Nancy's 23 Things...and Beyond!

Thing 47 - Evaluation

2009-06-16T12:33:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-16T08:17:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-11T14:44:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-09T07:37:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-03T09:59:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-02T08:28:00.000-07:00

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.

Thing 41 - Life as a mashup

2009-05-29T08:37:00.000-07:00

I signed up for Lifestream. The thing that I found most surprising is the HUGE number of sites it supports. I thought we were seeing lots of sites during this whole Thing process (and we are!) but there are so, so, so many more out there! To say I'd never heard of most of the supported sites should be expected. (And there are some that sound familiar, so I've probably looked at them during the Things and just can't remember them.)

It's a great idea, to be able to pull all your accounts into one spot. Practically, though, I probably don't use enough of them on an ongoing basis to make this as useful or necessary as some find it. I'll follow it for a while, though, and see.

I added a Lifestream badge to the sidebar. And I found another Minnesota 23 (or 46) Things person to follow.

Thing 40 - Mashups

2009-05-06T20:32:00.000-07:00

Wheel of Food is just fun to do! It made me laugh out loud. And the Flickr Memory Game was very fun. Bubblr too.

Here, I tried Bubblr again, with more photos.

I'd forgotten about BigHugeLabs (the trading cards from the first 23 were so cool...). It was fun to play around with those apps again.

The Mashup Awards website lists some fun things - track what's being talked about the most on Twitter, match your Twitter posts with Flickr photos, get a 10-day forecast for cities around the world...

I am continually amazed by the creativity and resourcefulness of the people developing all these tools. Real-world applications aren't leaping out at me right now, but I'll keep thinking about how we could use them.

Back to Thing 37 - Just a comment

2009-05-06T20:23:00.001-07:00

I've done most of these Things at work, but because of the problems with the scrapbooking tools, I was working from my computer at home, and I found that one of the two Animoto slideshows is now visible! And I still don't have a gmail account! I don't think I could see it at work earlier. How weird. And if one is visible, why wouldn't the other one be too? Computers really do have minds of their own.

2009-05-06T20:17:00.001-07:00

Thing 39 - Digital Storytelling

2009-05-06T09:35:00.000-07:00

What could be better - scrapbooking *and* computers?? These tools were lots of fun, and I want to play with them more, both at home and at work. For the page creation, I tried both Scrapblog and Smilebox. With Scrapblog, it wanted me to purchase anything I wanted to use on a page (which I didn't want to do). With Smilebox, I wanted to create just one page, but the template required me to do four (which of course took more time). It's nice to be able to use video in the pages, though, and to add music.

Uploading the file from Smilebox did not go smoothly. The application kept quitting, and then it was unclear as to whether it was actually uploading the file or not. So I tried it from home, and didn't even get that far. The application would download but not open - kept crashing.

So back I went to Scrapblog and finally found some things I could use without buying them. The page is the post above.

I liked both of these tools, but there are some drawbacks - the fact that I couldn't actually upload the Smilebox set is the biggest one, of course. I'll try it from work again tomorrow and see if the problem has been resolved or if their tech support has any suggestions. I think digital scrapbooking would be really nice to implement on my library website, but it may take a while to get going.

Thing 38 - Screencasting

2009-05-04T12:06:00.001-07:00

This is very cool. I can foresee load of library applications for this! I tried several apps - Jing, Skitch, Screencast-o-matic (who wouldn't love the name!) - and I think they all will be useful in various ways.

The screencast I made, using Screencast-o-matic, was on how to renew library materials online. This is something I will use on our website, but will probably re-do it and add some more details. The info in the training screencast on how to embed something into a blog or website doesn't work, however. There isn't an option for getting the widget and an embed code. So I'm not sure how this is going to go....

Worked! I'm really excited about the opportunities here.

Thing 36.1

2009-04-29T11:29:00.000-07:00

I thought I saw a pdf-to-Word generator when I was looking at the online pdf generators the other day. Today I needed to manipulate text from a pdf in order to create a booklist we use as part of our Teen Summer Reading Program - the 2009 Teens Top Ten nominees. I've done this in the past with a lot of cutting and pasting, and then a lot of stripping out unwanted formatting.

Just now I downloaded the pdf to my desktop, uploaded it to the pdf-to-Word generator, waited 2 minutes and then downloaded an .rtf file. Easy! Useful! Woo hoo!!

Thing 37 - Photo Tales.....or, A Lesson in Frustration

2009-04-29T09:34:00.000-07:00

Several of these items were not very successful....

Here's an Animoto video:

And here's one that I did of a trip to England:

OK - so those didn't post in the body of the blog. They did post in the sidebar (eventually), but the width is cut off. In order to post videos to Blogger from Animoto, you have to have a Gmail account. With all of the things I've signed up for during this process, why didn't I sign up for a Gmail account? Just stubbornness, I guess. Perhaps I'll do that later and then try re-posting the videos here.

Here's my collage of the photos of Youth Services at the end of our remodeling last year.

Slide's slideshow:

This was really easy to do. I may delete the music, though.

CaptionBubble didn't work for me (a Mac issue??), but I could add a caption with Captioner. It wouldn't post to the blog, though...

How about a Tiltshift photo:

OK, here's my "story," done with Picnik (which I think will have library uses), Tiltshift and Flickr slideshows:

Thing 36 - Generating some fun

2009-04-28T08:03:00.000-07:00

I'm thrilled to find the online pdf converters (Publisher files are often a problem), but when I uploaded a file to try it out, I got an error message saying there were server problems. I'll try that again later, because this would provide a real service for us. I think the password generators could be very useful as well ... as long as you remember to write them down somewhere! (My top tip for anyone doing the Things programs is to write down your usernames and passwords!)

I tried out the little READ posters and the newspaper generator, using a clever press release one of our former librarians wrote for a previous summer reading program.

And Wordle is fun - I did several versions for Strikepoint, which I'll post on the Strikepoint blog, but here's one of them.

I've seen these done before but haven't tried it. Just clicking the Randomize button after you get the initial image is fun. I did a Timetoast timeline for last summer's tour. If I had the photos of the churches where we played, I would have included them.

Oh yeah - way too much fun!

