Thing 23 - The End (or The Beginning!)

As I reflect back upon all the hard work of this 23 Things on a Stick, I realize that there are so many tools that can make connecting with the rest of the world not only easier, but more meaningful. I really liked some of the new social networking tools I discovered in my assignments. I am going to make a daily effort to keep using these, to try my hand at podcasting, and to keep my eyes open to new developments in social networking tools.

23 Things on a Stick has been one of the most refreshing learning experiences in libraries I've been a part of all year. It was completely hands on, and all the learning that happened in it depended upon me. Because of this unique instructional style, I surprisingly learned much more in this self-driven challenge than I have in any other workshop format to date. I can't wait for them to do this with other topics!

I'm sad that it is all over, but excited to get out there and keep using the new knowledge I've gathered so far! Thank you to all those who put this together and got all these Library people around the state to get involved in learning about internet technologies.

Thing 22

We have definitely learned a lot in doing this 23 Things. I got to do so much of Library 2.0 / social networking, that now there is no turning back - nor would I want to!
I resolve to use a little of what I've learned every day. I set aside a little time at the end of each work day to explore a little more of at least one of the recommended sites. That should be no trouble as everything we've learned here is both useful and fun! I will try to add to this blog as I learn new things.

Minitex and WebJunction will also be a constant source for me so I can always brush up my skills so I don't get too far behind.

(I see posted to link http://explorediscoverplay.blogspot.com/ that looks fun and interesting. I will have to look into this more!)

This has been a lot of fun, and I'm really glad I did this!

Thing 21

In my last post I complained about Myspace and Facebook not being grown up enough for social networking. The two are very popular, and that made them seem like the only options for me. Now that I've tried Ning and Gather I see that there actually are options for me!


View my page on 23 Things on a Stick


I'm having trouble getting the widgets to post to my blog, but I'm going to keep trying even if it makes me crazy! I also added a picture of my Libraries Book Cart Drill team to the Ning. I love the idea of the Ning site, and I'm seriously thinking about making a page for my Anne McCaffrey friends that meet each year in Atlanta. We could have a place to discuss the author, share our trip itineraries, post pictures, and just hang out online. Right now we all use a social networking site devoted to the author, and contact each other through the forum on that page. It is a great way to discuss our interests and make friends online.

I have played with other social networking sites like Project Playlist where I created a list of songs I enjoy. Here is the player if you are interested:

Thing 20

I have used various social networking sites. It has proven a great way to network with former schoolmates, co-workers and neighbors from former residences.
I have a Facebook page, which I don't use more than once every few weeks, but lately more of my librarian friends are on that. I don't understand some of the stupid gifts and games in it, but I think that keeps people coming back. I really enjoy the groups features, that help keep people connected.

This past few days I got together with a bunch of MSU librarians to try out Facebook. We took our Library Week Read pictures and posted them, with tags sharing who's who. I made some friends on it, and joined our new Fans of MSU Library facebook group. I've had some fun with Facebook this week, and I can see it as a better way of connecting to other professionals online.

My Myspace page is pretty boring, but I do play around with the themes and added a music widget with songs. I've gotten a few people who networked with me contacting me through the site. I am not convinced that the site is that great, but it has helped me find people every now and then.

Myspace seems much more teen oriented, with its bright and flashy interface. There isn't a lot to do there, and the dialogs I've seen on Myspace seem very juvenile. While Facebook isn't much better, it does seem like a slightly grownup version. If there was something with a little more practical links to things I need, then I'd probably use that instead. Until then, Facebook is the winner.

Thing 19

Podcasting was really fun to try. I listened to the NPR podcast since I've listened to that on the radio before. That was pretty cool, and I found out about brand new book information. I thought that it seemed much more convenient that having to drop everything to listen to the show live. Now I can just listen when it is a good time for me.

I looked through some of the directories and found podcast.net the easiest to get around in and to actually find podcasts of interest to me. I think that podcasts would be a great benefit to libraries to get material out to people who can't come to presentations live.

