Thing 23

Yeah! It really did seem like a neverending story about midway, but here we are. It's still a bit overwhelming to me in that I had to play catch-up from the beginning and then I had to go and do some more globetrotting. Fortunately, I'm a part-timer so I had some time to really play with this.
The only components that I had any experience with at the beginning was watching YouTube videos, wikis, and attempting to download books from NetLibrary. I didn't even own an mp3 player. Now I'm a log-in carrying member of all this information I didn't even know existed. The Things I see myself using most often will be wikis, Library Thing, Flickr, Del.icio.us, NetLibrary, and YouTube.
As I mentioned in Thing 22, some of the activity directions were still not basic enough for us novices. At one point in my career, I was actually instructing others how to use technology--five years later, I'm a toddler again. Which proves the point that we need this sort of activity at 2-year intervals at least.
I will never have enough time to keep up with all of the RSS feeds I signed up for, so after y'all are finished reviewing this, the unsubscribe button will get a work-out. I will keep a few, don't worry, but not the +10 that I'm getting now. It's like finding 300 e-mails in your account everyday.
That's all for now. Thanks for the opportunity.

Thing 22

I'm writing this as I am listening to a downloaded book from NetLibrary. I'm never really sure how I fumble my way through these tasks, but I get there. Either I'm not reading the directions as carefully as I should, or they're not as idiot-proof as they could be. It's like getting the secret family recipe from that relative that leaves out a key ingredient. The idea behind NetLibrary and the others are great. I'm a bit confused about one thing. If I've "checked out" an eBook, does that mean it's not available to anyone else until my time expires? There were not as many titles available as I would have liked, but some of the series books I've been reading are, so I'm happy. It goes without saying how beneficial this is to our patrons. Our patrons that listen to talking books will find this easier to manage once they get used to it. I know I'll be talking it up.

Thing 21

Well I enjoyed my little trip into podcast land. As well as book reviews, I also found travel sites that narrate walking tours of various sights--Washington, DC, Prague, New York, etc. A good use for the mp3 player. I think the tours would be useful to our patrons as well. I added Nancy Pearl of the Library Action Figure fame to my Blogline--whoa, has it been that long since I read those things?? There is a light at the end of the 23 Things Tunnel when you are on #21. If you are wondering why I suddenly started labeling these entries by just their "thing" number, it is because I found out what URL had to go onto that log.

Thing 20

As you can see, I was able to get a YouTube video into my blog. I'm not exactly sure how and it took much longer than I thought---I gave up and went to bed and there it was the next morning! Just like Christmas. Why would I pick something like this? Well I guess it's just my warped sense of humor. I'll probably find out from our younger staff members that this has a library cult following (if not it should.) Anyway, it just shows that we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously. As far as uses for YouTube in the library, one right off the top of my head would be to film some of our children activities so that the children that are unable to attend could watch it at home. Then there's always fundraising efforts, book discussions, updates are our future remodeling project, a Welcome to the Library-type of presentation, etc. Then there are also the reference material for student projects as the teachers are always asking for a visual in the projects.

1987 - Betty Glover Library Workout Tape Ad

Let's keep those extra pounds from finding us this winter!

Thing 19

Since we had already explored a number of sites on the award list, I tried out the other library sites and of course the travel sites. As always, some were more user-friendly than others. I intend to spend more time, when I able, on this list. I can see that our patrons would have a definite interest in several of the sites I explored.

Usefulness of Zoho

This is a great tool for our patrons that need to use a word processor as we currently have only one patron computer with a word processing program. I can also see the benefits for someone who travels and doesn't wish to lug a laptop along but will have computer access during their travels.

Week 7 Wikis Thing 17

I found some of the tutorial videos a bit hard to follow. Wasn't some of the stuff he was doing HTML?? However, I was able to get my blog onto the Sandbox list so, yeah! I did add some favorites to someone's list, felt weird, hope it was more than just one person's recordings. If not, then they can just go and delete what I wrote. I'm not quite ready to make my own wiki yet as it does seem time consuming (at least to some of us.)

Week 7 Wikis Thing 16

Wikis are one of my favorite aspects of this whole technology ride we are on. I'm not saying that I have any experience in posting to them, just that I like to use them even with all of their faults. To me, the almost fatal flaw for research using wikis is for students and the gullible among us that believe everything they read without any type of verification. Having been a classroom teacher and a school library media specialist, I probably wouldn't allow wikis to be used as a sole-source reference. I probably would allow high quality wikis to be used as a starting point.

I was so caught up in the Bull Run Library Wiki that I forgot where I was. I can see how they earned The Best Library award. For our library, I would love to see wikis for school projects, summer reading programs and book discussion groups. Except for the summer reading programs, we usually get hit with big school projects after the fact and the first student comes in and checks out every book on Eqypt for example. With a School Project Wiki, the teachers could post the assignments ahead of time, we could be prepared and even parents could see what's on the horizon. We are also in need of a supplement to our antiquated library catalog (sorry.) Note: no where in this post did you see me volunteer to set these up---that's for you full-timers that make the big bucks ;)

Week 6 Tagging, Folksonomics, & Technorati Things 13, 14 & 15

Thing #13: I've set up my Del.icio.us account and I can't wait to get started. I've always been very lax about editing my bookmarks so this will help tremendously.

Thing #14: Technorati--I'm going to need someone to explain to me face-to-face why I would want to do this. Some of the places I visited were interesting--my husband and I found the opening joke of Cal Ripken's Induction into the Hall of Fame speech--but right now, I'm skipping opening this account.

Thing #15: In 'Away from the "icebergs",' Rick Anderson questions the need for a "just in case" collection. This touches a nerve with me in that I'm just not there yet. I wouldn't want you to think that I'm a technophobe, but I firmly believe that the intangibles of print materials still have a place in our libraries, even if every word and picture is available online. We still have an imperfect technoworld. Our access to the internet can be interrupted for hours, if not days; not to mention that in our "world" we have only five computers for patron internet use. I once worked with a school principal that envisioned a school without books. For our sake, I hope this happens long after the year 2525...

Week 5 Playing Things 10, 11, & 12

Who knew that playing could be so mindboggling? The Avatar is as close as I can get, but you get the picture. I will have fun with Library Thing. About 20 years ago, I convinced my computer programing cousin to write a program that would allow me to catalog the books in my classroom by title, author & subject, and allow me to sort them as well. It took him a couple of hours and I was thrilled with the results. Needless to say, I'm really quite pleased with Library Thing. Rollyo has its merits, however I found some of the searches, r e a l l y s l o w. The rolls (?) I added concerned travel and reference--naturally. I'll need help working on these link things. I'm not doing something right on Library Thing and Rollyo--Julie are you there???

Week 4 RSS and Newreaders Things 8 & 9

Well, Grammy has been globetrotting again, hence the gap in posts. It will be major catch-up time in the next few days, but I can do it!

Playing around in the world of RSS and newsreaders, my first question was, "Do these people have a life??" Then I started finding bits and pieces that actually had some potential, not just people trying to prove how so very clever they are. I found several library feeds that look promising, as well as a couple of travel feeds and one cat feed that came in the back door. I'm hoping that I did manage to follow the directions carefully enough that you can access the library feeds at http://www.bloglines.com/public/globetrotting-grammy . The tool I preferred over all the others was "syndic8." I kept having the others tell me something wasn't available. On "syndic8" you could check the status of the feed before you bothered trying to add it.