Nancy Eaton's Dewey Decimal Section:

585 Gymnosperms; conifers

Nancy Eaton's birthday: 6/28/1957 = 628+1957 = 2585

Class:
500 Science

Contains:
Math, astronomy, prehistoric life, plants and animals.

What it says about you:
You are fascinated by the world around you, and see it as a puzzle worth exploring. You try to understand how things work and how you can make them better. You might be a nerd.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Thing 35 - Books, Books, Books

2009-04-27T12:50:00.000-07:00

I will confess that I have not done anything with LibraryThing since the first 23 Things last spring. It seemed to me like a lot of work to enter what I own or what I was reading or what I want to read, and then to maintain it. That could all be time that I *was* reading! But there are quite a number of people on one of my listservs who love it and get lots of reading suggestions from each other. (On the other hand, I'm not going to live long enough to read the reading suggestions I have now!)

I tried librarious because I thought it would be a good way to keep track of DVDs I own. And it probably would - I'd just need to spend a lot more time entering information. I added Twitterlit to my iGoogle homepage, but my phone plan doesn't support the other services that will send info. Twitterlit could be diverting...

Then I tried both Reading Trails and What Do I Read Next. WDIRN offered some truly bizarre suggestions that were not at all similar to the titles I entered. There were some that *were* similar, but of course the weird ones are the ones that stood out! The BookStumpers site is always fun to surf through. I have a passion for reading series books in order, so the Which Book site may prove to be useful.

I wasn't very impressed with the various online book community sites. The listserv I'm on provides real book discussion, a lot of off-topic discussion and tons of book suggestions, so I'll stick with that. On the other hand, I like the book group resources sites; we have permission to use both the Reading Group ones when putting together our book club in a bag kits, and I'm glad to find out about the Lit Lovers site. I looked at several of the sites in the other categories and played around with Facebook's Visual Bookshelf a bit - that'll probably be the app I'd use the most.

With all of these book-related websites, and all of the people who are passionate enough about the books they're reading to support and maintain those websites, how can people think that the age of the book is passing? There's certainly room for both books and technology!

Thing 34 - Not Really Competition

2009-04-22T08:19:00.000-07:00

Several of the answer sites were pretty fun. I liked Ask Metafilter and ChaCha. AllExperts and WikiAnswers required a lot of clicking in order to get to the questions. Yahoo also required a lot of clicking down into subcategories, and there are a lot of pretty useless polls (Chinese or Mexican food? Are you a morning person?) and questions that result in opinions but perhaps not answers (Should food be rationed to all in order to combat global warming?). Amazon's Askville is nice, but I didn't like that the first thing you see on a page is the sponsored ad links.

For me, if I wanted specific information, it would seem quicker and much more direct to ask a librarian (or even to do a specific Internet search). If I had extra time (HA!) and wanted to surf for anything interesting, these sites could be amusing. I'm not likely to spend much more time on them, though.

Where I do see a use for them is for some of the specific requests that the library - or at least my library - can't answer: how can I do this (insert task here) using this piece of software? or What are people's experiences with this particular restaurant or hotel in this location?

Thing 33 - Travel 2.0

2009-04-15T12:05:00.001-07:00

There are some fun sites in this Thing. I found another blog to follow (swell - more to read...). I looked at several of the travel sites and searched Clearwater Beach, FL, which is one of my favorite vacation spots.

I tried the Mapness travel journal site, and it would be another way to do a map of Strikepoint's tour routes. It's easier to use than Google Maps, and gives the option of automatically connecting two points by roads, rather than the user having to draw the route on the map. On the other hand, it chooses the roads it will connect by, and there's no editing option.

Vcarious looks like a fun site and could be useful if you're planning a trip to somewhere where its users have posted info. Lots of options for creating online journals with photos and maps, lists of restaurants and sights to see, etc.

I suppose that some of these could be linked on my library's Internet sites by subject Travel list, but other than that I'm not seeing a whole lot of library application.

Thing 32 - Google Maps

2009-04-14T14:05:00.000-07:00

This Thing was fun - a little frustrating at times, but fun. And very useful - perhaps mostly in a personal way but also professionally.

I created a map of the Duluth Public Library locations and linked it on my library website. The weird thing is that the first time I clicked on the link on each of my computers, I got a totally different map, of some place in Missouri!! So I'm a little wary of leaving it there.

It worked better on my personal project, which was on a blog for Strikepoint, my handbell ensemble. I embedded a map of a couple upcoming concert locations.

View Pequot Lakes concert sites in a larger map

My next project will be to trace the routes of our annual tours on a map, with placemarks for our concert stops. Our director would like there to be a single map showing all of our tours (for 20 years!), each in a different color, but I don't think Google Maps does that.

Thing 31 - More Twitter

2009-04-02T07:11:00.000-07:00

Twitter is one of those things for which I've had a hard time seeing a library application, but I guess I'm finally finding some interesting library uses for it. Luria Library (is that right?) used their feed to tell their students that first, the Internet was down in the library and then that it was back up. Hennepin County uses theirs to give reminders about programs. (I can only wish that we'd have programs to promote!!)

I've read a lot of the articles linked in the Thing instructions and signed up to follow several more people/organizations. (I've seen somewhere that Queen Elizabeth is on Twitter but haven't found her there yet. That would be fun!) Some of the techie tweeters put out so much that it's just too overwhelming to try to actually follow.

If my library had one or more Facebook pages - and I'd really like to see this happen - then automating a feed into Twitter would be great.

Some of the fun things - I started following the Mac v. PC tweets, looked at the Twittergami bird (very cool) and took the "what punctuation mark are you" quiz (I'm a comma). I didn't post it to either Twitter or Facebook - I've been seeing sooooo many "What (insert noun[s] here) are you" quizzes in the past few days that I just don't feel like extending it! (But I *have* posted results from some others on Facebook. As a children's writer, I'm Beverly Cleary!)

David Lee King's articles were very interesting, and particularly the one about who not to friend on Twitter or Facebook. While it can be interesting and idea-sparking to see what other libraries are doing with these media, I agree that the primary purpose of a library's presence on Twitter/Facebook should be to connect with their patrons.

