Thing 23: Relfections

I found learning about our 23 Things to be very enjoyable. The Things exposed me to a few new tools, tools I'd heard about but hadn't explored and taught me more about the tools I had been using.

I think 23 Things were just enough of a sampling; sometimes they seemed like too much. By the end I didn't want them to end - I enjoyed learning new things and being able to draw on the expertise of library staff when some of the Things were difficult.

Thank you 23 Things team, for doing such a great job of educating me about Web 2.0.

Thing 22: Best of Web 2.0

I took a look at several Web 2.0 winners I hadn't examined during the earlier part of our "23 Things".

Pandora is fun and a definite keeper. I liked Wufoo form builder too but I think I'd be more likely to use it from home, not work. I'm pretty good with the tools I have at work so it isn't necessary. It is nice to be able to use from home.

Audio ebooks

Honestly, I meant to finish the 23 things in September. I hate being this tardy. Part of me just didn't want the fun to end.

I've used audio ebooks before and haven't been that impressed with them. There isn't much of a selection for items that one can download for free. This might also be a result of the subject area I was interested in. I was looking for titles of books we were reading for book club. Ah well, reading a book is more satisfying than listening to it.

Podcasts

This was fun. I'm now subscribed to the Best of NPR, This week in Tech and Science Friday. I subscribed via RSS feeds, bloglines did't work with these feeds. This should be a lot of fun.

I also subscribed to our library's podcast page too. Very fun.

That's as far as I got with the exercise. I'm not going to create my own pod cast.

Hmmm, should be interesting to see how rapidly the memory on my PC fills up, apparently my subscription goes right to iTunes.

Youtube

I watched a few library clips.

Okay, as much as I like Mr. Bean I couldn't watch the whole thing. I found the episode of him accidentally marking up an illuminated manuscript far too disturbing.

I liked "Interval Library" watching compact shelving move. Who knows, someone may make a video of our compact shelving someday.

"Installing Ubuntu" was fun too.

Of course, I watched a few of these at home since I can't used sound on my work pc. (My pc is in the public area so sound is a no-no).

I liked the search interface for Dabble the best. MetaCafe, yahoo video etc. interface wasn't as streamlined. I prefered youtube and dabble's UI because it was simple and gave me a synopsis about each clip.

Firefox extensions

I tried to add Cruzcat to my search box and it turns out I already had it there. I can't figure out how to delete it. I'll keep working on that.

I don't recall when I added Cruzcat to the search box but I also added several other search engines, sites etc. at that time. As you can tell, I never use them. So no, they aren't very useful.

Zoho

I decided to explore Zoho since I've used Google docs. I wasn't that impressed with Google docs.

Zoho: I tried to import an excel file and found that file type isn't supported.

I felt unsure about providing my user name and password to my blog. I wasn't sure how secure the Zoho website is.

It worked fine exporting my test blog page from Zoho. I could see this would be an easier way to write a blog because the Zoho interface is a lot like using Word.

Update: I deleted my Zoho test blog post. I tried to edit the post so only a little of the text was posted but Blogger didn't like what I was doing with the html and told me there was an error. I didn't want to keep playing with it so I deleted the post.

Library 2.0

I thought all of the library 2.0 articles were thought provoking. The first two stuck with me the most.

I agree we need to tailor our user education to patrons; we can't expect them to conform to us for the most part. We still need to educate them about how to find things in our library but the "look and feel" does need to be more 2.0-ish. I think the new upload of the Cruzcat catalog does this.

Perhaps I'm becoming an old fogey but all I could think about in the first articles is "What happens when the power goes out?". Sure, disregard print material and focus on digital but remember, it won't do you any good when the power goes out. Think it can't happen? One good heat wave, fire or earthquake and we're down for a while. Whatcha gonna read then?

What does Library 2.0 mean to me? It means streamlining and making finding information simple. It also means customization so if you are a novice user it is still easy to find things and if you are an advanced user you can find even more.

Rollyo and Google Custom Search

I think many of my fellow library employees are exploring Rollyo right now too. The site seemed slow and unresponsive.

Even with the slowness of the site it was fun to explore. It does take a lot of steps to create your CSE but it was fun. I liked looking at the CSEs other folks had created. I did create a CSE, Shoemath, all about shopping. The results it gave were not quite what I expected but it worked out okay. I think I need to tweak it a bit more and it'll work fine.

Google's CSE was much easier and faster to set up. I have it bookmarked on my toolbar. I couldn't figure out how to do that easily with Rollyo. In all, I think I'd use Google's CSE instead of Rollyo just because it is simpler.

I'm getting quite a collection of bookmarks on my toolbar. I wonder if firefox extensions will offer different options on the symbol next to a link? I'm getting bored with the generic dog-eared page symbol.

