Sandbox - Thing 17 - Not Happening Here

So close, yet so far. The signin is there, they even give you a password. I tried signing in with my MCPL email address, and then gmail address. Nada. I looked back on other blogs, and somewhat reassured to find that I'm not alone with these problems. So how do I fulfill this task? It's too cold to locate a read sandbox, possibly it would be covered with snow. So what's a librarian to do? Give up and read a book.

I'm DONE - Thing 23

Time consuming, sometimes fun, interesting, frustrating, useful - all terms I would use to describe this program. And yes, expand it, and I'll come back for more.

Positives: It put a little more depth to my knowledge. Sure, I knew about PodCasts, RSS feeds, and web organizers, but I admit that I had not used a lot of them. Or when I used them it was with one of my children holding my hand. GoogleReader - it was just a tab on my email, and now I use it daily to get valuable and useless information. I'm a fan. I've always loved YouTube and have a little more knowledge. Wait Wait Don't Tell Me has always been my favorite podcast, and after looking at many others, it hasn't lost 1st place. Library podcasts are still a little boring in my mind, especially as a tool for teen service. Web organizers - what a nice discovery.

Negatives: Signup - It took me several weeks to navigate the system. I just worked with a colleague yesterday to assist her in what should be an easy and inviting task. Still had major problems. Update the links!!!!! Sure, it becomes an adventure to find sources on our own, we're all librarians, and can do so with ease. But it just does not look like a professionally organized training with all those dead ends.

Downloadable ebooks

Because of "life on the info desk" I did know about these resources. Patrons at public libraries are increasingly aware of the existence of these resources. However delivering the resources to the patron often is problematic. A quick response at the info desk could be, "just go to net library, open an account, select a title and follow the directions to download" is similar to giving a bike riding novice a bike, telling them that physics is on their side, and it will all come together once they push off. Netlibrary resources, Project Gutenberg and similar resources are amazing, and will continue to grow. The issue is marketing the product to the public, and providing hands on instruction. I know that is in the works at MCPL, and hope the initiative is expanded to all staff and then to patron workshops.

Podcasts - Thing 21

Podcasts are an audio program distributed via the Internet, through RSS. Length can be from 10 minutes to an hour. Shorter of course. It is important to consider the audience. Boredom should not occur from listening to a podcast! Most of the sites listed in "Thing 21" are no longer active. No problem, I'm getting used to that. I thought the most helpful information was found in "Beginner's guide to podcast and podcasting." We have considered doing podcasts with our teen group, and then dropped the idea as we became increasingly short staffed. After listening to several book podcasts, I'm thinking that's okay, that going the YouTube direction might be more interesting especially for teens.

Directories - www.podcast.net, www.podcastalley.com and www.podcastdirectory.com. All were good directories, but I found that just going on google, putting in libraries got some good results.

Thing 19 Web 2.0 Awards - Pandora

Checked out the list, and was amazed at the number of sites. Craigs List to more specific, real estate, finance etc. I love music, so stopped at the Pandora site. What fun! Create your own music profile, and listen for free. First you name a few favorite artists. True confessions, Amy Winehouse. I know, my kids roll their eyes. Still went from her to Norah Jones, and then to many more artists. All types of music represented. Of course you can buy the songs for your Ipod, or do as I do, and listen for free.

Google Docs, ZohoWriter and other online productivity tools

Online productivity tools are certainly an enhancement to group projects. I'm comfortable with Google Docs, but looked at ZohoWriter to compare formats. GoogleDocs wins in my mind hands down. For familiarity yes, but another major reason is easy of use. Plus anyone with a gmail account already is signed up for GoogleDocs. I have signed up for so many services thanks to 23 Things, each with a different account signin. At some point, consolidation looks most appealing.

GoogleDocs helped as a planning tool for a family wedding. Professionally, I have used it for edits with CapitolChoices projects. We did book annotations this way, and are now working on a planning for the future document. The book annotations, accessing the page etc. were easy. The most recent CapChoices doc is causing members some trouble.

For our Teen Services Annual Reports and Work Plan, maybe a switch to Google Docs would be helpful for us all.

Thing 16 - Wikis

I spent some interesting time looking at the suggested wikis.
SJCPL Subject Guides - liked the "Local Authors" - and it would be a wonderful addition to MCPL given the wonderful resource of local authors that we have in this community. Also liked the Business Seciiont - nice roadmap to resources.

Library 2.0 in 15 minutes a Day - dead link as was Librarian Instruction wiki and Book Lovers Wiki.

Library Success: A Best practices wiki. Obviously (from looking at postings) updated on regular basis. Liked the ract that they circulate video games, labeling them E (everyone) and T (Teen) with over 300 titles. We could learn from that.

ALA Wikis - have looked at them before attending conferences. Wealth of info for librarians, but what would you expect?

Research libraries wiki was interesting - good tool for advanced research.
MERLIN - I had looked at that before in an attempts to sign on to 23 Things. Love their training calendar, and blogs and wiki links. Yeah Annette with her photo blog.

Lots of food for thought. The wiki design with open input could be problematic in a public library, but obviously with monitering it does work. Liked the idea of an Amazon model re patrons rating books.