So right now I guess I'm at the "kinda doubtful but willing to be convinced" stage of Twitter. I'll keep plugging away...

Thing 30 - RSS and Delicious Redux

2009-03-24T14:37:00.000-07:00

When I opened my blog just now, I really focused on the Clustr map. My gosh - there are people from all over the world reading this! (And I wonder why???...) That's amazing!

One of my favorite Things from the first round was blogs. I have found a LOT of them that are fun and interesting and pretty and useful. I added a subscribe button to my browser toolbar so it is way too easy to follow a link, read a blog and sign up. Easier to sign up than to keep up. (So I should do some weeding!) It was, therefore, quite heartening to read the Seven Tips for Making the Most of Your RSS Reader article and to see that #1 was...Oversubscribe! I can DO that!

The same tip was #1 in the article about "wildly successful delicious users." I've recently added several bookmarks to my delicious account (the problem there is remembering what I used for a username & password!).

I'd like to get more in the habit of using delicious both for home and work, and I want to explore using delicious bookmark lists on my library website. I did add a couple subscriptions to find out when new bookmarks are added in a couple categories.

I also looked at 43marks.com and really liked it. I think it's a much more user-friendly format than delicious. I need to play around with this more too.

Thing 29 - Google Tools

2009-03-12T08:15:00.000-07:00

The parts of this Thing that I think are most useful are ones that I'm already doing. I set up a Google Alert some time ago to track references to my library - good for seeing what's being said out there or for seeing media references that I've missed. Our city administration also has an alert set up. As part of this Thing I did go in and try to refine the search terms so that I get more narrowly defined results.

I've also been using the Google Calendar product for some time, and have it linked on my library website. Here's the link to the page where it's embedded, but I see now it doesn't appear to display in Safari. Great - something else to figure out...

I read some of the tips articles and there are certainly lots of cool ways to use Google Calendar for your personal calendar. I will explore some of these for myself later.

Oh, Google 411 is very cool. I am definitely going to try that. I looked briefly at Google Health. I can see that it does useful things - consolidating records, keeping information about medications, diseases/conditions all at hand, etc. - but I don't think that I want to put my health and medical records out on any website. I'm tempted by the Google Desktop....

Thing 28 - Customized homepages

2009-03-06T13:45:00.001-08:00

I thought this was fun during the first 23, and it still is. This is something that I've been doing since last spring. I created an iGoogle homepage on one of my work computers and have changed the background and added gadgets to it several times. I have some useful things and some....fun....things on it. There's a little To Do list that looks like a legal pad that I use to narrow down the top things I need to get done. And I've got weather/temperature info from Duluth and from some places I'd rather be (my Florida vacation spot, London...). Just looking through some of the options on Google Gadgets has been really interesting. Every so often (like maybe three or four times in total) I've scrolled through a few pages and added a couple things. Puppy of the Day photos. Times of movies showing in Duluth.

It never occurred to me, though, that you could add other 2.0 tools to the page. I added a Facebook gadget, which might make me remember to check Facebook more often! And I added gadgets for my Flickr photos and delicious bookmarks. I added a sticky note gadget, but it would work essentially the way my legal pad To Do List gadget does, so I deleted that. There are a couple others that I added last year and haven't looked at - hard to remember to scroll all the way down the page... - so I deleted them and moved some others around.

This is a really useful ability - to create your own homepage without having to know any html and to be able to add so many fun and useful things. I may show this to my mother, who would enjoy having things like the current stock market info so readily available.

My Facebook story

2009-03-06T13:21:00.000-08:00

I have done more with Facebook in the last six weeks than in the last six months! And for me it's kind of like Twitter - I have a hard time remembering to check it or thinking of anything interesting enough to post.

But a few weeks ago I got a friend request from one of my childhood best friends. This is someone that I haven't heard from since I was entering junior high! She was just enough older than I am that we never went to the same school and as school life became more complicated we drifted apart. She found me on Facebook and sent me a message! If it hadn't been for Facebook, I'm sure I would have never heard from her again.

How cool is this!!

Thing 27

2009-03-06T12:46:00.000-08:00

This Thing has taken a long time to do - not because it's hard or complicated but just because I haven't had the time to both explore Twitter and then to write about it. Just too busy at work!

So I found my Twitter login info from the first set of Things and then found a few people or organizations to follow. I have a hard time remembering to check Twitter! Luria Library (in California) looks like they're using Twitter well - one recent tweet was that the campus Internet system was down, followed shortly by one that said it was back up. That's the kind of instant info that people would find useful.

I watched several of the videos mentioned in the Thing instructions and read some articles. One guy said that he devotes 3-4 hours a day to Twitter. THREE TO FOUR HOURS??? Oh my goodness! I don't want to be that kind of person!

I added a photo and changed the background and color settings of my page. I have posted a couple of times (nancye28) but I have a hard time thinking of anything that's interesting enough to say!

Thing 26

2009-02-24T12:10:00.000-08:00

I joined the Ning during the first 23 Things....and haven't been back. In fact, I sorta forgot what it was, and went back to the 23 Things website and re-read some information. So today I updated my profile, added a profile picture, uploaded some other photos and left a comment on one of the forum topics. I also read through several of the forums and looked at the groups and photos.

I can see that this would be a useful tool for projects such as these Things. Someone's having trouble doing something and posts a question. Someone else posts an answer. A way to provide long-distance support.

Could this be used in a library setting, for library users? Maybe in a reading program that had activities and projects? Or some kind of writing workshops/classes?

This may be a Thing I don't use much, but I can see there are some real-life applications.

Thing 25.4

2009-02-12T12:24:00.000-08:00

Apture and SnapShots look very interesting. I looked at both of the sites and read through the license agreements. I decided to try Apture because SnapShots talks about advertising being one of the things you have to accept with its service. I'm interested in how Apture works both for the library website and for Strikepoint. It would fun to put in a map or add a video or provide some additional context.

I also added a clock on the sidebar.

This Thing has lots of fun stuff to explore but it has taken an IMMENSE amount of time. And there are still several parts of the instructions/linked information that I haven't looked at. I'll keep the information bookmarked, but I've got to move on!

