# 23 And Now It's Time to Say Goodbye

My favorite things:

• Getting inspired enough to buy an MP3 player
• Finding out all that stuff about Zombies
• Learning how to make neat widgets
• Bloglines--I use it all the time at work and home
• Checking out all the neat things I'd heard about but hadn't made time to explore, and discovering ways to use them in my everyday life
  
• Tagging--that's come in handy at work
• Rollyo
• Making avatars
• Posting funny videos
• making mash-ups

Impact on my lifelong learning goals:

• Reinforced that it's a great idea to play with new things and have fun and I might also discover useful tools for home and work

Unexpected outcomes:

• I didn't know I'd end up buying an MP3 player
• I had tried Bloglines and given up on it, so I didn't expect it to become part of my daily routine the second time around
• I use my avatars a number of places
• I started a blog for my writing life when I didn't think I was interested before

What could be done differently to improve the program:

• More time
• It's impossible to do one's regular job properly and thoroughly explore 23 Things in nine weeks. I enjoyed this and took time to do it, and even I took lots longer than expected. People with less motivation and less access to computer time are not going to be able to do this within time and may give up
• Update the instructions periodically
• Quite a few times I would read the instructions linked to from the 23 Things page then discover the reality was different. I can make the leaps and figure it out. Some people may not be able to do that
• If this is rolled out to branch staff I suggest making sure that agency managers buy in, and that they have a monthly meeting on one or two Things so staff can discuss their experiences and those who got it can demonstrate to those who didn't get it. Staff need to be encouraged to read each other's blogs and comment
  

Would I participate in something like this again?

• Absolutely!

How I would describe my learning experience:

• FUN FUN FUN!

Now I'm excited to try out

• Library 2.0
• Learning 2.1

I'm Hearing Even More Things

Well, I bought me a Creative Zen MP3 player and blogged about the experience of downloading my first audio book on the Library Shhh-out Out Blog recycling the "I'm Hearing Things" title.

I am quite in love with my new little gadget and am really enjoying listening to my first downloaded audio book in the car.

#22 I'm Hearing Things

wOw! There's a ton of audio books out there and all sorts of ways to get them. While I am pleased with all the contemporary material available on Netlibrary and Overdrive, it's hard not to be amazed and overwhelmed by all the old books on Project Gutenberg. A huge number of 19th century novels by H. Rider Haggard can be found as ebooks, way beyond what you can find these days without trawling the old book stores--and two are in audio format. The download instructions there are not as complete as those at Netlibrary or Overdrive, but I think I could muddle through.

I found the World eBook Fair to be a little more obscure. The very small annual fee seemed okay, although puzzling since they get a large portion of materials, including eBooks from Project Gutenberg, it seems. I did get excited by all the science fiction titles from Baen until I saw the small print that explained that they were sample chapters. Booooo! Hisssssss!

It would have been great to have a look inside the scanned children's books, because they would be more like the real books than the text only Project Gutenberg versions, but I wasn't about to plop down eight-bucks-something just out of curiosity. I did enjoy looking at the covers, though. I was surprised to see some scans of Beatrix Potter books published by Warne (now owned by Penguin). I assume they got permission.

There are many collections on the World eBook Fair that think I would never use--but you never know when you might need The Victorian Prose Archive or The Swami Center Collection. It's nice to know they exist. The various collections can provide tips of where else to go on the Internet to find eBooks.

Disappearing Zombies

Yikes! My Zombie News Feed has disappeared. It must have shambled off somewhere over the holidays. I guess I'll have to try and reinstate the link before I move on to the home stretch.

Back again--I've discovered the problem. Feedster is DEAD. Maybe it will become a zombie web site now. I guess I'll see if there is another site that does the same thing.

Back again, again--I did a Google search for news widgets and came up with the suggestion of using a Grazr widget to post a Google Blog Search. Voila! It seems to be working for now (see right column) but we shall see.

#21 Podcasts Have Nothing to do With Whales

According to podcast.net, Podcast Alley, and Yahoo Audio there are no podcasts about me. That's funny, because I was interviewed for a podcast last year. Check out the May 25, 2006 episode of Mr. Ron's Once a Week. It probably doesn't show up on a search because my name doesn't appear in the written description. I did find a weekly podcast about circus freaks called The Human Marvels and added it to my Bloglines account. I already had a science fiction show saved there.
Podcasts are broadcast with many forms of software players so there seems to be something for everyone.
Libraries are starting to use podcasts for news, storytime, booktalks, author interviews, etc. There appears to be a variety of on-line tools to create podcasts. Maybe we should do an audio version of the Library Shhhout-out.

