Final - Thing 23

Even though SAPL's 23 Things debuted in last fall I was very late to the party, for a number of reasons.

About a year or so ago I looked at a 23 Things program offered by another library system. The organizers posted it to a listserv. As I mentioned in a previous post one of the things was exploring Second Life ... not my cup of tea. I was glad to see that wasn't one of SAPL's 23 things, but still, RSS and Tecnorati and such sounded like too much strain on my brain. Then there's the whole issue of blogging. About a zillion people have blogs, and many of them are the virtual equivalent of telling a total stranger standing in the grocery store line some of the most intimate and personal details of life. Way, way TMI.

When Didi sent out a reminder and notice of the extension I thought I'd at least give it a try because I like Didi and I want to be supportive on her project. It didn't take long until I was totally and completely hooked on maintaining my blog, playing around with my photos, ready to use Google Docs, checking out the new stuff on other people's blogs. I gotta have gadgets and I need more widgets.

This whole 23 Things process has been a total blast! Part of the reason for my reluctant to join early was that I wasn't sure I had enough time and attention to learn that many new things. Maybe I was a little intimidated even. I'm fairly techno savvy, but still ... After 23 Things, I still don't have an expert's grasp of a few of the subjects I at least now have a working knowledge of them - enough to be able to better my skills with practice. I even added NPR's podcast to my Blackberry!

The experience has been enjoyable and very benefical on both professional and personal levels.

Would I attempt a similar program again? Yes, and I wouldn't wait so long to jump onboard.

Thanks!

Useful Sites - Thing 9

I didn't blog per say about the useful RSS sites I discovered, but I do have them posted to this left. Daily I can glance at them and see the new items added.

Podcasts - Thing 21

When I first got iTunes several years ago I explored podcasts, but never really did much with them. Finding out I can add NPR podcasts to my blog was really neat because now I don't have to keep going from program to program ... it's all right here.

I gotta get a picture of the Nancy Pearl action figure to go with her book review podcasts.

Today I had one of those duh moments until I finally had an aha moment. I searched and searched the net for a way to add a podcast device to my blog. Finally I looked in Blogger gadgets and there it was.

It will be fun to keep up the book reviews on a daily basis.

You Tube - Thing 20

One of my favorite things to do every summer is attend the Drum Corps International Southwestern competition at the Alamodome. There are a lot of DCI videos on You Tube and I enjoyed watching those. Maybe you will, too.

I've used You Tube videos to learn how to do various things, most recently how to make duct tape wallets, which was the subject of a teen craft program. I had only one participant for this program, but I showed him the video and he followed along. The video was a lot better at teaching the craft than I am.

The Salvador Dali art gadget on my blog came from watching a You Tube video the other day.

Since I was sick and couldn't attend Staff Development Day it was nice to watch bits and pieces of it You Tube.

It would be nice to see snippet some of our programs - Eva Longoria Parker's reception, The Big Read jury - on You Tube.

Scratching Around in the Sandbox - Thing 17

It took a bit of time to get the hang of getting the blog posted the way I wanted it and where I wanted it. I realized I didn't have to put it on the very bottom and that I could place it under the SAPL banner.

Oh, Those Wacky Wikis - Thing 16

A lot of the library wikis were appealing for one or more reasons. The St. Joseph County Public Library system wiki reminded me of an interactive bulletin board, and I appreciate the fact the featured books are linked directly to the catalog. The ALA website looks just like Wikipedia, but it's easy to use and had lots of good info. Love Princeton's reviews from various sources. Librarianchick's was pretty boring appearancewise, which made me not want to surf around.

By allowing patrons an opportunity to post things, such as book reviews would give them a great sense of ownership.

One of the things mention was finding a link to a Little League game, thus making the library more of a community center. Hmmm, do we want to go that far? Something to mull over for the future.