Thing 25.3

2009-02-11T13:17:00.000-08:00

I added a photo widget from Good Widgets. Not difficult to do, but kinda time consuming (also interrupted by a desk shift, lunch and creation of some summer reading program materials).

I did add the ClustrMap to my Strikepoint website. Scroll to the bottom of the homepage to see it.

I need to go and do some work now, but I've been thinking about the widgets. They're very fun and slick, but I don't know how useful a lot of them are in a library setting. I know some libraries run their websites entirely through blogs, which seems limiting to me. So far a lot of the widgets I've seen are basically designed to be used on blogs and are maybe more appropriate for personal blogs than for a business (which is what a library is). I am going to look at a Google Map widget and see if it would work on our website to map our locations, so that would be useful. The photo widget I added would be great but the maximum number of photos it sorts is 10. I guess you could put a widget of 10 photos on a bunch of different pages...

Still Thing 25

2009-02-10T14:27:00.000-08:00

I'd prefer to have the ClustrMap over in the sidebar, but can't see how to add it there.

OK - as you can see, I eventually got it in the sidebar. But I was looking for a way to add another area of HTML code and then be able to move it around. I had wanted the map down below some of the other gadgets. Oh, well.

Having worked a bit longer with Blogger, there are some awkward things about it. Two of our librarians are using WordPress for their library blogs (not the 23 Things ones, I think) and I need to talk with them about how flexible that is.

I think I can add a ClustrMap to my Strikepoint website. I've sent the code home and will try it tonight.

Flickrshow will appear here!

Again, not so successful. I have used Flickr slideshows extensively in my library website and really like them, but it's just not working here in the blog.

That's it for today. I've got to go. But this Thing is taking hours and hours and....

Thing 25.1.2 - Not always a good thing

2009-02-09T07:33:00.000-08:00

So I have discovered a problem with the mail-to-blogger feature, at least as it works with my email program. If I copy myself with an email, which I often do, our software autofills in the address and it's choosing the "mail-to-blogger" address, so emails which are not public were showing up on the blog. Now I could go in and delete the address from my address book, but the next time I used the mail-to-blogger feature - assuming that I would remember the address! - the problem would be back. So far I've deleted three posts that shouldn't appear here and I'm waiting for something else to show up.

For me the solution will be to disable the mail feature. If I can figure out how...

Thing 25.1 - Just testing....

2009-02-03T14:09:00.000-08:00

If you can read this, then I followed the directions correctly! Woo hoo!

Thing 25 - Bloggers' Toolkit

2009-02-03T14:01:00.000-08:00

My first impression of these Beyond 23 Things: they're really long! Lots of links to things to explore. I'm betting most of these will take more time than the first 23.

Beyond the 23 - Thing 24

2009-01-29T13:54:00.000-08:00

We're back! Time to start the next round.

I haven't done anything with this blog since April, but I did start a different, personal blog a couple weeks ago. Now I should go in and play around with the gadgets, avatar, lists, etc. That one has a specific purpose and I haven't done much with it except set it up and write a couple postings. I remember writing in my blog post for Thing 1 that I felt no compulsion to have a personal blog, to share my life online. I guess that's pretty clear evidence of how time and experiences change your perceptions about things!

So I did update this blog - new look, new avatar, new title. Looking through the avatar sites listed in the Thing 24 directions made me realize that a lot of the 2.0 stuff seems to be "use it or lose it." I need to re-familiarize myself with a lot of what I did last spring.

I read through many of the "Finding the Time" links in the More Things on a Stick instructions. And it seems to be consistent with much of life: everything is a tradeoff. To have enough time to do some thing, you have to give up the time to do something else. This should be nothing new to any of us!

Probably the things that I've enjoyed the most of the first 23 would be blogs - reading them - and Flickr. Flickr was a godsend when we were doing our big remodeling project, right in the middle of my 23 Thing odyssey. I've got hundreds of photos of the whole process up there. And I have continued to post photos for our summer programs and most recently for a Christmas tree sponsored by one of Duluth's sister cities and for various book displays around the Library. Blogs - I have way too many in my reader and should go in and weed out some that I am less interested in. But they're fun! My favorites are not work related (what a surprise!). I'll add some to a sidebar, but I do need to go and get some other work done.

Thing 23 - Woo hoo!

2008-04-15T10:32:00.000-07:00

This has been a very useful and very interesting experience. I've urged several other library staff and former staff to participate. I hope that the list of Things and instructions will remain up for a long time.

Some of the Things have had a direct impact on my work and I've been able to incorporate some of them into my library website. The timing was great! I learned how to work with Flickr and PictureTrail just at the time that we began a big construction project. I've put photo slideshows up on both of those sites and then added a couple videos to YouTube. The timing could not have been better.

The online productivity tools were surprising to me - things I never expected to find on the web. Also the online document sharing abilities.

And then some of the things I'll probably never use again - like the avatar. But it's still useful to know something about the process.

I would definitely do the next 23 things.

I really enjoyed the Common Craft videos as part of the Things. Whoever worked on putting together this overall project did a good job. Most things were very clearly explained and the resources were useful. Thing 17 - ELM Productivity Tools - was the one that seemed to be the densest. I know there were some participants who weren't familiar with the databases and therefore had difficulty with the tools for them.

My overall feeling during this project was amazement. The variety of tools and software and web capabilities is truly mind-boggling. What a lot of truly imaginative and gifted people there are working on these kinds of sites! I'm so glad to be more conversant with what I hear or read about. Thanks for providing this opportunity!

Thing 22 - Keeping Up

2008-04-14T07:46:00.000-07:00

I HAVE learned a lot from this project. And perhaps one of the most important things is that "I don't have time" - even when I DON'T have time! - isn't a good enough reason to not explore new tools/websites/services. I can't possibly finish all the work that I have to do, even if I don't try to keep up with technology trends. So I should find out about those trends and see if they can help me with my workload.

I clicked through all the links listed in this Thing and added quite a few to my Bloglines account and then added a couple websites to del.ici.ous (or wherever the dots are...).

I'm really glad that I've found some of the tech-related blogs and will make a point of reading them (and some others, just for fun!) regularly. Taking some time at the beginning and at the end of the day, if possible, is the easiest way that I've found to keep up with my email and check blog postings. It also eases me into and out of the work day.