#20 Video Killed the Radio Star

I've been checking out YouTube for quite a while now. You can spend hours there. It's a fun way of getting a glimpse of "where are they now" celebrities, old rock bands, shows from the early days of British TV, and even family members. Yes, my cousin who is a singer is on YouTube. There are clips of his TV appearance on a British TV talent show in the 90's where contestants had to pretend to be famous celebrities, some shaky video of a pub show, and even a clip he loaded of himself landing a plane.

Here he in on Stars in Your Eyes as Bobby Hadfield of the Righteous Brothers.


I was interested in that huge list of other video hosting sites linked to from the Learning 2.0 site. Whew! Who would have the time to explore them all? I see Yahoo videos cropping up more and more these days, though, and some Google video.

I like YouTube's social networking aspect where you can find out more about the person who posted the video and find out their other posts. The comments can be interesting, although there are a lot of trolls.

YouTube might be a good way of sharing programming tips with other libraries or among staff. You'd have to watch out about violating copyright, however, and only use fair use portions of copyrighted materials. It would be great for displaying programs with content created by the participants, though--like improvised drama, booktalks, poetry readings, etc. Permissions would have to be obtained from the performers. Promotional pieces for the library could be produced and linked to YouTube from other sites.

#19 Exploring Web Award Winners

I've tried out some winning 2.0 sites.

I can't get excited about fuzzmail. I previewed it on the site to find out that it just shows you an animation of the way the message was created with the spelling corrections and editing included. Mostly you just don't want people knowing what a spelling dork you are. The message I sent myself hasn't shown up in my in-box yet. I don't instantly see any library use.

Wow! With Shopify you can create your own on-line store as easily as creating a blog. This might come in handy for libraries that have a gift shop.

That's the first time I've looked at Craig's List. Interesting and useful in general. Again, can't think of a library use. I noticed that people don't give away things free in England like they do in this country. I guess this is a land of excess and opulence.

Okay, I knew going in that Cocktail Builder wouldn't have any library applications except for recovering from the library when I get home--I had to look, anyway. I now know how to make a drink called Lady Godiva's Nipples. I've already tagged that puppy on del.icio.us and I'll be picking up the Chambord raspberry liqueur on the way home.

I bet there's a good use for swivel. It looks like a useful tool for putting statistics in understandable visual format--maybe circulation, programs statistics, work flow information, etc. I can't tell right away if you can keep your charts private, however. That may have an impact on what data one wants to upload. I don't see a quick explanation of how to, though.

wufoo: Well, on-line forms and surveys--of course that might be handy to get patron in put and staff opinions. The site is explained a lot better than swivel, too.

ning: Make your own social networking site. That might be a fun way of creating spaces for people to discuss books, etc. or for staff to discuss training.

On to the next thing.

Google Docs is Not a Shipping Company

Well, you know, as frustrating as Zoho was, it's a lot cooler looking than Google Docs, but it already knew who I was when I opened the site because I have a gmail account and I had already logged in there today.

There are some similar features but the interface is not in your face. That is good and bad. The view is less cluttered so may be less daunting to some, but you have to look behind tabs and drop downs to find some features.

You can insert comments in a variety of colors but they seem to be more intrusive; they don't disappear into a small icon when you finish. But neither do they duplicate themselves when you press enter and start a new line which is what happened to me in Zoho for some reason. There's no tagging.

You can track changes made to the document from the Revision tab. I didn't see this in Zoho, but I didn't look for it either. In both programs you can get contextual menus by right clicking. This is useful. You can collaborate on a document with others, and post to your blog from Google Docs as well as publish the document on the web for others to see, as in Zoho.

I had to search further to find the document settings and change the default font.

I think someone who wants very basic functionality and gets confused by too many options might like this better, but might get frustrated trying to find the document settings. The fact that the active document and the home page with saved files are in two seperate tabs may bother some. I like the way Zoho has it all on one screen.

Well That Worked

So, now I know that those tags in Zoho turn into Technorati tags (and you can't use two-word tags like in Blogger) and if you change colors they don't always look well on your blog background.

