Thing 22: Staying Current

As I come to the sunset of my Neflin 23 Things Blog I thought I'd share my motivations for the future.

Yes, I will do my best to keep blogging...I'm thinking of starting something new and different. Something where I can share my thoughts and ideas. Something akin to my favorite blog to catch up with, Josh Jubinsky's Library Storytime Blog. His blog is wonderful and very inspiring!

I'm not sure if it will be a librarianship related...youth services related...still thinking about it.

Just this week I made my first YouTube video for the Library's homepage. Let me tell you, it was harder than it seems but I'm pretty happy with how it came out. I'm glad we are embracing this new way to reach out to patrons.

I've been looking back at my previous posts and some are more interesting than others - some are very wordy, others short, but all will certainly clue you in to my opinions of this process. Blogs are supposed to be opinionated, right??

Thing 21: Student 2.0 Tools

When I was in high school, I had a well meaning English teacher who forced us to map our entire research paper onto index cards. We had to assign subject headings, sources, discussion topics...the works. I hated it. I felt like I was writing the paper ten times before I actually got to touch the page.

To me, my brain just doesn't work in a linear 1...2...3...you're done! sort of way. I like to jump all over the place, diving in where needed, cutting things out at the last minute, shifting direction as I see the need...

These tools are facinating and interesting, but they are so formulaic. I think the process of actually committing the information from understanding to knowledge is not as easy as these tools make it seem. If you going to demonstrate true mastery of the topic you might need to deviate from this "schedule." Also, by the time you are in college you should be beyond the "what is a thesis" question.

I thought, okay, I'll give the Assignment Calculator another go...perhaps as a project reminder service, and that email function is only for UM students.

I think that these resources are neat and I'd recommend them for a student that just didn't know where to start. Otherwise, I think they are a distraction from the task at hand. I'm not against "Student 2.0" just against trying to dictate the pattern by which we learn.

Off my soapbox now.

p.s. The handouts on RPC are neat, I bookmarked those.

Thing 20: Books 2.0

Booooooks!

Thank you for bringing Books 2.0 into this discussion. I secretly want a Kindle because it gives me massive techno-envy. I mean, I can be on the beach and download a novel right then and there. Wowee zowee. Anyone have one I could play with for a while?

I played around with Books on My Phone, which I would TOTALLY do if I wasn't too cheap to decline the data plan for my phone. Although I love the printed page I think the features of electronic books are awesome and right up my alley.

I was VERY sad to see that LookyBook has gone away. Britta and I shared some free moments there a few months ago enjoying the full page electronic versions of these contemporary kids books. Bye Bye Lookybook, so nice to know you...

I have Visual Bookshelf on my Facebook profile...this reminds me that I need to update it soon.

I also found some great wallpapers for my computer from the Vintage Children's Book Flickr pool. Beautiful!

Thing 19: Other Social Networks

I have a confession to make and it's going to give my age away.

I've joined a Ning for the combined 20 YEAR reunion for Allen D. Nease High School classes of 89-90-91. They hunted me down, said all sorts of nice things to me about how they missed me and I joined the Ning. Class of 1991 - Go Panthers! (it's not been 20 years for me. yet.)

Wow. I feel old.

The Ning is neat in that only those who are invited can join and we feel very comfortable in our 30 something world of career and personal updates. You create a profile very much like Facebook or MySpace and you can customize the Ning to do all sorts of whiz-bang things. Members have posted videos of themselves surfing, scanned pictures from high school (YIKES!!!), added polls, comments, created message boards. Overall, I really, really like the Ning format. I'm really comfortable with the Facebook style features and it feels more conversational than a Wiki.

It has latest a latest activity newsfeed, slideshows, newest members joined...you can also make your profile page look spiffy with themes, widgets and such.

I would love to see our youth services team move to a Ning. We use a wiki now and it feels cumbersome.

Oh, if only I didn't have to feel old to join my first Ning.

Thing 18: Facebook and MySpace

I'll have to admit, I get a certain bit of happiness when someone becomes my "friend" on MySpace or Facebook. It's like a tangible proclamation that we ARE friends.

