Thing #23 -- Final Thoughts

Blogging has been a bit of a revelation. I had not done it for a combination of 2 reasons. The first was my usual concern about content. Would I have anything to say? Or even: would I have anything to say that people would consider worth reading? What do I have to contribute that hasn't already been said better by others? Having the 23 Things to blog about gave me a starting point, and I may find from now on that coming up with posts isn't as hard as I thought. And they don't all have to be "great ideas."

The second reason I held back was for concerns about my privacy. In spite of all the Web 2.0 things happening around me I'm still not comfortable opening myself up too far online, at least not in any way that can be identified with my "real" self. So I set my blog up to be as anonymous as possible. I've struggled a bit with that choice as I worked through the Things. There were times when I could have illustrated a point better by mentioning or linking to a specific project or web page at my library. Since this program (and Web 2.0/Library 2.0 for that matter) isn't just about learning but also about sharing, was I breaking the rules so to speak? And how will I treat my identity if I continue my blog, as I plan to.

While, as I said at the very beginning, I've been doing some of the 23 Things for awhile, this program has been inspiring in its breadth of coverage. I found new uses for old Things, and was excited by the possibilities found in some new ones. And, to be honest, was completely unimpressed with a few...

In addition to blogging, some "new to me" Things that get applause are:
RSS feeds--not so much their use, but becoming aware of some new good ones, like LifeHacker and Librarian in Black.
Second Life--I was afraid to venture into virtual territory, but decided to take the leap for this Thing. I was impressed by what's there, and surprised at how often I could wander around and hardly see anyone else.
Library Thing--I want to play around with a couple applications using it.

One thing I've enjoyed is the way blogging about my experiences has made me slow down a bit to reflect on what I've learned. Instead of rushing through all the Things (especially as it got closer to the deadline) I had to take a break from willy-nilly clicking Resource links and think about what I was doing, whether or not it fit into my life and work, and if so, how.

Related to the mad dash toward the deadline: I'm glad the 23 Things blog will stay up for a bit. I'd like to go back to some of the Things and do more of the Challenges, or follow some of the links I left untouched on my first go-round. I also want to take some time to view other participants' blogs. I tried to read others at the beginning, but gave it up because 1) it was taking so much time I wasn't getting any of the Things done myself and 2) I didn't want their views to influence my own thinking too much while I was still exploring.

Thing #22 -- What Did I Learn?

About half way through this project I started wondering if I would keep my blog up once I was finished the 23 Things. I decided I would try to, although I will probably not post as regularly without specific "assignments" to comment on. A little less "what did I learn today?" and more "what did I learn this week or month." Having a blog in which to report my findings will be a motivating factor--I'm sure I won't want it to sit unattended for too long at a stretch. And if I get stuck for ideas there's always moving on to Learning 2.1 and Things 24 and up.

Over the course of the Things there have been plenty of times I've said "I'll have to think about that" or "I'll get around to that later." So I can report on my future exploration. There are a couple of specific projects I want to work on, and their outcome will likely end up in my blog as well.

As far as keeping up with the 23 Things, and discovering new ones, one idea I had was to create reminders in my calendar. I can set them for time that is typically unscheduled in my week, and they can pop up and alert me that I should be checking my RSS feeds, or browsing some online communities, or visiting Second Life. We'll see how that works, and if I'm disciplined to act on the reminders and not just close them and go on with what I was doing.

Thing #21 -- More with Social Networks

There are 2 library related online communities I'm a member of: Blended Librarian and WebJunction Minnesota. I tried to take a look at Ning, but they're having technical problems right now. Guess I'll have to join the 23 Things on a Stick Ning later. Several years ago one of my cousins set up an online network for my extended family on my mother's side. We use it to keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, share photos, and even collect family recipes. I'm familiar with Flixster, my sister often challenges me to their quizzes using their Facebook app. She's much more into pop culture than I am, and she always wins. For the most part I prefer to do my socializing in person rather than online. I'm more likely to join an online group when I already know some of the people there.

Well, Ning is finally back up and I joined the 23 Things community there. Here's my badge:

View my page on 23 Things on a Stick

National Library Week

It's National Library Week and I was wandering around the recently rebuilt ALA Island on Second Life. There's an area where you can take a snapshot of yourself for a READ poster. This is mine.