The Great Blog Shift

Okay. I am testing to see if i can post to my blog from Zoho.
Is this Abandon hope all ye who enter here
or God bless all who sail in her?

Technorati Tags productivity,word,Zoho,Blogger,processing

#18 Wasting Time With Online Productivity

These apps hold a lot of interest for me since they have the potential of helping me edit a chapter whatever (Internet enabled) computer I am on.

Zoho sounds simple till you get there and have a whole array of menu items to consider. *takes deep breath and plunges in*

I like that you can tag docs as opposed to putting them in folders. I'm not sure that I am so fancy in my blogging needs that I need the extra features there to post here, but you never know. The sharing capability would be useful for work groups editing a document together. The comments feature is pretty cool (except why did it duplicate the comment when I pressed enter after it). The templates are pretty boring, though.

I found Zoho a little frustrating out of the gate. It changed font on me when I hit enter to start a new paragraph but seemed reluctant to stop using bold and underline, and the highlighting feature wasn't acting quite like I expected. I guess, like anything, you have to get used to its quirks.

Yikes! It decided to freeze in mid-edit as I tried to look at a comment. I had to refresh the page then I thought I had lost my information since I hadn't saved it yet. That would be very irritating if it was an important document. It turns out it must save automatically because I found it in an untitled doc when I started a new untitled doc.

I was able to import a file from my PC successfully.

Okay, I guess I could use this but it might take some getting used to. It seems a little buggy.

#17 MD Wiki

Well, it took me a few minutes to figure out how to add my blog to the favorite blog list on the Maryland Libraries Wiki but I guessed it before I finally found the instructions on one of those videos. Just to be cheeky, I also added a photo; something no one else has done on that page.

I think there should be clearer written instructions on how to proceed with this task because a lot of people are sticking their blogs on the front page and not on the favorite blogs page, and others are adding their favorite things to the comments and not editing the appropriate favorites page.

Aren't I fussy?

I made my own page on the wiki--Annette's Evil Laboratory--and I added a couple of creepy movie trailers. The editing is very much like editing this blog. Not hard after the initial stage of figuring out where everything is.

I had fun looking at some of the other pages. Some people caught on and got fancier than others. I added a couple of comments to some of the sites.

#16 WIKI WAKI WOO

I find Wikipedia a great source for pop information--ultra-current information but also pop culture of the past. If I want to find out what has happened to a pop star of the past, I go to Wikipedia and start there. If I want a definition of a current slang term, I find Wikipedia a great place to look. Since it is edited by all and sundry, however, I tend to verify facts in other sources if I need total veracity. I think it is a great informational springboard, however. There's even a Wikipedia article about me! But it has some misinformation. Maybe I'll register and add some information as part of this learning experience. Hmmmmm! There's a thought.

I haven't explored other wikis as much. We have a community wiki for my town but not much was going on there the last I looked. I think it would be a good source of local information if more people contributed. I would like to share information about contractors and handymen, for instance, but the references there are old. New recommendations from neighbors would be very useful. Of course, how do you know it it's not the tradesmen themselves or their friends who are posting good plugs? That's the sort of thing a local library could partner with their community on.

Wikis would make it easier for more staff to contribute to updating library Intranet pages instead of it falling to a small set of people with the right log-in and knowledge.

I like the use of wikis for book lists and subject guides--at least open to staff to edit. It might be interesting to pilot opening it up to the public and see what happens. Time has to alloted for someone to monitor the site, however.

Some wikis seem to have problems with spammers inserting links to their ads. Any library who uses wikis needs to figure out how to block those and have someone on spam patrol. The Library Instruction Wiki I looked at, Library 2.0 in 15 minutes a day, was totally infested with spam. I'm glad to see from the Princeton Public library BookLoversWiki that not all wikis need have that generic Wikipedia look.

What surprised me about the Bull Run Library wiki was that it was created by a patron and not associated with the library. Can they do that? Anyway--news flash for library patron--when I checked the "add features" tab it said your wiki subscription has run out and you owe the wiki people money.

#15 continued

Things I agree with from reading articles on Libraries 2.0:

• 2.0 technology offers great ways of removing barriers between our patrons and our information by making processes user friendly.

