Yippee! Thing 23

I will answer the required questions first:

• What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

Well, I now LOVE LibraryThing and have an account that I've updated and played around with several times. I used my del.icio.us knowledge already, and helped create an account for the Oshkosh Public Library and I really liked looking at the Web 2.0 Awards.

• How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

Well, if I had 23 goals set I would have accomplished all of them. But I didn't even have a single goal so I'm pretty impressed with myself. I now feel like I know a lot more technology and can learn even more in the future.

• Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
  

I guess I didn't expect to feel so excited about technology and libraries. I really want to start incorporating some of what I've learned. Now Now Now!


Also, I just happened to be reading the October 2008 School Library Journal and Surprise! there is an article on the 23 Things. Here's the link. I laughed over the Minnesota libraries slogan (23 Things on a Stick) and enjoyed that one librarian said that the 23 Things is like summer reading but for library staff members!
Overall, I am super happy with this experience. I've been forced (nicely) to step out of my box and try new scary technology thingies. And I've enjoyed it!

Thing #22

If you ever need the book: "Elisabeth's Manly Courage": Testimonials and Songs of Martyred Anabaptist Women in the Low Countries I know where you can find it: NetLibrary!
I've been a user of NetLibrary for a few years. I remember a few years ago I was reading a fun Young Adult series and was only waiting to read the last edition. I was like 40th on the hold list. Well, lo and behold: NetLibrary! They had the book available and I downloaded it to my computer and read it in one sitting!
At the library where I currently work we have someone mention NetLibrary and can we help them start a new account about once a month (we are a small library). I imagine this will only get more popular with the advancing technology that we are living through. I only wish the library that I worked at promoted this service a little more...

Thing #21

So, "podcast" was the word of the year in 2005 (named by the New Oxford American Dictionary). I have listened to quite a few podcasts over the last couple of years, for conferences and classes, especially. They are fun and helpful. I subscribed to MuggleCast, the #1 Harry Potter Podcast that talks about the Harry Potter books and movies and all sorts of "muggle" information. I think this could be great for a lot of the fans out there, I noticed several podcasts about the super popular Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. Kids and teens might be interested to know these exist and Children's and Teen Librarian should be aware of them too, to keep "up-to-date."

Thing #20

YouTube hooray!

I don't have much to say about YouTube, I love the book sites that are popping up, like authors talking about their books to fans creating book trailers!
John Green is the author of several great teen books and his posts on YouTube are hilarious (see the one I added below)! I think this is a great way to help get teens interested in books and reading. On school booktalking visits I often try and show a book trailer or two.
I think creating videos to recommend books would be a fun for patrons and staff to do. And maybe creating videos so library patrons know how to do things like searching databases or looking for genealogical information would be good for visual learners.

Thing #19

The Web 2.0 Awards are awarded to the best sites that use this new technology in some way. For this Thing, I looked at the three top sites for the category "Books."
Lulu took first place. Lulu is a global marketplace where anyone can publish their own material (with cover art and binding) and purchase other material. This is something that I think librarians should be aware of. It seems often that would-be authors come to the library looking for information on publishing and this might be an option for some of them.
Second place went to Biblio where one can search for used and rare books. Also another good site for librarians to be aware of, with some of our well-loved books falling apart from use!
And third place was VuFind. One their website it states:

VuFind is a library resource portal designed and developed for libraries by libraries. The goal of VuFind is to enable your users to search and browse through all of your library's resources by replacing the traditional OPAC to include:

• Catalog Records
• Locally Cached Journals
• Digital Library Items
• Institutional Repository
• Institutional Bibliography
• Other Library Collections and Resources

Wow! How did I not know about this? The live demo didn't work for me but it looks really interesting and seems to have a lot of potential. Imagine how handy this would be! I think I'll look into this a little more.
So I guess I decided that the Web 2.0 Awards are useful for librarians to be aware of, they provide noteworthy things going on in the technology world!

Thing #18

This week's 2.0 exercise is on using online apps like Google Docs. I use Google Docs often. It has become increasingly handy as I progress through graduate school. I am a commuter to Madison, driving about an hour and a half to get to class. My only class on campus this semester ends at 8PM, making me very hesitant to want to stay after (or come down another day) to work on group projects. Then, Google Docs enters the picture. I have several documents that I share with many group members. We can all be editing the same document at the same time. This alleviates the multiple emails from group member to group member, being unsure which is the most recent document and who made what changes.
I do not think that at this point Google Docs or Zoho will mean the end of the Office empire. I still copy and paste what is finished in Google Docs into Word and mess around with fonts, margins, etc. I will probably continue to do this because I like being able to use some of the features that are in Word that are not in Google Docs.

Thing #17

PBWiki is a popular wiki-making site. Wikis can be created for free and wiki-ers can create as many wikis as they would wike...I mean like.
I think wikis are definitely something I will try in the future, especially with a teen group. I also think that if a library staff is very large, a wiki would help keep all staff up-to-date with goings on at the library.
I did discover one issue I have, however. For Thing #17, we were shown the Sandbox wiki that was created to by the Learning 2.0 folks. This wiki is considered a "sandbox" because it is only for play. When I was glancing through a few of the pages, for example there is a Favorite Books and a Favorite Movies page, they seem incredibly messy and long. The lists just went on and on with no sort of structure or well-organized layout. That messiness bothered me but I suppose this is mainly a problem with the large amount of people that are trying to post on the Learning 2.0 sites.