There's a comment at the end of this Thing description about Things 24-56 - with a link. I followed that.....and there are certainly many more Things to explore! (It's called Library 2.1!) This is a learning/training project for the Charlotte & Mecklenburg County library system. I also looked at their first 23 Things list, which is a little different than the one we've been working on. So I will explore that as well. They seem to get started more slowly than we did, so I'll have to see if they covered as much territory as our 23 Things.

Thing 21 - Other Social Networks

2008-04-10T07:21:00.000-07:00

It seems there are social networking groups for all interests and tastes. Are people spending more and more time online and less and less time in relationships with (gasp!) other actual people? Or are the social networks a way of connecting far-flung people with similar interests who may not know any "real" people with those interests? Do they lessen people's loneliness?

I joined the 23 Things Ning group, uploaded a photo, left a comment, explored around on this group, a couple other groups and a few other social networks. Lots of interesting things and lots of groups where you really need to spend some serious time in order to figure out their best use. I think of the Ning groups, I liked the MPR ones - Minnesota Readers and Minnesota Life - the best.

I thought the WebJunction article on building social networks at your library was very interesting. And it had a couple links that I followed - a discussion board on how to create a social library led to a blog that listed that blogger's choices for the top Web 2.0 tools. So I found a new list of tools to explore and a tech-related blog to follow.

Thing 20 - MySpace & Facebook

2008-04-08T10:04:00.000-07:00

55% of teens are on MySpace - that's a phenomenal statistic. At PLA there was a teen librarian talking about libraries who ban MySpace and Facebook, which is essentially saying to kids "we don't want you here in our library." What a dreadful message to the taxpayers of tomorrow: the library doesn't care about being relevant to you.

The Hennepin and Denver PL pages are interesting because they provide links to the basic library services. So I guess that's how a library should look at developing this kind of presence - as just another means of making the public (most likely the younger public!) aware of what the library has to offer. My library has not discussed whether we should be on MySpace or Facebook, but we're having a hard enough time right now keeping up with the blogs we've already begun.

I guess I'd like to hear more about how HCL and Denver feel about their MySpace pages - do they think (or know) that they're reaching actual teens in their area, are they seeing an increase in library use, etc. It looked like lots of the "friends" listed on both pages are either authors or other libraries, and I don't know how useful that is.

The teen librarian at PLA (from a suburban library in Ohio) says she has a lot of kids contacting her on her MySpace page ...... OK, I guess it was her personal page instead of her library page. I haven't been able to find it through MySpace's search functions. But she's ended up using it to do a lot of promotion of library events.

The upshot of a lot of these tools, including MySpace and Facebook, is that they're only as useful or relevant as they are current. So time must be allocated in order to keep them updated and changing visually.

Thing 19 - Podcasts

2008-04-07T08:01:00.000-07:00

I have listened to podcasts before and have subscribed to some through my iTunes software. As with lots of things on the Internet, the quality and usefulness of podcasts vary a LOT! I've listened to some that at first glance appeared to be potentially useful and interesting but turned out to actually be largely a waste of time --- unless you like to hear a couple guys making lame jokes and laughing a lot at what they say to each other.

I signed up for the Grammar Grater podcast at MPR and listened to a couple episodes from other MPR podcasts. In the Minitex podcast list, I found an interview with former Duluth Public Library director Beth Kelly. I also listened to a podcast of teens from Connecticut reviewing their favorite 2007 books. That one was really well done, with several kids talking and music between the sections. Nice production.

It would be great to be able to add podcasts to our website - things such as author talks, maybe somebody talking about new books. We considered trying to do a podcast when Greg Mortenson (author of THREE CUPS OF TEA) appeared recently as part of our One Book, One Community project. The response to his appearance was so overwhelming that I think being able to offer a podcast would have been wonderful for people who weren't able to get tickets to his live appearance. We just didn't have enough time to pull together the equipment or the logistics, although I think that it's not as difficult as it may appear.

Thing 18 - YouTube

2008-04-03T08:23:00.000-07:00

How fun! I found library drill teams and library Christmas cards. The library dominoes were great.

I added some video to my library website a couple weeks ago. We're doing a big remodeling project and I took 3 short videos with my digital camera of the stack movers moving a big heavy range of bookshelves. Here's the first one. The hardest part was converting the footage from the camera into a format that YouTube could use. It had to be compressed and took me a while to figure that out. But the process of uploading was really easy.

(My handbell ensemble also has a video on YouTube. I didn't take this, or upload it, but I'm in it!)

I think YouTube and Google Video are great ways to publicize library programs, present tutorials on how to use library resources or the catalog. There was a great video at PLA last week that Denver PL (I think) used to advertise their teen summer reading program. This was a great idea and I'm hoping that we can do more with video here.

Thing 17 - ELM productivity tools

2008-04-03T07:51:00.001-07:00

I have some experience with the ELM databases, but it's mostly the technical "this-isn't-working-how-do-I-fix-it" kind of experience.

I did the search for social networking in ProQuest and found some interesting articles that I both downloaded and emailed to myself.

I had the same trouble with the EBSCO db that others did (according to the comments at the bottom of the Thing 17 page) - didn't get a "create search alert" link or a way to add the RSS feed, and couldn't get the QuickTime videos to play. So much works so well - it spoils us for when things don't work!

I also clicked around some in NetLibrary. Many of the titles indicated they were unavailable to my library, but they did look interesting. Hmmm.....ILL?

Some other 23Thing-ers blogs have indicated that they were totally unfamiliar with the ELM resources. I've done a little bit of searching - partly to make sure things were working, partly to help create a training demo for kids when we were doing some outreach programming, and partly when helping patrons ask questions. Databases are one of those things where it is extremely useful to go back and do a refresher course periodically, both to remind yourself of what features are available and to see what features have been added. What a great service from the state these ELM databases are!

Thing 16 - Student 2.0

2008-04-01T09:45:00.001-07:00

The Research Project Calculator looks great! I've had a note about this for a long time to add to our pages of useful links for students, and I'm going to make sure it gets added today! We also have pages of links for teachers and for homeschoolers, so I'll add the teachers' info links to both of them.

