As others have said, the Things made me explore things I never would have and did things I never thought I could. Thanks for a great program.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Thing 23
Thing 22
Thing 21 Other Social Networking
Ning is really easy to use and I like the interest groups it has. I have bookmarked some that I really want to delve into more deeply. I am especially interested in the Academic Libraries and Library 2.0/Web 2.0 group because it looks like it gets into some of the technical issues of Web 2.0.
Thing 20 Facebook and MySpace
In Facebook I joined the American Library Association Members, the Library 2.0 Interest Group, and the Librarians and Facebook Group. ALA updated their profile a week ago. Library 2.0 updated their profile 5 months ago and the Librarians and Facebook Group have not updated their profile for the last 12 months. I joined these mostly because the link was right on the 23 Things page. I have since noticed that it is easy to find groups to join, so if I were really interested, I could join some that are more meaningful to me.
I read a couple of online articles that suggest that MySpace and Facebook are losing some of their popularity due to things like being assaulted by advertisers and marketers. See
http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/03/networking_sites_myspace_faceb.html
Others suggest that application developers have flooded Facebook with too many applications and have been bothering users with messages to try their apps. See
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/have_facebook_apps_peaked_in_popularity.php
Young people have a tendency to lose interest in things when adults show too much interest. It's like when a parent helps with a child's science project so much that the child loses all interest and the project really belongs to the parent.
I looked at a few MySpace library pages and see that they provide links to things on their library websites that they think will interest young people. One library had a catalog search on the page too. It's just another form of advertising and it goes to where the young people are, so that should be very effective.
Thing 19 Podcasts
Thing 18 YouTube
One of the first videos I ever saw on YouTube was Michael Richards having a meltdown in response to some hecklers. I also remember reading a cartoon about a teenager who said he fell down in the lunchroom and spilled his tray of food all over himself. He friend replied, "yeah, I know. I saw it on YouTube." Because phone cameras are so ubiquitous these days, no one can get away with anything. I am sure everyone agrees that this is both good and bad. I enjoyed looking through the videos, old commercials and the march of the librarians. I was at ALA last year, but did not see myself nor did I recognize any of the librarians in the video.
My favorite video is also from ALA last year. It is Dewey Decimators Book Cart Drill Team - MLA 2007. I take part in a drill team here, but these guys are great! I hope you enjoy it.Thing 17 Elm Databases
Thing 16 Student 2.0 Tools
For myself, I am giving a presentation at a conference in August. While I have a general idea of what I am going to say, this will help me make it more complete. I have already entered my dates and signed up for email reminders. I think it is a great tool.
Thing 15 Games
I also found an article about a free tool for educators for creating 360 virtual reality rooms in second life. The article can be found at VRR Demo
My photo is from a gathering in Second Life which imposes avatars imposed on the Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Thing 14 Library Thing
Thing 13 Productivity Tools
Instead of to do lists, I often flag messages to follow up and make tasks lists in Outlook. It works very well. Outlook also has a notes feature like sticky notes.
The tool I liked the best is the Zamzar site. We often have to convert file formats for students in our library. The most frequent is Microsoft Works documents to Word and .docx to .doc. It will be very useful.
Thing 12
I found some great podcasts on technology that I would like to listen to, but I would be interested in them regardless of how they were rated.
Thing 9 Online Collaboration Tools
I accidently skipped Thing 9, so this is out of order.
Google documents was much easier for me to use because I have used it quite a bit but just for myself. I had a bit of trouble allowing someone else to edit my document at first, but we figured it out.I think the Founding Fathers would be shocked that other people could get in and edit their prose.
Thing 11
After seeing what other libraries are doing, I am wondering if I can use it to create a site map for the web site. I am going to look into that soon.
Thing 10
While it is fairly easy to edit pages, setting them up and formatting them can be tricky. Wikis do not use all standard html code and users need to learn some different formatting codes. On the other hand, allowing more people to edit gives them a sense of ownership and collaboration. I think the content gets updated more frequently and is more relevant.
Thing 8 and 9
I managed to miss my Thing 9 post and couldn't figure out how to get it in order. So I am adding Thing 9 to my title but my post for 9 actually appears between Thing 11 and Thing 12. Doh!
I see both personal uses for these tools and uses for libraries. Slide sharing is handy for people who travel and do presentations. I have been to conferences where the speaker forgot his/her presentation and was scrambling at the last minute trying to get it or recreate it. Slide sharing would be one more way to make sure you have your presentation when you arrive at a conference.
Picture sharing like Flickr is handy for families spread around the world. Lazybase looks like it would be very easy to post a list to a person's own website. I could make a list of DVDs that we own and share them with my kids.
One tool I have used is eFolio. It is easy to sign up for and easy to set up. I have to update my resume every year and keep track of my professional development. This site makes it extremely easy to do.
There is a huge variety of Web 2.0 tools available and something will be useful to everyone if you can take the time to look.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Thing 7
My library uses the Outlook program for email and calendaring functions. We have set up shared calendars to schedule things like rooms and equipment. We also have shared contacts and distribution lists. We communicate so much that some days I cannot get through all my mail and just read a few sentences of some of the longer messages. So in some ways, email is very efficient, but in others, it has hampered productivity.
Our library does online or chat reference through QuestionPoint, an OCLC program. For that reason, we have never explored other ways of doing it. Instant messaging would probably not give us the transcripts we have of each session or the statistics.
I have used text messaging on my phone once at a concert. However, our campus has the ability to send text messages to our phones in case of an emergency. I have yet to set that up, but intend to do so soon. I also took a class at one time where the professor required us all to install Yahoo Instant Messenger and to use it at least once to send him a text message. It was a good way to communicate with him because I could see when he was logged in and then I could expect an immediate reply.
I have attended Minitex webinars in the past. It sure beats driving for a couple of hours to attend a workshop that can be done in one hour, so I think they are just great.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Thing 5 Mashups
Leaves
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Thing 4 Flickr
Thing 3 RSS Feed
For a library, an RSS feed would be useful for their news page. Our library does our news that way, but we struggle to update our news often enough to make it worthwhile for our readers. RSS capabilities with the OPAC would be useful for our users-they could get an alert when the new book by their favorite author arrives.