Thing 16. Student 2.0 Tools

What a great aid for students. I really appreciated the Research Project Calculator because it is more generic and doesn't take me to a library catalog that I can't access. There is so much information that the students can link to and it walks you through every step of the way. I think it is great that you can input the due date and it breaks everything down. That can make something that seems overwhelming at first doable. I also like the format option for essay, slide presentation or video. I also appreciate the support materials. I like the fact that they can be downloaded in PDF or Word.

The assignment calculator is nice, also. It has much in the way of help and resources. However, since it is the University of Minnesota, many of the links take you to the University's indexes and catalogs that you need an ID to access. I could see other academic libraries adapting the idea and making it work.

Thing 15. Online Games and Libraries

As I stated in an earlier posting, I don't want much to do with Second Life. To me that is too much like work. Besides which, I have dial up access at home, so it wouldn't really work for me.So, for this Thing I went with the Puzzle Pirates. I read a little bit and then just went to it. I created my pirate and did some bilging and earned some money. And another pirate just gave me a red bandana for nothing. Hmm...what kind of bartering is that? Then I did some carpentry and earned a little more money and the title of sailor. With that job I guess I earned a pink bandana. I tried to interact with another pirate, but didn't get anywhere. I enjoyed playing the games, but need to work on the social aspect. I am so much of an introvert, that I would rather just play the games, even if it is virtual interaction. However, I will give it one more shot.

I know many people enjoy Second Life. I would rather just enjoy my real life. Yes, I can see a role for librarians in Second Life. I know some who do reference there. I guess that is a good thing for the virtual world. I just don't want to be the librarian who is doing it.

Thing 19. Podcasts

I am a big fan of the Sunday Puzzle with Will Shortz on NPR. Last week was the time change. Before I went out Saturday night, I set all of the clocks ahead one hour. I set my alarm, too. I wanted to be all ready for Sunday. Well, on Sunday morning I woke up at 7:50 a.m. I thought I had set my alarm for 6:30, since I had to leave the house at 8:30. Oops! I set it for p.m. I had to rush to get out of the house and I missed the Puzzle Master. So for this Thing, I decided to listen to the Sunday Puzzle. I looked at Podcast.com, Podcast.net, and Podcastalley.com to compare. Podcast.com and Podcastalley.com worked just fine. I entered in Will Shortz as my search term and they both promptly found the Sunday Puzzle. When I tried the same thing in Podcast.net, I didn't get any results.

This Thing has not inspired me to create a podcast. I don't like to listen to my own voice. However, I will most likely subscribe to the Sunday Puzzle so that I will never miss another one.

Thing 18. YouTube & Other Online Video

I have seen many things on YouTube. Many have been emailed to me from others. I kind of like the Library Ninja ones. However, I don't think everyone would appreciate the one I like so I didn't put it in my blog. I picked the next best thing. :^)



I must say, this was about the easiest Thing to do yet. I had no problem with the code as I have had with other things. YouTube is easy to use and navigate. When I went to Google Video, it just connected me to YouTube again.

I suppose it would be fun to have partial videos of library programs for a glimpse of what is happening at your library. Or maybe patrons talking about how wonderful your library is.

Thing 14. LibraryThing

Just when I said I didn't want to sign up for one more thing, I signed up for an account on LibraryThing. Perhaps so that I could post a few of my favorites on my blog - I am not quite sure. I did want to add some titles so that I could try out the suggester and unsuggester. I wasn't too impressed with the suggester, even though I did write down one title that I want to check out. It could be that I didn't add too many books to my library. Or possibly that I didn't put any tags on the books I put in my library. Half of the books were about cancer, which I am sure is because I put "My Sister's Keeper" on the list. I loved that book, but don't want to read more books about people with cancer. The unsuggester did look like there wasn't a book on there that I would be interested in, though. I also did not like that when I picked a book with a certain cover it sometimes just added a plain brown cover. Reminds me of the old library binding.

I don't think I like the idea of LibraryThing for my library. However, we have been talking about cataloging the books we have at my church. It is a small collection and being able to link to it from the church's website would be ideal.

