9.23 SUMMARY OF THOUGHTS

This project has been extremely useful for me. At first I thought I would know many of the 23 things and I did know a few, but my knowledge has been expanded much more than I expected. Just the other day I was doing a reference interview and one of the sites I discovered during this activity was perfect for what the patron was looking for. I think the most helpful thing was discovering that there are many ways to find information on the web other than through search engines such as Google and Ask. I think it would be beneficial for this project to have a supplement every 6 months. We learned about many cool things, but there are still many, many things yet to be created and we need to keep on top of them. I would like to see libraries implement this knowledge by encouraging librarians to think about ways to use these tools in public libraries. Thank you for the opportunity to participate!

9.22 OVERDRIVE LIBRARY

I found some very uesful features and some not so helpful ones after exploring Overdrive. Overdrive offers audio books, videos, and ebooks. It is exciting to be able to pick a title while sitting at your computer and download it at once. Also, the audio books can be sampled which is very useful in deciding if you want to borrow it.

On the other hand, there is a waiting list for materials in Overdrive. It would be much more beneficial to be able to access the files immediately. Additionally, I'm not sure how often the ebooks would be used. Not many people want to sit at their computer screen and read long books. Short stories and reference books would be a good choice for ebooks. It is possible to burn the files to CD, but they can't be trasferred to an iPod which is a listening device that many people use. There are some flaws to Overdrive, but overall, I think as it progresses it will become a much used resource.

9.21 SEARCH TOOLS FOR PODCASTS

I searched a few of these sites for personal interests such as yoga and knitting. I found that podcasts are a very specific format that can't be used logically for everything. It has to be something you want to listen to as opposed to viewing or reading. It also has to be something that is in a series, somthing that you would want to listen to week to week. For example, I might not want to listen to how to do a certain kntting stitch, but rather learn how by watching a video. Also, I might just want one-time information on knitting, not a series. I did find a library-related blog called Open Stacks and added it to my Bloglines.

8.20 YOUTUBE

I did a search on YouTube for teen library programs and came up with a variety of results ranging from news clips on local library programs, videos of the programs themselves, and promotion of upcoming programs. This is one way to share programs with other libraries around the country and the world. It is one thing to read a blog or a magazine article about a program, but it is something entirely different to watch a video of the program. For example, I watched a video about a flipbooks program (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQET3uxtdqM). The teens created their own flipbooks and then displayed them for the camera. So, the actual products that were created and all of the ideas were shared in a way they couldn't be by a text description.

8.19 WEB 2.0 AWARDS LIST

LULU - Another awesome site! More and more books are being self-published. This really opens up doors for people who otherwise wouldn't be able to share their talents. It's interesting to think about whether we are becoming a society that's more homogeneous or more diverse. I think Lulu really proves the long tail effect. More people are able to buy less popular items in today's world. We don't all have to buy the same things because they are easier to produce and market.

I looked through the winner list and found that I knew a lot of the #1 sites. So, I'm not that out of the loop. This is also a good place to find useful websites to go to when doing a reference interview. I plan to become familiar with the other sites that I don't know about already.

8.18 ONLINE PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS

Wow! Very neat. I played around with Google Docs and I can really see this coming in handy. Recently, I switched to Google for my email and I have been writing a lot of documents in my e-mail and it will auto-save to my drafts and I can come back to them. This is pretty much the same concept as Google Docs, but the format can be saved differently in Google Docs (.ppt, .doc, .html) and it can be published as a web page immediately. Being able to publish to a web page without having access to a server or using a blog, wiki, or other such place is really cool.

There are so many times when people come into the library and loose or aren't able to find their data. A lot of times I try to remind people to e-mail their documents to themselves. Using Google Docs eliminates a few steps and allows people to access these documents from anywhere without having to carry around a disk or flash drive.