Web 2.0 - Thing 15

In 1997 I attended a seminar about using the Internet as a journalistic aid. The presenter started off by saying: "Imagine walking into a library and finding all the books on the floor. That's the Internet." More or less I shared his opinion because the only search engine I was familiar with was AltaVista, which had only been out about two years. You put in a search term and got pretty much an unsorted list of EVERYTHING on the Net that included your term. Danish, Spanish, French ... language mattered not ... it was there and you have to hunt for what you needed and hope it was what you wanted.

I say all this because it's what popped into my mind as I was reading over the 2.0 perspectives. Compared to 11 years ago the Internet is almost (I said ALMOST) as organized as a library. There's still a lot of stuff laying around on the floor, but a lot of people have worked hard to make things easier to find. And in making things easier to find the Internet has become an invaluable tool for education, for libraries, for business and for entertainment.

A couple of other things popped out at me, particularly in the Manifesto perspective. In using Web/Learning 2.0 to our advantage we have to overcome mindset challenges. As a librarian during the early days of the Internet it was drilled into my head: DON'T USE THE INTERNET, FIND THE PATRON A BOOK. I still have that argument with myself in my head on occasion, but now the Internet has completely reliable sources. And for the most part one doesn't even have to enter the library to use it. Think databases ... think getting card online.

Second Life is explored in some 23 Things courses. While I personally find it creepy and extremely boring it would be a great way to hold a virtual face-to-face meeting with co-workers scattered around town or across the globe. If you listen to NPR's call-in shows they often have questions from a Second Life character. To me, this best illustrates the point made that library services must be personalized and that we must meet users where they work, study and play. NPR has reached out to folks who feel more comfortable as an animated avatar, but nonetheless, these avatars have valid, intelligent questions to pose.

Technorati - Thing 14

Blog Information Profile for SnookyJane

Shallow Thoughts by Sherrie has been claimed on Technorati and it ranks 4,758,329. Woo-hoo!

If I ever have anything deep to say the blog will be the place.

It's taken me a bit to get used to adding the tags/labels at the bottom of the posts, but it's really easy to do with Blogger. Technorati is pretty easy to navigate and it uses your Google ID. Like a lot of other sites it allows you to add a profile, a photo of yourself and a biography. If you're blogging aboug quantum physics you might want to include your PhD in subject. ;)

I searched the blog posts for "Learning 2.0" and got 397 returns. That's not too bad considering a Google search would have resulted in thousands. When I searched the tags I got 174 items ... better still. The directory has a Web 2.0 folder under Technology but you have to slog through too many blogs for this to be that useful.

Del.icio.us - Thing 13

A few years ago I had an opportunity to sit along a reference librarian at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission for about an hour. Reference librarians there find themselves answering the same questions numerous times over. For example: How do I get a Texas driver's license? They store email responses they can call up and use as templates to answer a question. Along with the process they have dozens and dozens of bookmarks stored because they tend to get a lot of similar types of questions, such as can you provide statistics on: education, population, economy, etc.

Del.icio.us would work brilliantly in this such a situation where one is doing heavy research. The social networking aspect, hmmmm, not so sure about that one in a professional setting. As librarians we need to make sure the information we provide is accurate and from reliable sources. If the sharing were done via a network of fellow researchers/librarians it would be beneficial.

I did open a Del.icio.us account and found adding bookmarks to be easy. It was nice to have a list of them right at my fingertips, so to speak, with the sidebar. The tags really didn't do much for me.

Update on OverDrive

Didi sent a link for a Windows Media Player upgrade and it worked like a charm.

Here's the message she sent: Windows Media Player really messed up their last release, and even though it's the "newest", lots of folks are having problems with it.

Try this "upgrade" from Microsoft: http://drmlicense.one.microsoft.com/...en/indivit.asp
If the "upgrade" button is grayed out, you need to "enable addons" under "Tools", then "Manage Add-ons". Enable the ones that are from Microsoft and any that say Overdrive (I wouldn't mess with any others). After you complete that upgrade, go back to Overdrive, then do Tools - Security Update.

