Wooden keyboard

social network interfaces

2009-01-11T16:12:00.004-05:00

I've recently caved in and joined Facebook and Linkedin. They both seem pretty intuitive and I am returning to them fairly regularly. But I still cannot seem to get the hang of MySpace. I cannot even figure out how to add a friend. Is it age? Is it brains? I'm thinking that what is intuitive may vary with generation or maybe learning style. Whatever it is, MySpace is still a foreign country.

civic engagement deliberation guides

2008-10-01T21:27:00.005-04:00

Everyday-Democracy has an Issue Guide Exchange for folks who write deliberation guides. There is also a forum for discussion. And there is an online tool to walk you through creating a guide.

And while I'm on the topic, ALA has a blog on Civic Engagement and a listserv called Deliberate and a Member Interest Group.

I highly recommend this community engagement role for libraries. I think I can guarantee no Google will come along to bump us out of it. Moreover, by nurturing the civic capacity of our communities, we create a better climate for support of libraries and understanding or their value.

Testing a new gadget

2008-09-05T15:52:00.002-04:00

Nicole alerted me that Blogger offers a voting gadget so I've added it. Please vote so I can see how this works! Also, Google Gadgets offers a polling gadget, but it is many screens in so use search to find it.

still here, with new goodies

2008-08-20T21:33:00.005-04:00

I have found some fine new toys: Many Eyes and Wordle. Many Eyes offers ways to visualize data sets. Some of the graphs would probably strike Edward Tufte as having too much ink, but they are a definite step above the hideous 3-D bar graphs that come out of Microsoft products. Wordle is a word or tag cloud maker and it can be used on Many Eyes. And Many Eyes is definitely a social network for people who like to look for patterns in numbers.

thanks, David!

2008-03-21T07:47:00.001-04:00

For sharing this YouTube video. Just the thing for planning library services to senior citizens.

Flickr refinished

2008-03-18T19:44:00.002-04:00

I had to get a Yahoo account for something else entirely, so it seemed foolish not to set up a Flickr account too. Have a look at my photos. Here's a place I'd like to be right now:

certified 2.0 genius

2008-03-15T18:24:00.004-04:00

Got my certificate, button, MP3 player. But stopping now would invalidate the learning, right? Let me recommend Halting State by Charles Stross. Set about 10 years into the future, it is a mashup of IT security risks, infowar espionage, and ARGs. Imagine that people participating in a sort of role-playing game are being used unwittingly as tools by a foreign government.

The book got me thinking about other possible uses of ARGs, so I did some surfing and found World Without Oil. Don't know how I missed this last year. But maybe before Learning 2.0 I wouldn't have appreciated it? Anyway, it integrates many of the tools from L2 to create a simulation of a social policy crisis and invites everyone to play along. It calls this wisdom of crowds but I think it is closer to civic engagement. I think the wisdom of crowds is simply Adam Smith's invisible hand - the cumulative effect of the self-interest of many. World Without Oil, however, invites imaginative participation with no advantage to self interest - in other words, what's good for the community. I am thinking this may be a better model for civic engagement in the future than sitting around in deliberation groups, National Issues Forum style. It seems like there ought to be some sort of game that would cultivate information skeptics as well.

freebees for working groups

2008-03-09T14:27:00.002-04:00

I read Michele Boule's "Changing the Way We Work" in Library Technology Reports. It was less than I'd hoped for. All her examples are software/applications development workgroups. She does review some interesting free applications.

One of the case studies is http://about.scriblio.net/ "open source OPAC with faceted searching and browsing features based on WordPress." See http://tamworthlibrary.org/ for a public library application.

http://www.dimdim.com/ claims to be "web conferencing service which is free to consumers and extremely easy to use, as there is no software to download or maintain." More web comferencing hosts are http://www.yugma.com/, http://www.zoho.com/ and http://vyew.com/site/.

http://www.37signals.com/ has free project management tools: Basecamp, Campfire group chat, Backpack, and Whiteboard.

In addition to pbwiki and wetpaint, she reviews http://www.seedwiki.com/. A booktalk use is http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/hallahan_library_book_talk/hallahan_library_book_talk.

Rollyo back again

2008-02-20T18:25:00.002-05:00

Helen asked me how I did it. So, of course I had to redo it to figure out what I'd done. Sigh. This time I have amalgamated dictionaries. Let's see if that's any more useful than my other Rollyos.

twice more, actually

2008-02-20T17:15:00.001-05:00

Cindy convinced me to put the book list over on the side instead of in the post. It has been done, O Great Peer!

