23 Things Summary

I found this whole experience really fascinating and it was good to familiarize myself with concepts I hadn't heard about before (Rollyo e.g.) and also to reacquaint myself with some other things that I had learned about before (like blogs and wikis and OverDrive). I wish I could have spent more time on each one and I worry that I will forget all that I've learned if I don't continue to use it. But I feel more comfortable with all the various tools out there and it's made me think about how we might be able to use these things with our customers, especially when they are so used by young people. It is those customers we really need to woo if we want to still be in business in the future. Some of this has made me feel old - like when I think about how we did a lot of things in libraries when I first started out (many moons ago). But it's not because I'm not open to these things - I actually love them. It's more because it takes me a lot longer to master them and that didn't used to be the case.

The only frustrating thing for me was when something didn't work right - like when I couldn't get my document from Zoho to come over and when I had trouble figuring out how to get my avatar to post. But all in all, I enjoyed the process and I'd like to go back when I can and do a little bit more. I am certainly enjoying going to my bloglines and bringing up some of my favorite sites without having to remember which ones I want to go to. That was a real plus in my mind. I will also continue to think about how we might use some of these tools in our department to communicate or even do training with staff - I think that would be a lot of fun for us and hopefully would be fun for everyone else as well.

Week 9, Thing 22 ( OverDrive and Project Gutenberg)

I have used the OverDrive site many times and in fact, I demo'd the site last year for branch staff at our branch visits. I have used the site to download ebooks to my palm pilot and also audio books to an MP3 player. I wish that the site could be used with an IPod because I think would cause our stats to soar since most people are hooked into the IPod as their MP3 of choice. I am also aware of the Project Gutenberg site as well and just recently pointed a customer in that direction because she was not happy with the selection of classics that we have in our regular book collection. One of the reasons that I wanted to get a second MP3 player is so that I can use one exclusively for books and one for music.

Week 9, Thing 21 (Podcasts)

Again, as with You Tube, I was amazed at the number of podcasts that are available, how diverse they are and how much time one could spend exploring them. I went to my old favorite, NPR, and added a couple of podcast subscriptions to my bloglines account. I went with the Nancy Pearl book reviews and also the NPR movie podcasts.

Week 9, Thing 20 (You Tube)

I have visited You Tube many times before so I was familiar with the site. I started looking for some videos on yoga and found some really funny ones regarding Laughter Yoga. The one is with John Cleese and the other is just wierd but I thought they would be good for a laugh.

I tried posting from You Tube but it doesn't seem to recognize my blog account for some reason. So the best I can do for right now is to copy the embeddable code which seems to have worked.

Week 8, Thing 19 (Web 2.0 Awards List)

I looked at the Health sections here, specifically Healia and Medstory. Both very interesting with articles from all over the place. You could probably spend hours looking at site after site because there are lots of links to take you to other places. I have been familiar with WebMD but I think I will now check out these two other sites because there was a lot of information and many of the articles seemed to be from reputable sites.

Week 8, Thing 18 (Online Productivity)

I got to Zoho and created a document but when I tried to post it to my blog, it didn't work. Still not sure why not but as I am behind in finishing my 23 Things, I decided that this is something I need to go back to and not worry about right now. I like the idea of these online tools since they are free but I wonder how easy they are to use and whether they provide much support to users who have no clue how they work. With the Microsoft products you have the help function and tons of user guides. Didn't see much in the way of this for Zoho. But maybe I've missed that somewhere along the way.

Week 7, Thing 17 (Maryland Libraries Sandbox)

Wow, lots of staff out there working on the 23 Things. I posted my blog URL in what I hope was the right place and added a couple of my favorite books to another posting. They were two books by Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tucson and also Prodigal Summer. It was interesting to see what others had posted although for some reason, the display of some of them seemed chaotic - not sure why.

Also posted to Favorite Movies - one of mine is Party Girl with Parker Posey. Here's a link to IMDB so you can find out what this movie is about.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114095/

Week 7, Thing 16 (Learn About Wikis)

I have used the wikis we have here at CCPL for postings to other members of a team. I looked at the examples of the different ways you can use a wiki and I liked the best practices one and the one that St. Joseph County created with subject guides. The downside for me is keeping it up to date. Even as I was exploring some of the links provided by the wikis, there were ones that went nowhere and that would be frustrating to anyone trying to use them to find information.