As yet another example of how these Things (or perhaps more specifically my awareness of them) feed into and off of each other--while visiting ALA Island I discovered links to ACRL's podcasts and appropriately enough listened to one on online culture.

Thing #20 -- Facebook / MySpace

I joined Facebook in the fall, mostly out of curiousity. I had heard a lot about it and wanted to see for myself. After I created my account I discovered my siblings in other states are also on it and it's now one of the ways we keep in touch. I'm currently on a couple of groups related to my library. For this thing I looked briefly at some of the suggested Facebook groups, but didn't join any. I plan to take a closer look at them later (when I'm not hurrying to finish the rest of the Things) and will probably join at least one.

I chose Facebook because it appeared to offer more security than MySpace--you have more control over who can see information about you. The layout in Facebook seems cleaner to me and the ads aren't as obtrusive.

Thing #19 -- Podcasts

My library has discussed creating a blog for our web site a couple of times, and we always bring up the same objection--content. Would we have enough content to make it worthwhile? We don't want it to end up a stale section of the our page that hardly changes. I think this goes double (at least) for podcasts, so I can't see us taking on any podcast projects anytime soon. (Which isn't to say it will never happen.)

In my personal life, I've found and listened to podcasts using iTunes--I really like iTunes U. I also knew that MPR had podcasts, but had never listened to any until doing this Thing. I added one to my feed list. It's getting pretty long by now! I also added a couple from NPR to my iTunes.

While I was working on this Thing I took a break to go through some mail. One item contained a notice about a new OCLC podcast and webinar series. I'll have to keep my eye (or is that ear?) on these.

Thing #18 -- YouTube

As I discovered with Thing 4 and Thing 11 (also Thing 12 to a lesser extent) it's hard for me to find useful things on sites like YouTube without a clear need. If I'm simply browsing aimlessly it seems primarily like a big jumble of content. That's probably why most of my experience with YouTube has been from following links in email and other places that take me directly to individual videos.

My library currently has one video on YouTube. We haven't discussed adding more, but I'm sure we will at some point.

As a Mac user, I thought it appropriate to include a video of the classic Apple commercial that aired during the 1984 Super Bowl.

Thing #17 -- ELM Productivity Tools

Gale and Search Alerts: I'm quite familiar with search alerts in general, although I haven't created any in the ELM databases. I use them in a few different databases to inform me of book reviews in subjects related to my liaison departments. Last year I showed faculty in one of my departments how to create search alerts and this fall I created a search alert tutorial for them using Wink.

As long as I'm (peripherally) on the topic of the Gale ELM databases--One tip I picked up a few months ago from a colleague at another institution was to publicize the K-12 focused databases to students in the education department here. I realized they could be helpful to students for creating lesson plans and other aspects of their student teaching.

EBSCO's Page Composer and ProQuest web page creation: This is kind of funny--After reading this Thing I remembered I had previously played with the "create a web page" function in ProQuest, but didn't think I knew you could do something similar in EBSCO. Then when I opened my folder, there was a web page already sitting there. Guess that functionality didn't make too much of an impression on me!

I'm not sure I would use either of these a lot since I have other web editing tools available to me. However, they could be useful for our students as one way to save articles they were interested in. Putting their marked articles in a web page allows them to be clickable for easily retrieving them later--something they can't do with a paper printout from the database.

One way I might use these tools is when I am helping students with their research via email. I'm more likely to simply suggest databases and search terms than to send them actual citations--we are a college, after all, and they're supposed to be learning to do research themselves. But if I wanted to include citations, doing so as by attaching a web page with articles linking into the database would be a good way to do it.

Something I don't like about ProQuest is it doesn't allow you to create an account and keep your results or web pages beyond the current session.

NetLibrary: I've tried reading books on NetLibrary several times, and every time I'm reminded how much I hate reading on the computer. Given this, I can't imagine wanting to take my notes online. I believe some of our students have discovered the note taking function in NetLibrary, but many of them just want to print off pages from the books they find.

Thing #16 -- Student 2.0 Tools

We customized the Assignment Calculator and added it to our library's web page a little over a year ago. We tried to link as many of the steps to content on our own web site as possible. There are links to it from various pages on our web site, including a section we have for new students. Whenever I'm teaching these students about using the library for their research projects I usually show them the Calculator. Web site statistics indicate it doesn't get as much use as many other parts of our web site, but this semester there have been just over 200 views of our Assignment Calculator so far.

