Thing 23. Final Thoughts

My favorite thing was del.icio.us. I had read about it and looked at it, but had not signed up to use it.

I think that was the best part about the 23 Things. I signed up for many things that I had looked at but had not bothered to sign up for. The 23 Things also introduced me to aspects of things I was using that I had not explored, like avatars and image generators and blog widgets.

I wished there were an easier way to find blogs that hadn't been abandoned after very few things. I enjoyed the finishers' blogs, but having half-finished blogs in a nice list would have been helpful a few weeks ago. The best thing would have been a way to read blog postings about the thing I just finished.

I would be interested in a "more" 23 things. It would depend what the things were, though. Maybe we could have a smorgasboard with "Pick 5 things out of 23".

Thanks for putting this together!

Thing 22. What Did I Learn Today?

My resolution would not be much different from what I already do. I read articles, I subscribe to feeds, I'm on email lists, I attend webinars. My resolution would be to put more of the things I read about into action. I started a blog for our library last fall, and I plan to implement chat reference at the beginning of the next school year.

One other thing I'm going to do is cut down on the number of things I look at. For example, Library Stuff has way to many postings of really trivial stuff. Stephen Abrams' Lighthouse, on the other hand, always has gems. Why slog through trivia when you can just get the gems?

I'm also going to subscribe to Lifehacker for a while.

Time stamps on blog posts

The time stamps on my blog posts bear no resemblance to reality other than the date. I wonder what they are drawing from.

Thing 21. Beyond MySpace: Other Social Networks

I've used WebJunction Minnesota information, but have not posted. Someday, I want to take one of the online classes, perhaps this summer. The problem with this, Gather, Ning, and other sites like the MnPALS forums, is that they are not push technology. I have to go there to look at them. I have to have the time to go there and look at them. I have to remember to go there and look at them. And even if I request to be updated every time something I'm interested in changes, it's just way too much information. And now that I've joined the 23 Things on a Stick Ning, that's another one. Ugh! TMI!


View my page on 23 Things on a Stick

Thing 20. Libraries and Social Networks

I joined Facebook a few months ago. Various librarians have become my "friends". My husband is now one of my "friends". (What if your husband refuses to be your "friend"? :-)

I joined the Special Libraries Association and Minnesota Library Association groups.

I have to admit a bit of annoyance with Facebook. Because I have a Century College address, it won't let me join my college network, only the Century network. Anyone know how to get around this?

I find Facebook unituitive. I prefer LinkedIn, which seems to be the place for librarians in the Twin Cities to be. I find it more useful and more intuitive.

Thing 19. Podcasts

I chose an episode of MPR's How's the Family to listen to. It's one that I heard the beginning of on the radio on the way in to work about how familys are consuming more. It's a truly appalling subject. I subscribed to the feed.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/podcasts/hows_the_family/

Podcasts are interesting, but I actually think we'll be getting more mileage out of a podcast combined with visuals from slides or PowerPoints. GCast is interesting, but I think we'll use Audacity for the audio.

Thing 18. YouTube & Other Online Video

I think my current favorite YouTube video is the scary Mary Poppins trailer. It just goes to show how you can take any information and repackage it to show something completely different. I've also liked the medieval help desk video in the Things blog since the first time I saw it over a year ago. We're going to use both these videos in a presentation on the Information Revolution at the Century College Campus Conference next week.

Thing 17. ELM Productivity Tools

I love ELM. I've now used it in three different librarian environments, and each one brings new insights.

I've set up a feed from EBSCO into my Bloglines account for several tables of contents. At work, with IP verification, they work great. The EBSCO Web editing tools aren't that interesting. They seem clunky and I can do the same thing with other tools. The ProQuest My Research seems a bit more helpful. I could see taking this basic page and editing the HTML to really use it for something.

I like the NetLibrary books as an addition to our print collection. In fact, we're in the middle of purchasing the new Community College collection. These resources help us serve our distance education students. We also like that we don't have to catalog these since we can just have the MARC records loaded. We also don't have to process the physical item with stamps and call numbers, and they don't take any shelf space. I particularly like NetLibrary for subjects like computer programming, where things get dated so fast. It's really easy to weed old items.

Thing 16. Student 2.0 Tools

We use the Assignment Calculator on our library web page through Research Quickstart, which is hosted by St. Cloud State. I like that I can customize the help to include resources at our college, like the Writing Center and the library. I can even link to our databases if I want. This is a really useful resource, particularly the email reminders.