Links to our pages:

Sites for Teens - Homework Help

Sites for Teachers - General Activities

Sites for Homeschoolers - Education

We've wanted to do some presentations to teachers about library resources and how we can help both them and their students. This would be a perfect resource to demonstrate! Our only problem (ha!) is time and staff.

The college level Assignment Calculator also looks great. What wonderful resources these both are for students! I like that this one breaks the project down into more steps. It's a less visually intimidating appearance (fewer links explaining each step), although since there are more steps, the amount of time the student has suggested to work on each step is shorter.

I'm really impressed with these tools.

Thing 15 - Fun & Games

2008-03-31T13:02:00.000-07:00

Aargghhh! I'm going fer Puzzle Pirates! Who doesn't like a good pirate!? But I downloaded the files.....and launched the game.....and got a "sorry, the server must be down for maintenance" message! Rats!

I have played a few games online - not the big role-playing ones (I don't have enough time to devote) but other, shorter games. In the iGoogle homepage I set up, there's an online version of Tetris - one of my all-time favorites. And when I was working on a catalog listing of a game my library purchased for use in the library, I found there was an online version. So I tried it. It's addictive! I had to buy my own copy. I have sucked up many hours playing Zuma. And I hear that Bejeweled is also fun. Find them at Pop-Cap Games.

I'm off to try Puzzle Pirates again....

[next day] Well, Puzzle Pirates didn't work when I tried it again yesterday and it didn't work today - on either my Mac or my PC. I tried both playing online and downloading their free client. So then I went to Second Life, registered, downloaded stuff, waited for the email verification.....and it won't play either. It could be there's just too much Internet traffic or - perhaps more likely - our computer systems are blocking these kinds of sites. And my Internet access at home is dialup, so way too slow to do online gaming.

I remember seeing a lot about Second Life a couple years ago, maybe when the Info Island was first set up, and then it really dropped off. I had totally forgotten about it. I was thinking that it was perhaps not as popular as it used to be, and then the Info Island blog talked about a big unveiling that happened two days ago.

We will hopefully be providing some gaming opportunities in our library in the future - first for teens but perhaps expanding to other groups, such as seniors. Gaming for seniors is a big thing now.

Thing 14 - LibraryThing

2008-03-31T08:34:00.000-07:00

I kinda like LibraryThing for Libraries - I wish I'd had enough time at PLA last week to stop at their booth and get some more information. It would be very nice for patrons to be able to quickly get this kind of similar book recommendations - and particularly for fiction where there aren't as many subject headings.

I'm on a listserv of readers where a bunch of people are quite taken with GoodReads, so I need to check that out. (On the other hand, I seem to be creating a huge list of books I want to read very nicely on my own without getting recommendations from outside....I need to live a very long time!)

I've added a few books to my profile on LibraryThing and clicked around a bit. This is a site that probably requires you to spend quite a bit of time on it in order to reap much benefit.

Comments

2008-03-26T12:23:00.001-07:00

One unfortunate thing I've noticed is that some of these online applications don't display in Safari. I've done all the reading and exploring on Safari, and nearly all the creation of stuff there as well and that's worked fine. But now for example, in Safari - on the same computer that created the Google Calendar - the Calendar Grid that's linked in the post below this brings up my website's html page with the title, the top navigation bar and a big empty space.

In a real-world application, I've been adding lots of PictureTrail slideshows to our website, showing our library construction project progress. And, foreshadowing of Thing 18, I've included videos of moving bookstacks.

Thing 13 - Online Productivity

2008-03-20T13:48:00.000-07:00

The personalized homepage things are way fun! I experimented with each of the three ones mentioned - Google, PageFlakes and Yahoo - and I think I like Google best. I will try it as a personal homepage for a while.

Let's see if the 23 Things coundown widget worked:

Hmmm.....so far, it got the title and the colors right, but the countdown isn't running. Does that give me endless time to complete this??? Didn't think so!

I liked Google Calendar, and created a calendar of events grid for my library:

Calendar of Events Grid (click ahead to April - that's where I started)

We've had a list of events, 2 months at a time, with links to the webpages describing the events, for several years but people also like to be able to see events plotted out on a grid. One feature I really like about Google Calendar is the ability to have events recur, so the storytime that is on the second Tuesday of each month actually appears on the second Tuesday of every month until you tell it to stop.

I tried the Remember the Milk to do list site. I love To Do lists! (I know, how sad... but it frees up space in my head!) I've used my computer word processor to create To Do lists both at work and at home for a long, long time, so I am a big fan of the concept. I was saying to a colleague that I wasn't sure what the work application of the online to do list is, and she immediately said that it would be great for join projects. So we may try that a little later in the spring on one of our big annual projects.

Backpack looked great! I think that would be very fun to explore if only the free version had more features.

This has been a fun "Thing." I'm looking forward to exploring some of the other sites when I have more time.

Thing 12 - Not Digging It

2008-03-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

I looked through all four of the sites (Mixx, Digg, Newsvine and Reddit) on a couple different days and looked for the same kinds of information on each site. I liked Newsvine the best, I think, and also Mixx. It seemed to me that you have to work harder at filtering Digg in order to get the good stuff. The homepage list includes so much "junk" that it lessens the credibility of the rest of the stuff for me. Reddit is not visually appealing - it looks like a link farm.

I registered at Newsvine and added a link ("seeded the vine") to a news story from BBC-UK. In the process of clicking through a bunch of pages, I saw a story that later I wanted to go back and read. At that point, I realized you can't search for anything on Newsvine - at least I couldn't find a search box. There are plenty of lists and links and subject-like headings, but no search box. That's unfortunate! I also registered at Mixx and added the same BBC news story. Mixx does have a search box, but it took me a while to find the story I added, and I knew what the keyword tags were!

I'm much more likely to keep up with news by looking at the specific news sites that I like: BBC, NBC, CNN, etc. I'm sure you can find quirky, off-the-beaten-path stories not covered by mainstream press, but you're going to have to spend a lot of time on these sites and look through a lot of junk.

Thing 11 - Delicious!

