23rd Thing

Well, I had my doubts when I started, but I made it through to the 23rd thing. I am surprised at how much I enjoyed working on this learning project, and at how well it went! I learned that you don't have to be technical genius to do a lot of this stuff. I can see how someone could get hooked on these tools, especially if he had a lot of time to experiment. I don't know how much I'll use what I've learned, but at least I have a much better understanding of what web 2.0 is about.

The thing that might be my favorite and the most likely thing that I will continue to use is flickr. I also enjoyed Library Thing, del.icio.us, and of course YouTube.

Overdrive

I took the Overdrive guided tour and watched the "how to" videos. I don't use mp3 players, but I think that the tour explains downloading clearly enough for me to figure out how to get an audiobook downloaded to a player. The video on burning to CD seems to do a good job of explaining things. In my opinion, it would be very difficult for non-techie types to figure out how to do this stuff without very clear explanations. We've got a long way to go as far as simplifying things for ease of use.

I tried searching for audiobooks by subject and didn't get much in the way of hits. I had to resort to searching for best-selling authors. The selection of books beyond best-selling authors appears to be pretty limited. I might be tempted to try using audiobooks if the selection was better.

Podcasts

After stumbling around a little, I was able to subscribe to a podcast through Bloglines. I am a little confused about podcasts, but NPR's podcast directory has a Help section which cleared up some of the questions. The various sites that I visited were set up in different ways and that added to the confusion. It would make it easier if there was some uniformity between sites.

Summer Reading Program

I chose the Summer Reading Program video. I had trouble using Blogger's "Add Video" button, but I was able to post the video by just pasting its code into my blog entry.

Youtube is great because it's got so much in it. I can track down old TV shows and video of musicians from decades ago. I've even gone to it for research purposes.

One thing that our library might do is videotape some of our more popular programs for adults and children and place them on our website.

Wufoo

I tried out Wufoo which I used to make a form. I was surprised at how easily it went. I created a form with check boxes, drop down menus, etc. I was just goofing around without a specific goal in mind. It might get a little tougher to create a form for a specific purpose.

Zoho Writer

I tried Zoho Writer and had mixed results. Creating the document was similar to using Word, so it went well for the most part. But somehow I deleted a table and had to go back and recreate it. Naming and saving the document was no problem, but I couldn't find Zoho's equivalent to a file/close command. My previous post was published from Zoho.

zohotest

So, I'm trying out Zoho, and it seems to be working fine. 

 

Bold

 

italics

 

centering

 

"Undo" didn't work exactly as I expected. all the time.  Neither did "redo." 

 

 

Bullets:

• One
• Two
• Three 

 Tables

abc	def
ghi
			xyz

Wiki Sandbox

The wiki sandbox was fun to play around with. I had a little trouble creating a link, but figured it out.

Wikis in libraries

I looked at the wickis for Bull Run and Grand Rapids public libraries. The Bull Run wiki was confusing. It looked like a library webpage with a bunch of wiki related links at the bottom including a "view page source" link. Judging from the content, it appeared to be for library users (but why would the public want to view the page source???), but not user-friendly. The Grand Rapids page was less confusing, but didn't exactly impress me either.

I think I've got a decent understanding of wikis as a tool for collaboration, but how do you apply that to a library's website in a way that makes sense???

Web 2.0, Libray 2.0

I read all five articles. The first and last articles were the most interesting. I especially enjoyed Wendy Schultz's prediction of the future for libraries. Who really knows what library 3.0 or 4.0 will look like, but it was interesting to read her ideas. The first article hinted at the idea of a giant digital collection with everything in it--books, journals, blogs, podcasts. My guess is that one day we will have a national library like this. If so, then what will local libraries look like??? Will they only be used by folks who don't know how to use or don't like technology? Or will web 2.0/library 2.0 and even bigger technological innovations lead to libraries evolving into something that we can't even come close to imagining?

Technorati

I found 73 blogs that linked to our library's website including ones that referenced our mousing tutorial.

Some of the related tags that I encountered while doing a tag search for web 2.0 were Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTickr and NetVibes. These all sound like more web 2.0 applications, websites, etc. Where does it all end??? I also came across a new term,"social fatigue," which was defined as something like having problems remembering all your usernames and passwords for all your social sites on the web. Apparently, the person who coined the term wasn't fatigued from participating in all these social sites.

Del.icio.us

I had fun with this one. I've gotten out of the habit of using bookmarks, but this could get me back in the habit. I started using Yahoo bookmarks a while ago for the ease of access anywhere, but I don't think it had the networking aspect. It's interesting to see what has been bookmarked by other people with the same interests as me.

Webfeat

Webfeat turned out to be a little clunky. If I searched on my hometown (a small town) over all the databases, Webfeat did a lot of hiccuping and then would get stuck. Choosing just a few databases to search brought up a list of hits, but I encountered problems getting to a good number of the actual articles. Webfeat sounds interesting, but it needs to work out the kinks.

Library Thing

Library Thing was easy to set up and fun to play around with. Seems like a fun way to find books by looking at the libraries of people with similar interests. I found several books of interest this way.
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/hauserj23things

images

1. Camel, 2. Lil'" Cutie, 3. http://www.blogger.com/<> Friends, 4. http://www.blogger.com/<> the top of the hill we go, 5. http://www.blogger.com/<> Bike at Sunset, 6. http://www.blogger.com/<> lighting, 7. http://www.blogger.com/<> point, 8. http://www.blogger.com/<> Point 2, 9. http://www.blogger.com/<> a long day's ride...

Here's my shot at uploading from an image generator. I used mosaic maker.
http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php

I also had some fun with the Roller Derby name generator.
http://rumandmonkey.com/widgets/toys/namegen/10568/

RSS

I just set up a bloglines account and tried out RSS. It does seem like it can be a time saver for people who spend a lot of time going from site to site on the Internet. Wish I had the time...

New Technology

Podcasting sounds like a new technology that might interest me. I don't know much about it. I've listened to one. I'm not sure what makes podcasts different from other audio or video on the Internet. I'm guessing that people doing podcasting are doing news, music and informational programming. I'm looking forward to learning more...

Outside the old NCR branch

Outside the old NCR branch
Originally uploaded by johntoe23

Every once in a while, a patron will ask about the old library on Military Trail. This must be it.

Blogging at the library

Libraries could use blogs on their websites for library news, events, new book arrivals, etc. Possibly there could be a blog devoted to a specific program such as the Read Together program. The articles that we put on the library's homepage could be presented as a blog.

Blogs could also be used internally for work-related issues. Reference, YS and circ could all have their own group blogs where members of that group could go for info or discuss issues. Also, individual branches could have their own blogs.

7.5 Habits

The thing that struck me the most about 7.5 is the first habit--begin with an end in mind. It makes sense to have a specific goal to keep you focused. In the past, I've undertaken self-improvement projects without setting a specific goal. I wonder if I would have been more successful if I had defined exactly what I wanted to achieve.