Of course, it hasn't stopped students from coming in the day before their paper is due to start their research!

Thing 15. Online Games and Libraries

I tried both Puzzle Pirates and Second Life. Puzzle Pirates interested me because a woman who worked for my husband just left that job to work for them. It's an interesting game, but not nearly as interesting as something like World of Warcraft. All these games end up quite repetitive, though. And the social aspects aren't very interesting to someone who already has very little free time.

Second Life strikes me the same way. Why not use your First Life? I can see this being a great venue for people with disabilities who are not mobile or need adaptive technology to interact with people, but I'd rather work on improving the real world. These virtual games can also be addictive because they're so easy compared to day-to-day reality, and thus become an incredible investment of time - for what end?

After I retire in 20 some years, however, I might be persuaded to use my implanted neural shunt to play lots of virtual games.

Thing 14. LibraryThing

Well, I finally have joined LibraryThing. At my previous job, I told two colleagues about LibraryThing, but never joined myself. They both joined at the lifetime level, bought scanners, and use it regularly. And rave about it. I've just used it to find books I might want to read, without joining. I've felt like a slacker for over a year, but now I am a productive citizen of Web 2.0 and LibraryThing.

My library has a few of my favorite books in it. I'm not sure how I feel about having this information public. I know that some people I know who use LibraryThing zealously guard their privacy with a username that cannot be traced back to them.

In a library, I could see using this for the same reason I use it personally, as a reader's advisory help. I also think the tag clouds are interesting and a good way to find books on weird things like "wordplay". And it lets you see how other people rate books.

Thing 13. Online Productivity Tools

I created an iGoogle page. I can see that this could be useful, particularly the weather. I tend not to check the weather forecasts very often, and got caught in the snowstorm on Monday in only a raincoat. (Silly me, I thought spring was here!)

We're thinking about using Google calendars as a shared staff calendar at work, so we can keep track of vacations and training. I use a PDA currently, and I'm contemplating purchasing a combined PDA/phone now that they are getting less expensive. I like that the PDA synchs with Outlook, which is what we use at work. I need to check to see if Google calendars would synch with Outlook, because I don't want to enter things twice. I also use my PDA/Outlook to track tasks. I'm often looking at that list when I'm far away from the Internet, so I probably would not switch.

Zamzar looks to me like it will be as useful as TinyURL, which we use all the time in answering email reference questions.

Thing 12. Do You Digg?

I used to think this was an interesting idea until I looked at Digg, Mixx, Reddit, and Newsvine, and saw a lot of dog stories, a story about a bimbo, and an octopus escaping through a one inch hole. Not a lot of useful information. It's kind of like getting your information only from the Onion. I would far rather trust my local newspaper editors to decide the most important stories of the day than 10,000 random people with too much spare time.

What's more, important stories get ignored because few people "digg" them. A large company can skew the results of a product release by providing thousands of college students a free cup of Starbucks to "Digg" their product. It makes me think of the difference between a representative democracy and direct democracy. We live in a representative democracy for the most part, and we elect representatives to make informed decisions about laws. California indulges in direct democracy and ruined one of the best school systems in the country by passing Proposition 13. I'm glad Minnesota has not yet partaken of this experiment.

I suppose our library could use this type of social software to provide students the ability to "digg" items in our catalog. However, we might get better results if faculty were the "diggers". Otherwise, the only items that rose to the top would be the same items with large circulation numbers: UFOs, witchcraft, deformed humans, cults, marijuana, etc.

I joined Digg a while ago when a friend asked me to Digg something that was important to him. So I suppose I'm part of the problem. What information can you trust these days? While it's certainly interesting and entertaining to see what other people find interesting, I don't know that it's particularly useful.

Thing 11 - Tagging and Del.icio.us

I've had a family blog for a while, but had never added tags to it. I think I will use this feature a lot in the future. It's useful to find all of the posts about one kid or about Cub Scout activities, etc. I figured out how to add the labels as a page element in Blogger. Cool!

I've also been meaning to try Del.icio.us for a while, so it's useful to have the motivation of the 23 Things. I signed up for an account. I see a use for this at Century as a collaboration between the library and various other offices. I often come across web sites that offer resources for educators, like MERLOT and BEN. Our college needs a place to put these bookmarks so everyone in the institution can get at them. I think we can figure out how to do this using Del.icio.us. (I just wish it had an easier to type name!) I also plan to use this to keep my bookmarks so I don't accidentally bookmark something in IE, and then be unable to find it in Firefox. It will also be better than trying to keep my home and work bookmarks in synch.