We also added links on our web site to the Research Project Calculator found on the ELM Portal. In this case we just link to that site; we did not create our own version of it.

Thing #15 -- Gaming and Libraries

Working through the 23 Things is certainly getting me to look at a lot of things that have been varying priorities on my "to do" list for awhile. Several times over the last couple of years I've gone to Second Life and looked at the documentation and other information. But it took the prod of Thing 15 to actually create an account and install the software. Now I have no excuse for not following what's going on at Info Island. I see Second Life more in terms of my own professional development than as a way for me to interact with library users. I may even "attend" one of the events surrounding the 2nd anniversary of Info Archipelago this weekend. Now if I can only become skilled enough at moving around smoothly! It doesn't help that there's such a high lag time when I'm doing it on my computer at work. The experience runs much better on my laptop at home.

I also tried Puzzle Pirates, but wasn't impressed with it. I wasn't interested in trying cute puzzle games, and I get plenty of experience communicating with others via chat elsewhere.

Thing #14 -- LibraryThing

My husband told me about LibraryThing several years ago in relation to all the books we have at home. I think I even created an account and library at that time, but didn't do much with it. When I tried to use my old account for this Thing I couldn't find it.

I'm interested in using LibraryThing for new book or other kinds of lists, playing around with various ways to import books so the work is easier. And I did create my own account and add some books.

Thing #13 -- Online Productivity Tools

Once again, on first reading through the Thing I think to myself: I'm already doing a lot of this with my Mac...

• My husband and I share an iCal calendar, and use our iDisk to keep it in sync.
• Mac's OS comes with a built-in PDF converter. Just choose File>>Print>>Save as PDF. I use this all the time, both for converting word processing files and for saving web pages.
• OSX also comes with both a Stickies application and a Stickies widget for the Dashboard.

The other thing I'm noticing (no pun intended) as I work through the Things, is the process makes me take closer looks at things I've been aware of, to a greater or lesser extent, and examine whether there's a place for them in my life or my library. In some cases the answer is yes, in others it's no.

One yes goes to iGoogle. I chose iGoogle over Pageflakes because I already have a Google account (still trying to keep the creeping account-itis down...), although they seemed equally appealing. I had tried My Yahoo! a bit ago, but found it frustrating to customize the way I wanted. One feature I like is creating multiple tabs. I can put work related items on the main tab and things more for personal use on a different tab--still easily accessible, but not right in front of me. I did add both the New York Times and Village Voice gadgets, so in spite of what I wrote for Thing #12 I may stop receiving their content via email.

I had tried Google Calendar previously, and while the web accessibility from anywhere is nice, I was a little uncomfortable with the safety consequences of having my schedule "out there" and stopped using it. I didn't want some hacker knowing that I would be leaving work at night after an evening shift, or that my house would be empty if I was out of town.

It's not exactly a calendar, but one useful tool I've discovered for scheduling meetings is Doodle. It works via a "poll" of available times that participants vote on, and automatically calculates the best time for the most people. Especially if you're scheduling people from multiple institutions and calendar systems it saves a lot of time. There's no need for multiple emailing back and forth.

It's interesting how some of these Things play off and refer to each other. For an earlier Thing I was trying to remember where I had seen something I wanted to mention. I tried searching for it, and while I couldn't find it I did discover Lifehacker, which looked really interesting. I added it to my list of feeds, and now here it is mentioned as a resource for Thing #13.

Thing #12 -- Social Media Sites

So much information, so little time! Sometimes I just want to get away from the computer, and reading the print Star Tribune in the mornings is one of those times. I try to keep up with what's happening locally and nationally. Other media sources I use are online--I receive a daily email from the New York Times, which I can tailor to specific types of content that interest me. I also subscribe to the Village Voice by email.

It was interesting to look at the 4 social media sites, but I can't see myself going back to any of them. There's just too much stuff, and too much work to separate the fluff or the junk from what's worthwhile. I found Digg and Reddit especially hard with their undifferentiated lists of stories. Mixx at least breaks the lists up visually with headings or horizontal rules. Newsvine offers the ability to customize the view by rearranging chunks of content on the page, but that's still not enough for me to make it a habit.

