would define them in a way I understood, and things weren't made clearer when I heard a few clips of random podcasts. This was because they all seemed to be random and without purpose, not to mention rather crude and reminiscent of a badly constructed fan fiction. I suppose it was luck of the draw that I managed, in my random sampling, to avoid all the good ones.

Finally, someone took pity on me and gave me some examples of what podcasts are and what they can potentially do. At the basic level, they seem to be an audible-only YouTube video. It's a cheap and easy way to "publish" something that would have otherwise had to compete for space on a radio station.

I couldn't figure out how to embed a podcast, but I've included a link at the bottom of this post which leads to one I found somewhat amusing. I listed to part of the Tues, May 13 broadcast, which was admittedly pretty aimless but which I nevertheless found most tasteful of the podcasts I'd sampled. So enjoy!

http://podcastalley.com/podcast_details.php?pod_id=27383

MeTube, YouTube, WhoseTube?

Part of this week's exercise was to explore YouTube. Well, I'm afraid I've already done that... extensively. Often using time I didn't have. But there's so much to see and learn about! If you can spell it (and often even if you can't) you can find a video about it. What I like about videos on YouTube is the immediacy of the experience, because it's so much more compelling and interesting to view a film clip than to just read about it or see a photo.

If I were to apply the concept of YouTube to libraries (which would make sense because working at a library started this whole journey), I can see many ways in which this could be useful. We could do video accounts of our programs, "teaser trailers" for upcoming programs (takes advertising to a whole new level), and create a video tour of the library for people who live too far away to visit.

Now for myself, I mostly use YouTube to watch funny or videos I find interesting . I suppose I could have gone in a scholarly direction with the video I chose to share, but this one captured my fancy so completely I had to make this my choice. Enjoy!

And the winner is...

Farecast! Or at least it is according to me. I agree with whomever awarded this site a Web 2.0 Award (2007), because I find it very useful. My extended family is scattered all over the map, meaning that we have to book flights if we want to see them. It's a constant headache to figure out when to book and when to wait. That's why I like this site, which can tell me how likely it is that fares will drop or rise in the near future.

The only downside I've found so far is that the predictions are only available for certain locations, which don't include most of the cities I need. Of course, I can always let the price for the nearest large city guide my purchase, but that's less exact. As far as I can tell, Farecast doesn't make predictions for international flights. Seeing as that's the site's specialty, the relative scarcity of options could have killed its usefulness. The saving grace is that even if the predictions are only available sporadically, the search results still show the lowest prices from many other airfare search engines.