More Thing 12

I edited NEFLIN's 23 Things wiki. I added a page on other library wikis and edited the side bar.

I like the collaborative aspect of wikis and the vast amount of info available. As with all things on the Internet, we have to be smart information consumers and use reliable sources.

More Thing 12

I looked at St. Joseph County Public Library's Subject Guides. Very nice use of community and library information. Nicely organized and up to date.

Book Lovers Wiki has possibilities tho there are many sites that gather book reviews and favorites.

I've looked at Library Success wiki before. I've used it in researching different projects.

The Albany Co. staff wiki is similar to what I set up for our library staff. Good ideas of more items to add.

In the Blogging Libraries wiki I added to blog site for New River's blog. Easy to do. I also added this wiki to my Delicious tags. I'll read other blogs to see what other libraries are doing.

There is so much information on the Internet, both good and bad. I love how we have access to so much idea and information sharing.

I am now officially a Thing 10 fan

I went to Gale database (Infotrac) training yesterday. Our trainer, Julie, showed us how to bookmark searches so that we could find them again, say if this related to a school assignment. Since they are persistent (stable) URLs we can add them to Delicious.

I tested it and it works. Yeah! Also works with the Backpack feature in Kids Infobits. Julie said that the Galenet URLs are usually stable. You can use the bookmark or Backpack feature in Infotrac.

Great use for a Delicious reference set of bookmarks.

I'm liking Thing 10 more and more

I just added 23Things@NEFLIN to my Delicious list. I can never remember its exact address and I was going to NEFLIN's website to find the blog. Now I have it in Delicious and it is much easier to find. I noticed that 23 other people have added it to Delicious.

Thing 12: Wikis

I read over the info on wikis, and viewed the video. I'm familiar with wikis as I have created one for our staff. It is for internal use so you won't be able to see it. It replaced our intranet.

More on wikis later.

Back to Thing 11

I looked around at the sites Digg, Reddit, Newsvine, Mixx. I'm going to like Newsvine since I like to read all sorts of news topics. Got sidetracked on reading an article.

I submitted a link to Reddit since I already have an account there. My son told me about this long ago tho I have not used it much. I had to copy and paste the URL in. Delicious was much easier to use since it grabbed the URL automatically.

On the page I chose to submit, I counted 30 social networking sites (all with cute little logos) where you could submit the link. Too many,information overload!

I'm excited about Thing 10

I just found a real live use for Delicious.

In looking at the WebJunction web site for some info--love that site--I found something else that is interesting but I am not ready to use it right now.

How to remember it? Tag it by using Delicious! A teachable moment!

Thing 11: Social networking

I started on Thing 11. Watched the video--love those videos. I also looked at Mixx. I'm a bit familiar with Reddit and Mixx looks to be similar.

I've seen the share and article tools on various websites. Now I know better what they do.

As to use in libraries...there are many links we can make between these sharing tools, and with bookmarks such as Delicious. I can see some value in a library setting but wonder if these links would be used. I wonder if others feel like I do sometimes...too much information.

Thing 10, part 3

I'm suffering from information overload. I looked at NEFLIN's Delicious list of bookmarks and saw several I'd like to investigate...time permitting.

Delicious will be useful for libraries in creating booklists and bookmarks for patrons.

Thing 10, part 2

I looked at Delicious a bit more and imported all of my bookmarks. I spent some time deleting bookmarks for sites I no longer use.

This is something I've thought about before..using bookmarks. I no longer bookmark as many sites as I used to. Perhaps more familiarity with the web is one reason, but I think a bigger reason is the powerful Google search engine. It's easy to find a website and info inside a website. You don't have to remember the website exactly, just a good question to ask.

Thing 10

I began exploring Delicious. I've heard about it but never investigated what it was all about. I like the little video that goes with some of the Things, short and very good at explaining the Thing.

I've registered for Delicious and imported bookmarks. I know I'm going to like Delicious. Librarians like to organize and Delicious certainly does that. I'm looking forward to tagging new sites and organizing them.

I can see benefits for libraries. I've seen some libraries that do this and I can see how it would help in organizing websites that correlate with student assignments, or booklists for readers.

I'll investigate Delicious more later on today.

Catch up week

I'm caught up. I've been reading various blogs and leaving comments.

Thing 9, part 3

I looked at Lazybase but it does not seem to be working. Might be a good tool to put together some booklists.

I also looked at 50 Web 2.0 Tools...probably more than I'll ever use, but nice to know they are out there. I did not realize all the picture help that was available. Another new thing from 23Things@Neflin. Thanks NEFLIN.

Thing 9, part 2

Big Huge Labs has many neat tools to work with photos. I created a mosaic. Again I can see uses for photo tools on web pages and blogs. Maybe the load time isn't a big deterrent. Our libraries have speedy connections and more and more home connections are by DSL.

Here's my mosaic.

Thing 9

Well that was fun. I looked at Picture Trail and created a puzzle type slide show. The site made it easy to customize and gave me the code to embed on my blog.

Options make for a jazzier presentation than Power Point and it is easy to embed the code on your web page or blog. Many possibilities here. Do all the fancy graphics slow down the load time of a web page? We are notoriously impatient.

Thing 8

I've used IM at home to keep in touch with my children...my only two buddies at home.

We've used GoogleTalk IM in our libraries for quite a while. I find it has been a great time saver. We get answers to quick questions almost immediately...no longer waiting for an email reply. Saves on long distance phone charges too.

I am familiar with text messaging though I have not used it.

I've taking part in several web conferences and online training. I even went to a workshop at NEFLIN on the OPAL web conferencing software tho I have not used it yet.

And I Twitter too. I've heard about this communication method but finally learned about it over Christmas. My son and I were visiting my daughter in California. Nathan keep messaging and when I asked him what he was doing, he explained and showed Twitter to me. He was tweeting about the Pacific Ocean instead of looking at it!

I can see uses for all of these communication methods in our libraries. Interacting with students where they live and communicate would help them think of libraries when they need information.

Thing 7

I tried an image generator. Here is my first attempt. It's from ImageCchef and it is easy to use.

This one is from ImageChef also.

This one is fun. Another one from ImageChef .

I can see many uses for this in our libraries. There are many image generators to work with. I think I'll put the Florida license plate on my library blog right now.

Thing 6, part 2

Looked at some more mashups. Put a frame around a camellia photo.

Thing 6

I looked at the puzzle generator and made a puzzle. Not sure what to do with it or how I can use it but will think about it.

And I mashed up a word and images. Have to figure out if I can make them all camellia photos. Would be nice if you could spell library with books or something library related.

I find it hard to read the blue text on black background on this spelling mashup page.

Thing 5, part 2

I've realized I spelled camellia incorrectly in the name of my blog. Duh!

I fixed the header, but don't think I can change the link name without further complications.

Thing 5

I'm a bit familiar with photo sites. I've viewed NEFLIN's Flickr account before 23 Things.

I watched the Commoncraft video about online sharing took the online tour of Flickr.

Commoncraft pointed out that on line sharing is a way to back up your photos, something I had not considered. The Flickr tour was interesting and informative.

I searched for camellias (!) and found there were 23,842 photos of camellias, and I'd wager that they were all different. Lovely flowers. Here's one that I particularly liked. It's a photo of a Camellia Japonica (variety name not listed, Wikipedia says there are more than 2000 varieties of Japonica) taken by jam343 and posted in April 2006.

All of the photos on Flickr are taken by better picture takers than I am! Above one of my camellias.

I decided not to sign up for a Flickr account since I personally already use another photo sharing service: Snapfish.

I'm still not sure about a Flickr account for the library.