Yay! You like me!

I use Facebook the most these days; mainly to catch up with college buddies that have moved on to glamorous world destinations while I stay in quiet little St. Augustine. They post pictures of themselves with celebrities and I post pictures of my kids.

I've joined a few library related groups on Facebook (I can thank Jae for turning me on to most of the cool widgets and stuff there). Ask a Librarian is there with a direct link to the service. I think that is the best way to use Facebook.

It makes sense to develop a presence there reminding friends of your good deeds and upcoming activities. Like I said on my Twitter post, I've fallen in love with the "microblogging" feature of the status update. Wouldn't it be cool to create a presence for your library and post things like,

"SJCPLS is really looking forward to the Florida Heritage Book Festival this weekend!"

"Clifford had a wonderful time at Storytime this morning."

"Did you know the Main Library benefited from 455 volunteer hours in March. Awesome!"

"Have you hugged your Librarian today?"

See? Cute and useful!

Thing 17: Podcasts

I had fun with this one...podcasts are super neat. I explored Podcast.com for parenting and library related podcasts. I was able to find a podcast that combined my love for non-fiction and parenting. I listened to an author talk from The Feminine Mistake about why women should work. Hmmm. Interesting.

I couldn't do too much with podcasting at work since I'm on the desk most of the time (shh!! quiet around here!) but I've explored them frequently in my free time at home.

I LOVE the idea of creating your own podcasts. Like pretending you were your own radio broadcaster...but without all of the money required to rent a license and tower.

Thing 16: YouTube

No. No. No. You WILL NOT watch YouTube at the Library.

That's what my computers at work have been telling me on this "thing." Apparently streaming video is a space hog on our already crowded Internet lines so YouTube has been ixnayed from our staff computers. I waste enough time on YouTube at home so I certainly don't need to go there now...

One funny aside, while my hubby was in class last night (FSU LIS class of 2011, go team!) they were discussing the use of YouTube clips to promote information literacy instruction. They watched a painfully awful clip about evaluating website validity featuring a college student dressed up like Elvis. Seriously.

Here it is, watch it if you dare.

Viva La YouTube!

Thing 15: Rollyo

Ewww. I have to admit, Rollyo doesn’t really do it for me. I created a profile, created my own snazzy “Searchroll” and played around with it…not too impressed. Sorry Neflin 23 things but I’m not rollin’ with the Rollyo.

I created a frugal shopping Searchroll and added several of my favorite online deal sites and blogs. Tried a few searches and got very strange irrelevant hits. I tried "stroller" and "wii" certainly things that should come up with some interesting results, no?

The results were almost what I was looking for but not quite there. Perhaps I’m a novice user…perhaps I’ve got no patience today (maybe it’s the clouds) but I’m not sold on it. The ads kind of threw me too. Personally, I think the results page is little too commercial heavy for me to recommend it to patrons. Maybe it’s my sour mood, I dunno. Libraries could certainly give it a whirl but I wouldn't push it.

Here’s my profile if you want to try my Searchroll out. While you're at it, find me some great deals, ok?

Thing 14: Online Productivity Tools

Let me use this “thing” to share with you my love for calendars. When I was in 10th grade, I suddenly figured out that if I wanted to get into college I needed to get my act together. I’d been doing well in school, but I wanted to do more. And better. And faster. And easier.

My best friend was doing all sorts of snazzy extracurricular stuff, on a billion committees in clubs, going to afterschool programs, in plays and still maintaining an A average. How did she do it? She had a Daytimer.

I’ve been a Daytimer advocate ever since – I have a current one on my shelf now as a matter of fact. I rarely use it, though, because I’ve transitioned to my Palm-enabled cellphone. Now, I have all my contacts, information and calendars on my phone whenever I need it. And, it buzzes me when I have an appointment coming up – my old Daytimer never did that! It doesn't have that loved, pencil-scratched in feel that my Daytimer had, though. There's something that grabs me when I have that visual representation of my life on paper. My busy life feels real once it's been noted, reviewed and checked off.

