Thing #13 Library Thing

I found LibraryThing to be really simple to use. It took no time at all to get the books added. I think it would be a nice thing to use with my siblings/parents/friends who are always telling me what they're reading when we're in a restaurant or someplace where it's not convenient to write it down. When I got home I could look at their library and remember the title and add it to my list of "to be read."

I would have liked LibraryThing better if there were pictures of the covers of the older editions of the books, but I guess I'm a perfectionist. For my uses now it doesn't make much of a difference, but if I were compiling a collection of my library's holdings I would need the exact cover. Otherwise my patrons would say, "But it didn't look like that on the computer," and that would get tiresome.

How can you use LibraryThing for your library? I would have loved to have used it in my previous position. We had a relatively small collection that was kept in a back room and many people forgot it existed. We never had the time to catalog it properly and many of our patrons wouldn't want to get up out of their chairs to look on a shelf. They would have preferred looking on the computer first and then getting up if necessary. Sorry, it's the truth.

How else do you share booklists, etc. with library patrons? Since we didn't have an up to date list I would take the patron by the hand and bring them to the shelves. Or ask them as if it were a great secret I was letting them in on, "Have you seen our book room?"

Would LibraryThing offer an alternative? It would have been great. If we could have done 10 books a day or gotten an intern to add books it would not have taken a ton of time and I think I could have gotten the staffing approved for it.

How can your library use LibraryThing Local? I'm not much for events besides the friends of the library sales, but if it were automatically updated I would look at it and perhaps add an event to my list of things to do.

Could you use LibraryThing to organize your home book collection? If I did I think I would come to realize that I have a lot of weeding to do:) But it would save me from buying my kids the same book multiple times.

Thing #12 Wikis

What did you find interesting about the wiki concept?
I found wikis interesting when I first heard about them years ago. In my former life where we were hiring people straight out of college, who were not native to Jacksonville, I thought a wiki would be a great idea. I envisioned it as a place where people could store their knowledge of Jacksonville and others could find it and use it. The drawbacks were trying to entice employees to do "one more thing," and the thought that after all of their hard work, someone with less knowledge, could delete or edit their information.

What types of applications within libraries and schools might work well with a wiki?
There seem to be many group projects given in school now. Many times it is difficult for parents to drive their kids to a friend's house because they are at work or their child has other commitments after school. Time is valuable. I think it would be a good idea for kids to work together on a couple of projects using wikis. I also think it would help with the problem of one kid doing the majority of the work assigned. By using a wiki the teacher could readily see who did what. I think it's a great idea.

Many teachers/faculty "ban" Wikipedia as a source for student research. What do you think of the practice of limiting information by format?
I am a professional researcher. I love research and when I have worked on subjects that I know nothing about I have started with Wikipedia. I do not stake my reputation on it. I do not take it as the gospel truth. I simply use it as a starting point to get keywords or to get a basic understanding of the topic at hand. More often than not it has been helpful and accurate.
I don't think it's a good idea to ban it. I think we should teach kids about it and make it a lesson in sourcing. Find things that are inaccurate and show them how easy it is to manipulate and change things on Wikipedia. What a great opportunity.

Which wiki did you edit?
I edited our pb wiki. I just added my 2 cents. I also kept the email notification on so I could see when it was being edited. It was cool to know people were working on it and to wonder what the final outcome will look like.

Thing #11 Social Media

I read 2 stories on the Washington Post site both were in the Faith section. Then I read the comments. I think that is where I went wrong. On things like faith and politics people believe what they believe and they are not going to be disuaded or educated in that forum. More times than not it becomes a shouting match. I don't enjoy being a witness.
I read Jacques Berlinerblau: Bible Not For Beginners
and Lisa Miller:Is It Immoral to be Rich now?

One woman said,
"God doesn't give a RAT's A. whether you're rich or not...IF you earned it in some decent way, hit the lottery or inherited from a good family who earned and sheparded it for generations, good manners flying.But if you're some greedy crooked Wall Street type with a $42M penthouse,strutting around and keeping only to your own, wearing $3000 t-shirts and eschewing anything not your ethnic clan...God hates you. And you should fall off the earth. That's the final word.And history, in a few years, will back that up, at least as evidenced here on earth. "

I thought it was funny that she said God would hate someone. Again - the comments are nothing I would WANT to share, but I often share news stories with people.

How do you think you can use these tools in your library or at home?
While I like to read comments by readers about some stories, many times I'm disappointed by the quality of discussion that takes place.

Also headlines like "The Herbs Which Can Help You Improve Your Sexual Health," will probably always receive more votes than a story on education or foreign affairs. Am I a news snob? I never thought about it. I guess I don't trust the anonymous masses to tell me what's important, although these are the same people that vote in my elected officials. Maybe I don't trust American education? A topic for another day.

