Thing 22 Staying Current

This has been a really good learning experience for me. Sometimes overwhelming, sometimes challenging, sometimes even easy, but always interesting and intriguing. It has good pracitcal applications and I have already used what I've learned several times while helping people in the library.

To stay current, I want to make a notebook of the 23 Things. If I was an organized librarian, I would have started out that way, but I'm not, so I didn't. In my notebook, I want to log the different sites and skills that I've amassed and acquired with my own notes and login names and passwords, etc. That is what this blog is for? I still do better with paper, but the old way will help me with the new way. So I want to go through the 23 Things again. I want to set goals for myself and whittle away at the list. The 23 Things has helped me see what I do know and what I still need to learn. It'll be a curriculum that will constantly change and grow, but will keep me learning all the way.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to set this up for us. It was great.

Thing 21 Beyond My Space - Other Social Networks

I went to Gather. I joined Ning, though I haven't figured out what I'm doing there just yet. I also joined Web Junction, which I thought was a great way to network with other librarians.

I uploaded a photo into my Ning 23 Things page and left a message for someone. I can't figure out how to add a widget, so that is my current obsession. I did manage to get the Ning badge into my blog.

I am a member of 2 online knitting communities, though I must admit to be a lurker. I do get great ideas and inspiration from them. It's also good to see the problems that others' have and how they are solved. They are just like my live and in person knitting group, but in cyberspace.

I checked out some of the other online communities, but didn't feel compelled to join anymore. I'll lurk at the ones that interest me for a while.

I'm going to consider this Thing completed even though I am determined to figure out the widget thing. All in good time, I guess.

Thing 20 Facebook and My Space

I joined Facebook, added some Friends and joined the Librarians and Facebook group.

It's an interesting way of social networking, because a lot of work is done for you... finding friends with similar interests, finding things of interest in your profession or geographical area. I can see why people love this.

I checked out HCL's My Space page. A great way to reach people.

Thing 19 Podcasts

Here is a link to the grammar grater from MPR.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/tools/podcasts/grammar_grater.xml

It discusses words that are current and in the news, such as caucus. It seemed a relevant site for reference librarians.

I also managed to subscribed to the rss feed in my bloglines account.

I checked out the Gcast, when one could record by phone and podcast it into a blog, but I'm going to pass on that option.

I often listen to public radio shows via podcast, so am familiar with it, moreso than most of the other Things I've explored. I methodically did the same searches on each directory. I thought all of the directories were pretty easy to use, except for podcast.net. It consistently took longer than the other sites and found more garbage than the other directories, making me hunt for what I was looking for. I don't think I will be using that one again. I also didn't like the menu driven EPN and gave up on that one pretty quickly.

This Thing has not inspired me to do any podcasting of my own, though I already do listen to podcasts. I wasn't aware of the directories, so that is useful information.

Thing 18 You Tube

March of the Librarians - no, I did not see any Minnesota Librarians that I recognized.

A video from Google video on Web 2.0 can be found here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-936277830411426090

I couldn't find anywhere to click About this video, but I did click on Find Related Videos to get other similar ones. OK, went to YouTube and found this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsa5ZTRJQ5w and did find About this video to see the tags.

For the Google video, I simply copied and pasted the url into my blog, but I did follow the instructions and copied the embedded url to paste into my blog for the YouTube video.

I chose the subject Web 2.0, because I wanted to stay on topic. I picked these 2 videos because they were short and similar to the examples in this Thing.

HCL could do videos of readers talking about their books for the BookSpace page. It would add a new dimension to the reader reviews on the site.

Thing 17 ELM Productivity Tools

I set up an rss feed for new articles on smoking. I wasn't aware of this feature and can see where it would be very helpful for research papers, or any research in general.

I also listened to the first part of the NPR story on children's lack of sleep, but didn't see how to do the rss feed. Again, I didn't know it was possible and found it very cool.

I created a web page in Ebsco in Academic Search Premier. Found some articles and some photos and added them to my web page. I saved it to my computer.

I found the articles in Proquest about social networking and sent them to my friend Meg, who got me started on the 23 things adventure. I use Proquest a lot, but have never explored these extra features, so this really has been a learning experience for me.

I also created a netlibrary account and added a note to a page and saved it to Favorites and Notes.

All these things would be a great help to someone doing extended research. Also, very good for collaborations. A helpful thing indeed.

Thing 16 Student 2.0 Tools

These tools are very impressive and it would have been wonderful to have access to such guides while in school. These would be very helpful to have as handouts for students doing projects. A link on the Teen site would be great too.

It would even be good for professionals when giving presentations, because the guidance would be helpful and the timeline might keep a procratinator on track. But then again, maybe not.

Thing 15 Gaming

I've gotten stuck on this thing and am a bit frustrated. I tried downloading the Puzzle Pirates, exceeded my space on my profile and had to call the Help Desk to clean my profile before I could log off. I'm reluctant to try it again, so I'm going to proceed to Thing 16 and come back to this another time.

Thing 14 That Library Thing

I signed up for an account and added a few titles. I even included a link to this blog. I really do not like being this public. Anyway, this is similar to the My List feature that HCL has, or even the Book Space page at HCL. It's a great way to make lists for Reader's Advisory, and to see what others are saying about books. I did pick one obscure book that I love (Bridge in the Jungle by B. Traven) and did see that 23 others have it on their lists. I'll have to check them out sometime.