7.17 LEARNING 2.0 SANDBOX WIKI

Although I have used wikis before, it took me a few minutes to figure out how to link my page. This is a good place for people to be able to test out the technologies without committing to a particular site or feeling that the entry has to be serious. However, being a typical librarian, the hodgepoge of information makes me a bit uncomfortable ;)

7.16 WIKIS

I think wikis could be useful in libraries for subject guides, book reviews, and online book clubs. While working at an academic library a few years ago I was involved with the creation and maintenance of subject guides and some librarians were toying with the idea of the idea of wiki format. Others were not so pleased because if other people could add to the wiki, it limited their authority on the subject. But, that feature can be removed and it is a nice way for people to create pages without having to know HTML.

Blogs seem to be more like an onlnie diary with people's thoughts and wikis seem to be more collaborative and webpage-like. This lends itself well to online book clubs and book reviews. Some of the wikis listed used them for these reasons.

Wikis can also be used internally in public libraries. One way is for groups or committees that can't always meet physically. One example is a committee that spands across branches. They could continue to meet virtually through a wiki.

6.15 LIBRARY 2.0

All of the articles and perspectives on Library 2.0 that I read were very exciting and motivating. However, I think as public librarians that we need to focus on older adults as well. Baby boomers are growing in number and will be our important patrons over the next years. Many older adults are familiar with the internet and new technologies, but many others aren't. As we move toward more digital materials and services and doing away with others, we are leaving behind a number of patrons who either can't or won't participate in these technologies. We can't ignore this population and we need to find ways to include older adults. One of the best ways is to help them learn either by offering classes at the library or suggesting classes at the local senior center or community college. Another way is to provide senior computers with specialized equipment. And yet another way is to train staff on older adults and theie use of technology.

6.14 TECHNORATI

As I was looking at Del.icio.us, I was thinking about the issue of authority and that although letting average people organize information is a good thing, it can create problems. Technorati has come up with an interesting way to deal with this by rating authority of different blogs/bloggers by the number of websites that they are linked to. Interesting, but I don't think this entirely solves the problem because how is the authority of web pages being decided? It will be intriguing to see how these problems work themselves out over the coming years.

Using both Technorati and Del.icio.us' feature of popular materials on the internet is a good tool for librarians. It is important for us to keep up with what is current and contemporary not just in the physical world, but the virtual one as well.

6.13 DEL.ICIO.US

Social bookmarking is an excellent way to organize information on the web. When the internet started in the 90s there were so few websites that anyone using the web could puruse all of them. Now, in 2007 there are 106,875,138 websites (according to Netcraft). It is impossible for anyone to look at all the websites available. Social bookmarking sites, like Del.icio.us offer a way to organize and find relevant information rather than just searching in search engines. This is groundbreaking because people, normal people, are in control of information and are making decisions on what is good information and what is bad information.

I could see this site being especially useful for library research if there is a lot of information on the web about a particular topic (i.e. shopping). This would narrow down the popular sites that a librarian may not be familiar with. If it is something less popular(i.e. biography of Rita Hayworth) it may be more beneficial to do a search engine search.

5.12 ROLLYO

I rolled my own search tool for book lists that can be located on the lower left-hand side of this page. I found this to be a very beneficial tool. I have spent a lot of time scouring separate web pages for book lists on many occasions. Being able to do this in one search is incredibly useful. Many times I am searching the book lists for a reader's advisory question at the information desk and it needs to be answered quickly. It takes a long time to search individual websites and Rollyo is a way around this.

5.11 LIBRARYTHING

What a cool site! Every librarian should use this site. I had been keeping track of the books I was reading on an Excel sheet. This is a much more useful way to do that especially of the other features such as reviews, ratings, book suggestions, tagging, etc. I might have to subscribe to it because 200 books isn't very many. It would be a good tool not only for personal use, but to create reader's advisory lists. Additional materials could be added to the list as they are discovered and it can be accessed from anywhere.

5.10 ONLINE IMAGE GENERATOR

http://www.festisite.com/tools/generators/cardgame/

I made my personalized playing card with the above website. I have previously made avatars in Yahoo messenger and AIM. I didn't realize that there were so many online generators to be searched in one place.

