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?