Thing 23

The 23 Things definitely took longer than I thought they would. It was easy to get side-tracked and spend a lot of time on YouTube or just following interesting links. But it was just so much fun to actually get things to work in the blog and it helped a lot to write about what I learned. I think one of the most useful things is the file converter. People are always bringing me odd files that they can't open.

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.

Thing 22

It will be a challenge to keep up with what I have learned. My goal is to incorporate one or two Things into our library website. In addition, I bookmarked a bunch of Things that I will go back to when I am done (using Google bookmarks that I can get to from any computer). I will also use my Google Reader to keep up on news and new technology. I feel much more daring and empowered than I did before I started.

Thing 21 Other Social Networking

Just before I finished library school, I joined a Yahoo group to study for my comprehensive examination. That was the smartest thing I have ever done. So even though I had done my entire degree online, I developed a close sense of community with the others in the last six months--a feeling, I am sure, born of the extreme terror of flunking the comprehensive exam and wasting two years of classes. By the time I went to Milwaukee to take the exam, I felt I knew a lot of the other students because of our shared terror. So I really like the idea of interest based groups. You start out with something in common. I have also used Web Junction which I think is a great resource for learning about all kinds of library related topics.

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

This is the Thing I was looking forward to the least. MySpace and Facebook always sounded like they are just for young people. It just seems so "high school" to invite friends and then wait for them to approve you. That said, I continued with the assignment.

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

I listened to some political podcasts and then I listened to some of the ones posted on other 23 Things blogs. I really like the NPR podcasts and News from Lake Wobegon. The podcasts themselves are very easy to create and access. Having just finished an online degree, I can see many uses for them in distance education. I am not inspired to making my own podcast yet, but I will try to get some on my mp3 player.