I had great fun looking through the online calendars and other productivity tools. I’m most intrigued about calendars so after I created an IGoogle page (pretty!) I searched through the recommended calendars in the “Web’s Best Calendars” article. I can’t wait to try out Scrybe, I put myself on the list for that one. (if you have an invite could you send me one?) My husband uses Yahoo calendar for his DJ business. It’s easy and it’s nice because we can both log in at any time and see what’s up.

Libraries can use these calendars in many ways. We are going to be ditching our meeting room reservation books soon for a shared Outlook calendar. I can’t wait to do this – it has so many features that will make scheduling and tracking our reservations easier and more efficient. It also has protections that let you choose who has permission to change or edit entries. This requires some consulting with our MIS department so any library could use one of these online calendars instead to achieve the same result. I see how libraries could switch to these calendars for equipment reservations and project management, too. Let's get organized People!

Thing 13: LibraryThing

Oh my goodness, in another life I’d love, love, LOVE LibraryThing. Gosh, I wish I had the free time these days to explore and have fun with this…what a neat site for book lovers! I’ll be honest, I have so little free time and I just can’t dive in to this full steam right away. It’s like another world for bibliophiles…social networking where books are the focus! I love the shared reviews, the way you can find others who share your reading interests, the groups devoted to genres. I almost joined the non-fiction reader’s club but thought better of it. Just what I need, another website to log in to every day...I just can't do it.

I created a profile and added some books to my library bookshelf.

I'm intrigued by how Libraries are using LibraryThing...neat!

Thing 12: Wikis

Wiki! Wiki! Wiki! As easy as a peanut butter sandwich.

I’m kind of on the fence about Wikis. I think they are cool tools, especially when they are used frequently. They are a super alternative to wading through gobs and gobs of emails and letting the conversation get recorded on one page for all to see. I’ve edited the NEFLIN 23 things Wiki and added my own thoughts there.

We use a Wiki for our youth services team here at St. Johns County. It is a great way to post all sorts of things (agendas, contacts, resources, brainstorming, etc.) Like NEFLIN, we use free PB Wiki. As far as being on the fence, we just don't use it often enough for my taste for the Wiki to become as productive a tool as it can be. I think we need to tinker with the formula a bit to better tailor it to our team.

Thing 11: Social Media

Oooooooo….so that’s what all those pretty little buttons are at the bottom of the news story! Yay! I CAN learn something new here.

I played around with these sites and had some fun – on first glance I was drawn to Digg the most. Reddit’s site seemed circa 1998 to me…very text heavy and very little white space. It reminded me of the old Yahoo homepage (and I say that nostalgically and affectionately). I could figure out Digg right away. I logged into BBC news, found a cool photo montage of interesting pictures and “digged” it. Or “dug” it. Whatever.

I had to create a Digg account, but that was easy. I’m not sure how much I’ll use this, but it is need to have the power to recommend things for others to see. It gives me authority! It gives me power! It makes me look smart and well-read!

My friends use the recommendation feature on Facebook all the time; that’s how I get clued into the really interesting stuff out there. It always says something about the sender, too. I find myself trying to connect the content to the sender….hmmmm…why would she send THAT?

Figure this one out. Ha!

Thing 10: Tagging and Delicious

I think tagging and delicious are neat. It brings out my hidden inner cataloger to assign tags to my blog posts…I was tempted to call them all sorts of strange things, but I suppose that defeats the purpose of tagging effectively. I remember discussions a while ago (we’re talking a couple of years ago) with our technical services director about adding tagging functionality to our library catalog. It was interesting to debate the pros and cons of allowing our patrons to tag library holdings with their own created tags.

While I was intrigued with the positive potential (creating new ways for patrons to find our stuff; easily) I was a bit dismayed with the ability to “renegade tag.” What if our patrons assigned malicious or purposely misleading tags to items? Who would clean up the catalog with misplaced tags…what do we do with tags that are just plain wrong? Ick.

