Mrslibrarian's Weblog

My Thoughts on 23 Things

mrslibrarian — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:50:56 +0000

Well, I have finally made it through 23 Things. Since I started, I have gone from a part time employee of the Poultney Public Library to Library Director. The massive amount of changes that this has brought made it impossible for me to learn 23 new things in 11 weeks. Thank you, Mara, for your flexibility in allowing some of us to learn at a slower pace. I have discovered so many new technologies that I would not have, if I had been constrained to the 11 week format.

While there are some technologies I may never use again, I was pleasantly surprised to find many that I have used, and will continue to use in the future. There are also some that I am interested in exploring further on my own.

The highlights:

1- Blogging. While I have not been as regular as I should be in blogging, I was stunned by the ease in maintaining a blog. Our library does not have a website, and is not quite ready for one. At the suggestion of Rob Geiszler, I am exploring the idea of having a library blog to make an online presence.

2- Flickr. One of my early projects as Director was designing a brochure for our library. We do not have a digital camera, but I felt photos really added a necessary touch. Low and behold, there are picture of the Poultney Public Library on Flickr! They are now proudly displayed on our new brochure.

3- RSS feeds. Most of the things I signed up for as feeds have since been deleted as I lost interest in the massive amounts of information I was receiving. However, the cream always rises to the top, and I thoroughly enjoy the two that remain. The are “Read Roger” and “Early Word”. Both are gems.

4- I had no interest in social networks, and was not interested in exploring them. In fact, I stalled a bit at this point in the program. That all changed when I went to Collection Development. Grace Greene spoke so frequently and so enthusiastically about Facebook that I signed up that week. I now have 81 friends on Facebook, including Grace. It has been a wonderful tool as it allows me to easily keep in touch with some of the librarians I met at Collection Development as well as many of my teens from the library.

5- I am a minority, I do not like Delicious.

6- Wikis and online word processing tools are something that I want to explore further.

7- Youtube. OK, this one was just fun. It does have useful purposes though. With the change in staff we lost a guitar player and a dulcimer player. We have gained a flautist. This does not bode well for story time! I have been trying to teach myself basic guitar, and found beginner guitar lessons on youtube! Hooray!

I want to thank Mara for this excellent course. I feel so much more aware of what is going on in the world. I would definitely participate in another discovery program.

Podcasts

mrslibrarian — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:31:50 +0000

I played around with the different podcast sites. I was impressed with what some libraries were doing with their podcasts. I particularly like the story beginnings and story endings. I did sign up for itunes and I also signed up for the NPR book review podcast. While I think it would be fun to make a podcast someday, I don’t see myself listening to them often. I am to much of a visual person, and do not enjoy audio books, radio talk shows, radio news, etc. Because of this I think this will be one of the technologies I have learned that I use the least.

Youtube review

mrslibrarian — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:34:06 +0000

Adding a video clip from youtube from my blog was much easier than I though at first. My blog site was not listed on youtube’s share list, which flummoxed me for a moment. Then I realized I was doing it backwards! Once I came to my blog and chose to insert a video, it was simple. I found a lot of useful videos. I have been trying to teach myself to play guitar and there are some great training videos.

I can see where this would be a useful tool. There are existing videos that could be imbedded in an email, blog, etc. for assistance, programming, or entertainment. If we purchased a camera so that we could make videos, the possibilities would be endless!

I had a lot of fun on youtube, and like the resource overall, but found it pretty easy to see things I really didn’t want to see!

I did sign up for an account and have started a favorites list.

Youtube Librarians

mrslibrarian — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:23:54 +0000

I remember this sketch from when I was a kid! I just stumbled across it when I searched for “libraries”. I added it to my facebook profile, and now I am going to try to add it here!

Web 2.0 Awards

mrslibrarian — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:30:32 +0000

First, I want to say how cool it is that so many of the sites we have been using for 23 Things were on the short list! I rarely get to feel up to date with new technology, so I loved that I recognized so many of the applications. I played with several:

Craigslist: Too wordy, crowded pages with lack of images and color variety made it hard to read and navigate quickly.

