It has been 10 days since the last post.
In that time I have investigated the possible
addition of a "teen night" to our library events.

I also toured the Rochester MN public library.
WooEEE. They even have an automatic book sorter
connected to the book drop-off.

When visiting a social networking area for library
2.0 stuff at NING I found this little video "mash-up"
that reinforces our commitment to keep learning
how Web 2.0 and other up and coming information
devices can be integrated into library services!

The text for this video was originally written
back in November 2006 by Laura Cohen in her
blog,"Library 2.0: An Academic's Perspective".
Another video "mash-up" of the text was done
by the Pickering Public Library in Ontario.

THING 23

Thing 23 was an online survey.

For me, the thing least liked was
the wide-openness of our wiki entries,
but I must say reading other people's
comments was enjoyable. I don't
think we are tapping into a wiki's
utility for collaboration.

Then again, I joined the Pioneerland
library group because of something
posted on that wiki!

It is very fun to network with
other librarians! And it is interesting
to view the history pages of that wiki
to examine how our librarian entries
formed a sort of template each of us
mimicked.

Onward and upward.

THING 22

Now this thing I can do!

I PLEDGE TO KEEP WRITING
AND KEEP HONING THE SKILLS
LEARNED IN 23 Things on a Stick!

I am off to add more resources
to my RSS aggregator.

WOO HOO!

THING 21

Recently, someone I met in Guatemala
asked me to join a social networking group
called Good Tree. It appears to be a place
where non-profit organizations can get
support, recognition and money to
carry on. I understood 12.5% of the site's
revenue is donated to charities. All
they ask is that you use GoodTree as
your start page.

Gather seemed user friendly. It
was sort of like a magazine
with networking. Definitely felt
more sophisticated, for grown-ups.

THING 20

Facebook definitely feels "tighter" than MySpace.

I am giving Facebook a trial.
Nieces, nephews and relatives will befriend
me, right, by sympathy vote?

Had about a 50% success rate sending
friend requests . Succeeded in getting a
few "friends!" Joined a couple networks.

Went to some of the MySpace library
sites. My goodness, these sites can get
covered with busy-ness. Would be a
good place to practice graphic and
page design! Or maybe that's what we
are doing.

Is this ever good for associative thinking!
I could get lost and loose track of time
in a social networking
space, because of curiosity.

One thing leads to another and before
you know it, you can't remember your entry
place, except for the "back" button.

THING 19, PODCASTING

A couple years ago my brothers and sisters
gifted me an 8GB Mp3 player. Shortly
thereafter I tried subscribing to podcasts with
an open source software called JUICE.
Google reader and the Firefox live bookmark
are more recently tried aggregator tools.

I looked into the podcast directories
listed in 23 THINGS. Here is an example
of an EASI podcast offered at Barrier-free IT
(this one is very serious, don't expect entertainment)

Does Course Content Need to be Accessible?

At the EASI web site I saw the word "vodcast"
which stands for video podcast. It looks like
the word "podcast" includes vodcasts.

Despite the fact that some aspects
of the EASI web site didn't
work right from my end, I found so
much useful information, I didn't care!
Case in point; look at this page! Most
useful for librarians who want to know
more about library accessibility issues
and solutions!

A vodcast uses the RSS concept but is
like TV on demand. It works on computer/TV
and players like iPod touch.

Look at FireAnt or iTunes to subscribe
to internet TV channels and podcasts/vodcasts.
Here's a link to a free 2007 BBC Newsnight
podcast at FireAnt.

THING 18

The YouTube Norwegian Medieval
Help Desk IS a hoot!

As mentioned in an earlier post,
I want to make a video/YouTube
to demonstrate how to use our
library catalog. Did try to make
my own animation and a banner
but couldn't get them to upload
into googlevideo. More to learn.

Here is a little puzzling adventure
"Under Giant Trees" Puzzle cards:



Isn't it incredible how well
the cards fit together? Did
they use a computer program
to design or did they do it
by hand?

THING 17

Trumpeting ELM,
the Electronic Library for MN!

InfoTrac Student Edition
RSS really simple syndication.
HAH! Thanks to the tips from 23
Things people, I figured this one out.
My Mozilla Firefox browser
grabbed the RSS feed search alert
for youth smoking immediately, but
I still had to remove the elm proxy reference
in the address.

I have used my Firefox browser "live bookmark"
feed since THING 3 for a quick path to my blog!
I must say I prefer this browser bookmark to
google reader, but maybe a google start page would
make it just as convenient.

In Steven Abram's 43 THINGS this is listed as #32.
I haven't taken the time to design my own start
page which could lead to customizing our start pages
on our public access library computers. Might this
be helpful? Our little library doesn't have its own
web site, but customizing is do-able.

To get the Search Alert to adhere to the google reader
I also had to remove the proxy (.proxy.elm4you.org)
AND remove an attached space at the end of the web address.

I can't imagine a teen having the tenacity to
go through all that. Now, the browser method
was one slick click on the "html" button provided.

ELM definitely works better with
high speed internet. The instructional
videos linked from 23 THINGS were
problematic on my dial-up at home.