Library 2.0 - Thing 15

Lots of food for thought presented by some experts in the field. Just a side comment, why only one woman listed, and bibliography for Wikipedia also listed few female generated articles. Ladies, why are we always behind in technology?

With embarrassment I will admit that the short summary in Wikopedia was most readable and useful. Tom Storey said the obvious, "The Web moves from simply being sites and search engines to a shared netword space that drives work, research, education, entertainment and social activities..."

My favorite comments were by Rick Anderson who said that"..it no longer makes sense to collect information products as if they were hard to get. They aren't." Best is "We need to focus our efforts not on teaching research skills but on eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need, so they can spend as little time as possible wrestling with lousy search interfaces and as much time as possible actually reading and learning." "But if our services can't be used without training, then it's the services that need to be fixed - not our patrons." This is so important, and biggest case in point - e books, and net library. Daily we have patrons with inquiries, who to do this, how to use this service, yet training for librarians is in short supply. Why offer a service if we cannot market it and/or explain the use of it????? One last comment from Mr. Anderson, "We have to be a bit more humble in the current environment and find new ways to bring our services to patrons rather than insisting that they come to us - whether physically or virtually.

I also liked John J. Riemer's words "To better bibliographic services" including broaden relevance ranking, and adopt popular web features of Google and Amazon.

All interesting articles in cluding Dr. Schultz and her take on the future, and Library 4.0.

Thing 20 YouTube

YouTube was calling me. So I'm out of sequence, but having fun. Posted below is my favorite library related video: Library Cart Drill Team from last summer's meeting in Chicago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtmZxghTkyY Wagner will never be the same.

Google and Yahoo may try to complete, but it looks like YouTube has the videos pretty locked up. Library applications - book trailers, upcoming program trailers. But either do it professionally, or low ball it with humor.

Technorati - Thing 14

Once again, many of the links were found to be out of date. Somehow one expects more from such a program. But then librarians are over-worked and understaffed everywhere, so move on!

Technorati is fascinating - loved the organization of such a system. Top blog today was Huffington Post. You go girl! Not that I share her viewpoint, still it is woman-power. Of course # 7 - Celebraties and Gossip - who could ignore. Need that update on Brad and Angelina? Or the fact that Bill Gates danced until 2am at the Sundance Film Festival. Just back from a trip to New York, I'm happy to say that I didn't stay at the city's dirtiest hotel - Hotel Carter.

Again - I liked their structure - and link accordingly. Obviously focus changes daily. Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas was focus of Technology, but sure that will be old news soon.

Del.icio.us - Thing 13

Interesting process exploring this topic. The video links were no longer valid. Maybe it would be helpful if they were updated for future 23 Things users??? But once I spent some time with Del.icio.us, I'm sold on the idea. How wonderful to be able to pull up bookmarks on any computer. No more re-inventing the wheel for me.

I can see if you were doing academic research, this tool would be invaluable. No more writing those web sites on little scraps of paper that get lost within the hour. Sign me up!

rollyo

The instructions were to make my own search tool, using a frequent library request. As I am doing this "thing number 11" on my own time, I decided to be a little selfish and create a food/recipe/wine search engine. What a wonderful idea, and rollyo proved most helpful in that category. So no more blogs for awhile, because I have so much cooking to do.
Rollyo was easy to use and I can see how it would be helpful in a number of categories. Short of a specific homework assignment, our Bethesda patrons ask pretty varied questions, so I'm not sure that rollyo would be a lot of help on a daily basis. But I'll give it a try.

LibraryThing

As a member of Capitol Choices Best Book Committee and MCPL Teen Service Steering Committee, I read a lot of books each year. I make lists as I go along, and at the end of the year annotate the list to use for informal and more formal booktalks. I see that using LibraryThing would put everything in one place, but I've also played around with GoodReads and similar competition. I think that I like the format of GoodReads, and just saving the book lists as a file on my computer may be just as easy. Jury is still out on this discussion.

So many useful library related blogs out there. Favorites include "Awful Library Books" which showcases books we can/should live without, Library Journal News, and variety of YALSA blogs and one of my favorites: www.readingrants.org. This is great for YA literature updates and some good reviews. www.chasingray.com is another favorite for teen book coverage. There's a great article in the Nov. 09 School Library Journal, with interesting cover (think they got slammed for it by their readership, but hey, our profession could use an update, although maybe not with alcohol) and Ten Blogs with information on what you can't live without. With all this information coming at you, maybe we could actually live without a lot of this information.

RSS Feeds, Bloglines etc.

There is way too much information out there. I've gone to my google account and set up "reader" with an interesting assortment of blogs and rss feeds. Tried a little fashion (as my daughter would point out, that's a step in the right direction) and little law, because my husband and oldest son are attorneys, and of course covered the library world. Cooking is a big interest for me (although my family thinks my bigger interest is carryout) so am loving "smittenkitchen" for cooking ideas.

Thing 10 image generator

My new avatar:

From yahoo.com avatar builder
Guess I went overboard, but so many images to incorporate, so little time. Desert with penguins - perhaps a symbol of global warming. But the red bag is for the many books that I have to read after I finishing 23 things....