• We need to find new ways to bring our services to patrons rather than insisting that they come to us—whether physically or virtually. This means placing our content and links in places other than the library Web Page and being a presence on the Web in places other than our own site.

• The 2.0 librarian uses Instant Messaging to meet users in their space online, builds blogs and wikis as resources to further the mission of the library, and mashes up content via Application Program Interfaces to build useful Web sites.

• questions to ask when planning for technology. Does it meet the users need in a new or improved way? Does it create a useful service for putting users together with the information and experience they seek?

• Users will create their own mash ups, remixes and original expressions and should be able to do so at the library or via the library’s resources.

• Libraries should welcome the submission of reviews, assignment of keywords (“tagging”), addition of scholarly commentary, and other forms of user participation.

For me, Library 2.0 means I get to play with cool things at work and make them relevant to what I do, and, in turn relevant to our patrons' needs.

#15 Perspectives on Web 2.0, Library 2.0 & the future of libraries

I went to a day-long conference on this very topic last Friday: OCLC Capcon's Annual Meeting 2007: Social Networking: Fad, Folly, or the Future. Aside from providing very good food they also provided a variety of speakers on 2.0 technologies and how the library can participate and use these advances in Web technology. There was a presentation of the results from a new membership report Sharing, Privacy and Trust, and Our Networked World which can be downloaded or ordered in hardcopy from the OCLC website. The keynote speaker, Roy Tennant, Senior Program Officer for OCLC Programs and Research, addressed how we can "integrate the new social media tools, learn from those content streams, and deliver platforms that incorporate user-generated content." There was a panel of experts who discussed library use of the 2.0 technologies and even touched upon 3.0. There were some good tips on which libraries are doing what and it will be interesting to look at their sites. I also jotted down some web sites I didn't know about but want to explore. I have quite a stack of things to keep me busy.

The PowerPoint presentations of these speakers can be viewed and downloaded from the Capcon Website.

One thing I am sure of--this is not a fad, it will not go away, and libraries need to use these THINGS to stay relevant. They also are fun and can save a lot of time and effort. Allowing our users to interact with us and add to what we do via tagging and wikis can make our users feel more invested in our services.
One speaker, Roy Balleste, Director of the Law Library at UDC, had a list of questions we should ask ourselves when we considered using a new application--
Can it help the library?
Can it help the staff?
Can it help the customers?
He said you must get the staff doing it if you want to create evangelists. Thats what this 23 things is all about, huh?

#14 Technorati

Hmmm! Not sure I want to claim this blog. Want it to remain semi-private,it being a learning thing and all.

Anyhow--in searching Learning 2.0 in Technorati I noticed that Allen County Libraries are doing 23 Things along side their customers. That seems like a very interesting twist that might help library patrons not only learn some new things but be aware that Librarians are relevant to the new technology.

Under key word search in Technorati--509 results for Learning 2.0 and they range much further than libraries. Apparantly CPAs are into it.

A tag search turns up 620 posts, and they include videos.

I find 669 blogsabout Learning 2.0! That surprised me, because I thought number of posts about the topic would exceed number of blogs dedicated to it. Wait a minute--the search is using those as seperate words. When I put quotation marks around the phrase I narrow it down to 309 blogs that look more relevant. many of these are from libraries and librarians participating in 23 Things.

Vanity search
There are 58 results for me under key word search
1 post tagged with my full name
And no blogs dedicated to me because I haven't made any public as yet and my stalkers are not so tech savvy apparantly.

Top favorited blogs listed by Technorati contain a few I know since they seem to get quite a bit of attention other places. A few I already have RSS feeds for. Many are technology related. Some I couldn't tell what they were from the technorati profile. One I checked was a Canadian political blog that suddenly folded as of Friday. Hmmmmm! I wonder who that person pissed off. Some I have no idea why they are so popular and don't have the time to explore and figure it out. Marketing, web development, and the arts are represented but hardly any politics which surprised me.

Top blogs based on unique links in the last month--I recognize more. Some of the same topics reflected. More humor, news, politics, tips, gossip. Not so much on writing which seems odd since so many authors keep blogs now. Are they screaming into the void?

Top searches seem to reflect breaking news and pop artists. That's to be expected.