Once more dear friends...

2008-02-13T20:35:00.000-05:00

Library Thing try again

2008-02-13T20:30:00.003-05:00

Aha, gotta go to my Library Thing Profile to get the right code. Ha. But when I added some books, my old blog entry updated, Now that is truly slick!

Will this work any better?

updating Library Thing

2008-02-13T20:20:00.001-05:00

http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=emelas&shelf=list

gonig back over stuff now

2008-02-06T14:30:00.000-05:00

Using pictures from flickr makes me antsy about copyright, so I found this in the library photo archive and flikrtoyed with it.

Friendship

2008-02-06T13:36:00.000-05:00

FOLUSA has ads onYouTube encouraging people to join the Friends of their local library.

Classic Czech Cartoons

2008-01-31T12:06:00.000-05:00

Decades ago, back in Cleveland, I used to show Mole cartoons to kids in the library. I don't know how legal this is, but I am glad to find them on YouTube!

A Suitable Timepiece

2008-01-28T19:36:00.000-05:00

I got curious about all the countdown gadgets on other people's blogs so I decided I needed one too. Didn't know what I was going to count down to, but gotta keep up with the bloggers.

But I found something better! Scroll down to the bottom and see the clock I prefer to use.

IM catchup

2008-01-28T18:37:00.000-05:00

Well, I just had a nice exchange with the IM person. You may remember that when I did the IM thing it was too late in the day and I left a message that seems to have gone to Im-m-m-land. So now I have gone back and experienced IM as a website user. I don't have an account and don't really want one. I really truly would rather email.
Now, my conscience is clear.

30 means "that's all" in journalism

2008-01-28T10:39:00.000-05:00

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you? I did not realize how much signing-up there would be and I find this the most off-putting aspect of Web 2.0. I really hope for a shift to more seamless embedding, with less joining and accounts.
The trend from asynchronous to activities that require people to be on at the same time distresses me. I always thought that the great virtue of the Internet was that it didn’t matter what time it was somewhere else or whether the other person used his computer on a different schedule. I see 2.0 as getting too time-bound (as well as too time consumptive), and yet something as simple as stating the length of a podcast is neglected.
And we are still ignoring the shortening lifespan of technology. We are far too focused on details that will change, rather than on creating a process of adaptation/adoption that can keep up.
Too many 2.0 services push a superficial fear of html which dis-empowers users, but html exists to create that seamlessness and put content creation in everyone's grasp.
I want to learn more about tag clouds - I think they could be as transforming as keyword searching has been for libraries. Tag clouds have potential as a knowledge management tool.
I am imagining a library that gets better the more its customers consciously participate in its development. We need to collaborate with our public and channel their impulse to share. Reader advice is particularly suited to social networks. "Collective wisdom" is really self-correcting wisdom, but wiki manners for correcting need to be explicitly stated. What gets appropriate participants to self-select? Would it help us to think of our customers as online volunteers? We need to recruit & trust our self-correcting collective and we need structures that do this automatically 24/7.
Wise organizations will consciously create a self image in the networks, as they have in architecture. However, while we need to be reachable through each person's preferred communication channel, this is not the same as trying to create separate self-images in each channel. For one thing, fresh is more appealing than polished. And trying to be cool is pathetic. Moreover, cool moves on constantly, especially when corporate and middle-aged presences arrive. I believe preferred communication channels are a reflection of learning styles, not just generations.
The public may finally be ready to recognize the bias inherent in all human records, not just online or collaborative, and acknowledge that critical thinking is a vital skill, not a threat.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept? Definitely need to recalculate the necessary time for learning. I would say each thing took me between one and 3 hours, depending on how involving I found it. Smaller bites than 30 might encourage more people to participate. I know we don’t want to spend MP3s on less than a large effort, but the SRP has shown the need for little incentives along the way. Also, possibly some way of verifying that the participant understood the thing. I know I did not understand pods for the longest time. Maybe that’s just me, but sometimes one can do stuff by rote and still not “get it.”

