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.