Do these tools seem to be a productivity enhancer or a productivity detractor? I'm not sure if these tools are supposed to enhance productivity. If I'm looking for straight information I'll look for it in the sources I trust. However, if I want to see what is "hot" or "trendy" or "weird" I would look to one of these sites. It's like People Magazine. I don't buy it, but if I'm at the doctors office and it's there I'll pick it up and catch up on pop culture.

Have you ever read a story/item as a result of seeing it on one of these sites? I read a story about Clint Eastwood by accident because the headline that I could see on the homepage was
The Top 10 Awesome Things You Didn't Know About...
Well, of course I want to know what I don't know so I clicked on it and the full headline was The Top 10 Awesome Things You Didn't Know About...Clint Eastwood. I like Clint so I read it, but I wouldn't have ordinarily. The comments that followed were somewhat stupid. A back and forth about the misspelling of the word "lose." Discussion of being a vegan. Nothing worth my time.

I read another story on Amex offering $300 to people who pay off their balance. The comments were pretty bland aside from one reader who asked if that meant their slogan in the future would be, "Leave home without it." The article lead me to a poll which asked With the economy doing so poorly, will more people resort to crime to make ends meet? The majority (53%) of people voted "absolutely it will." which was bad enough, but then there were the 4% who voted "I already have." I'm not sure if they are funny or scary. This poll lead to a discussion on keeping your guns. All of this because Amex customers are not paying their bills!!!
Newsvine was full of a racial debate about apes and Obama. I didn't feel that I got any smarter there.
Reddit was so filled with profanity I didn't want to.

Thing #10 Tagging and Del.icio.us

I've been tagging my posts as I've been going along. I guess that will help others who are searching for information on our experiment down the line. It's not time consuming and if I can help someone else save time I'll do it.

I love the idea of de.icio.us! I had been asking for something like this for many years in my former position as a researcher. I had a ton of bookmarks for sites that I used on a regular basis for each department. I wanted to share them with the appropriate people. But back then the best my IT people could do was import my bookmarks as one static all encompassing list and shoot it out to everyone.

It wasn't user friendly. Everyone got everything whether it pertained to them or not. Also the list couldn't be manipulated. Once it was sent that was it. If I wanted to update it I had to send the entire list out again.

I can see a lot of reasons to use this product. Why reinvent the wheel? If someone has taken the time to save bookmarks on a subject I'm interested in I would take a look at theirs and add some of my own. I'm a great researcher, but why waste time?

I think this product would be especially for someone who wants an easy transition from work to their home computer. Also not to get too morbid, but in this economy you never know when it could be your last day at work and one of the first things they do is freeze your computer. It's smart to save to the web.

Someone was asking me about Flickr badge and I hadn't tried it yet. I found it and cut and the code. Let me see if it works. I'll paste it here




Your HTML cannot be accepted: Tag is not closed: If anyone wants to let me know what I did wrong please email me at 23things@neflin.org

Thing #9 Share

OK I just played around and created a slideshow in Zoho.

It wasn't too bad although their clip art is lacking.

I'll see if I can link to it or post it or whatever down the line. Right now I'm going to take a break.

Okay, let's see if I can embed this code. It's was under publish on the Zoho site. I took advice from the A. Nonymous' 23 Things Blog and went to advanced options to copy the html. Here goes nothing!



I decided to play around in picture trail. I uploaded the sample photos that were on the computer since I wasn't at home when I did this.

This is what I came up with

Success!

Note to those who meebo'd me: That was fun! I enjoyed hearing from you. The anonymous part of it was a little weird, but I had a good time. Keep it up.

Thing #8

Communicate your thoughts on these tools in this communication tool--your blog!
Describe how your library uses email. Has it improved productivity?

I love email! It makes my life easier. The older I get the more I like to have reference questions in front of me. As I get pulled away I can return to what I was doing more quickly.

I can also write down some initial thoughts and save them as drafts and come back to them and fill them in when I have time.

When I'm talking to someone and they ask me a question I'm afraid I'll forget I ask them to email me. Most people are fine with that and then I don't wrack my brain trying to remember what they asked me.

I love that I can take one response and send it to a bunch of people so I don't have to keep repeating myself. It saves time.

I can save emails so I can look back and find information by the sender or keyword or date - much better than my filing cabinet!

I also like the fact that I can respond at my convenience whether it's at 7am or 11pm. I can get the information I need and then respond to the email.

Share your thoughts on online reference using some of the other Web 2.0 communication tools.
Are you an active user of text messaging, IM, or other communication tools?

I am not an avid user of chat.

I've had a couple of chat buddies and I find it somewhat intrusive. I'll be working on something hot and heavy and then this window pops open and I find myself on a tangent. It's distraction to me.

In one of the articles we read it mentioned that you have to be a multitasker to enjoy chat. I am a multitasker, but I guess I like working on my tasks at my speed. I don't enjoy unexpected tasks that require my immediate attention.

