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