Okay, I understand the Technorati tagging business and could add an html tag if I wanted--but DO NOT WANT.

cross-eyed and delicious

I've been doing a lot of tagging for my own del.icio.us site at home and have just started a separate account for tagging all the links on Kidsite. Now we'll really see what we can do with it, reorganizing and updating a section of a big library website. Yikes! It does get convoluted and tiring, though.
I've started to look at some library sites that use del.icio.us. (I think La Grange Park Library should either sue or fire the person who does their website. Can you say 1994 anyone?)
I find it difficult to see where and how these libraries are using del.icio.us but, as I mentioned, I'm cross-eyed at this point. Someone's going to have to walk me through it.

#13 Lucky or Not?

Well, Summer ended and the work began to pile up so it's been longer than I like, but here I am again. Just startling to look at del.icio.us.
OK, number one--how do I pronounce that?
Number two--DOESN'T ANYONE HAVE A SENSE OF PRIVACY ANYMORE!!!!?
Do I want all my book marks made public? Do I want to stalk and be stalked. Do people tag their favorite porn sites?
brb
Okay, I'm back. That didn't take long, did it? If you exist in virtual space that is.
Anyway, I set up a del.icio.us account and put the link at the bottom of the right hand column over there. I spelled "anomaly" wrong in my user name--oh, well, the real spelling was probably taken anyway. the last time I used it I had to use the spelling "Annomaly".
Now I need to add and tag more stuff.
Even later--
I like being able to add buttons to Firefox so I can quickly see my account or add a site. I chose the version of the Firefox add on that didn't automatically upload and reorganize all my local bookmarks. I put the buttons on both my home computers, too. I can still upload my personal bookmarks when I'm ready. I've just found out that you can make bookmarks private if you want. Whew! I don't want total strangers to have a complete profile of my personal life. I may use del.icio.us more in that case. It will prove handy for sharing bookmarks between all the computers I use.
Libraries could use this for sharing useful bookmark sets at a branch or through a whole system without having to load bookmark files on every computer. Cool!

#12 Roll Your Own

Rollyo is interesting but my mind went blank as to what to create. Then I looked at what others had done and began to think it had all been done already. I was especially impressed by someone who had made a search for children's preschool programming resources.

I almost made a best price search, but it had been done before. Then I began to do a slang dictionary search even though there were a few of those, but decided it was too broad, so I limited it to Web slang and this is what I ended up with.
Annette's Web Speak Search Engine.

I could see staff making handy search tools on information desk computers for subjects often asked about. It could also be used to generate search boxes for our public using one or multiple tools. Can it be used for sites that usually have to be logged into, however? is there a way to set that up?

I'm going to try and add the search box to my Blog.
Okay--that worked. I put it under my zombie news feed for now.

# 11 It's a Library Thing

Well, I checked out Library Thing and set up an account. I was frustrated that I had to upload books by the same author one by one instead of being able to check the ones I wanted on the list and upload them all at the same time. Also, it was irksome determining different editions of the same book so all could be represented--it meant checking various sources and changing view on the display back and forth. If you want all your books to have pictures then you need to also check various sources or upload your own. And most of the other sources are academic libraries which narrows the choices for fiction readers considerably. Overall, while it was quicker than doing original cataloging it was still fiddly to enter all those subject headings and I didn't even want to get into writing reviews at this point. (Interesting that they make those reviews available other places on the web if you don't opt out.)

It's very clever all the things they do with the information up-loaded like those clouds, and very reassuring that there's such a booky site on the Web that's supposedly the death of book reading.

I found I had an author page on this site by virtue of having my books in the libraries of other people, so I uploaded a personal photo to it. I was amazed at how many people had my books in their libraries and how many were talking about them on the chat boards. I'm not sure if I want to announce myself as a Library Thing author and make all my books available for public scrutiny but it certainly is another venue for authors to network and promote their work, and maybe even give some insight into the reference materials that they use.

I think that the discussion groups could be very useful to libraries who want to have on-line discussions without having to set up their own software. The fact that you can create your own discussions group and limit the membership in various ways is very useful.

I found it very interesting how many public libraries are already using it as a supplement to their catalog. If this is the wave of the future, however, by importing information from the same sources, I see the potential for one mistake in cataloging to be perpetuated all over the universe forever. It's a good job one can edit the results once one has uploaded them.

I've added a Library Thing widget to the right, below my profile. It show the books in my library so far. Very self-centered aren't I?