I think regarding this Thing I'll stick with my more Luddite ways.

Thing #11 -- Tagging and del.icio.us

One fun and useful aspect of tagging is the ESP Game. I first saw this in a presentation at ACRL last spring. The librarian said he showed it in his library instruction classes as an example of the benefits of using controlled vocabulary. The team behind the ESP Game is attempting to label all the images on the web by making it fun for people to provide tags for them. Once you start playing it can be addictive.

I'm a little of two minds about the usefulness of tags in libraries. Allowing users to add tags to the catalog makes more sense to me in public libraries than academic ones, but maybe that's because I haven't seen a good application of them in an academic setting. I know there is this strong movement towards involving the user,and for the most part I'm okay with that, but it also seems like we could be dumbing things down. As an academic librarian, where learning is supposed to be part of the point, I have a hard time with that.

I've known about del.icio.us for a couple of years now, but haven't used it. Whenever I'd explore the site, all the bookmarks and tags seemed overwhelming without a purpose for my exploration. And whenever I was searching for web sites on a subject, it never occurred to me to check out del.icio.us. So this was kind of a "lightbulb" moment for me--next time I'm looking for subject resources, or researching something for myself, I'll go to del.icio.us.

I also never thought to create a del.icio.us account for my bookmarks--although I could have used one recently when my work computer was replaced. While most of my personal files were transferred just fine, my browser profile, including my bookmarks, was wiped out.

Thing #10 -- Wikis

At my library we created a wiki, using PBWiki, that is primarily built and used by our reference assistants. It's a place for information about various aspects of working here and staffing the reference desk. It gives our assistants a way to share what they've learned with those who will follow them--since they're likely to be more aware of passing on information that we may take for granted. Library reference staff can edit it as well, and occasionally do.

The wiki also has a section for "sticky questions," primarily those pesky citation questions that none of us want to have to research twice. (As an academic library, we get lots of requests for citation help.)

I'm involved on a planning group for a regional conference, and we also use PBWiki. It's an easy way for different team members to float ideas, ask for input, and update the rest of us about what they've done or are working on. It's nicer than emails, but email notification of edits ensures we all stay informed of changes.

I wasn't previously aware of the Library Success wiki--it looks like a useful way to share information. I did go in and edit a couple of pages related to online reference.

I was intrigued with the wiki of subject guides that St. Joseph County Public Library created. These look like only librarians edit them. For the subject guides at my library, each one has one person responsible for them, so the collaborative aspect doesn't seem to make that much sense, unless unless we were to open editing up to students, which I don't think we would. However, there is a series of research guides on our web site that aren't assigned to one particular librarian. We use them in our instruction classes, and because they are the responsibility of everyone (or no one) they don't all get edited regularly. Putting them in a wiki and allowing students and faculty to leave comments to let us know when content is out of date or links are broken would be helpful. I think students might also appreciate the search capabilities that a wiki offers. It would allow them to find the guide most useful to them without having to review the entire list.

Thing #7 revisited

I've recently joined a Google Group, since a group I belong to has begun using it as a communication method instead of the previously used group listserv. I haven't explored its functionality much, but it seems to offer more possibilities than a plain listserv. Being able to post files to one place, rather than having attachments scattered throughout messages in the archives, is a useful feature, as is the ability to create group web pages.

Thing #9 -- Web 2.0 Collaboration Tools

I've used both Google Docs and Zoho Writer previously and they are a useful way to collaborate, especially for projects involving librarians at multiple institutions. The ability to chat with collaborators from within Zoho is a nice feature, although at one point we ended up switching to the phone to work out a problem because it was easier! In theory, I also like Zoho Notebook, which allows you to build a project that includes multiple types of files--documents, spreadsheets, web sites, etc. However, in practice, we've had problems with it, as the contents of many documents in the notebook aren't appearing. I'll admit, this could be more a problem with us not understanding how to share documents properly rather than with the application itself.

As far as straight word processing goes, Google Docs and Zoho Writer seem equally capable--I didn't have a problem creating and editing a document in either one. Google Docs' autosave feature is a little annoying at times, but its interface is a little clearer. One feature that would be helpful is automatic notification if others have edited the document. I didn't see that this was possible in either application, but perhaps I just missed it.