Thing 47 - Evaluation

When I think back about this second round of Things, my impressions are that it was not as useful to me as the first round. Then I looked at the list in the evaluation and realized that there are indeed things that I'm going to keep on using. I'm eager to work some more with the screencasting tools and add some tutorials to my library's website.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about making the library website a more interactive experience for patrons, which is a way libraries can remain relevant and appeal to younger users (who are, of course, the future taxpaying supporters of a library).

I'd love to see more programs similar to this as web-based tools and apps continue to evolve. I want to go back and review all the different kinds of available tools from all 46 Things. I've urged a bunch of people to participate, even if they don't do it "for credit."

Thanks very much to everyone who worked on putting all 46 Things together!

Thing 46 - WebJunction

Investigating WebJunction has been on my To Do/Don't Forget list for a long time, so I was glad for an opportunity to explore this site. I was particularly impressed with the course offerings - I don't think I realized they were available. Despite the fact, however, that I was logged in and had clicked in the Remember Me box, the courses kept coming up with a charge. I tried logging out and back in and it was the same. So that was a little disappointing. I'll try it again another time when I may be able to actually do one of the courses.

The groups show potential but there doesn't seem to be a lot of action yet. I was hoping to find a list of groups, and finally did. It's interesting that many of them are not limited to MN libraries.

I found the options listed under some of the top tabs (Technology, Library Services, etc.) to be worth exploring in more depth. It would be nice to find a group for sharing ideas for the summer reading programs or for Teen Read Week. Those kinds of hints/suggestions/ideas would be pretty quick to post and useful for a lot of people.

I just tried registering for a course again and followed the "green box instructions" on the courses page step by step.....and it still wants me to pay $40 with a credit card.

My final take on this is that it's a very nice site with a lot of potential if more people would be using it.

Thing 45 - Up in the clouds

This is just an exhilarating concept! And scary, too. And overwhelming, from a workload POV. I was reading parts of this Thing immediately after reading an article in Computers in Libraries about making your OPAC accessible via smartphones and other handheld devices. And the point is, people want access to everything at all times! The way libraries can remain relevant is to facilitate that access, to make information and collections available online and for a variety of computer-like devices. What a huge undertaking this is! And especially difficult in a time of staff shortages when we're struggling just to keep the doors open.

Thing 44 - Money, money, money

I really liked both the mymoney.gov and the National Endowment for Financial Education sites. There is a ton of information and I plan to go back and explore them further. I'll consider using a site like Mint, but I'm not quite there yet. Feed the Pig does have some useful info, and FuelEconomy.gov as well. The cell phone plan comparison site was very interesting, as I'm thinking about making a change there. The Frugal Dad tips sound a lot like my dad and are the kind of tips found in lots of magazines these days. (BTW, it was good to see him plug using the library!) And Wisebread would have a number of interesting articles for people who take the time to click around. I liked the list of frugal bloggers, but I have a hard time reading all the blogs I have in my reader now! (I know, I know, I'm going back to that page....Subscribing to blogs is so darn easy!) I'm already familiar with some of the coupon code sites.

So, just like nearly everything else, there's a lot about money and how to save it on the Internet. It's interesting to find the various money management tools, though. I have quite the list of sites to go back to.

Thing 43 - Online TV

Hmmm.....just what I need - more TV! 

Hulu was very fun. I'd looked at it a year or so ago after seeing it mentioned somewhere else. This is a great way to see episodes you missed or old TV shows. I watched part of an episode of It Takes a Thief, which I loved as a kid. (Ahh....Robert Wagner!!) And it is not available on DVD.

(It made me laugh to see that when I ran this on my computer, the commercial sponsor was the National Anti-Crime Network. For a show about a jewel thief! Ha!)

The problem for me here again is bandwidth. I don't think my connection at home is fast enough to watch with any continuity, and I'm sure not going to do this at work.

It's fun to know that this is available, but I don't see any library application here and I probably won't use it much at home.  (A colleague just suggested that out-of-copyright films could be shown as a public program.) While I certainly watch *plenty* of TV, I don't think I want to do it in front of my computer screen, even if connection speed weren't an issue.

Still, this to me is one of the marvels of the Internet - the fact that so many programs and specials that are no longer available through "regular" TV can be enjoyed without special charge (except for the high-speed access...) by anyone in the world. Amazing.

Thing 42 - Music

This one is really fun! I mostly work alone in a windowless office surrounded by loads of computer equipment, and therefore am usually playing some music, either through my computer or on a CD player. But eventually you get tired of hearing the same tracks repeatedly. This is where Internet radio is so handy. I signed up for Last.fm, downloaded the app for Mac and let it draw on my iTunes library to create a station of music I'd like. And it's pretty good! Lots of people I haven't heard of but whose music I do like. The listings also indicate similar artists (so I can see what they're basing the choice on) so I can explore further if I want.

The one problem here is that we've been asked (well, all right - told) not to do streaming radio at work because of the bandwidth demands. So I probably can't use this a lot at work. I'll have to see if my connection at home is fast enough.

I also played around a bit with Pandora, which is also very cool. The only problem I found was that the first two search terms I put in in Pandora returned no results. It's been great to have something different to listen to in my office. 

As you can see, I added the Last.fm widget, both here and in the sidebar.

Last.fm, at least, does not seem much like "radio" to me. Well, maybe it's more like MPR than regular commercial radio. When I listen to commercial radio, sometimes it's partly for the local stuff - news, weather, ads, etc. You don't get that with Internet music services. Even the Internet weather, it seems, is not updated as quickly as local radio can give updates.