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate? YES! I really like self-paced experiential learning, especially with hand-holding available so my anxiety doesn’t get loose and run around shrieking. Thank you Cindy for creating this! And thank you Diane for your repeated encouragement. Now I have to figure out what to do with an MP3. (I really did this for the learning, not the reward.)

obligatory cute animal picture

2008-01-27T14:22:00.000-05:00

I thought this little rascal would be ideal for a motivational poster or a lolcat poster. But I cannot think of a good caption - I guess the photo says it all. It was a thirsty summer here in Virginia Beach.

So, if you want to interact, leave me a caption suggestion.

Note, this too is not one of the 30 things. A freebee!

My Fellow Bloggers

2008-01-24T20:22:00.000-05:00

2. OK, OK! I do not own a cat. Clearly if you don't post cat pictures you are chopped liver. Or Whiskas or something. On the other paw, I do pun. I enjoyed looking at what others have done. And I don't think I suffer so badly in comparison. EVEN IF NO ONE READS THIS!
Deep breath.
1. I enjoyed the solitary play. I am not sociable enough for 2.0 I fear. The parts I liked least were the interactions with people. The parts I liked best were playing with images and things. (Hmmm, could it be that? No, it's the !#$% cat pictures!) I know Ms Boule believes it is a generational thing - "you just wouldn't understand" - but I think at this end of 2.0 that learning styles and extro/introversion may be better predictors of comfort with the new technology. And time. When I got intrigued, hours just flew. And I don't have all that many hours left.
I really resented the need to keep joining/subscribing. I mean, I understand the business plan, but it is tiresome.
How was I affected? Well, there are plenty of online activities to pursue if I ever stop working.

what goes in a Rollyo?

2008-01-21T17:38:00.000-05:00

I made 2 of them, one very general with search fields on each site, and one very specific to interesting views of the Periodic Table. However, when I search on them, the results seem to come from elsewhere. I don't get it. I'm pasting the code for them below, don't know if this will work...

Well, it looks like it did work, sort of.
I suppose we could set up topic-specific search boxes for reference, but truthfully, I like the serendipity of a broader search and I am not sure that "librarian approved" is going to make a big difference to most users. Hmmmm, might this provide quick reference for those staffing IM?

cloud from library thing

2008-01-21T14:34:00.000-05:00

I just put together some possible books for a discussion of why we have government.

I picked the tag cloud instead of the titles, in part because tag clouds fascinate me and in part because it illustrates what I'm getting at. Now let's see how it turned out.

generating trouble

2008-01-21T13:19:00.000-05:00

I played with this one at home and wasted lots of time. Here are the ones I found that I like.

Useful:
Tufte sparklines
family tree
Dublin Core metadata
lorem ipsum layout text
Mindmaps but it requires a download!

Fun:
bird song
design a face
error dialog box
rebus maker
cartoon maker

Enough of this. Gotta catch up to thing 30!

extra edition - not one of the 30 things

2008-01-05T10:40:00.000-05:00

OK, finally I do get podcasting. I reread Cindy's intro and this time I really thought about "AUDIO FILE + RSS FEED = PODCAST." I was so focused on the audio v video, I totally missed the RSS implications.

But, I have to say that I'm not thrilled with the idea of subscribing to audio feeds. In part, it's because I am so over-subscribed already. In part, it is learning styles - I am not an audio learner. I want the control print offers to skip and go back, to assess the length and quality without being immersed in the text. I can make the trade off for visual interest with video, but audio just doesn't do it for me. Also, I really prefer the dip-in feel of YouTube over the commitment of podcasting.

I am thinking that offering content to meet a variety of learning styles is as critical as meeting different generational expectations.

One other thing - I'm doing this post from home to see how that works.

Why are vids easier than pods?

2008-01-04T12:45:00.000-05:00

It was a little thing but it bugged me - the time was wrong on all my posts. I think I have fixed it. We'll see.

Now to the main topic. To me, it feels like viewing and mashing video are much, much easier than podcasts. I don't know why this should be, and history suggests that audio is simpler than audiovisual, but that's not how it felt. E.g. I had no trouble embedding a video two posts back. Therefore, I'd choose video over podcasting, even if I had to fake the visuals. Also, I think we have greater tolerance for amateurish image than sound. I found the voices doing book reviews unctuous and studied rather than fresh and sincere. I also really disliked not knowing the length of the podcast! If that information was there, I didn't see it. And it wasn't always clear to me what I needed to do to. For example Boulder teens seem to think I want to subscribe before I've even tried them out. Is it my age that I just don't get podcasting?