I guess I’m a purist at heart and I’m not ready to hand over our catalog to the tagging public. (we never did, by the way)

I nosed around in delicious, tagged my blog posts and had fun with this one…

Thing 9: Sharing - slides, photos, databases

Isn’t he just the picture of newborn squishy cuteness? That’s an old photo of my son, Max. I’ll tell you why he's here on Thing 9...

I had grand designs of using Picturetrail to make a cool valentines-themed spinning cube thingy to highlight the pictures from my recent Clifford birthday party program. Alas, it was not to be…the firewalls on our work computers made uploading the pictures to the Picturetrail website very challenging.

I would think that I was all…most…there…and then, BOOM, error message. Drat. Tried and tried again for about half an hour and then hung my head down in defeat.

This is a prime example of how WE, the technologically willing may be ready to zoom off into new frontiers while our current resources may send us crashing back down to earth. I persevered, though, and went about it in a round about way; I used my old Photobucket account to upload a picture (hence the really old photo of Max.) See? I told you I was getting to him sometime.

I do think these “Flicks” are neat – I could see myself spending a whole bunch of time making them to promote or celebrate programs. I’ll just be sure to upload my photos to Photobucket first next time!

Thing 8: Communication - Web 2.0 Style

I remember the day, not too long ago, when my good friend Lori showed me how to text message on my phone. I used to do it the old fashioned “scroll through the three letter choices gosh this is painfully slow” way and rarely sent messages. All of my buddies were writing me gobs and gobs of messages and I would respond with “yes, call you later” because that’s all the patience I had.

Once I learned the beauty of T9 Letter Prediction software on my phone I was in text messaging nirvana. (you have it on your phone, by the way, and probably don’t even know it.)

Anyhoo, I love the instant quick answer you can get through text messaging and I think it would be awesome if we began some sort of text SMS reference service. I found it funny that the article we were to read on texting was from 2005 and it already seemed a bit behind the times!

I think text messaging (or chatting, or even emailing) from a smartphone is the way everyone will be communicating in a few years. The Iphone has proven that people love to stay connected, informed, and organized with a small portable device. I was laughing at an article I read yesterday online...Dan Moren from Macworld.com wrote:

"Ask your average iPhone user if they spend more time on the phone or on the Net, and I guarantee that the majority of them will say something to the effect of “Holy crap, it makes phone calls too?”

Once you have a phone that does so much, you just don't want to take the time to call when a message or email will get the job done. If we, as librarians are to stay relevant we need to get on the messaging bandwagon. I'll be the first to jump on.

I've done my fair share of Ask A Librarian chat duty and I loved it…I’m a fast typist and I found it easy to interact with patrons through this service. I remember the urgent “I want it NOW!” feeling from patrons mentioned in the article. I never had a problem reminding patrons that I would take me a minute or so to look up their information. After all, through these services patrons should remember that although our method of communication is high tech it is old fashioned personal service they are after.

Thing 7: Online Image Generators

Oh, I wish I was working on my 23 Things Blog at the beach. And it was warm. And it was summer.

These image generators are very cool - now I know where all the cool kids make glitter words for MySpace. Yay, I'm cool now!

I think it would be neat for a Library to use these to promote programs or jazz up an online calendar. I'm not too fond of the "ImageChef.com" logo, but several of these aren't so obnoxious with the advertising. I thought LetterJames was very hip and European. I especially liked the Paris Metro train sign generator. I used ImageChef for my beachy logo.

Thanks for teaching me something new Neflin!

Thing 6: Flickr Mashups

'Nuff said.

Thing 5: Flickr

Isn't this the absolute best thing you've ever seen? And it's for lunch!

I have to thank the lovely Britta for sharing this with me...photo from kickedintheheadcomic.

Where the Wild Things Are Bento. Amazing! AND, to be found on Flickr! How appropriate! (Enter cheers here).

I have a Flickr account, the upgraded one, because I have way too many awesome photos of my kids. I love to take pictures and I have an older computer (boo hiss) with not a lot of storage space. I fancy myself an amateur photographer, here’s a pretty photograph I took of some friends at their wedding. Aren't they smashing?

Flickr was great for sharing wedding photos, I could post a link and everyone could oooh and ahhh as many times as they wanted to. I just checked and the photos from the wedding were viewed 240 times. Neat!