Oh. And the 'chiclet' that is supposed to link to my catalog? It actually works!

Thing 13. Online Productivity Tools

For this Thing, I started with creating my own homepage. I took a look at Google and at Pageflakes. I entered the same things into each tool to see what I could see. I liked Pageflakes better. It put everything I wanted on one page, thus the name homepage. When I entered the same things into Google, it had a different page for every category I chose. Too much work for a productivity tool. I like seeing it all on the one page. It had my local news and weather on the top and then news from USA Today and CNN elsewhere on the page. It had a scrumptious sounding recipe on the page, a tip of the day concerning seasoning a cast iron skillet, movie listings for my area, and the sudoku game. Perfect and condensed. When I wanted to see the same things on Google, I had to flip through all the tabs. Not productive for me. So, if I were to keep one of these for my homepage, it would be Pageflakes. However, it doesn't really work for me at work, and I don't really use the computer too much at home, so I don't expect it will become my permanent homepage. It was fun to explore, though.

Our library team uses Google calendar. We have one sign-on for the team and we use it to schedule our hours for virtual reference. It is nice for scheduling because you can see who is signed up for what times, pick an open time and sign up. Or you can see who does VR ahead of you, so that if they forget to sign off you can remind them.

To do lists: my outlook calendar works just fine for things I need to do for work and I will continue to use it. As far as my personal life, I will stick with the old fashioned way of jotting it down on a piece of paper. That works for me and it can be recycled when I have completed the list. I would rather not be reminded by my phone when I am out somewhere.

The little white box below is my attempt to put a countdown widget on the blog. Is it me or is it justsayhi.com? Well, I did successfully put the countdown widget on the left side of my blog. However, it still won't countdown. I give up. On the Thing 14...

Thing 12. Do you Digg?

No, again I say no.

I checked out each of the sites. I did like the layout of Digg the best. Reddit reminded me of the Del.ic.ious layout that I didn't like. Digg had the nicest explanation of how it works, too. I went to a news site to try and share it with both Digg and Reddit. However, in my first few attempts someone had already posted the story. When I finally found something that hadn't been posted, it required my having an account to post. Frankly, I don't want another account unless it is absolutely necessary.

I am interested in knowing how people have the time to do all of this gathering. It seems like it would take some time to go browsing the Internet looking for articles to add to one of these sites. As far as using this tool in my library, the only application I see for it is to keep up on the latest stories that the students may be viewing in case they want to talk/ask questions about it. I wouldn't use it in my personal life.

I confess that I did link to one of the websites that I saw on StumbleUpon. It was under the bizarre category. Those who know me know that I like my fiction somewhat sick and twisted, so I wanted to check out the bizarre category just to see what was on there.

Thing 6, redux

Since I was able to get my image posted and I was able to play with Flickr spelling, I am feeling confident that putting my trading cards on my blog will not be a problem. I like the trading card idea. I think it would be fun in a big library for patrons/students to be able to collect trading cards of the librarians/staff. It also gives me an idea for a contest for the students at my campus. So, I may just have to create some more trading cards to work with!

Here is what I have done for trading cards. I decided it would be easiest to use photos that I already had. So here they are. Not so very creative, but now that I know I can do it, I can experiment some more.

Getting these trading cards on my blog was a little tricky. I tried to upload the images all together. Because Blogger does give you that option. It just never worked for me. I kept getting error messages. Next, I tried to upload 2 at the same time. Error again. Finally I just did one and it worked so I went back and put the second one on there and decided to skip the last.

Thing 6. Online Image Generators

I am going back to Thing 6. Since I discovered that I can do some things, I am getting a little braver. Here is my image that I created. I have also done some trading cards and will post them on another blog, since I still don't know how to put more than one image on a post. I can see the image generators being used for advertising the library. Plus they are fun to do

Thing 5. More Flickr Fun

Well, well, well. I finally got some code to work. This turned out quite nicely. Now if I can only remember to turn it off so that it doesn't show up every time I post. Hmmm.......