Thing 10 - Wikis

I edited the 23 Things on a Stick wiki. What a conglomeration! That's the problem I see with wikis - you definitely need some guidelines or a stylesheet in order to end up with something useful like pathfinders. I'm working on creating a wiki for the SLA MN Chapter Board, but I have to admit that I have not been able to spend as much time on it as I would like. Their system, which is called Confluence, is terribly convoluted and not very user friendly. It comes with a manual that is HUGE. Not the best way to promote wiki usage.

Thing 9 - Online Collaboration Tools

I can see the utility of this. No more platform based problems with access or transfer of documents. I kind of hope this eventually means the end of Microsoft Word. I've written plenty of documents that had to be emailed back and forth for revisions until we forgot which one was the current version. Online word processing will be useful.

Thing 8 - Share your Creations

I can see that E-Folio could be useful for K-12 students making web pages for History Day projects. And if we don't gain control of our own library page soon, I could see using it for that purpose as well. The problem with E-Folio is the same as any other web site, that they go out of date so fast. Look at how many sites have not been updated recently.

Lazybase is intriguing, but I'm not sure how we would use it. Lots of these tools are cool, but I don't want to be using tools just because they are cool.

Thing 7 - Web 2.0 Communication Tools

While at the State Law Library and the Legislative Reference Library, we answered email reference questions constantly and the numbers of questions rose each year. Yet at Century, we receive barely one email per week. I plan to publicize the service starting next fall to see if that helps. I also want to implement IM reference. Some staff question the need, but I don't see how it can be a bad move. It's really no harder than answering the telephone. I do wonder if it will be used more than our email reference.

Thing 6 - Online Image Generators

I can see that these online image generators will be useful for handouts and for our library blog.




My trading card is pathetic, though.

It needs some statistics.

Thing 5 - More Flickr

Just checking out the Flickr toys. These are kind of fun.

Thing 4 - Flickr

I created a Flickr account and uploaded this photo of our new library building as it is being built. It's shows the south facing windows and the electronically controlled tinting.

I created a Flickr tour of the State Law Library when I worked there, but I have not used Flickr personally. If you want to take a look at the Law Library virtual tour, it's located at http://www.flickr.com/photos/9201331@N04/sets/72157600431218715/. Click on "View as Slideshow" and then on the "i" in the middle of the screen for the full effect. I plan to do this for Century's new library once we move as well.

I probably will not use Flickr for posting photos. Flickr is owned by Yahoo, which is being pursued by Microsoft. Do you want Bill Gates' company hosting your photos for free? How long do you think a free service will last when owned by Microsoft? And how private will the information remain? I would much rather rely on my own computer and backup system. I firmly believe that I am much more reliable and trustworthy that Microsoft or any other online system.

Thing 3

I've had a Bloglines account for several years, so again, this was not a new technology. In some ways, I prefer email lists to RSS, because I don't go look at Bloglines nearly as often as I look at my email. On the other hand, I like that I can access Bloglines easily from any computer. And when I switched jobs and email addresses, my RSS feeds were easily transferred, while my email lists took forever to unsubscribe and subscribe. In the process of switching addresses, I moved as many discussion lists as possible over to RSS. EBSCO will even feed Table of Contents into my feedreader. That's cool!

Thing 2

I've been learning and reading about Library 2.0 for some time, so these ideas are not new to me. My problem is that I can't figure out how to apply and make them relevant to our library. Although I've used many of the tools on the 23 Things list before, some I have not, and this will force me to try them. In the process of trying these new things, I hope to spur ideas about how we can use them in our library. I hope to determine which ones are useful and which ones are fun, but a waste of time.

One interesting concept in the reading was that the social aspects of the net require trust. Trust that employees will post well on blogs. Trust that students will stick to comments that can remain public. I've seen the comments on the newspaper sites degenerate quickly, so I can see the need for trust. Do we have that trust? In staff, definitely. In students? I will have to persuade my colleagues.

23 Things - Thing 1

I have two other blogs, so creating this post is very familiar. However, the avatar is a new one for me. I wish I could just choose clothes separately. And the red hair looks really fakey. I'll have to check out other avatar creation sites.