One of the things I tried was a video podcast called Diggnation, which has my favorite guy from old Tech TV Kevin Rose, who is also one of the founders of Digg. This is just a videotaped podcast where you can see everything that is going on and it is videotaped for an audience.

I am thinking about trying my hand at a podcast. I have another blog on LiveJournal that has a phone in podcasting type feature. It is rather cool as it also transcribes the text I submit via a phone. My LiveJournal account is paid, although, I'm a permanent member so I'm not sure what the monthly cost of this would be. I also have free RSS feeds for my page, so I think that would make it easy for sharing. If I can get this posted, I'll try to link it here.

Podcasting seems like a great way to reach out to busy library staff and patrons. It could be one more way to share information with people who already are listening to and enjoying podcasts.

Thing 18

Youtube is an addicting site that can give you clips from anything you like. My only problem is that the movies are rather low quality, and there is a lot of junk to wade through before getting to the diamonds.

The following is a cute videoclip of a gentleman's 3-year-old daughter describing what she thought happened in the Star Wars movies. It is quite cute and funny, and also falls into my nerdy interest in Star Wars.



I thought this was a great way for people to share information that is freely accessible. I have made training videoclips at other institutions that have used this. However, I would feel safer having our own videos kept at a more secure site.

I did make my own videoclip of our Fall Student Appreciation party in 2007. It was rather easy to upload, but some may want a pay site that has features like editing to make things run better. I tried out some of their new titles features, which I enjoyed. Although I tried it again another day and these options were no longer available. Maybe they are trying them out?

Here is the video I made of our party:



This was really fun for me to do. I can see using this a lot at most libraries, and being free is the right price!

Thing 17

The ELM Productivity Tools are wonderful! I have used search and journal alerts and the RSS feeds as well. The Web Page (Page Composer) feature of EBSCO is a great tool for faculty who want to easily incorporate sources from the EBSCO databases into class reading. I don't use these very often in my present postion, however when I worked in reference, I used them all the time.

Thing 16

I wish I had the Research Project Calculator when I was in college! What a great idea, to help students plan out their time, and to give them a clue about how much time needs to go into a real research project. I think time management is one of the most difficult things for most people to master. Having a tool like this will definitely help!

Thing 15

Second Life is an awesome MMPORPG that has something for everyone. I loved the information island and chatted with several librarians there. Last year, I went to an online Second Life for educators conference (http://slbestpractices2007.wikispaces.com/) there, which was very popular and interesting. The only problem they had was some of the streaming video didn't work correctly for everyone in areas, and they had a limit of how many people could be in each area at a time, so you may miss things.

It takes some getting used to the controls for moving around, but I found that once you go through the tutorial it gets easier. I love flying around! My biggest pet-peeve is how commercial everything is. I get tired of all the things for sale, and the sexual nature of many areas. However, if you know where to go, seeing pyramids, castles and fantasy lands all for your exploring is a very exciting idea. I think as the technoloyg gets better, we will be able to use Second Life for more and more seamless educational experiences. It is definitely worth investing some time into.

Thing 14

LibraryThing was great for adding my personal reading list and finding out what others thought about the books. I found the Kitchen Confidential book and the Lord of the Rings had thousands of comments! This would be great for book clubs and documenting what titles you have in your own personal collection.

In the past, book lists were emailed or posted on a web page. It seems to me that this would make things easy for a book club or a group that visits on their own time. Then you could have a virtual book club, where people read and post thier opinions online. Also, reading the reviews can help people decide on new books to read.

Thing 14

This is my LibraryThing widget. I am excited about this and want to add more!