2008-03-17T14:30:00.000-07:00

Del.icio.us is a great way to keep track of all the various sites someone's interested in, on a variety of subjects. I followed some of the tags around. The usefulness of the sites varies, of course, like everything on the Internet. I also uploaded most of the bookmarks from my office computer; now I need an opportunity to access them from another computer to see what a life-saver it can be.

I see how it can work in an educational setting, but I'm not sure how useful it is for libraries. We keep subject lists of websites as html pages on our website. Do other libraries transfer these to del.icio.us tags? How is this more useful for the patron? I'm going to have to think about this and talk with some of our librarians...

I looked at the library sites mentioned. Some of them have seemingly random lists of bookmarks. Menasha Library does have a subject list, so there's some organization of sites, which seems more useful. San Mateo organized their links by Dewey number - useful to their own library staff, I imagine, and to other librarians but less accessible for the general public.

Thing 10 - Wikis

2008-03-14T11:16:00.000-07:00

Well, wikis are kinda cool. I played around with Minnewiki (MN Public Radio's music resource) and Wikipedia, adding some things to both. Interested? Search for Strikepoint under Groups on Minnewiki. And I added a link to a MP3 file in the handbell entry on Wikipedia. What I don't know is how you know something has been changed. For example, in the Common Craft video about the 4 friends going camping, how did each person know when they should look at the wiki and who else had already seen and made changes? [OK, I have seen that there's a tab labeled Watch in some of these wikis, but I haven't -obviously - explored that.]

I expected more from the Library Success/best practices wiki. I thought there would be more narrative in a lot of the categories. The article "Using Wikis to Create Online Communities" has a section about using wikis in libraries that has some good ideas. I have seen a library online catalog that includes the ability for patrons to comment on/recommend materials. (Can't remember if that was an example for a Thing or if that was linked in a listserv email....) I really like the idea of doing a staff wiki for communication.

Test Doc

2008-03-13T10:27:00.001-07:00

This is a test document for

Zoho Writer.

2008-03-13T10:16:00.000-07:00

PA ANNOUNCEMENT

Thursday, November 6

6:45 p.m.

May I have your attention, please? This evening we present a free Library Lecture on the Literature of the Mesabi Range, at 7:00 in the Green Room. Library Lectures are sponsored by the Duluth Public Library and Duluth Schools Community Education. Thank you.

Thing 9 - Collaboration

2008-03-13T10:02:00.000-07:00

Well, Google Docs is not at all intuitive. I finally found the link for "take a guided tour." I can see that if you're starting with a text/Word document, it may be an excellent way for people to edit it and see group changes. I wonder if some of the problems with the Declaration is that we're working with an image rather than a text file?

I uploaded a Word doc and played around with it. Yep, this would be useful, and particularly if you were working on a project with people not in your building - something like an MLA or ALA committee or such. So I took my document and published it to my blog and it worked - it's the post two below this, the PA announcement.

I think I like Zoho Writer better, although trying to edit the Declaration was again frustrating. It must be the image vs. text doc thing. I did another sample doc and published it to the blog. I'd like to find a real-world use and try this out.

Oh, wait. I just published this and looked at it, and it posted this message BELOW the two sample documents from Google Docs and Zoho Writer. Hmmm....

2008-03-11T12:48:00.000-07:00

I just looked at my last post. It's unfortunate that in the Flick of the new remodeling photos, the photos that I rotated didn't stay that way. I'm not sure what the problem is - in the photo album, they're rotated the correct way.

The other comment I have is that some of these tools are more browser- and platform-dependant than I expected. Some parts of Blogger even are working differently on my Mac than on my PC. So I'm doing some jumping back and forth between machines to work on these. And using IE, I don't even see the Flick/PictureTrail slideshow in the blog! But it does show up in Firefox.

Thing 8 - Sharing Stuff

2008-03-11T09:23:00.001-07:00

We're doing a major remodeling project at my library and I turned a set of "before" photos into a Flickr slideshow and posted that link on our remodeling webpage:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24225477@N08/sets/72157604068579503/show/

And I found a PowerPoint presentation one of our librarians did and uploaded that to Zoho:

Picture Trail. I have a number of friends who use this site regularly, but this is the first time I've tried it. Parts of the process were really frustrating. I uploaded photos in three separate batches, and it was really annoying to have to re-order the photos after each upload. The way to avoid that would be to upload them in the reverse order that you want them to appear....or not to care what the sequence is. I didn't find a way in Flickr to re-order the photos, but at least they showed up in the slideshow in the same order I uploaded them. I should look to see if there's a way to rearrange the order there. There must be. So anyway, here's the Flick of the next batch of construction photos:

Thing 7 - Communication Tools

2008-02-28T09:51:00.000-08:00

Email is great - it's a great tool to facilitate communication both within the library and with the outside world. I do really dislike, however, when it is used exclusively within the library INSTEAD of face-to-face communication. Sometimes a phone call or a visit to another desk *is* the best form of communication. But on the whole, email has been a great boost to productivity. It's a way to shoot off a message/ask a question when someone is unavailable in person, it's a way to create a "paper trail" so you don't lose track of something. It's one of the great inventions of the twentieth century!

My problem with email is that I'm on a couple of VERY active lists, and the amount of posts I receive each day is staggering. I could just delete them, but I do get useful information and I hate to just delete unread. So I'm running way, way behind and several times a day I have to scroll through my messages looking for things from "real people." I'm trying very hard to catch up but am also trying to batch the email reading so I'm not constantly turning to it.

I didn't know a whole lot about IM before reading the "how it works" article, so obviously I've never tried it. The only library application of it that I'm aware of is IM reference service. I think we'd like to try that here once our staffing is improved.<

I also haven't tried text messaging (my cell phone plan does not include it) but I certainly have seen friends use it. It seems a bit cumbersome to me - having to hit number buttons multiple times to get to a particular letter - but I know that people can do it really quickly. I think my library is much more likely to implement IM before doing much with texting.