If that button is still grayed out, try these instructions: http://forums.techarena.in/media-player/713430.htm#post4092591. They should do the same thing, essentially. This set of instructions worked on my computer here at work.

Thanks

Web 2.0 Awards - Thing 19

Upcoming Events

More of langston2941's events

This is a badge you can get from Upcoming, which works on a Yahoo ID. The format reminds me a little of SAPL's Evanced, but with Upcoming one can post events on a virtual calendar not tied to a particular organization or agency.

Upcoming can be a great place to publicize our programs, particularly ones that came up too late to put in Bookmarks.

You can also add events you are interested in to Yahoo and Google calendars and some other applications.

I looked at a couple of other winners - Comiqs and Im Cooked - and can't see any professional value, but on a personal basis they are a lot of fun to use.

Google Docs - Thing 18

As a library committee member who was responsible for preparing a proposal, I can relate to the fictional Sam in the intro video. I would mail out a draft and my fellow committee members would make changes, additions, suggestions, etc. I would get back four or five revisions over a period of a few days and I had to correlate all those revisions. Google Docs would have made the process much simpler.

This is something I will keep in mind for future use.

As one of the now legions who attended library school online WebCT served a similar purpose for the composition of group projects. It is nice to see something that will serve the non-academic community.

This will also be a great tool to share with patrons who need to type up a resume and "store" it online. If you copy and paste into an email account you can lose formatting and if you save as an attachment you have to have the supporting software on the next computer.

As a matter of fact I wrote this post as a sample Google Doc and copied it over to my blog.

NetLibrary and OverDrive - Thing 22

In looking over the list of things I still need to do I thought Thing 22 would be so easy since I'm already familiar with both NetLibrary and OverDrive.

It's been a few months since I've downloaded anything from OverDrive and in that time period I got a new computer. It runs Vista. I won't say anything about that other than I have some issues with Vista.

I found an audiobook I wanted on OverDrive (usually what I want isn't available, but I settled on something tonight). My OverDrive software is on the old computer so I had to download it to this one. No problems so far ... then I try to listen to the audiobook and get this message: Unable to acquire license to play the selected title. The selected title requires a newer version of the Windows Media Player security upgrade (2.5.0.1) than is currently installed (2.5.0.0) Please upgrade the security of yours Windows Media Player by selecting "Tools > Windows Media Player Security Upgrade ..." from within OverDrive Media Console. I do that and get nothing! It won't do anything!

I LOVE VISTA ... NOT!!!

To make a long story short I have the latest version of Windows Media Player so there's nothing I can download. I search and search for the security update and can't find it. Until I can figure out what to do about this I'll have to fire up the old computer to listen to OverDrive books.

This might be something we could encounter from patrons one day. I never had a problem with OverDrive when using Windows, and I am a BIG fan of OverDrive. I was so glad to see tht some have become iPod compatible.

Rolling with Rollyo - Thing 12

Select...Eatin' in SASearch The Web

The title didn't pop up, but it's called Eatin' in SA and it has a few sites that include lots of San Antonio restaurants.

I put one of my favorite restaurants - Lorenzo's - on there and once I had Rollyo on my blog I searched "Italian restaurants" and got several of Lorenzo's various pages as returns. A few too many for my tastes.

While I really like the concept of Rollyo I am going to have to get a lot more familiar with it before I start using it with any confidence.

A Day at the Gardens - Thing 6

Goodreads - Thing 11

If one is administering a library blog or website then Good Reads is a no-brainer. What better way to promote new titles and renew interest in the classics.

Personally I found Good Reads a bit frustrating when trying to add Friends. I wanted to invite a lot of my Facebook folks, but Good Reads classified them as good matches, possibly false positive matches and no matches and didn't give me an option to continue.

