Thing 23 - The End

I really enjoyed participating in Thing 23; I learned a lot and it gave me an excuse to play around on the Internet. I would definitely participate in a program like this again - I thought I was pretty up to date on technology, but have learned that sadly, I'm really not. Right now, I'm trying to figure out how to use everything that we've done at our library. Not just to aid us in helping patrons, but maybe showing patrons how to do some of these things for themselves. There is so much information out there - I'm excited to see what else I can learn.
The end.

Thing 22 - What Did I Learn Today?

Taking part in 23 Things has at times been frustrating, but overall has been a good experience. I've enjoyed seeing all the options that are out in the technology world, whether I think I'll use them or not. There are a few things that when I was first introduced to them I didn't think I would ever look at the site again. Of course, those are the ones that I've now become addicted to. My favorite Things were: Bloglines, LibraryThing, Facebook, discovering other social networks, and YouTube.

I'm not sure if I'll keep up with my blog. I don't have much going on in my life outside of work, so I think I would run out of stuff to talk about. Maybe I'll try it for a few weeks and see how it goes. I will be using many of the things I've learned, both at work and at home. I will also continue to play with the different technologies that I've started accounts with. There was so much information during 23 Things, that I don't think it had time to sink in. Now I can go back and actually take my time working through things.

Thing 21 - Beyond MySpace: Other Social Networks

I am a member of Flixter and of last. fm. I got involved in Flixter through my Facebook account, which had a movie application I added which created a Flixter account for me. I signed up for Last.fm in March and it has been awesome! At first it was a little creepy because of it's audioscrobber, but once I witnessed the amazingness that ensued I was converted. Last.fm automatically builds a profile for each user based on the music that is already on your computer and then can recommend other music or show you other users accounts that share your interest.

I'd be interested in using Gather and WebJunction in the future. I've tried WebJunction a few times and haven't been able to get it to work, but I haven't really been gung-ho about it. If I maybe applied myself I could probably get it to work. :)

Thing 20 - Libraries and Social Networks

I was already a member of Facebook before I got to this Thing. I admit, I was very anti-Facebook for awhile, but now I can't even remember why. It's been great for me. Since I moved away from my college town, it's kept me in the loop. I know when other people are coming back to visit, when there's going to be get-togethers, etc. The reason I like Facebook more than Myspace is simply privacy. There're sooo many more people on MySpace that it's scary. Facebook (in my opinion) has better privacy filters. With Myspace, it's either all or nothing whereas Facebook gives you options.

I do like the idea of using these Social Networks to get the library into a public place. I really like Hennepin County's MySpace page. I'd like our library to have one, but we would need to solve some filter problems before it would actually work.

Thing 19 - Podcasts

I'm a bit apprehensive about podcasts, I've said this before I think. This Thing changed my mind a little bit. I listened to a few from MPR - they're related to music and language. The one about music is really good. They had an entire episode all about The Clash!

I haven't done anything with iTunes U, but one of my friends plans on spending his summer at the lake using his iPod to study for the bar exam. The directories listed on this Thing were really helpful, as I had no experience in podcasts at all. I had some problems with podcast.net, but I'm not sure if it was the site or my computer. It kept timing out. I also wasn't a huge fan of the Educational Podcast Directory. It just seemed like it was too specific, but if you were in a situation where you were studying and needed that kind of information, it would be a valuable resource.

I have never done any podcasting myself and can pretty much guarantee that I never will. I did however subscribe to 3 different podcasts that I'll keep for a while and see how I like 'em.

Thing 17 - ELM Productivity Tools

I think all the ELM sites are incredibly useful. I wish our library had Proquest, but now I see that I can go in through http://elm4you.org and access it that way.

I tried to make a web page through EBSCO, but it seemed way to advanced for me. I was confused through the whole process, it didn't turn out and even if it did, I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to do with it. It wasn't on the internet, so was it a webpage? Much bewilderment. Setting up an account seemed like a good idea. It would be especially advantageous for using at home for saving articles and searches. It would make research really easy. It wouldn't work quite the same way at the library. We do such random searches for patrons that we almost never need to go back to the same search a second time. Maybe if we get interrupted or something.

I set up a search alert just to try it out. I checked my Bloglines account this morning and had over a hundred links. That's a lot. And most of them were from Australia and kind of repetitive. I wonder if there's a way to limit your search to just certain places? I'll have to do some more experimenting.