Lulu: What a cool idea! This might have potential for future group writing projects at the library…

Urbanspoon: I don’t see this being used in the library a lot, but I loved it. You can find restaurants by city. It provides type of cuisine, address, phone, reviews, and in some cases menus.

The applications that seemed most likely to be used in the library are job search sites like careerbuilder and monster. Unemployment is a growing concern, and familiarity with these sites and what they offer would be a valuable service to many of our patrons. I played quite extensively with monster, and like that searches can be narrowed down by geography, date posted or type of job.

Google Docs

mrslibrarian — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:15:09 +0000

Online productivity-

I signed up for GoogleDocs for this exercise. I like that it is very similar to MS Word, making it easy to use. (In fact it is easier to use than my new Word 2007!!) While I prefer to continue writing most documents on MS as it feels more secure and is one less password to remember (my brain is already too full of passwords and pins…), I think the sharing aspect is wonderful. My teen group is planning on writing a script together, and this would be a good way to work on it as a unit, even when some can not make it to every meeting. The last item I attempted to send to my blog did not work, so here goes nothing!

PS- I tried to send it to my blog MANY times and could not get it to work, so I ended up copying and pasting. This makes me slightly less excited about the program…

Thing 18

mrslibrarian — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:02:29 +0000

Wow, that sounds like a Dr. Seuss sequel…

Anyway, I have completed Thing 18, and I still love wiki’s. I definitely plan to use this tool with my teen’s. After playing with the 23 Things wiki’s, I will definitely go with wetpaint. It was by far the most user friendly, which scores major points with me! I am all for using technology in the library, but don’t get many minutes in a row to sit down and do it, so it has to be easy to do.

I also had fun adding to the “Favorite Restaurants”, because the one I chose I had not been to in years. I didn’t even realize they had a website until I looked it up for this exercise. Curious? Well, here it is:

http://www.tinpangalley.com/

Wikis

mrslibrarian — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:42:50 +0000

I had fun with the wiki lesson. I was amazed to discover that there is a Wiki about almost everything you can imagine. As a former school librarian, I am a little biased against Wikipedia. While it is a great source for quick information on a subject, as well as a starting point for sources, it is not a research authority. I have seen too many students use Wikipedia as their ONE source for a research paper and get away with it! As a historian and a librarian this makes me shudder, as you can not assume accuracy of information on an open wiki.

I do see lots of potential for a wiki, however. I especially think it would be great with my teen group. We do book reviews and recommendations, and the wiki format would be perfect for that. I also like to give them input on future library events, and a wiki would be a good way to have a suggestion box and/or ballot box for programming ideas. I think this is definitely a tool I will be using in the future.

Week 8

mrslibrarian — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:28:37 +0000

Wow, I finally made it back to work on 23 things! I have been exploring delicious and technorati. I have our library bookmarks set up in delicious, we got a new computer in the office and it seemed like a good way not to lose them. Wrong! Everyone seems to love this site, so maybe it is just me, but it seems like an especially hard way to access my bookmarks, especially quickly. I finally had my tech guy pull my bookmarks off the old computer and put them in a file on the new one, in case I never found them again! I have also tried using this as a search engine, as I saw recommended. It seems to give me almost the identical choices as google, so again, I’m not too excited.

However, I have to recant on facebook. I am up to 47 friends and use it regularly to keep in touch with people that I previously had not spoken to in years. I solved the picture problem by putting in a picture of Hermie the elf and Rudolph. People who know me can easily tell by the picture that they have the right person!

LibraryThing

mrslibrarian — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 15:03:39 +0000

Here goes, hopefully this link will take you to my LibraryThing profile. I only have five books per the assignment so far, but it was really fun! Once I finish my collection development class I want to add more. I could see myself getting carried away and cataloging my entire home collection. This would take awhile. My husband calls my book collection “Poultney Public Library North”!+

a href=”http://www.librarything.com/profile/mrslibrarianvt”> src=”http://www.librarything.com/pics/thingamabrarian3.gif” />

hmmm… that didn’t work, how about this…

http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=mrslibrarianvt”> src=”http://www.librarything.com/pics/thingamabrarian3.gif” />