2 peas in a pod

2008-01-03T17:32:00.000-05:00

Since Websense sensed forbidden things on all the links that weren't broken, I just went off to google and tried "library + podcast." I found this http://podcast.denverlibrary.org/ which is a podcast version of dial-a-story. I notice they have a partnership with a specific publisher which seems like a great way to launch such a venture.

I'll try the Learning 2.0 links from home. I did set up DenverPL on my Bloglines.

I found YALSA's podcasts about teen library services by noodling around the ALA site rather than a pod directory. Overall, I'm thinking that "podcast" is a bit too focused on the medium rather than the message. Eventually, I expect it will all be more seamless like that YouTube video I embedded last time.

buggy code

2008-01-02T17:12:00.000-05:00

I put in "insect" as a search term. There are far too many people who want to watch someone eat a bug. Why don't they just have some shrimp? However, I found a pair of cute cartoons. Insect Rally and Insect Race. Enjoy!

Now let's see if I can embed one.

Hmmm, pretty easy.

Flickr my Blog

2007-12-26T13:43:00.000-05:00

Oooo, this was fun! I made a motivational poster. And this has possibilities for locating visual synonyms - great use of tags! I also enjoyed the Color Pickr, but never got the Montagr to come up or the Mappr to do anything. But I did get Karen Schneider's trading card on the first click. The trading cards could be a fun activity for Harry Potter fans. And Spell with Flickr has possibilities.
Good timing to have this fun stuff for the holidays. Speaking of which, today is Umoja (unity), which is complemented nicely by web 2.0's community-building.

Flickring illumination

2007-12-26T12:31:00.000-05:00

The 10 ways to use Flickr in a library seems to me to be only 3. There's Flickr presence, marketing (collection, events, services), and preservation (the dreaded off-site storage).
Conversely, "how Flickr is different from traditional photosharing web sites" would seem to invite very different library uses. For example, we might share images from the library's collection to encourage tagging by outsiders so as to create better access to the images. We might create an image library of the community to ensure that there were no gaps in coverage. We might add cataloging terms as tags to Flickr images to improve access for everyone and influence tagging trends. Essentially, we need to look at collaborating with the public, not just marketing to the public, which is all I hear Stephens saying. Otherwise, I fear that we will miss the more profound aspects of Web 2.0. It's as thought a librarian looked at the Model T Ford and saw the potential for a bookmobile, but not parking lots and drive up windows and Chiltons manuals.

not another account?

2007-12-21T10:31:00.000-05:00

I was all ready to set up a Flickr account because I need to share some photos of the backyard with a person whose advice I'm seeking. But, having to create a Yahoo email account really put me off. I agree with the comment on the Learning 2.0 blog that there are just too many sign ups to keep track of on Web 2.0.
Hey - killer app! A Web login manager. Maybe I'll get rich in the next internet bubble?
Anyway, after I gave up on making my own Flickr account, I decided to see what images of Virginia Beach are there. 27,345 pictures! Lots of nice sunsets and waves and bathing suits, but if City government was smart, they'd add a bunch of promotional images. IMHO. So the exercise to add library images was smart. If only it didn't mean another @/#!! email account.

socially networked reader advice

2007-12-18T13:32:00.000-05:00

LibraryThings http://www.librarything.com/ book seems to be quite good - the recommendations matched my perception of the titles I tested. The 2 honorable mention book resources were also interesting. For very amateur video book reviews, try http://bluerectangle.com/book_reviews/view_one_category/today Admittedly, I read the transcripts instead of listening to the video. But, amateur or not, the reviews were on target for what the site is trying to achieve.
On the other hand, http://reader2.com/has potential but there's not much there yet. And what there is, isn't interesting to American leaisure readers. The structure looks good, but the contributions so far aren't going to encourage more people to get involved. Lots of biz n-f and a recent bunch of Indian titles.
How does a site attract a critical mass of well intentioned contributors? Some of it is scope and structure - easy to contribute but not easy to hijack. I suppose some is marketing. But, it seems to me that this non-tech question is at the heart of 2.0.

tickling Technorati

2007-12-18T12:43:00.000-05:00

Maybe I'm missing something, but Technorati simply doesn't thrill me. I really don't care about the newest news, the latest fad, what everybody talking about. (I don't even read best sellers.)