Thing 18 - YouTube

I don't have TV in my apartment, so I spend an awful amount of time on YouTube. There is so much stuff that is wonderfully time-wasting. YouTube is currently filtered on the computers at our library, I'm not sure if it's because of the content or more because of the bandwidth. There are some racy videos on YouTube, but it's way more conservative than what some people manage to find - even with the filters. One of my favorite things to search for on YouTube is movie trailers. It has made me really excited for this summer! The Incredible Hulk, Ironman, Dark Knight, X-Files, etc. The clip that I chose to embed in my blog is from Comic Relief in Britain. It is a sketch of David Tennant of Doctor Who fame and Catherine Tate, who coincidentally will be the Doctor's companion in the upcoming series.

Thing 16 - Student 2.0 Tools

I wish I would have known about these while I was still in school. (If they existed) I am a master procrastinator known to watch an entire season of a TV show to avoid getting my work done. These tools don't allow you to "forget" that you're supposed to be working on a project. I would definitely recommend this to students using the library, especially high school students. I think it could also be useful for the staff of the library. We could use it to keep on top of projects or events without becoming overwhelmed.

Thing 15 - Online Games and Libraries

I'm a really big nerd. Thought I should lead with that. I love MMORPGs. I've played Everquest and EVE and I'm completely addicted to World of Warcraft. I'd never played Puzzle Pirates or SecondLife before, but I'd heard a lot about SecondLife. I signed up, created my avatar, wandered around a bit, visited Info Island and got really bored. Really fast. The reason that I play online games is to beat levels, or go on missions. SecondLife was too much like the Sims for my liking. It also seemed a bit creepy. People are living more on SecondLife than they are in Real Life. They end up spending all their time and money on this fake world that they've created for themselves. It just seems wrong. Maybe I would have liked Puzzle Pirates better.

My favorite part of these games is creating the characters. My character on WoW is awesome. He's this big viking-looking guy with tons of cool weapons. Total BAMF. On EVE, it is a completely different story. No matter what I do, or try to change she always just seems to turn out looking like a Transvestite Hooker. Can't change it. Don't know why.

Games are fine in libraries. I know that there are a lot of people who get mad at the people playing these games when there's a shortage of computers, but that's an equipment problem rather than a content problem. We can't judge people based on what they're using the computers for. Even though I didn't like SecondLife, I think it's cool that libraries do have a presence there.

Thing 14 - LibraryThing

I love LibraryThing. I've been using it for about seven months and have really enjoyed it. I needed a way to keep all the books that I own straight. That way if I ever move or rearrange, I'll know where they all were and hopefully it will make it a little easier to put back in order. Or if we get an earthquake. That probably won't happen in this part of the country, but it's good to be safe. It was really easy to add my books into the computer. The first time, it did take a little dedication to get all the way through, but now I just add the book as soon as I bring it home from the store and it's taken care of. What I've recently started doing was adding reviews to a few of my books. It's been hard for me to really say anything valuable in the reviews other than yay or boo, but I spose that will come with practice.

There are still so many things on the site that I haven't gotten involved with yet. I joined the group Librarians who LibraryThing, but haven't really contributed anything. It makes me feel guilty for being in the group. Maybe that's why I haven't joined any others. Oh and I try to get early-reviewer books, but haven't been lucky yet. Cross your fingers.

I added a widget to my blog awhile ago after seeing one of the other girls here do it. I copied. So sue me. But in case that's too time consuming you can also go here to look at my books.

I think it would be useful for the library to have a place where people could look at recently added books or see what the librarians are reading, but it would take waaaaaaaay to much time and effort to enter all of our books, even with a scanner.

Thing 13 - Online Productivity Tools

The sites that we looked at in this Thing seemed like they would be more useful than others we've seen during this process, but there was kind of an information overload. There were so many different sites to look at, I felt overwhelmed. It might be good for me to look at one different site a day so I can actually comprehend the differences.

Since I already had a Google account set up to use Blogger (and have a hatred of all things Yahoo!) I chose to set up a Google start page. There were some things that seemed to be useful - I liked having my weather right there! But some others seemed extraneous. One thing I really like about Google's original homepage is that it was so simple. You could go to Google and find what you were looking for without any distractions. I'm very very very easily distracted, so I think I'll probably not ever sign into that homepage again.

One tool that was talked about on one of the links was TinyURL. I've used that a few times. Sometimes the addresses for sites get so incredibly long that there's no way to remember them, no way to write them down, and no way to copy/paste them into anything. When you use Tiny URL to shorten the address it saves a lot of time and brain power.