Generators - Thing 10

By using the RoutanBabyMaker 3000 this is what a child would look like if Angelina Jolie and Angelina Jolie had a baby. The generator is animated and you can post the code to myspace, but I couldn't get the code to work on Blogger.

Obviously I got that bug worked out. Be sure you use sound when you view this because the baby coos and giggles.

I used a couple of other generators, too. One created a soccer shirt for your favorite team. I didn't care too much for the final product.

Another one let me create my own Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor and name it. After adding sweet cream and chocolate as the base, white chocolate chunks and walnuts and caramel swirls what else could it be called - Does This Make My Butt Look Big?

The generator is fun to play with and I can see some real uses for creating fun program promotions.

RSS - Thing 8

RSS is waaaayyyyyy simpler than I expected. For some odd reason I thought it would be constant live streaming video ... go figure.

The beauty of Google Reader is that it becomes your own nutshell, if you will, where you can keep little nuggets of information and view them quickly.

I like the fact that I can store my favorite newspaper sites and glance at the new stuff ever so often without wading through the things I've already read.

Google Reader is definitely going to be a keeper for me.

As far as RSS use in a library I think it would be a great way to update patrons on new things, such as telephone notification, groundbreakings, branch closures for construction, and to send out program reminders or changes.

7 1/2 Habits - Thing 2

While the video wants you to focus on what you want most from the 2.0 experience (RSS feeds) it really made me think about the other things I've wanted to learn - kayaking, ballroom dancing.

I always have an excuse ... too this, too that, yada yada ... but if you develop the habit of addressing the obstacles then you will obliterate those excuses.

Being a librarian I have no problem reading books on subjects, and I LOVE gadgets so I've got lots of them. Motivating myself to learn by signing a contract may just be a good way to get off the couch and stop imagining and do it!!

How cool is this? - Thing 7

Photo from Next Nature



As one blogger wrote: It's cute and kinda gross at the same time.

Researchers in Tokyo this week announced they used cells to create a figure about 1/5 th of an inch tall.

They took a doll-shaped mold and cultivated 100,000 cell capsules — 0.1-millimeter balls of collagen, each coated with dozens of skin cells — and put them in the mold for a day. When the cell capsules formed a mass of tissue, it was placed in a culture solution where it lived for another day.

It was created "to demonstrate a new method for fabricating three-dimensional living biological structures ..."

The researchers also tried the method with human liver cells. Lead researcher Shoji Takeuchi said the method can be used to create bodily organs and tissues with complex cellular structures which could prove useful in regenerative medicine and drug development.

“The overall shape can be controlled by changing the mold,” said Takeuchi, who expressed a desire to combine multiple types of cells to create a complex system that functions as a living organism.

Botanical Gardens - Thing 5

Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall, there's ALWAYS something blooming at the San Antonio Botanical Gardens. Once you walk inside the sounds of the busy city vanish and are replaced with the sounds of nature.

Naturally flowing water, the splashing of fountains, birds chirping ... it's one of the most peaceful and beautiful places on Earth.

Ah, blogging - Thing 3 & Thing 4

Maybe because - by nature - I am an introvert, but blogging has never really appealed to me.

It is a great tool to use when you're involved with a committee. You can toss up an idea to your fellow committee members (read bloggers) and post minutes or ask questions that need answers quickly. Yahoo Groups was a bit of a forerunner in this realm in that you could post comments, ideas, etc. and send emails to fellow participants.

I Googled blogs and found Google Blog Search. Clicking there brought up a list of various blogs on various topics. There are 160 blogs that discuss New York Gov. David Paterson's decision to name Kirsten Gillilbrand to the U.S. Senate, and the announcement came just a few hours before. Kelly Osbourne heading back to rehab is mentioned on 39 blogs. The fact that President Obama headlined several Italian newspapers was the subject of 16 blogs.

Some people simply copy and paste news stories found on various news agencies' websites. The ones that truly confound me are the people who post the minutiae of their lives on the World Wide Web.