Thing 13

1. For productivity, I created an iGoogle page. I added all my widgets to help make it easy to get needed information without leaving the page, like weather, youtube, and even a digg widget. This was rather fun, but I'm not that used to it yet.
2. Calendars: I love all the Google stuff - everything I need in one place, and I don't need to create another account. I played around with the calendar, and I see that there is a feature I'm going to try tomorrow. I can sync my Outlook calendar with my Google calendar! I can't do this from home, but tomorrow, if I can get that to work, I could have it set up so I can do everything from anywhere! One feature I like is that I would be able to share this calendar, since I am unable to share my calendar with people outside of the library. This can help me combine my work calendar with my personal calendar.
3. Next, I tried the Remember the Milk productivity tool. I already use the calendar, tasks, and reminder tools in Outlook. However, I like how this will email you reminders for anything you set up. I think it is a great idea, although it seems like it would take a lot of time to set up before it begins to be useful. I'm going to experiment more with this in the next few weeks and see if I will really use this or not. I am expecting to just continue using my Outlook, but who knows?
4. Backpack is an awesome idea for having a calendar/file sharing/social networking and everything you need for working with a group online. The only problem is that it is a pay site. I am looking for a free option, so until then, we will have to be happy with what we have now.

Zamzar is a tool I've used online many times to convert files in the library. We had no budget to purchase software to convert these files in a past job, and having this site available meant I could help patrons do what they needed. A great, easy to use site, although sometimes it would take a while to wait for the file to convert so you could download it.

I have to say Lifehacker is one of my all-time favorite websites on making your life better. I have this on my other blog and I am always impressed by the many tips they post every week. Where would we be without Lifehacker?

Thing 12

I explored Digg more today. After creating an account, I read various articles and found that I could spend lots of time catching up on the newest information. It was rather entertaining. I tried my hand at finding an article on Simon Pegg of the Hot Fuzz movie and found that he was planning on making another movie. So I Dugg that article, and found nobody else had posted it yet. So after putting this up, I blogged it to my page below.
I think this page is a real time saver in that it has all the best stories on the internet all in one place. That way you don't have to spend all day looking around for news, and instead find what you are looking for in one place.
I already use this tool at home. My husband and I are constantly sending each other links to Digg pages. As for work, I think in the technology section, you can get cutting edge information quickly.

Thing 12 - Story: Hot Fuzz duo confirm third movie

Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg have confirmed plans for a third spoof comedy, following hit British movies Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

read more | digg story

Thing 11

Del.icio.us was very easy to install, although the getting the Links to change was a task. I was thankful they had the video tutorial on how to add the buttons at the Links bar, or I wouldn't have used it.

My page is here:
http://del.icio.us/wickedgroovy

I can see the benefit of this for sharing research, and resources between people who are working together. It could help people find all your best information on a topic, or even just all your online research to show where you found your information if they want to know more. At its most basic, I enjoy just having my important links available anywhere!

I have used another site for doing tagging called Magnolia. Magnolia is a little prettier, with the same idea. I think that using the tags, for ideas, can help you search for ideas more easily. I like clicking on a word and seeing what else I can find.

Thing 10

I have used wikis many times before this thing. At my last job we used a wiki and a blog to share information between campuses. I created my own wiki on PBWiki, but I find I don't use that as much as I would like anymore.

I have looked at the Library Success: Best Practices Wiki and found it was full of lots of great ideas for all kinds of libraries. I will definitely come back to that soon.

For this thing, I went to the 23 Things on a Stick Wiki and edited it. The editing process was easy, but the wait for the system to finish saving it, took forever for some reason, but finally it saved. Very easy to use, although from looking at the advanced features, you can also use code to make it exactly the way you want it.

I think that the collaborative nature of wikis, makes wikipedia a bad choice for research purposes. However, I don't want to tell anyone that they can't use wikipedia for finding out background information before you start doing research. It usually does have mostly good information. Just like any source, you have to be aware of the author, and not having a definite author makes it much less credible than other sources.

Thing 9

File sharing is a great use of Google Docs. I had used it before to do word and excel documents when I needed to go between computers with no working usb port. It is a pretty easy to use interface that makes me love Google even more.

As for the sharing, I had a hard time using it. The site refreshed too quickly and changes were lost. Also on the test one we were to try, I clicked edit, and even though I'm logged in, it wouldn't let me change anything.