I won't use an online calender - I'm too afraid that I'll forget my password or forget where I put it. I use a paper calendar and that is what works best for me. However, at the library we do use a Google calendar to set up the meeting room schedule. We used to use a paper schedule and then it would be constantly erased and changed and things were moved around all the time. Now we have a Google account just for meeting rooms that everyone has a password to - it saves a lot of time and effort.

Thing 12 - Do you Digg?

For this Thing, I browsed around all four sites to see what struck me. These are my first impressions. Digg - too much pop culture. Reddit - strictly sensationalism. Newsvine - actually reliable? a tad more intelligent, maybe. Mixx - combination of the others, I liked how it was divided into categories. While I think it's good for librarians to stay on top of what's going on in the news, I feel like these sites will actually detract from that. There is so much junk to sift through that it will take more time to find the important stories. And there's the fact that these sites that are Digged (dug?) could be anything; they could be some crazy guy from the backwoods ranting about aliens. There isn't a filter to keep the important/relevant stuff in and everything else out. That's why respectable sources have editors. I think I could spend hours wasting time on these sites at home, but not in the workplace.

Since starting on the Things, I've become addicted to my Bloglines account. I have news feeds there that automatically update and since they're from CNN, the BBC and the NY Times - I know that I can (cross your fingers) trust the information that's on there.

I went to the NY Times and found the article about Sarah Jane Olson being let out of prison and then being put back (She was released because of a clerical error). I have shared articles on Facebook before, but never through any of these sites. I chose to use Mixx mainly because I really didn't want to use Reddit or Digg, but it was really simple. It let me share things without signing up for a full membership, but the site seemed friendly (if that's possible for a web site to do) and I almost considered creating an account. But I didn't.......for now.

Thing 11 - Tagging and del.icio.us

I've been tagging all of my posts as I've been going along, so that was pretty easy. I've also used tags for some other sites (such as LibraryThing). That was actually my favorite part of del.icio.us. I don't think I'll use the site for reference, since there're only a few sites that we use consistantly and those are already bookmarked on Mozilla, but hoo boy! it was funny to see the connections for between me and random other people who look at the same websites as I do. The tagging of my LibraryThing is pretty standard (I used subject headings) so that it would help me recognize Dewey numbers better since I'm still new at this whole library business. For my blog posts, I've been incredibly random. I've found that the randomness isn't quite as useful, but is a lot of fun. And as long as you have a few serious tags, what difference does it make?

BTW, did anyone else have a hard time getting the dots right in del.icio.us

Thing 10 - Wikis

YAY Wikis!! I've never edited a wiki before, so that was kind of fun. The only experience I'd had with wikis before this thing was Wikipedia (which I am in love with). I know it's not "scholarly", but when I need to look up random pop-culture information - nothing can beat it. I've also used Wikipedia to aid my research a few times. On some of the more standard encyclopediaish articles, they have resources cited at the bottom of the page and also places to go for more information. It's helpful.
Before watching the CommonCraft video, it hadn't even occurred to me all the different ways wikis could be used. I think it would be awesome to have a wiki at the library with book reviews or something for patrons. But I fear that someone would have to be monitoring it almost constantly (we have some little stinkers in the library that may decide that the entire wiki must consist of Runescape cheats) Can you even cheat at Runescape? I have no idea, I may have to go to a source. Anyway, I love the idea of wikis and all the things that we can do with them.

oh and I edited the 23 things on a stick wiki.

Thing 9 - Online Collaboration Tools

In this Thing we were to follow links and edit the Declaration of Independence. I found both programs pretty easy to use, but if I had to choose - it would be Google docs, but that could just be because I am more familiar with the way that Google sets their sites up. The one thing I had an issue with was the fact that you had to get permission to edit a document. I guess if you were using it for your own personal use that wouldn't be a problem, but it seems just as easy to have a flash- drive on your keys.

Thing 8 - Sharing Creations

I just realized that there's less than a month left and I still have 15 things left. YIKES!! I've been extremely over-lackadaisical about this whole thing. I need to get my butt in gear. Alright, thing 8...I tried using Zoho to make a little slide-show. It was really simple, which is good. I could see that being used in our library for presentations and/or classes. It takes a lot less time than trying to figure out Powerpoint. I'm not going to upload my presentation to my blog because it was really sad and little, but it served its purpose.

I also liked eFolio. It would be really useful during a job hunt, and not just for employers - I could see myself using it not to send to people but to keep track of information myself (awards, special projects, &c) so that when I was building a resume I would have all the information in one spot where I could pick and choose what to use. Was that a sentence? Probably not, but oh well. I looked at a few different resumes and the biggest problem I could see myself having with the site was keeping it interesting, but also professional. I could easily see it turning into a MySpace page.