Which leads me to an unexpected, but I think related phenomenon. I do not like the phone as much anymore. I used to enjoy it, but now many times I find it irritating and distracting. I like to focus on the task at hand. I think that somewhere between email and TIVO we have become an "on my schedule" generation. Thank God for voicemail!

Okay, Brad asked me to monitor the Meebo and so far it's been fun. I have the volume turned up so I can hear when one of you dings me. It's pretty funny to have conversations with anonymous people. If it were with the general public I think it could get creepy, but we're all friends here.

I guess what I'm finding is when it's for fun I like it. But when I'm focusing on something I'd rather have it turned off.

Which web conference (Webinar) did you attend? How was it? What do you think of this communication tool?

In the past I attended webinars with vendors and webinars at work. What I realized is it can be hard to get a word in edgewise. It also takes a long time to get started - everyone is introduced and seems to feel the need to say something witty.
When you have a number of people at one site sitting together they start making faces and gesturing to each other (maybe that was just my site:)

I am now listening to an archived webinar on interesting books for reluctant readers which I am enjoying. I am alone and it is not live. I like it!

Thing #7 Online Image Generators

I am tired and am starting to feel like this window:)

So I read the directions for Thing #7 and decided to go back and get my stained glass puzzle by right clicking it and saving the picture - why didn't I think of that?

I'm going to come back to this post after I get some of my photos from Kodak. I took some nice ones of the Hudson River and the Rockefeller Estate in the fall when the leaves were changing. I also took some in Feb of the Vanderbilt Mansion that I think would do. I can see I may lose time here!

These are some pictures I've taken on vacations to Washington DC, the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in FL and the Rockefeller Mansion in NY. It took forever to create the Mosaic in BigHugeLabs.com, but it turns out it was my fault. When I uploaded them I set permissions to private. Once I figured that out it was easier, but still time consuming to get the photos uploaded to Flickr. I have to say it is much quicker than Kodak. Anyway after all that work I hope someone enjoys looking at them!

Who says librarians aren't fun???

Thing #6 Flickr Mashups

I made a cool puzzle with one of my photos of stained glass windows, but when I tried to upload it a warning said


fd's Flickr Toys wants to link to your Flickr account.
You should not authorize fd's Flickr Toys unless you trust them with access to your account.
By authorizing this link, you'll allow the fd's Flickr Toys service to provide:
Access to your photostream (including private stuff)
Editing of your photo or video information via fd's Flickr Toys
Uploads to your Flickr account via fd's Flickr Toys

So I decided against it.
Still if I wanted to I could take photos of my nephews and nieces and give them each their own puzzle as a gift.
That's pretty cool. Although in this culture of customizing I don't know if it would be as cool to them as it would have been to me. They are used to seeing people's pitures on mugs and notepads and such. I still think it's cool.

How can you use any of these tools in your library or media center?
What do you think of sharing photos online?

I think these tools would be cool when dealing with teens inparticular. We can catch their attention for a minute.

Sharing photos online is great - even if it is just between family members and friends. I have an irrational fear of archival images being destroyed. Not having to worry about fire or flood ruining my family photos has been a relief.

Before this I gave each of my immediate family members a fire box for Christmas one year. Imagine their joy when I told them it was to preserve their photo negatives;)

I also keep our family photo albums and yearbooks by the front door in case we ever need to evacuate - maybe I could grab a few.

I wasn't always like this. Really I wasn't! But moving to FL and experiencing wildfires and hurricanes and trying to pack all of this stuff, 3 kids, my husband and the dog into a car makes me happy to have an online solution.

I'm sure we all have our foibles...right...right???

Thing #5 Flickr

How might you use Flickr in your library or media center?
Do you use Flickr or another photo hosting service? Which one? How does it compare to Flickr?
How do you feel about having your photos public (note that you can mark your Flickr photos private, too)--any concerns?



Most of my photos are in Kodak so I didn't have much to post to Flickr. Maybe I'll try to get some from Kodak in order to improve the look of my page. For now I just wanted to show myself I could do it:) Mission accomplished.
The process wasn't hard though it was time consuming and registering and giving private info still makes me shudder.
Also remembering passwords, user id's etc. is not my strong suit.
I did have a problem uploading one of my photos - but the site said,"BONK! One of your photos didn't upload. Do you want to try again?" So I clicked yes and it went through that time no problem.
I think the BONK made me smile instead of fret. I realized it wasn't a big deal, it happens adn it can be rectified. Good customer service on their part. If it had kept happening I think I would have wanted to BONK them;)
I really enjoy taking pictures though and although most of them include people, these days I'm taking more architecture and landscape shots. My sister is a great photographer and I try to learn from her style.
I wouldn't feel comfortable posting pics of people I know for public consumption. My father sometimes gets annoyed that I capture so much and upload it to Kodak to share with family and friends. Part of it is that I also am very into ancestry.com and documenting my family history. Many times when we talk he says - you don't have to email that to everyone.
Whenever my husband makes a face at me these days I tell him I'm going to take his picture and post it on my blog!