Thing 23

Thing 22

Ways to keep learning

Thing 21

I read the articles. There are some interesting possibilities for library applications. I think it would work better in a college/academic setting because of the age of the clientelle. I joined Ning and set up an account. I left a comment for Therese and added a Ning widget below. I am a member of Facebook, though I don't check-in very often. I am not a very social person, so these are of little benefit for me.

Thing 20

Facebook

This is the "thing" that I have had the most fun with so far. I set up my account, and within days had a bunch of high school classmates asking to be "friends". A lot of these ladies I had lost touch with because it's hard to keep track of married names. I joined the group "non-essential government workers", which I am sure will become more active as trivia weekend approaches. I think that Facebook more than Myspace is geared towards adults rather than teens. There are still some facets that are clearly teen oriented, but overall it's more adult.

Thing 19

Podcasts are a wonderful concept. If you find something you like, you can subscribe to have it automatically sent to you instead of needing to repeatedly download it. You can also just get individual episodes very quickly since they are usually short.

Thing 18

I have to admit that I am slightly addicted to YouTube. My husband and I recently upgraded to DSL from a dial-up connection to the internet, so it is a new toy.

Thing 17

ELM productivity tools

Thing 16

There would be many uses for the assignment and research project calculators. The best thing about it is it gives deadlines for small parts of the project. This makes it less likely that the student will put off the whole project until the last weekend. It also allows the teacher or librarian time to acquire needed materials that may not be available when starting the project.
The teachers guides have many handout possibilities for students working on projects (including History Day projects). The ones about narrowing the topic and coming up with good questions would be very beneficial.

Thing 15

Libraries and games

Thing 14

Librarything would be very useful for individuals trying to keep track of their books. Especially since it allows you to search by isbn for the particular edition instead of just be author/title. It would also be good to use on library websites showing their new materials. I added a widgit to the bottom of this blog with a few of the titles I added to Librarything.

Thing 13

I created a Pageflakes account and added some different widgets. You could waste a lot of time setting up something like this. I also found that some of the widgets don't work. I prefer Myyahoo, which I already use. I tried to find the Kiko calendar, but found it has been defunct since 2006. Spongecell looks interesting, but I choose to keep my Yahoo calendar. I created an account with Tadalist. I think this will come in handy. I can see myself using this regularly at home. I took a look at Backpack. I didn't create an account since this is not a free site. It looks as if it would be very useful in a business setting, but not so much in a public library.

Thing 12

I visited the homepages of the four social media sites. I preferred the layout of Mixx, didn't care much for Digg, thought Reddit was ok, and Newsvine was pretty standard. I thought that Newsvine would be the only one that might have use in a library setting. The others contain too many listings that aren't news. Too much distraction. I think that I wouldn't find much use for these at the library, but could waste a lot of time with them at home. I found an article on BBC's website and joined Reddit, but the article had already been posted. I left a comment.

Thing 11

tagging and del.icio.us

Thing 10

Wikis are frustrating for me. Whenever I get to the point where I have to access something on a wiki, it doesn't work. For example, I went to the 23 things wiki, created an account, then it wouldn't allow me to create a new page. I would click on new, a drop-down menu would appear but neither a folder or a page could be created. I enjoyed the "booklovers wiki", but found the "library success wiki" very unfriendly because you were constantly brought to a new page with more choices. Wiki is an interesting concept that would be useful to some (when it's working properly). I wasn't able to edit anything.

Thing 9

I tried both the Zoho Writer and the Google Docs applications. I found that the Google version was much easier to use. Zoho didn't have any of the editing tools at the top, so it was a challenge to find out how to change the document. Google is much more user friendly. The founding fathers would be appalled!

Thing 8

Share slides, photos

Thing 7

Communication tools
Communication tools are essential to the modern library. We used to be limited to using the telephone to check on materials at other branches. How things have changed. The first to arrive was the internet, followed closely by email. Instant messaging made things much more immediate and rapid. Text messaging is not something that our library system uses, but seems that it would be a little too open to interpretation (all the jargon/abreviations). Web conferencing and webinars are very useful in that they can provide decentralized training opportunities. The problem with them is getting all the software/hardware to work properly.

Thing 6

I used imagechef to create an image of my husbands name and mine carved onto a tree. I added it to the blog, though it kind of cut it off on the side. I could waste a lot of time playing with this. I also created a trading card with a winter scene and added it as well (though again it is cut off).

Thing 5

I had a lot of fun exploring the various things that could be done with Flickr. I added the "spell" program to the bottom of the blog. I wasn't able to do much with the mashups because webmonkey wasn't working.

Thing 4

I had a lot of fun with Flickr. I uploaded 30+ photos, mostly of my wedding preparations, a trip to the Black Hills and photos of my husband and I when dating. I plan to use this into the future since it is an easy way to organize photos online. I used tagging to describe each photo, and divided them into three groups.

Thing 3

I found that RSS feeds intriguing. Being able to have constantly updating information available is a wonderful invention. It allows you to keep up with things without repeatedly searching the web for the info. I added a librarian-related RSS feed to this blog.

Thing 2

I've decided to address the issue of time and library 2.0. I have found that making time available to work on the 23 things has been difficult. Normally when I am at work, I am at the desk and being constantly interrupted (not that that is a bad thing). It just made being able to concentrate on 23 things much harder. At home until this past week, I only had a dial-up connection, so many of the "things" didn't work properly. This combination of situations has made finding time to work on 23 things very difficult.

Thing 1

This is my record for "23 things on a stick". As you can see, this is the first thing since you are reading my blog. I found this very easy to do, and have started a couple of other blogs for other purposes.