Thing 7 - Web Communication Tools

I have a feeling this post may get really long, so I apologize in advance.

I grew up in a world with the internet, so most of the web communication tools in this thing were already at least a little familiar to me. I have used e-mail since middle school and was a bit confused by the comment in the "thing" explanation about e-mail existing before the internet. Not really sure how that would've worked, but anyway..... In our library we do have computer classes showing people how to set up an e-mail address and how to do the basics (writing messages, opening messages, forwarding, replying and attachments if the class can handle it) We also have all our overdue notices going out through e-mail. This is not a perfect system because the people w/o e-mail never get notified, but it's something we're working on. We also have an "Ask a Librarian" feature on our webpage.

I used to use IM a lot. I still use it, but not quite as much as I used to. It's helpful to keep in touch with people I went to college with, but who now live far away. I can see good and bad things about using IM for reference. We are not sitting at the reference desk all of the time (we wander and help people on the book floor) so if someone IMs us, we may not notice the message is there until it's too late and they've signed off. Another thing I think we'd have a problem with is the language. Although I use IM quite a bit, I don't use the Instant Message language (I'm really weird and have been known to use semi-colons [and I'm not talking about emoticons]) I couldn't understand half of what was said in the video!! I fear that we would need to have a dictionary sitting by our computers at all times in order to communicate.

Texting is a communication tool that I don't use very often. Again, it may be because I'm too long-winded and don't use or want to use the abbreviations for things. To me, it seems to take more time than IM or e-mail, but if someone used it all the time that wouldn't be so. One thing that is good about Text is the convenience of always having it with you. I saw that future versions of Millennium will have text capabilities built in to notify people of their holds. That would be really cool!!!

Whenever I think about web conferencing I'm reminded of the episode of "The Office" where the boss thinks he's going to a cool party in New York, but it's actually a party at their office connected to other offices by webcams. I have taken part in a couple classes that were taught by a person via the web, but that's as close as I've come. I learned in this thing that I have a really hard time absorbing the information in podcasts. There are too many outside distractions, especially if I'm trying to listen to them at work. I think they would be convenient to set up meetings between people in different locations, but it probably wouldn't be my first choice in how to learn information.

Alright, that got really long. Again - I'm sorry.

Free Book

One of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman, has made one of his books free for the next month or so to read online, which marks the very first time a major publishing house has made their books free on the web. If you click here, you can read American Gods.

Thing 6 cont.

I had problems posting this picture, but I'm pretty sure that I just used the wrong code. Now the picture is bigger than I wanted, but I can't seem to make it any smaller. Grr at the confusing computers.

Thing 6 - Online image generators

For a lot of the image generators, it required you to sign in to a Flickr account. I didn't create a one, so it really limited what I could do. I do see how most of these could be used in the library. I love the trading card idea (especially for authors rather than the librarians themselves).

I also took a look at toondoo, but I don't think I'm quite creative enough to create comics :) The other image I made was pretty much to experiment with the animation. It said that it would show up moving on my blog, but I had my doubts. Again, I am not really that creative and we show movies at my library, so if we do end up creating a blog or a myspace page, I'm interested in what would and would not work. Oh shoot, I'm supposed to be out at the desk right now. Gotta go...

Thing 5 - More Flickr

Most of the extras that I looked at this week seemed just to be a waste of time. You were able to find interesting looking pictures, but that's about it. If we were to use Flickr in our library, I think we would use it as a place to post pictures from our events etc. I don't know what the use would be to spell your name in blocks or sign letters. The one mash-up I looked at that would be cool for personal use was Jigsaw where you could turn your pictures into puzzles. The best part was the fact that you could order an actual puzzle made out of your photo. It would be good for gifts. I used Retrievr to find pictures that kind-of went together and then made a Mosaic of them. Interestingly - what I drew didn't look anything like what the site pulled up. I'm really not sure how that whole thing works. I also had some problems with the size of my type in my previous post, but I think I got it fixed.

Random Article not having to do with any(thing)

This is an article that was in Library Journal last week. I thought I would share.

Blatant Berry: The Vanishing Librarian

The library becomes a dehumanized supermarket or a chaotic bookstore

Thing 4 Addn

YES!!!! IT WORKED!!!