Here is a link to an excel file I was working on in my Google docs. I decided not to use sharing but to be able to let others see the file:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p9x_KdS8ONo9-UJcU91sRNQ

I feel that I would need to have control over who has the rights to edit any of my documents, as I have seen commercial spam come into public forums many a time.

Thing 8

Thing 8 was a lot of fun for me to play with. I really like the idea of having your presentations on a slideshow site, so that way if you lose your file, you have it on the net no matter what.

Here is my test slideshow:

| View | Upload your own

I liked Slideshare the best because it was easiest to use, and you didn't have to be a member to search through others publicly available slideshows. I loved the youtube feel of it all. I would recommend this for others to use. People have complained that they couldn't edit this on the site - that isn't what Slideshare does. You need to go into your original Powerpoint (or whatever you are using) to edit the slide and then repost. That really isn't that difficult, and I think is worth the trouble of having a link to your presentation anywhere that you can also post on your own blogs.

Thing 7

Web Communication tools are one of the main reasons I use the internet so much. I have 2 non-work emails, one on hotmail and one on gmail. I have the gmail automatically forwarded to the hotmail, to save time. I like having the free email, to keep work emails separate from personal. Plus if I sign up for a commercial webpage, I use that address, in case I get spam.
Another way I save time is by having not only the spam filters turned on, but I put in keywords to filter out in the title. Most people who write me emails wouldn't send me an email with a dirty word in the title, so that seems to help stop the gross emails enough.
Without email, my job would be a lot more difficult in our library. I get hundreds of emails a day dealing with my job. Without it, I think I would have a line of people around the block up to my workspace. It also helps keep people to the point so they can ask what they need of me, and that is a big help.

I use IM regularly. Many of the younger librarians I have worked with, like to use it to not only answer questions to patrons, but also to consult with each other on problems. When I worked at a branch library, we would all have IM on so we could stay in contact with each other. These branches were all over the country, so this was the best way of staying in touch.
I use MSN Messenger, but have also used Trillian and Meebo. These work well, but mostly I go back to Messenger as my associates use this the most. Meebo is good in that if people use different types of IM software, you can use this and can still communicate with everyone.

I have used cell texting on a friends cell phone. I am one of the few people in the world who don't have a cell phone, as I don't really like telephones. If I want to be unavailable to people, I think that is my right. I feel like it also makes people rude to each other by wanting to answer the phone at inopportune moments.
I would rather have the text messages come up to an IM reader on a computer. Who could sit at a cell phone all day trying to type on the tiny phone pad? Not fun if you were doing it all day, I think. However, I do see the benefit of being able to work anywhere and answer questions on the fly.

Web Conferencing has changed the way I do training in the past few years. Instead of having to wait for a local workshop or class on a topic, I can instead sign up for a webinar or online class on a subject. Also, I have used it in the past to do live online meetings for participants who are located around the country. Some of my favorite to do are the Minitex webinars. I try to do these whenever I see they are available. Webjunction also has tons of great web conferencing opportunities that I highly recommend to my staff. I love the idea of OPAL, and even though it seems geared towards public libraries, I have a few sessions I'm going to try out. From what I saw today, after downloading the plugin, it is really easy to use. I think it is a great way of reaching out to other librarians and users around the world.

I tried Twitter - I can see how people like to show what they are doing at all times, but it is still a mystery why people want to do this. I have friends that have their twitters posted to their blog journals, and I'm still not sure why I even want to read their twitters? I guess that is one of the social networking things I don't understand yet. I can see using it to show people that you are running late, or that you found something interesting that you need to share with the group. You can also post to this on your cellphone (which I don't have) and then it will go out to everyone in the group. That makes sense to those people who have cellphones I think.