However, for the sake of learning, I shall try to provide a Technorati tag here. Technorati help says, "To associate a post with a Technorati Tag all you have to do is tag your post by including a special link in the body of your post.
VBPLL2 " and I have substituted VBPLL2 for [tagname]. If I am reading this right, it does not need to be in Blogger's tag window but can be in the body of the post. We'll see if this works OK. Uh oh! Error message: Your HTML cannot be accepted: Tags cannot enclose tags. Hmmm, extra stuff seems to have crept in when I pasted.

Yummy tags

2007-12-18T12:05:00.000-05:00

This one's easy - I've been using Del.icio.us for months. I started because I have massive quantities of bookmarks and different ones at home than work. I'm not finished copying them to Del.icio.us yet, but already, it helps with portability.
And, I appreciate other folks' tags. I use them when I can, but I'm trying to control the proliferation of synonyms on my Del.icio.us pages. I also deliberately label a few personal links with tags that should be meaningless to others, e.g. my Bloglines account.
What I want now is the software to make clouds. I want to be able to create visual relationships between terms, not just size differences. For example, http://www.literature-map.com/ lets you see how similar two authors are. That would be brilliant in the catalog! But, simple tagging would be a start. I think the combination of cataloging and tagging would build on the strengths and compensate for the deficiencies of both. Cataloging resolves ambiguity. Tagging adds paths of access and enriches the meaningfullness of official subjects.

creepy space

2007-12-17T13:08:00.000-05:00

Well I created a MySpace thing. I did not enjoy it. Far too much of me seems to show. I think I've set it so no one can see, I hope! And then this "friend" showed up out of nowhere. CREEPY. Got rid of him, I think. Stupid MySpace decided I'm single, but I don't remember being asked. OK, I found where that is and fixed it. Sigh. Gimme a wiki anytime.
NO, I do not find this easy! Back when I had a website, that was easy. HTML is easy. Finding the right page to edit this stuff is not easy. OK, I really, really do not like this!

Whose Space?

2007-12-17T11:58:00.000-05:00

There was an interesting editorial today on the teen who committed suicide after her MySpace friendship blew up. It suggested the real problem was adults who immersed themselves too far into the teen milieu. A remark attributed to Yogi Berra, "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded," may soon apply to adult (including librarian) exploitation of MySpace. There is a subtle difference between being available where your clientele hangs out and being intrusive.

I see value in having our teen groups on MySpace - that makes sense in the context. And I support a VBPL MySpace account that focuses tightly on services of interest like IM, rather than replicating the whole range of our Virtual Library. However, I think we need to be prepared to follow the teen demographic when they leave MySpace which I'm guessing they will have done by 2010 if not earlier. If we take another three years to prepare to have a presence on the latest Internet fad, we might as well not bother. OK?

Wiki etiquette

2007-12-17T11:22:00.000-05:00

OK, I confess. I altered someone else's book review. Well, added to it, anyway. I saw some other improvements that I wanted to make but I refrained. What is the expectation of authorship? Should we go ahead and ignore the review that does not have last name first? Or fix it? Italicize titles? Add suitable tags? Also, what about the other headings besides staff picks - is anyone going to populate them?
I found the edit function very easy, but this is not the first wiki I've worked with. It was harder to pick just one book to add. I may go back and add more! however, if I had not known to expect font options at the top, I might have missed them since my author was late in the alphabet. Do wikis have a"freeze frame" option like Excell so the instructions can follow you down the page?
How else can libraries use wikis? Well, internally we could have a patron wall of shame wiki to alert other staff. Just kidding, I think. OK?

Wikis are the real Internet

2007-12-12T20:18:00.000-05:00

The first thing I encountered on the Internet back in 1992 was Usenet newsgroups. People in newsgroups like alt.folklore.urban were creating wonderful resources together, out of pride in their knowledge or the satisfaction of creation. When I raved about these resources, I heard the sneers that ordinary people couldn't author real information. Well, just what species do you think authors and editors belong to?
I love Wikipedia. If someone puts up lies, someone else can catch it. Try doing that with Britannica! And if you think Britannica isn't full of WASP bias, you probably are a WASP. The truth is that all books are full of biases and anyone who doesn't read critically is a fool. At least with Wikipedia, you know you have to read critically. At the risk of sounding sentimental, Wikis embody what I first loved about the Internet back when I though it was going to change the world, before spam and dot.com.
Specifically, VB could create a Wiki of reference and reader advisory information to support IM reference. I can testify that Wikis are wonderful for working teams, especially when they are geographically distant. The possible uses are much broader than blogging because a wiki is multidimensional, not chronologically linear. I think Wikis are the best of 2.0. ok

