Best Tuesday Ever! Shopping for Barbie Party with the Youth Services LIbrarian and Developmental Assistant Director, Jennifer Furuyama, and then I made this epic life-size Barbie box for the Barbie Party on Thursday! Muhahaha Jennifer asked how it could be that I hadn't thought of being a youth services librarian before. I don't know but I've been converted!!! :D Also, I received more training on ordering in Ingram today! Woot!
Also, the Developmental Library Director, Mary Finney, was sick of looking at nails in the wall...so she did this! :D
I first heard about Spotify, the application that let’s you soundtrack your life, when I started training for running. I was trying out different applications for music while I was running. I tried Pandora but running wise, the stations didn’t stay consistent BPM wise. I tried RockMyRun, which I do really like and I can get free playlists every week. I tried FitRadio, but did not like the radio selection options as the music was not stuff I specifically knew. Getting me motivated to run through music often means I’m looking for something semi specific to listen to.
So my experience with Spotify! I downloaded the application on my iPhone to start. It was after I was informed about some great running mixes that were published by PopSugar Fitness (http://www.fitsugar.com/). They were specifically Spotify mixes and they were super easy to access. I have since searched for running mixes in iTunes and just in general online and I have yet to find better mixes than the lists PopSugar put together on Spotify. RockMyRun comes close though!
Then, I went to the AppFinder! I found other applications that I could create specialized playlists with. For instance, I added the Reebok Fit List which allowed me to enter the type of work out, the intensity, the time and an artist. Reebok Fit List generated a playlist that I could then add to my Spotify playlists! This has made me actually want a premium account on Spotify!
I did create my Spotify account with my Facebook account. For this class, I actually downloaded the desktop application. I found it interesting that I only really want to follow people with certain types of musical interests. I personally feel like that at one point in time, I wanted to access everything in one place. I wanted to know about a friends day, music, movies, books, etc., in one place. But now I prefer to separate them a bit more and the tools/applications I use to do so create a lot more depth to the sharing, such as music and Spotify, books on Goodreads and professional life on Linked-In.
Spotify itself provides great depth and breadth when it comes to music specifically by connecting multiple ways to enjoy music, such as one’s own music collection, playlists through websites like Popsugar Fitness, applications like Reebok Fit List, and through other social media sites like Facebook, helping people to connect with friends through their music interests.
In the video below, that I watched for Libr 246, Web 2.0, a developer in the film states that they intended Spotify to be “accessible to anyone in the world” and this is why the social aspect was so important. Libraries are also supposed to be accessible to anyone in the world. With the social age we live in, I can see libraries adjusting their offerings with offerings of social connection, like teen events that are literature “themed” or somehow connected to literature (which can be any theme!) but that truly bring people together. Another example I think of is my public library holding author book-talks at a local brew pub instead of the library. The brew pub sets the atmosphere of socializing and the library brings the literature! It’s just too bad that we are still fighting to bring the same social atmosphere into libraries to create the same excitement.
They developers and founders talk about how the company finds collaboration and communication to be important and this comes out in the Spotify design. I believe more libraries (and organizations in general) that focused on greater collaboration and communication with the community could help to build further depth and breadth of materials and services at our libraries.
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