I keep a list of books in My Account to refer to for reader's advisory. I also refer to the HCL lists under topics I don't read so much. For example, I printed the list of historical fiction because I bombed that reader's advisory so many times. This would be a huge help in organizing books in various genres or topics to help readers.

Thing 13 Online Productivity Tools

1. I've had an iGoogle homepage for quite a while now, so I finally hit my comfort zone.
2. I use Outlook calendar at work, but signed up for the Google calendar at home. Very nice.
3. Online lists. Just what an detailed librarian needs. Ahhh.
4. Backpack. I took the tour, but did not create an account. I can see many uses for this tool though. Work: for program planning, weeding, creating booklists. Home: garden planning, planning a party, decluttering. I think the lists are endless.

No more little pieces of paper to misplace. What a concept. Maybe I will finally get organized, but I doubt it.

Thing 12 Social Media

I put tags on an article I found for my del.icio.us account and explored each of the sites. I am feeling more and more old fashioned the further I get into the Things. These sites could have many uses for libraries, but I'm going to leave that to others.

Thing 11 Tagging and Del.icio.us

I tagged one of my posts and found it really easy. A good idea.

I set up a del.icio.us account to organize my bookmarks. I didn't like it.

Thing 10 Wikis

I updated the 23 Things on a Stick wiki. While it was easy to update, finding something worthwhile to say was another challenge.

I love wikis.

Thing 9 Sharing Documents

I updated the Declaration of Independence which was kind of fun. I think it's great for collaborations and will probably use it in the near future, since I am going to be presenting a program with someone who works on the opposite side of the county soon. This will be a big help.

On to Thing 10, Wikis.

Thing 8 Photos

I made my montage using Big Huge Labs, which I really like. At first, I couldn't figure out how to get the images into the blog and I was getting quite frustrated. Finally, I remembered that we already did this, a few Things back, so I clicked on Add Image and got it to work. I was quite pleased that I figured it out by myself.

I think these are great tools for creating photodocumentaries of library events. I wish I had access to these tools when I was in library school.

Thing 7 Communication

I've been doing IM Reference for a few months at HCL and am comfortable with the medium. One thing I've noticed is that sometimes as I'm typing more information, the customer will log off because they think the transaction is finished. I now try to let them know that I'm still working on the question. Either with a ..., or a hang on a sec, just so they know more is coming.

I had a deaf customer ask me if she could txt the library. I showed her how to chat online through IM Ref. Perhaps Txt messaging is the next step.

I was not aware of the Web Conferencing classes or the OPAL sessions, so this is good information. The Minitex Webinars look helpful. I tried to listen to one of the prerecorded sessions on eaudiobooks, but the program was empty. No slides, no sound.

I'm on the reference and resource group at HCL. We have had 2 meetings at RD. Otherwise, we conduct most of our "meetings" via email, or once through IM Chat. It has been really helpful and a big time saver. It's a really good use of the technology.

Thing 6 Trading Cards

I made two trading cards for programs that the library does annually. They would make great cards to collect for the reading programs. This was not nearly as hard as I thought it might be.

Update: OK, this is waaaay cool. A teen just asked me if I knew how to make trading cards from pictures and the answer was YES, because of this Thing. I was very pleased that I was able to help him!

Thing 5 Big Huge Labs

OK, so I made a puzzle out of an image.















I am hoping this worked. It's for Senior Surf Day and would make a great poster. I'm pleased that I could figure out how to get them into the blog. Moving the letters to where I want them is another challenge, but we'll let it go for now.

Flickr Thing 4

This is a card catalog in Cambodia from mrsteven. I found the contrast of a photo of the old "technology" on the new technology interesting.

Here is a link to the photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrsteven/2213420054/

I had trouble inserting the link into this post, so Meg had to bail me out again. Thanks Meg. Again. I learned that it needed to be done in Compose, rather than Edit Html.

Thing 3 RSS

I set up a bunch of newsfeeds and blog feeds. At first I thought I was going in circles, but then figured it out. I liked the google blog search to find blogs about my interests. I subscribed to Canadian, Australian, and Italian library blogs for various perspectives. I feel like I am going kicking and screaming into web 2.o. On to flickr.

Thing 2 Web 2.0

Setting up this blog to participate in 23 Things has really taken me out of my comfort zone, so I guess it is a good exercise. Thanks to Meg for all her help in getting me up and running.

The articles for Step 2 were thought provoking. HCL has been doing enough web 2 stuff, that I can really see how much people love it. Bookspace is such a great interactive site and it's fun to see what folks have to say about what they read. I do IM Ref and that is also interesting. One man who was in the library asked me if there was a way that he could IM ref staff from the library's computers. I told him he could use the IM Ref, but there was no way to know where that librarian was. He seemed disappointed when I told him that he'd still have to walk over to talk to us. I can see that many people would rather communicate via computer than in person or phone. I get that this is changing the way we need to do customer service. So, I'll struggle on with the other 21 Things left to go. Thanks for the challenge.

First Post

So here I am on my way to 23 Things. 1 down, 22 to go?