While I didn't sign up for an account of all the survey generators, I have to say I think survey monkey was the best. It seemed to be the only service that wasn't just offering a free survey feature to get me to buy a more advanced account. QuestionPro seemed to be the most guilty of this, especially when I looked at their prices for a yearly account, $4999 the best. But QuestionPro also seemed to offer the best features of the bunch to justify why purchasing an account would be worthwhile.
I found SurveyMonkey usable. It was easy to create a survey, and their descriptions were accurate to what the type of question would be, but I wasn't sure how the questions would look until I saw the final version. It would be nice if they had a graphical interface... On the flip side, I realize that is a lot to ask from a free service, so I have no major complaints. Although, it would be nice if I was notified when people had filled out the survey via email.
The library has a pro account with SurveyMonkey. Can you think of surveys that might be interesting to conduct either in-house or among community members?
The library should make even more use of the pro account than we already do. There was the lintranet redesign committee survey, which the litranet redesign committee used to gain information. And there was that other survey, the one I can't remember, but I do remember filling it out... anyway as long as we attach food/candy to surveys I think we can use it for all sorts of feedback both with the public and internally. I think it would be neat if we could link surveys about library policy to the public computer log-ins. But I don't want to force people to take surveys...
The lack of open-ended questions is what always bothered me about standarized tests. I felt that having a finite answer that could just as easily be correct by guessing isnt' the best way to determine knowledge. Open-ended questions for some surveys are much the same way. The quality of answers may be higher if people are allowed to think out their answers, and we might get better comments and ideas. But there is more reluctance to take time to do a good job on open-ended surveys so the pool would most likely be smaller. As you can see I've used a lot of qualifiers in this last part of the post, and that is because I really don't know people would react, or the quality of responses we would get. A mix of check the box and open-ended questions seems to be the best for getting more advanced answers, while offering people the option of expressing their individual opinions. Although, people who express opinions on surveys usually are people with strong opinions, not people with moderate opinions...
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
This ning thing
I used to be a member of a few anime and manga networks pre-2005, but I found that people who are really into anima or manga are almost the exact same on the internet as they are in real life... Currently, I'm a semi-active member of Silverfishlongboarding.com. I would say very active member, but unlike many people in online forum/discussion communities, I don't post just for the sake of seeing myself on the internet. So while some members of the forum have 1000+ posts, I have a little over 100 and I've been on the forum for a year.
This is what I find to be an interesting part of social networks, especially ones that focus themselves around discussion forums. Post-counts, in some places, seem to indicate how active you are as a member, but only reflect the quantity not the quality of your posts.
As far as appealing social networks, I like longboarding, so anything related to that could be interested... as long as it is populated by mostly helpful people. I also like the idea of a Library Web 2.0 social network, and a cooking social network. I especially like finding new recipes because I like cooking and being able to contact the author of the recipe to ask for clarification would be pretty useful... come to think of it, if there were an origami network where one could contact the author of a page it would be very useful for clarification.
Overall, I like what ning offers. As long as you can drum up enough support it shouldn't be too hard to create something useful.
This is what I find to be an interesting part of social networks, especially ones that focus themselves around discussion forums. Post-counts, in some places, seem to indicate how active you are as a member, but only reflect the quantity not the quality of your posts.
As far as appealing social networks, I like longboarding, so anything related to that could be interested... as long as it is populated by mostly helpful people. I also like the idea of a Library Web 2.0 social network, and a cooking social network. I especially like finding new recipes because I like cooking and being able to contact the author of the recipe to ask for clarification would be pretty useful... come to think of it, if there were an origami network where one could contact the author of a page it would be very useful for clarification.
Overall, I like what ning offers. As long as you can drum up enough support it shouldn't be too hard to create something useful.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Myface and Spacebook
I've been a member of facebook for a few months now. I didn't do anything other than create a profile and leave it blank. In November I started updating my profile, and searching for friends, playing games, writing on walls, etc. Two of the groups I joined were the Library 2.0 interest group, and the I Longboard to Work group. These are groups that are relevent to my daily life. I've become a fan of many web 2.0 things and see their potential for further promoting the library... as long as we stick to the ones that are working. I joined the longboarding group because I have been longboarding to work since my second week here.