Library 23 Things tutorial session

I attended the Library 23 things tutorial session this morning at McHenry library. I'm so glad Kerry and Sue held this tutorial.

I had a blast learning more about the 23 things we've been working on. The tutorial was set up so we could go and our own pace, ask uninformed questions (speaking for myself) and ease any panic about finishing all of the 23 tasks. It was also fun to talk with other staff members about our experiences learning the 23 things.

I'll definitely try and make the next session.

More on Wikis

I've been enjoying looking around at different Wikis. I do wonder how well they would work in a public/staff interface. If they are just used for work then they'd be fine.

I checked out some of the library outreach/instruction sites, Wiki served more as a listing of links, which is useful. It didn't look like libraries were using the Wiki itself to provide instruction information.

Thanks to Kerry I have a better example of an interactive Wiki used as a wiki, not a place to list links. The Ohio State University Library provided a great example of a library using Wikis and Meebo chat.

Don't you just love finding out who/what has been editing Wikipedia? I would like to see such information more readily available, perhaps as part of the Wiki itself instead of a Hack providing that information. I know on some Wikis you can check what a previous entry looked like but it doesn't always tell you who edited it.

Wiki 2: Woohoo, I added an entry for Special Collections. Yay me.

I like the chat feature with Meebo. Sue showed me that if you want to save a session you need set it up to save before hand, you can't save the session during the chat.

Catching up...

I haven't had much time to blog so I'll try and catch up in this post.

I liked Del.icio.us as well. I like the convenience of having my bookmarks readily accessible. I also liked seeing what other folks had linked too. However, it does seem "Big Brother"-ish. I know I can set my bookmarks as private, I just haven't done it yet. Any new bookmarks I add will be set as private.

Wiki: Oh, this could be such fun. I agree with Sarah, the possibilities are exciting. I'll step away now before I get carried away.

MySpace: I don't log on as much as I used to. My friends were using it as a way to share photos but Flickr is taking it's place. I don't care for the Search & Browse features on MySpace; I find them very cumbersome.

Next up: Pinging

I hope I'm following instructions

I added a link to my bloglines from my blog page. I've been subscribing to folk's blogs and am reading them from my Bloglines, not from my blog. I hope this is correct.

I have to say I'm a bit disturbed to hear that someone was disparaging a staff member in their blog. I know the online world can be inflammatory but I was hoping that wouldn't happen here. I hope this blogger's intention was not to hurt anyone's feelings.

In all I'm finding the 23 things to be fun and enlightening. It's nice to learn the shortcuts presented here. I've been learning on my own and it is easier to have guidance with all these "things".

BTW: I'm already on Myspace. I find it useful for keeping up with several friends who live far away. They use it to monitor their teenagers. I'm not in its target demographic but I do find it amusing to see what the younger generation finds entertaining.

I plan on trying out another social networking site in the course of this lesson, just to have a comparison.

More on Bloglines...

I've just subscribed to some of my fellow 23 things learner's blogs.

I'm really enjoying adding things to bloglines. So far I'd say learning about Bloglines has been my favorite excersize. I could play with this for hours. I won't, but I could if I had time.

I wish more of my favorite sites had RSS feeds so I could add them to my blogline.

My new favorite blog

We could totally do this!!

Cool book carts

What great ideas.

Bloglines

I love bloglines! What a great site. It's a keeper on my toolbar. I've used RSS feeds before but bloglines organizes it in a much better fashion. I like being able to mark something as "new" so I can go back and read it later. Very user friendly.

I love this stuff.

I forgot to list my results from the first 23 things excersize. My favorite search engine is Sphere. I thought the interface was simpler and the most relevant results came up first. Yay. Blogscope was good too. I didn't like technorati - it seemed to find more commercial-like sites than real blogs.

Bell

Bell
Originally uploaded by shoemath

Did the Camino Real really run through campus? I'm geographically challenged but it didn't seem like the road would run through here. Anyone know?

Posting a pic

I found posting a pic rather difficult using Blogger. Janet guided me through posting my picture via flickr. Thanks Janet!

Antimony poisoning - again

I found an intriguing note in a Health Bulletin we have at the library.

In 1965 there was a recurrence of antimony poisoning . "Twenty persons experiences nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and varying degrees of prostation 15-45 minutes after drinking punch."

The County health department found no traces of antimony when it analyzed the remaining punch.

According to the Bulletin "The laboratory duplicated the pounch preparation procedure in the same pot and found 11 parts per million of antimony. Citric acid can dissolve the antimony contained in the binder between the enamel and metal of older utensils."

I was amused to read that a similar poisoning had occured in Virginia with this same group the year before. I wonder if they switched to tupperware after this episode.

If anyone is interested in the health happenings from 1963-1974 in Santa Cruz county, this bulletin is now stored at NRLF.