4.9 MERLIN, BLOGS, AND NEWS FEEDS

That was the first time I investigated the MERLIN webpage. I think I will be returning there in the future. The free online classes could come in handy. I liked the Topix.net news feed searcher. It is a much easier way to read the news rather than going to each individual news site and searching it individually.

I think it would take me awhile to get used to using Bloglines. It seems very overwhelming to have 281 feeds in the inbox at once. I think I would need to start with just a few RSS feeds.

4.8 RSS FEEDS

RSS feeds are a good way to condense information into one place. In this exercise we created a bloglines account which has a person going to a separate web page to view their feeds. To make this really useful, I think I would have the RSS feeds hooked up to my e-mail.

3.7 LINKED IN

I recently have become a member of the networking site LinkedIn. It is similiar to MySpace and Facebook, but is geared toward professionals. This site is very useful to promote yourself, keep in contact with colleagues, see what others in your field are doing, look for jobs, etc. This site enables people a way to interact with more people than ever before. Another useful feature of this site is that you can see who else is in your "network" (friends of friends basically). If you wanted to contact someone that you weren't linked directly to on the site you could see if one of your contacts was linked to that person and ask for an introduction or more information on the person. If this catches on with a lot of people, it will become an extremely useful tool.

3.6 TRIP PLANNER

Mash ups are neat! I didn't really know much about them before this exercise. It seems like an excellent way to actually do stuff with all of the information that is floating around out there. I looked at Yahoo's trip planner. Whenever planning a trip, it seems to take me a very long time to make decisions and I'm not always sure if they are the right ones. Yahoo's trip planner offers an excellent way to make this process easier. Trip planner allows people to record journals of their trip, photos from the trip, trip itineraries, links to hotels, and maps. So, you can do a search for a place that you are thinking about going and see what other people have done. This is almost impossible to do in a regular search engine. Mostly, you get advertisements for hotels and trip specials, but nothing like the information available in Yahoo's trip planner. I will definitely use this in the future :)

3.5 FLICKR

I like this picture. The viewer is drawn to the image not only by the technical components, such as the color contrast, but also by the weightlessness of the woman. If you look closely, you can see the woman is pregnant. The caption on Flickr says the woman was one week away from giving birth. She must have felt very heavy and burdened at this time and jumping in the water and floating for the picture must have relieved so much tension and let her feel light for a moment. The viewer also feels a sense of relief and freedom when viewing the picture.

2.3 SETTING UP MY OWN BLOG

I have created a blog in the past for a grad school class activity. This time around it was much easier to make one. It is difficult at first for me to understand the set-up of a blogging site. It took me awhile to understand that there was a front end (display) and back end (posts and account setting). I feel comfortable creating blogs and posting to them, but I'm not sure what reason I would have to use them in my personal life.

1.2 LIFELONG LEARNING

The habit that I find to the easiest to abide by is the first one discussed, "Begin with the end in mind." I love setting new goals and coming up with new plans. Goals and plans motivate me to do well. However, sometimes I find it takes me a long time to complete the goals if they are complex. One of the reasons could be that I have difficulty with the third habit, "View problems as challenges." Sometimes if a problem is too big to overcome I will put aside the project for a later date. For example, I really want to learn how to knit mittens, but everytime I look at a pattern I get frustrated because I don't understand all of the directions. So I set it aside and figure at some point it will be convenient for me to ask someone else about how to do this. This is good for my sanity, but not so good for the completion of my goals in a timely manner.

1.1 ABOUT THIS PROGRAM

I think that it is extremely important to have a program like this to update librarians on new technologies. This is an exciting time for libraries and we have the opportunity to make ourselves very useful in this information age. There is more available information than ever and some people say that because of this libraries are becoming obsolete. I think the opposite of this is true. Librarians are able to sort out this wealth of information and give patrons a manageable amount from credible sources. This is something that is not always easily accomplished and librarians are trained to do so. Libraries and librarians need to find their place in this new world and programs like this are really an excellent way to start.

test post

This is my first post to my 23 things blog.