The probably reason that facebooks is growing so fast is because older people are now joining it. When I was in my senior year of college I recollect some of my friends signing up for pages. They said that it was for college students only, or institutions had to sign themselves up... or something like that. I don't know whether this is true or not. Now everyone and anyone can sign up, so that isn't a problem. The real draw I've heard from people is it is easy to use and its setting are defaulted as private. This adds a measure of security for people who are timid about posting things on the internet. It erases that, "everyone can see my page!" concern that a lot of people who aren't teenagers feel. Other than the ease of use, and more private settings it displays I don't have any easy answer for why it is growing so fast. In the circles I've moved in on Facebook I've noticed a lack of juvenile internets behavior. There isn't a lot of flaming or bashing, and I haven't seen any of the annoyingly htmled pages that sprawl across myspace. Facebook also doesn't have the negative connotation that myspace has. When I was a teacher my principal led a campaign against myspace, policing it, and suspending people who were up to no good. I haven't heard any stories like that relating to facebook, so it not being myspace might be helpful for its popularity.
Now on to myspace...
Librarians are using myspace to engage teenusers. Both the linked myspace pages had about 800 friends. They are also using this as a contact for authors. Most of the comments left on the library's pages seemed to be greetings and thanks from authors for promoting their books. I like the idea of a myspace to display photos of, and promote events for teens. I didn't see anything ideas I really liked.
I didn't create a myspace and I'm not going to use one.
The probably reason that facebooks is growing so fast is because older people are now joining it. When I was in my senior year of college I recollect some of my friends signing up for pages. They said that it was for college students only, or institutions had to sign themselves up... or something like that. I don't know whether this is true or not. Now everyone and anyone can sign up, so that isn't a problem. The real draw I've heard from people is it is easy to use and its setting are defaulted as private. This adds a measure of security for people who are timid about posting things on the internet. It erases that, "everyone can see my page!" concern that a lot of people who aren't teenagers feel. Other than the ease of use, and more private settings it displays I don't have any easy answer for why it is growing so fast. In the circles I've moved in on Facebook I've noticed a lack of juvenile internets behavior. There isn't a lot of flaming or bashing, and I haven't seen any of the annoyingly htmled pages that sprawl across myspace. Facebook also doesn't have the negative connotation that myspace has. When I was a teacher my principal led a campaign against myspace, policing it, and suspending people who were up to no good. I haven't heard any stories like that relating to facebook, so it not being myspace might be helpful for its popularity.
Now on to myspace...
Librarians are using myspace to engage teenusers. Both the linked myspace pages had about 800 friends. They are also using this as a contact for authors. Most of the comments left on the library's pages seemed to be greetings and thanks from authors for promoting their books. I like the idea of a myspace to display photos of, and promote events for teens. I didn't see anything ideas I really liked.
I didn't create a myspace and I'm not going to use one.
Twittering Widgets Batman!
I finally found a twitter widget that would attach to my blog. I didn't look to hard at first, but I had some spare time. To revisit thing 7... or something like that, I found that twitter's app page left a lot to be desired in organization and information. But a quick google search allowed me to find a app that fit what I wanted. Do try to use bloggers twitter gadgets, they stink like a cat box.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Podcasts... They Exist
It may surprise everyone I know but I listened to the Good Beer Show podcasts. They said "amazing" and "greatest" a lot. The engine I searched was podcast.com, it was a pretty good podcast directory, I enjoyed the categorization.
Podcasts are neat, but I don't think I'll be subscribing to and listening to one regrularly anytime soon.
Podcasts are neat, but I don't think I'll be subscribing to and listening to one regrularly anytime soon.
I like vimeo and blip.tv better...
As with most people I really like these video sites. I remember back in the eary days of the internet until youtube came on the scene, when I would want to see a music video, or a clip from a tv show, or any sort of video, I would have to wait a long time, and then hope that I had the right codec to play the videos... more often than not it wouldn't work, and I would have wasted all that time. Fortunately, now I can use youtube, vimeo, blip.tv, and even hulu. I don't like yahoo! movies though, they haven't quite figured out how to not suck. Similarly, my experience with google video removing copyrighted material has been less than stellar. Overall, the ability to continually watch entertaining and stupid videos has left me with a great big thumbs up for internet video players.
As the challenge option of this thing states the library could use this as a constant updater of what is happening in the library. Think of it as a video newsletter, kind of like the library channel only consistently accessible via the internet. Many companies have youtube channels, and therefore get their faces out there for the internet to see. The library could benefit from utilizing this form of communication.
I choose this video because it gets to the heart of an issue we face everyday at the library:
As the challenge option of this thing states the library could use this as a constant updater of what is happening in the library. Think of it as a video newsletter, kind of like the library channel only consistently accessible via the internet. Many companies have youtube channels, and therefore get their faces out there for the internet to see. The library could benefit from utilizing this form of communication.
I choose this video because it gets to the heart of an issue we face everyday at the library:
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