As for my library, we use Microsoft Outlook. I use the file features to organize and can search easily within my emails. I like the task features, and calendar the best. In my past jobs I never used these features, and I have to say they improve my productivity and I can't imagine doing my job without it. In Technical Services, people don't like using technology for communication as much as I or other librarians do. I like to show them tools in our meetings, but many would rather do face to face communication. I save emails and IM'ing for appropriate times. However, if everyone would impliment IMing on our campus and also using emails, I would be very happy. I think IM'ing can be used to answer quick questions (I'd rather do that than use the phone) and can keep me more connected with my staff, who are now located in a different area of the library. I think the perception from IT (sorry guys) is that IM is just a toy that has no professional use, or that our people can't be trusted with a tool like that. I think that people would surprise you and end up using it. They would be more productive in the long run and I think it would be worth it.

Thing 6

I played around with the online image generators today. It was pretty fun, and I got to use my Halloween picture from two years ago, where I was the barbarian librarian. Here is the trading card:





Also, for fun I Simpsonized myself using the Simpsons image generator:



I could see using any of these to do publicity for your promotions. Anything that uses humor and has a sense of fun is sure to bring people to your events.
I could use this at my library in making training student workers more fun. Adding a few of these in the right places could be a great way to get attention!

Thing Five

This was a rather fun assignment. I got to play with Flickr mashups and toys that can take your pictures and make fun stuff out of them.

Here is one I did from the Big Huge Labs page. This is my family's dog Dylan. It was a picture when he was a puppy, and I decided to add the Lolcats idea to it:



That is so cute, I think I need to send it to my family!

And this was the Spell with Flickr:


I could see using some of these tools for the library. The idea of a librarian trading card always appealed to me. I mean we are all superheroes in our own way, right? Plus, the tools make it possible for anyone to make fun items to attract patrons, and can help to make the library more approachable. I will be using these tools in the future, for sure!

Also on Thing Four

I also have a Picasa account through my Google account. My family uses this more, and I like the interface better. Plus, it seems easier to drag and drop pictures, change the albums, and I have it automatically email me when my family members update their albums. I'm sure these are almost the same features as Flickr, but you use what your friends and family use, so that seems to be the easiest for me.

Flickr - Thing 4

I have used Flickr somewhat before. Many times if I go to a conference, and I wanted to see what pictures others took, I have searched using the tags to find other cool photos of the event. I also have posted pictures of work, and a few of family events.
I found a picture by Jonathan Coulton of the concert my two brothers and I attended in December last year. I added a note to it, so when you move your mouse over the image, you can see exactly where we were sitting. That is pretty fun.


Here is also a link to the image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/60288353@N00/2368384925/
I love the idea of having a picture of a collection and adding notes to each book so you can find out more information. Lots of possibilities here!

Podcasts

I didn't say it before, but I'm also super excited to try my hand at podcasting too!

Library 2.0 and Why I'm Here - Thing 2

Reading about Library 2.0 made me think a lot about how the new technology will be used in libraries, and how I can use it myself. I think that I'm hoping to get some good practice in on blogging and using advanced features in blogs.

How do I find the time? I do a lot of this at home, or on breaks. My job is pretty fast-paced, but anything worth doing, is worth making time for. I do that with aerobics every morning, and I can do it with this.

I'm hoping I'll learn something new, that can make things easier for patrons, or even my staff in the library. All the social networking changes are embraced readily by students, so it makes sense for us to use the technology that they use to reach them.

Feedburner - Thing 3 RSS feeds

I like the Feedburner best out of the two recommended feed publishers. It is set up to work easily with Blogger, so that is an added bonus. This 23 Things on a Stick project is starting off to be pretty fun AND educational for me!

A whole lotta learning going on!

Tonight, I've been playing with the new blog. It isn't too bad, although I could see how this could eat up a lot of my time. I'm not too new to using Blogger, although I admit that it has changed a lot since when I last used it. I've used other blog sites like LiveJournal and Myspace much more.

This is really a fun, learning project for me. I'm excited to see what everyone else has up on their own sites.

Welcome to my new learning blog!

That is my new avatar I created. Cute, eh? This Blog created on Blogger was a pretty easy setup, and Free! That is a great combination! I can see lots of people using this for their first blogs, and since I love Google, and it is part of the Google family, that makes it even better as they all use the same password and username.