Thing 4: RSS and Newsreaders

Here’s a scenario…friendly Librarian Lisa is standing outside the door of the library every day, with a sandwich board and a stack of flyers to hand out. Think NYC street corners - but without the 90% off banners and flyers littering the road.

Stay with me, here’s where it gets good (and somewhat relevant).

She’s doing her best to hand everyone a flyer – they are advertising the good stuff we do…storytime programs, new book lists, community service meetings, legal reference – it’s ALL good stuff and you MUST take a flyer. “Please??!!” she says, waving her arms frantically.

Some take pity on her and take one. Others mumble at her under their breaths. Some ask her out for a coffee and sandwich.

RSS is the sandwich board/flyer approach of Library 2.0. We can PUSH our message to everyone who wants it; and politely ignore those who decline. Those to want to stay in touch with our happenings can get the best we have to offer in an easy to read format.

I’ve registered for Google Reader (go Google, go Google…). I like it, although they’ve found a way to sneak in ads underneath some posts. (bad Google, bad Google...).

Newsreaders can be addictive and it’s easy to subscribe to everything. “I’ll take one of THOSE and one of THOSE, and add one of THOSE too!” Before you know it, your Newsreader looks like the front page of the Times. Not necessarily a bad thing, I suppose.

I've grown pretty fond of my Google Reader page and I'm happy to hang up the sandwich board. Viva la RSS!

Thing 3: Blog Search Engines

I love, love, love Google Blog search. I tried Technorati, but it didn’t grab me. Too much text, too many tabbed pages, too much sifting around to find what I want…just too much. Perhaps if I had a bunch of time to play with the interface I’d grow to love it, but on first glance it wasn’t me.

Google Blog search was quick and dirty – took me right to my favorite blog, wantnot.net, with little hassle. It also pulled up some interesting results on vegetarian cooking, juicing and equipment reviews. Not sure why, but I’ve been contemplating getting a good juicer and the blog posts on juicing are interesting…juicing cures cancer! It wipes out arthritis! It changed my life! Seriously? Seriously!

I thought these blog search engines were effective and useful. Thanks 23 things for teaching me something new!

Thing 2: Web 2.0 to Library 2.0

Just last night, my husband (who is a new LIS student at FSU) and I were discussing the changes in information seeking behaviors of youth in the past few years.

Generally we are a lot more fun at home, but with a Librarian and a librarian-in-training, these discussions are bound to come up every once in a while. It was over a glass of wine, so it wasn’t as stuffy as it sounds…

He was assigned to study an article outlining the information sharing trends of youth that was authored in 2005. He was amazed at how dated the article was; specifically, the article downplayed texting on cell phones and social networking sites were not even mentioned in the top five ways youth communicate. We had fun compiling our own list of ways youth share information and discussing the merits of each. My husband works at a local community college library and I work as a children’s librarian in a public library…we are both experiencing the change to Library 2.0, albeit with variations between public and academic library services.

Just in the past few years information sharing has gotten faster, more common, and just plain interesting. My new favorite term is “micro-blogging” for services such as Twitter and the status updates in MySpace and Facebook. No one wants to hear a long story of your life, they want a quick and easy answer to the question, “What’s up?” I love it. I’ve found myself trying to encapsulate my mood in one sentence…

But I digress.

I have mixed feelings about Library 2.0 – I feel the pride of librarians past and love the hallowed sacred space libraries can be. They are depositories of the world’s treasures and accomplishments, free for all without barriers to income, education or race. I’m deeply in love with all books can do to enlighten and improve ourselves as human beings…there’s something about that deep connection between the author and reader; it moves me.

BUT, I know that in order to survive libraries must adapt to meet our patrons’ needs. We need to provide enticements to see the library in a new way. We need to be significant to our patrons’ everyday lives. We just need to be MORE to more people.

My micro-blog status update:

Lisa is hopeful about her Neflin 23 Things blog and wonders if anyone will actually read it.

Welcome to my new blog created for Neflin's 23 things project!