Thing #14 Online Productivity "LibraryThing"

I enjoy working with LibraryThing. I started to set it up for our book club but then changed to a more generic site. I will definately look into using this at a later date for our book club. I would also have a link to it for our college library site. It's nice to have so many book reviews at your fingertips. I got some great ideas for books to purchase for my library and to read for book club. It is easy to navigate around this site. It was fun to read what others had said about the books I have read recently. Confirmed that I wasn't the only one not liking Cornwalls newest. I already turned my book club onto it, now I will share with my library patrons. FUN!

Thing #13 Online Productivity

This was an interesting "Thing". I tried several of the online calendars. Kiko was not easy to use at all, I did get an account activated with Spongecell which was quite easy to do, I have more accounts and passwords than I care to remember. I set up some tasks in Spongecell which was user friendly. I don't think I would use those online reminders much, post it notes work really well for me! I made an account in Remember the Milk just because I liked the name. I fiddled around with it and added some tasks but again, 3M will still make money from me on Post It notes. I did make myself an IGoogle page and liked working with that. I like the items that conform to my homepage and have their own easy access button on my taskbar. Something I have to log into each time does not save me any time. Its been fun to see what is out there and trying to figure out a way to put it all with in reach or a click will be the desired result.
I have been playing around with my IGoogle page and out of all the productivity tools this one I will use the most. It is very easily accessible and I can add exactly what I will use the most on it.

Thing #12 Social Media, Digg, Mixx

These sites I thouroughly enjoyed. I am a newshound and to see other news items from different sources was great. I liked them all, but I would use Newsvine more than the others in that I liked the way their site was set up. I tried to share several articles and kept getting a security certificate issue. I don't know if that is our college problem or if it was an internet issue. I will try again tomorrow. I especially liked the local news in Newsvine. Gave articles from not only the star/trib but city pages. This was a fun "Thing" to do, one of my favorites. At first I thought it would be a productivity detractor just because there is so much to look at but once I got looking around I think it can be an productivity enhancer. I am definately going to tag some of these site.

Thing # 11 Tagging and Del.icio.us

I enjoyed Del.icio.us. I can see some uses for this for our library. It would be nice to have sites bookmarked that you can access anywhere. I come across some good sites and then try and look later for them and my menapausal mind just can't seem to locate them again. This would work well for sharing of sites. I tried to watch the 8 minute tutorial and it would not open for me. I did find a site http://www.go2web20.net/ that I have shared with some of our faculty. Like one of them said, "its overwhelming, whats out there". This site puts it all in one place for you. I looked at Furl and Pagekeeper but our school uses D2L IMS software for sharing and discussion and it seems to work well for our students and faculty.

Thing #10 Wiki's

I've been looking at all the wiki links and really searching my brain as to why we would use one for our library. I can see uses of project involvement with others, I like the library that showed all their new items by month. I could see us doing that but I could also do that in a blog. Unless I would want feedback about something we were doing, I don't think I would wiki, wiki, wiki!
I did go out to 23 things on a stick wiki and put in a comment in the comment tab.
I've looked at several of the wiki examples. I am still having a hard time thinking of uses for our library. I joined PBWiki and have been playing around with that. I'm beginning to feel a little overwhelmed with all the tools. I am at a stage in my career where I want to downsize my work load, all these tools seem to make more work?? Maybe I haven't used them enough. I have a hard enough time checking emails, much less blogs, wiki's etc. I have enjoyed learning about all the tools, just need to see where it would be practical to use them. Our college uses D2L for alot of our sharing, discussions, course info.

Thing #9 Online Collaboration

I set up an account in both Zohowriter and Google Docs. The first problem I had was that it would not upload a Office 07 doc. I changed it and it uploaded fine. I edited in both and they were both very easy to use. I went to publish in both of them to my blog and it said it did but I can't find it anywhere...will continue with Thing #9.....

Thing #8

I fooled around with Picture Trail, the download was pretty slow, so I uploaded the faster version and I could not find the pictures I had saved. So I started over and it went fairly well although it put doubles in of two pictures. The picture cube is cool, not placed very well on the page. I could see utilizing some of the picture tools. Have some pictures coming later this week of our "Amazing Race" so I'll play around with that.

Thing #7 Communication

Since I am a one-woman show at our library, I have yet to set up a online reference desk. I am very interested in IM and how that could work as a reference desk. Our students have their own student email account but I find that most of them use their own personal email. We tell them constantly to check their student email as that is our preferred mode of communication. Some do, some don't. I just had two students today (as we are into a month of the semester) tell me they didn't know they had an account. I see most of them on facebook, myspace etc. I truly think having a library blog will be the way of communicating with them. Email is going out. I need to get on board with IM as I see them using that more and more. I have yet to test message anyone because I rarely use my cell phone and we don't allow them on in the library as we do so much testing for distance classes.
I did not attend any webinars through Minitex or OPAL but have attended quite a few through MNPALS and enjoy that route rather than driving 200 miles in January. The information I need from the webinars is easily understood and a great way to disseminate the info.

Clara in her Brett favre jersey

DSC00280,
originally uploaded by campbean.

Trying Flickr again to see if I can get it where I want it

Ongoing RSS saga

Well I got CNN top stories to feed but that really isn't exactly what I wanted to accomplish. I will continue to see how I can get my favorites...

RSS Feed

I thought I had the RSS feed uploaded but it wasn't what I selected so I deleted it. I am having one heck of a time getting what I want in my blog. I'm still working on it...

Thing #6 Online Image Generator

This was great fun! I can see using alot of these features on a regular basis.

Thing #5

My creation,
originally uploaded by campbean.

I chose to create a puzzle with Flickr. It was pretty easy, I might be getting the hang of this!

Thing #3

I played around with the RSS feeds and am not satisfied with my outcome. I selected several "favorites" and they were not the feeds that showed up in my blog. I am going to play some more with it, but for now have an RSS feed running just not the one I wanted! :)
I can see where this would be quite useful so I want to get a handle on working with the RSS feeds.

Thing #4

I enjoyed working with Flickr, just don't know how the blog and it connect?? I ended up uploading these photos from my camera not Flickr. I guess I am feeling quite lost at this point. I can see where it would be very useful to use Flickr I am just not understanding how to connect the two? Any suggestions...

"Thing #2"

I am just getting my feet wet on this Library and Web 2.0 jargon. Very interesting comments by Mr. Abrams and the blog by John. I do feel that we need to service our library community by whatever means possible. I want to reach my 20 to 30 year old customers in my library and if learning blogging, wiki's, myspace etc I am more than game to do that. I find it all very interesting and fun trying to think of ways to incorporate these features for my library here at NTC. Some of our program areas are already using Second Life so I hope to work with them on including a virtual library. I remember years ago when the internet was going to be a crucial part of libraries and how some old school librarians were not thrilled to be a part of it. I don't want to feel that way about Library 2.0. I want to embrace the changes and hope that I can reach my younger (and older) audience with these tools.

New "Thing"

I look forward to really hitting the "stick" so to speak next week and continuing the adventure of "23 things". I've taken some time to view other blogs and they have been very helpful. It is especially nice to get to know other librarian types in my region! Hope everyone has a nice weekend and it looks like we are finally on the temperature upswing!