Thing 4: Photosharing

I had more fun with Fickr than I was expecting. I'm not really a picture person - in fact I tend to run away whenever cameras come out, so signing up for a Flickr account really didn't make sense for me. I did enjoy looking at pictures that other people had uploaded.
When I watched the CommonCraft video I was a bit concerned about the whole public/private thing, but once I was looking around Flickr I found that you don't have to make all your photos public, you can pick and choose. There are some pictures that just shouldn't be shared with the world.
The picture that I decided to upload looked really cool, like the guy was in a raindrop or something. It was originally posted by Lawrence Whittemore. I didn't have too much trouble posting the picture to my blog. (At least, I don't think I did.) We'll see if the picture actually shows up when I publish this post.

Thing 3: RSS

I had set up an aggregator account through Bloglines right after MLA in October, but hadn't used it since...until this week. I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to get into it, but amazingly I remembered which password I had used and I was in! When I first set it up, I only put in 2 feeds which I learned wasn't enough of an incentive to use it.

Half the time when I'm on the internet, I'm trying to procrastinate or pass some time. Going to individual blogs was really good for that. I fear that with the aggregator may make me too efficient! I added the main 23 things blog and the blog for my region as well as 3 other participants' blogs. I found this creepy in a stalkery way. I felt like I was spying into their lives (especially the people that I know [so it doesn't count as stalking if its a stranger?]). I let myself experiment with it for a few days before I posted and I learned that not everything is good for RSS. There is one site that I visit frequently that deals with new and upcoming musical acts, but the site itself is somewhat like an aggregator, so when I added the feed to mine, I was getting over 100 updates a day. That had to be taken out. Right now I have 10 feeds. Over the next few weeks I may pare that down or add more, who knows? I do plan on adding a few more of the 23 things participants, but other than that I think I have as much as I need. We'll see.

Thing 2

In Stephen Amrose's video about technology in libraries he mentioned a few ways that it would be easy to find the time to participate in the activities. Some of the tips made really good sense, like the fact that you don't have to do it all at once. Find 10-15 rather than thinking you need to do it all at once. I have definitely used that strategy this week. I was really busy at work and didn't have the time to sit down and complete the entire activity, but I was able to watch the video in one chuck. I printed out the blog post and the article so I could read bits and pieces of them whenever I had time. The only part that I actually had to sit down and do was write this blog entry. That took awhile because I kept getting interrupted. However, I don't know if the activities to come are going to be as break-up-able as this one was. One problem I've found with finding time is finding a computer to do the work on. In our library we have to share computers. Usually I'm able to find one that isn't being used at the time, but then I have to deal with the filters. All of the computers in our building are filtered (both public use computers and staff computers). A lot of the sites we have to use are blocked (Blogger for example). Without removing the filter, we couldn't sign into our blog or view the 23 things blog, or watch the video, or read the John Blyberg post. The only thing we could do was access ELM, but we would need to know ahead of time what article we needed. That was another reason I printed off all the articles. It took some of the hassle out of dealing with filters every time I had free minute and wanted to get some of it done.

I liked the definition of Library 2.0 that was provided in John Blyberg's blog post that was originally Sarah Houghton's definition. It kept the concept simple enough to relate to everyone, and didn't completely focus on technology. Technology is a big part of Library 2.0, but it isn't the only thing. It should involve everything the library is already doing, just moving it forward to another level. One thing I really didn't understand about his post was the pre-Google vs. post-Google and how we as libraries have to compete against this "giant". We should be able to use Google as a tool, incorporating it into our other sources. It makes a more complete source of information (especially in the future when Google scans every single book into the computer, but I digress...).

I've used/experimented/dabbled in about half of the technologies on the list, but that was for my own use. I'm looking forward to finding out how I can use what I know and what I'll learn at the library (both for library use and to help patrons). Overall I'm just excited that our library is participating in 23 things on a stick. It is a great opportunity to have all staff members learn what's out there.

The first "thing"

I just realized how stupid I was for not knowing what an Avatar was. I did know, but just didn't know what it was called. If someone had called it "the little picture thing that represents you", I would have known what they were talking about, but since the world needs cool names for things...

I set up my avatar through Yahoo. It was fun; kind of like Barbie for adults. I'm not sure if I like what I ended up with. I may have to try something different later, but for now it works. The only problem I had was trying to get it onto my blog once it was made. I ended up saving it on my desktop and just copying it from there. It worked, but I'm not sure that was the easiest way.

With that done, I believe I've completed the first of the 23 things (hopefully correctly) ahead of schedule. yay!

23 things on a stick

I had some extra time today, so I thought that I might as well get started on the 23 things on stick. I spend an awful amount of time on the computer, but don't expand my knowledge much beyond what I already know, so I should learn a lot while participating in 23 things. Setting up the blog was relatively easy once I got into it, and I've registered it on the 23 things site. Now I'm off to figure out what an avatar is and how I get one.