I've done quite a bit of web conferencing. Some - probably most - has worked really well. Being able to see live demos of a product or get training on an application and at the same time be able to ask your specific questions of someone who really understands the application is invaluable. It's a way we can train many, many more people than we could possibly send to a conference out of town or out of state. But, when web conferencing doesn't work, it's dramatic! There was one notable webinar where about a dozen of our staff people had been freed up to attend, and the Internet connections were soooo sloooow that our screens were about 20 minutes behind what the presenter was talking about! It was a session we had all been really looking forward to - and our library had paid a lot for the webinar - and it was totally useless. When it works, it's absolutely wonderful. When it doesn't, it's pretty frustrating.

Thing 6 - Image generators

2008-02-25T08:54:00.001-08:00

Trading card
Originally uploaded by Pointer7

Well, this is WAY fun! I can think of more personal uses than library right now. I'll have to think about that.

Thing 5 - Playing around

2008-02-21T09:47:00.000-08:00

The "Spell with Flickr" mashup is fun. And so is Flickr Sudoku (I'm going to email that to my Sudoku-addicted friends!). Flappr is also fun - I'm not sure there's a really useful purpose to it, though.

I think that Flickr photo-sharing can be really wonderful in personal settings. I can also see that being able to house and share photos could be good to add to a blog. For example, we're going to be doing some remodeling at my library and this would be a great way to house the photos so people can see the process and the progress.

Tropical Snowman

2008-02-21T09:17:00.001-08:00

Tropical Snowman
Originally uploaded by Pointer7

Here's one of the photos I uploaded to my new Flickr account. Isn't he cute?

Thing 4 - Flickr

2008-02-20T13:53:00.000-08:00

I've heard a lot about people using Flickr and I think I looked around the site a couple summers ago, but this is the first time I've taken a little more time to explore. I looked at the photos that were uploaded on my birthday, and then I looked for photos from the Lake District in England, where I was a couple summers ago. Some people are truly amazing photographers! I like that this is a way to protect photographs from fire, computer crashes, etc. So I may need to look into this for my photos at home. I've had a digital camera for a little over a year and have uploaded lots of photos to my computer but haven't printed many yet. Flickr would be a good backup mechanism.

Next day.....well, trying to upload the photo didn't work well. I asked a coworker who blogged that she was finally able to do it with someone else's help, and that worked....sort of. The photo I was trying to do just showed up as a big white blank spot in my blog. And I tried another one of the same person's shots and had the same result. So for some reason she doesn't want anyone to be able to use her photos, I guess. They weren't labeled in any way. So I've looked for another photo (taken by "GA music maker") and was able to get it to display.

Here's the link:

And here's the relevant part of the instructions for why the first photo I wanted wouldn't work:

The things I wanted to paste in above - the link and the instructions - show down below but not in line with the rest of the text. Sigh. I'm going to publish this and go on.

Son of Thing 3 - RSS

2008-02-19T08:38:00.001-08:00

Yep - pretty easy to read quickly through blogs using a reader. So I really should have figured this out before!!!!!!!!

Thing 3 - RSS

2008-02-19T08:18:00.000-08:00

The problem that I have with blogs is that I forget/don't have time to go back and read them. So RSS should be a great help for that - right?? Now I just need to really MAKE time to check my Bloglines account. I had set this up after a workshop last summer and it was indeed very easy. And there are so many blogs out there on such an incredible variety of topics that it would be pretty easy to spend nearly all your time reading blogs! Not such a great thing in the workplace!

But I did add some that I had bookmarked in my browser and I will make a point of trying to stay caught up. I have some others bookmarked on another computer that I'll look at and probably add to Bloglines.

As far as which tool was easier, when I set up the Bloglines account last summer, I did a little exploring and did find interesting blogs. But what I think will work better for me is rather than searching for blogs, I need to take note of blogs that I come across other ways - journal articles, listserv emails, websites, etc. - and follow through that way.

OK - off now to check Bloglines!

Thing 2 - Library 2.0

2008-02-14T13:05:00.000-08:00

Well, this is both overwhelming and exciting! Where will we find the time? Stephen Abram is right in saying that we find time for things that are important to us, but sometimes that's a bit simplistic. Right now I have a little time to work on this - creating a blog, reading & watching the Library 2.0 info - and last week I didn't. No extra time, no matter how important I might have thought this is. But if we make learning about emerging technologies and envisioning the possibilities a priority, then at some point they will happen. It just can't always be at the "when-I-can-get-around-to-it" part of our to do lists.

I looked at the comments-enabled feature of Hennepin County's catalog. What a great addition! What a way to get people to "buy in" to the importance of libraries. I have no idea if that type of feature is in development for our automation system, but I hope so.

One of these articles talked a lot about staff participation and involvement in these ongoing changes. "We trust our staff and we know that when we expect the best of people that is usually what we get." Again, the "buy in" factor is vital to the success of Library 2.0-like tools. If most, if not all, staff don't believe this kind of change is even desirable, not to mention essential, then a lot of changes are doomed. In my library, we've been dealing with difficult budget situations for so long and the staff is stretched so thin, it's hard to muster up enthusiasm and energy for working out how to implement change. But if we can do so, it *is* invigorating to embark on something new. I don't know how we get beyond cynicism. If the workload were not so overwhelming, then there's more space for contemplating change and service improvements. This is pretty rambling and perhaps more negative than I intend. But it's kinda what I'm thinking about these possibilities.

What I'm looking forward to in the program? Direction. Possibilities. Ideas.

It *is* exciting.

Thing 1 - Blog & Avatar

2008-02-13T10:13:00.002-08:00

This is not something that I ever expected to do, as I don't feel a need to share my life on the Internet. On the other hand, I've found blogs I enjoy reading, so perhaps turn about is fair play!

One of the things we're really lacking at my library is time to learn and learn about new things, so this program, which mandates some learning time, will be great. Setting up the blog was very easy and took only a few minutes. I've been to workshops previously where we set up blogs, so I did know that it wasn't difficult.

So, creating the avatar was fun! It's a lot like playing paper dolls, but with the instant computer-y gratification of seeing changes immediately implemented. I didn't realize there were all those choices available - fun outfits, subtle changes in things like eyeglass colors (!!), backgrounds and even pets (but no springer spaniels! :( ). Very cool. I can see how these things (blogs, avatars, etc.) can become addictive time-suckers!