a not-so-instant message

2007-12-12T19:57:00.000-05:00

Well, it is too late tonight to reach anyone in IM. So I left a message. If I get a reply, I'll put it on the blog. One of the readings, Instant Messaging Tools and Technology: A Mini-Guide, said that as IM got more familiar it would get more asynchronous. I am willing to be convinced!
I got a hoot watching Sarah Long doing the interview on YouTube. It proves the old fogeys are still at it, working away on 2.0.
As for VBPL IM, the person who was on the last shift tonight got a Reader Advisory question. I'm thinking we need to populat the "rooms" on the Virtual Library with reading lists to which the staff taking IM shifts could refer. We also need to build an electronic ready reference database for them to check. It's all very well to have an IM widget, but we need to put resources at the staff's fingertips to make it a success.
So, will I get an email from the next IM shift? Come back and see. OK?

IM at the command line

2007-12-12T19:20:00.000-05:00

I'm delighted that Wikipedia remembers "talk" from back in the days before the WWW. I remember getting a "talk" request once from a 14 year old who noticed my email address was a girl's name. I was sorry to disillusion him that I was well past my teens. (He's probably pushing 30 and raising kids himself now.)
This is an example of where Web 2.0 came from. It irritates me a little when the "born digital" generation assumes that us old fogeys don't get it and never did it. Of course, it wasn't quite the same at 1200 baud. A more significant point is that these IM services are not seamlessly compatible the way the old Unix protocol was. That's sad.
Nevertheless, I don't expect to use IM much for myself. What I love about the Internet is that it is asynchronous. I hate phone-tag and voice mail and to me IM is another opportunity to miss connecting and get frustrated. ON the other hand, I think IM may be better than phone in some respects. And I do support providing library IM for those who do like it. Not everyone has to share my tastes. OK?

finding feeds

2007-11-20T13:32:00.000-05:00

None of the search tools helped me much, but Topix seemed the most productive. I was surprised to see that even blogs seem to have become a vehicle for spam. I do better picking up links from other reading. And of course Nicole alerts me to anything she finds. So, my best blog finding tool is definitely Municipal Reference!

Hans on Experience was a hoot, especially the Dutch version. OK!

RSS = Really Saturated with Subscriptions

2007-11-20T11:57:00.000-05:00

I never have time to actually go to Bloglines and read what's come in. The technology is great but the human is still typing on a wooden keyboard! Maybe when I retire, I'll have time to keep up? I would like to have the time to create a blog that was a diary of the local outdoors, e.g. record when the birds migrate and the plants bloom.

For libraries, I see more value in wikis than blogs. The chronological aspect of blogs seems to me to demand more than just "here's what I thought about today." But for most blogs, the date of the entry isn't all that meaningful. It makes sense to me to use a blog for an events calendar because that's chronological. To use blogging for a book discussion keeps comments sequential, but I'm not sure how important that is. A 2.0 catalog would not be sequential, but wholistic. In essence, all 2.0 technologies are conversations and the ones that are not sequential seem to me to build more more interesting outcomes.
OK

Better with Use

2007-11-20T09:47:00.000-05:00

I really like the O’Reilly quote, “software that gets better the more people use it.” Clearly this can apply to libraries as well, if we let library users participate in helping the organism grow. (A library is a growing organism, according to Ranganathan.) When we weed based on circulation, that is unconsious user participation. I hope to see library catalogs to which users can consciously contribute their tags, reviews and lists.

An interesting aspect of O'Reilly's observation is that it violates entropy. I know of one SF novel that explores the reversal of entropy - David Brin’s The Practice Effect. In that universe, knives get sharper with use.
OK

7 habits from PLCMC

2007-11-20T09:14:00.000-05:00

We were advised to contemplate which habits were easy and which hard for us. I find "Beginning with the End in Mind" impossible when it comes to Web/library 2.0. After all, who knows where this will end? At the risk of uttering a cliche, it's the journey, not the destination that matters. So, I have no end in mind for this blog - I'm just playing. And lo, playing is the final1/2 habit. So, there we are. OK?