Monday, March 31, 2008

Thing 12: Social Media Sites

Theoretically, the power and potential of these tools for helping readers influence the media are enormous. The application, however, seems to popularize the cute and weird, rather than the revolutionary. At least that's my opinion after today's browse of Digg, Mixx, and Reddit. Newsvine seems a little less fascinated with the bizarre and more attuned to news. It may be important for me to realize what people are reading in order to anticipate reference questions. But in my reference work in an academic library, I encounter users more interested in course-related resources and scholarly publications than in the popular press.

At first glance, the categories of Digg make it seem easier to use and more relevant; until you dig into them and find 'world and business' lumped into one. That's a pretty large category. Reddit seems to have the most information on the opening screen, with the option to sort by popular and recent, making it easier to scan for the 'lastest thing.

I'll keep exploring and hoping for more applicability but my initial foray leaves me feeling more overwhelmed than assisted.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Thing 11: Tagging

I love Del.icio.us! I've just solved the problem of how to access my bookmarks when I'm at school. I think I'm going to use this tool a lot to organize my own finds. It will help to eliminate that nagging feeling of remorse tinged with deja vu - knowing that I found a really cool website on that topic at one time but now can't remember what it was called or how to return to it. I really like the mutability of tagging; if I find another tag to be more useful in the future I can add it. And being able to add more than one tag for multifaceted sites is great. I was really impressed with how the Seldovia and Menasha libraries have used this tool to organize sites for their clients. What a simple way to create pathfinders for Internet resources.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Thing 10: Wikis

I edited the 23 Things wiki by adding Jenny Levine's line: "Life is all about having more fun than you can think of and it starts at the library."

I participated in a class wiki in Joyce Yukawa's Intro to Reference and Online Services class at St. Kate's in fall 2006. Our class shared search strategies for the course exercises. It is a really useful tool for creating community; collectively the members were able to create something much better than each would have been able to do individually.

Wikis can be really helpful in a workplace where folks can't easily meet face-to-face. They can preserve the wisdom of those with more experience and help orient newer folks to institutional procedures and ethos. They are living documents, unlike printed manuals, so they can be easily updated as needed. And they can be portals to other wikis/websites. I also like the democratic ideal of a wiki; everyone can contribute and benefit from a collective project. Why should each person reinvent the wheel. Wikis let us pool our knowledge, reduce redundancy, and improve efficiency! Wiki on!

Thing 8

I explored Slideshare. I was able to quickly upload a Powerpoint presentation that I created for a class project and share it with the rest of the world. Almost too quickly. After I realized that it was public, I began to worry that the bulk of the project was not mine. I had merely created the GIS metadata for an online mapping application currently in development in the geography department at the U. Did I have permission to share their work? My presentation included screenshots of the application in addition to my process for creating the metadata and examples of it.

Despite my nervousness about sharing, I think online slidesharing is great. The Picture Trail slideshow posted on the 23 Things blog is really cool and would be a great way to showcase public events at the library on the library's website. And these tools help those in small libraries without a lot of IT staff to enhance their web presence.

I hear a lot of talk about electronic portfolios so I was excited to see eFolio Minnesota. I would recommend it to students and look forward to exploring it further.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Thing 14: LibraryThing

I created a LibraryThing account after a readers' advisory class to help me remember what I read. So in order to complete this thing, I only needed to copy the code to the sidebar of my blog. Pretty simple and a really attractive way to share books. LibraryThing could be a great way for smaller libraries to catalog their collections and share them with browsers.

Thing 9

I've used Google Docs to collaborate with others on class projects. It's very easy to use; all project members can work concurrently or as they are able; and it's accessible from anywhere with an internet connection. Brilliant. However, as word processing programs go, its pretty elementary. We've found that once we've finalized our document, we need to export it back into Word for final formatting, especially if we want to use anything fancy, like graphics, tables, or headers/footers.

I haven't used Zoho and have requested permission to be allowed to edit the doc. Stay tuned for the comparison.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Thing 7

As a part-time reference assistant, I haven't yet gotten any emails from patrons but the regular librarians do use it to communicate amongst themselves. However, in my last job email was the predominant form of communication so I quickly found it necessary to implement some of the productivity tips that Merlin Mann mentioned, such as limiting my checking email to 4-6 times a day rather than constantly. That made it easier for me to employ templates for responding to routine questions and some issues did solve themselves without my intervention. Folders helped a lot in organizing correspondence, especially from regular contacts.

My first experience with IM reference was terrifying because I hadn't used it before. I felt the sender wanted an instant response and because I was learning both reference and IM on the fly, I didn't respond as quickly as I would have liked. Now that I've set up a Yahoo messaging account and goofed around a bit, the process seems a lot less intimidating.

Unfortunately I don't have a cell or mobile device so I didn't try texting.

I viewed an archived Minitex webinar about Business Source Premier. It was a helpful orientation to the databases nd I will feel more confident using it and suggesting it to our business/management students. I was surprised that there was so little response or feedback from webinar participants; the opportunity for interactivity doesn't always mean that folks will avail themselves of it. I will continue to check the OPAL and Minitex archives and register for upcoming live webinars to build my skills.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Thing 5: Shelf puzzle


Shelf puzzle
Originally uploaded by rmourningdove

It was incredibly easy to create this puzzle from a photo, upload it to Flickr, and then blog about it. Kind of makes me wish the photo were more artistic.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Thing 6: Online Image Generators


Children's Lit trading card
Originally uploaded by rmourningdove

Look, a trading card! This was fairly easy to do. It would be more interesting with a better photograph, with a librarian or library mascot, like the Reading Raccoon. I can imagine some neat applications in addition to using trading cards in place of business cards for academic subject specialists. How about using them to publicize the meeting dates of a book group using a photocollage of the year's books? Or to publicize an author event. Neat tool.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Thing 4: Flickr, part 2

CSC library shelf
CSC library shelf,
originally uploaded by rmourningdove.
Another photo from the St. Kate's library

Thing 4: Flickr.

CSC library Austen display
CSC library Austen display,
originally uploaded by rmourningdove.
Here's one of my photos from the library at the College of St. Catherine. The display was created by undergraduate student workers to promote the works of Jane Austen alongside the TPT broadcast of the movie versions of her works.

It actually took longer for me to take the photographs than to set up the Flickr account, upload, label and tag them.

Flickr is incredibly easy to use, especially since I already had a Yahoo account. I think Flickr would be a really useful tool to chronicle a library's book/video displays, and to share them with remote users. It could also be used to keep a visual record of events: author talks, book groups, storytime, etc. I'm looking forward to using it to share personal photos with friends.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Thing 3: RSS is really spectacular, sweetheart!

Wow, in about 5 minutes I set up a Google Reader and subscribed to five feeds (rarin' librarian, shifted librarian, zenhabits, and unclutterer blogs and Grist's enviromental newsfeed). I then spent the next 55 minutes reading. It really is addicting. But I've answered my own question about finding time to keep up with blogs. This will put them all in one place. The next step for me will be discerning which of the feeds are important and being diligent about jettisoning those that aren't.