Thing 11. Tagging and Del.icio.us

I viewed the tutorial on Delicious. Then I went to the Minn23 account to look around. First of all, I don't like the way it is laid out. It is kind of plain and boring. It is also hard to read how many people have saved the bookmarks with the varying degree of pink highlighting. I like the idea of bookmarking so that you can find what you have saved anywhere and on any computer from which you have Internet access. If I save something at work and want to find it later, it is no problem. In our library system we already use social bookmarking, but we use Ma.gnolia. I like the layout of it better than Del.icio.us. it is easier to read. When you click on details, it has a thumbnail sketch of the web page you save and a list of others who have that page bookmarked. You can click on them to find out more about them and what else they have bookmarked. There is also a rating system from one to five stars. We collect websites and post them on the library page for students to use. They can link to Ma.gnolia using the tags for accounting, criminal justice, etc. There they can find some good websites without having to do their own Internet search.
I also put some tags on my blog. Okay, 2 of them - zoho and Flickr. I figured since I wrote about Flickr on several postings that it would be a good tag to use.

Thing 10. Wikis

Whew! I survived that one. I was a little concerned when I went into the 23 Things wiki to edit. I added a new page - the B Movie page. Then I thought it would be nice to link from the home page to it so that people could add their favorite B movies. Well, I had a little issue and linked my new page to the home page so that when you went to the home page all you got was the link for my page. I started to freak out and tried to fix it. Well, I couldn't figure it out at first and thought that yes indeed it really was possible to "mess up" a wiki. I finally found the history at the bottom of the page which let me delete my mess and I was able to link successfully.
It was nice to learn what wiki actually meant. You would think that being a librarian I would look into it, but I hadn't. It could work as a collaboration tool within a group as long as you know who is editing and that the edits would be correct. BTW, I really enjoy the Common Craft videos. As far as the wikis I viewed, I liked the Book Lovers one best. The others all looked the same, but this one was a little more customized. I guess I don't really care for the formatting all being the same.
As an academic librarian I really discourage the students from using Wikipedia. I tell them it is a place where they can go to find a general idea, or to get some search terms, but that they shouldn't use it as a reference. A student in one of my workshops said that she had used it as a reference on one of her papers and still got an A. At that point one of the other students told her that she shouldn't use it because anyone could go in and change it. Sometimes it works when they hear it from another student.

Thing 9. Online Collaboration Tools

First, I had to request permission to edit in both GoogleDocs and Zoho. After I received permission, it was quite easy in google; I just had to sign in and it let me edit. Google also has a simple toolbar, which is nice. And you could see a list of all revisions made. In Zoho, it took me a minute to even find the document after I created an account and signed in. Once I found it, the tool bar had a lot more on it than Google. Many things I would probably never use for shared documents. So, my choice would probably be GoogleDocs just because of the simple toolbar. The librarians in my system have a shared account in GoogleDocs that we can use to collaborate. We had a project to work on and could use the template in GoogleDocs to do that if we wished. I started to use it for my section, but when I discovered that no one else had done anything in it, I stopped. I believe that the founding fathers would freak out with this technology which is somewhat more advanced than a quill and a bottle of ink. That is after they had heart attacks at viewing what had been done to their document. ;^)

Thing 8 revisited

I am trying Flickr again. Yesterday I decided to work on a badge with public photos. I couldn't find a grouping that I liked of anything that said anything about me. I finally went with autumn and trees and found some nice pictures. I put on a border and was all ready to upload it to my blog, but the code would not go. So, today I go in and recreate the search that I did yesterday, but cannot come up with the same photos. Actually, Flickr won't preview my photos. I have to go to the code page and then go back for the pictures to actually show up. I am now going to try again to put the badge on here. We'll see. Here goes.......


Failure. It appears that I can put a link for Flickr on my post, but the code for the badge just doesn't work. Ah well, maybe I will try again later. Maybe not.

Thing 8. Share your creations

Ok, after doing flickr I am getting kind of tired of pictures, so for this one I decided to create a database. Those of you who know me know that I am a coffee snob. So for my database, I decided to do coffee roasters. I used lazybase which really has no frills. It is nice that it links to the websites when you click on the URL and that it sends you to google maps when you click on the address. If you want to see which roaster has the best coffee in my not so humble opinion, check out my database.