NOTE: Affordable RURAL broadband
and high speed internet access is
needed for kids and adults in rural
areas to keep up economically in
this world!

EBSCO web page composer
exercise downloaded. Not sure
why we did this one. To create
portals on our blog or web site?

ProQuest Sent the web page off to myself
and my boss and made the link above go to it.

NetLibrary I went in without signing in
and found the 101 ways book. To place
notes on that book one had to sign in.

I signed in with my established user name
and password, and the book was gone.

I went back and found the book again
through the ELM proxy server. When
I went to "notes", I had to sign in and once again
I was restricted.

But I think I get the jist.

THING 16, MN Library 2.0

At this point my "toolbox" is overflowing.

One physical efficiency tool I have found
not listed anywhere around these 23
Things is owning a mouse with a rapid scroll option.
You can roll down a long page in no time flat.
Look into getting the best mouse money can
buy.

Looked at the Assignment Calculator
at the University of MN site. WAY COOL!

I noted that when one fills out the calculator
with information and clicks the first step,
it linked to the The Writing Center,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
At the bottom of that page it said the material
was under creative commons permission.
So that means if you follow the protocol there
you could place a link on your own web site
for it without infringing on copyright.

Next step took me to OWL, an "online
writing lab", which I have actually used
in the past to write better inspection reports.

It was very nice to see a step by step guide
to doing an assignment and the timetable
one should follow to keep on track.
This "wheel" was not reinvented.
The calculator was put together with many
resources and looks VERY USEFUL.

THING 15

Spent a little time investigating
secondlife; registered and
downloaded the viewing
software onto a flash drive.
Pretty sure that is the only
way one could use this site
on a public library computer
with dsl.

Dial-up, like I have at home,
is not capable of bringing
that 3-D world to me.
This game looks like it could
be time-consuming.

In the past few years teen boys in
our neck of the woods have come
to the library to play runescape.

The phenomenon of sitting next
to one of your friends and
meeting him online in this game
was fascinating to me. The boys
share (whisper loudly) about ways
to function in that rarefied ancient
British-made world.

Spent a little time looking
at the puzzle pirates game.
This one I could do with my
dial-up at home, but it took
several hours to download :(

This experience, creating a blog,
has been similar to decorating
and rearranging a room, without
the expense!

My tendency is to go back to
already published content to
review and edit for conciseness,
and sometimes to enhance by
widget, links or other interactive item.

THING 14

Took the Library THING tour.

Added a library thing list below
my profile on the right.

This could be a valuable social
networking/book club asset AND
reading promotion device to have
linked with a library catalog.

Yesterday I jumped ahead to
THING 20 because I heard that
you could fill and display a
virtual bookshelf in Facebook.

There were 212 book-related
applications listed at Facebook.

I created an account, added
an application called "my bookshelf"
(developed by Leung LLC) and filled
the shelf with newer books
from our library catalog! The cover
images are beautiful.

In Facebook it looked like there
were many virtual bookshelf applications
to pick from. The most popular were
"visual bookshelf" by the developer
Hungry Machine, "books iread" developed
by Ugenie and "books" by Jonathan Lipps.

FYI: I am treating this blog as a reference notebook.
Links and direct connections to web 2.0 THINGS
are added as windows for investigating 23 THINGS
in future with more depth.

THING 13

igoogle, therefore i am?

It was mentioned in 23's recommended reading that
yahoo calendar is one of the oldest online calendar systems.

That seems right because back in 2001
my brothers and sisters used yahoo calendar
in an attempt to coordinate efforts to
support our newly widowed mother.

The Litchfield Public Library uses an online calendar
so library staff can schedule use of their public meeting room.

My personal fee-based e-mail service offers calendar and
task reminders and these pop up when I check e-mail.
Its calendar can be uploaded/shared, synced, "beamed"
with one's phone or pda and the stars know whatelse.

I decided to try Empressr because I want to create
online instructions for using our library system's catalog.
Powerpoint seems too static. I want to use
some animations or video/YouTube.

With Empressr other librarians could help create a
better presentation than I could alone.

(...this will not get done before the 23 things deadline,
gotta finish the rest of the things first!)

THING 12

23 things on a stick is Mind boggling.

These are not the sort of THINGS
that one can use the "cram" method
to learn.

Here is something I got off DIGG by
exploring the tools which were at
the bottom of the digg page:


But for the love of librarians, don't digg this!
DOUBLE DARE YOU! (actually I already did...
click this link and add a vote!)

Hmmm...a little publicity for 23 things might be interesting.

The back and forth characteristics of
23 THING tools has potential.

THING 11

I noticed the labels box when posting
to this blog, so some of the posts are
tagged. And, guess what, I already do
THING 11 of 23: it's a del.icio.us account!

Searching for stuff by tags is pretty fun.
I tend to look at "who" tagged an item and
what other stuff they bookmark rather
than staying focused on my original search.

Guess that is the "social" part of social bookmarking!

I think that del.iciou.us is the place I discovered
Google Scholar, which is helpful for research.

Here are other bookmarks I found
on del.icio.us of interest to librarians:

INFOMINE scholarly internet resource collections

LIBRAVOX free public domain audiobook download and upload

a Librarian's Internet Index reputable internet research resources