Checklist Complete :-)

#23 the Alpha and the Omega , or, the Spiral

This is neither the beginning nor the end, but a continuum. Thanks for the 23 things. I had a great time. What did I like best? I thought the image generator tools were fun to play with. They made me giddy and in the mood for a good laugh. LibraryThing is another thing. I am excited to work with it more. I haven't found the time yet, but it's a delightful way to keep track of favorite books. I also loved Zoho, because it indulges the design lover in me. It also lets me gloat at Google, a rare opportunity. I also enjoyed reading everybody else's blogs, or at least skimming them from time to time. You all found some really neat stuff! Before the 23 things, I already loved del.icio.us, YouTube, RSS feeds, and podcasts, but this activity keeps them fresh and in mind.

Believe it or not, this endeavor also helped me to improve upon some of my learning tendencies. For example, it helped make experimenting with technology fun for me, when it's sometimes scary. I was able to use my ease with playing to leverage my unease with technology. Additionally, 23 things made it easier for me to keep a Web 2.0 "learning toolbox," because everything I learned about is saved on my blog, so I can return to it later when I need it.

Happy Surprises?--Rollyo! I'd seen Rollyo mentioned around the Web, but I had been too lazy to check it out. Now that I've used it, I can't believe how powerful it is. There's so much potential, and I really loved Jackie's suggestion to use Rollyo to search our Best Bets guides. Cool that Devin put a Rollyo search box on his blog!

How can you improve this experience? Do it again in 2 years, with new and different tools for us to learn. I loved it the way you did it, thank you! I would definitely participate again.

#22 Pass it On.

I helped our part time Reference Librarian, Jo-Anne, to use del.icio.us to catalog "ready reference," or "quick information" websites for use by our patrons. She learned quickly. At first, del.icio.us can be confusing for newbies, because the navigational links are on the right instead of the left (bad design, I think). Also, if tagging is a new concept, the logic behind it may not seem obvious at first. Del.icio.us also takes a little while to update itself sometimes, especially once a new bundle has been added. At first, this problem caused some difficulty, because it made it look like the work we'd done to bundle our tags didn't really work. Once I showed Jo-Anne that all she had to do was reload her page (sometimes, 2 or 3 times), it made sense. A lot of del.icio.us users don't use bundles to group tags into clear categories, and I know why--bundling can be tedious, but it is useful, especially for what Jo-Ann and I are attempting here. The most important thing when teaching Jo-Ann to bundle was to let her know that a tag to be grouped into a bundle should already exist, before the bundle is created, because a bundle won't show up unless tagged items have been categorized within it. Take a look at Jo-Anne's work here: http://del.icio.us/Quick_Information.

I also taught some members of the faculty about del.icio.us, and I pointed them to our DNLworkshops del.icio.us page at http://del.icio.us/dnlworkshops. I learned something from them in doing this. First, that we always need to include the name of whatever resource we're teaching about AS A TAG, and second, that we have too many descriptive tags, which they find confusing. KISS is the rule here.

I look forward to teaching more people about various web 2.0 tools, and I'm sure I'll get the chance!

#21 Podcasts

I mozied around in the suggested podcast directories, but I like even better NPR's Podcast Directory. Check it out! NPR has a great section in their directory for books (look under "podcast topics"). I have subscribed to the NY Times Book Review Podcasts, as well as our own lovely Nancy Pearl's book review podcasts. Check out my blogroll (under "podcasts," at the bottom), at http://rpc.bloglines.com/blogroll?html=1&id=monaleeislam&target=blank
if you'd like to see. Do I think these are useful?--HeAL yeah! Do I think these are awesome, you betcha I do. Listening to these may be a fun alternative to reading book reviews, whenever the inclination strikes. Hello library collection development. Yee-haw!!!

#20 YouTube of Toothpaste

I LOVE Prangstgrup, so I had to post one of these videos. Most of you are probably familiar with their "Library Musical: Reading on a Dream." If you haven't seen that, then WATCH it, you won't regret it. I found their "Public Hygiene" (getting to work on time at any cost) quite amusing, too. Watch it below:

What's not to love about YouTube, other than the videos that really are a waste of time? Many of the videos are very funny, and this is a revolution, whereby people can self-publish their videos. I love the fact that YouTube makes it easy to share videos through e-mail and blogs like this. It's also cool that you can join a discussion about a video you liked or couldn't stand, and you can search by topic or keyword for videos. YouTube also hosts contests for those submitting videos. A library might adapt these ideas on their website by highlighting particular materials owned by the library and asking patrons to make a video to "advertise" the book/movie/whatever, then give an award out to the best one. Or, the library could link to users' research inspired videos hosted on YouTube. I'm just brainstorming here--so far, I'm not really big on these ideas, but it's something worth mulling over and maybe something will develop over time and discussion, or just fall from the sky one day.

#19 Web 2.0 Awards

After examining several of the Web 2.0 award winners, I settled on .
That's an image link, so go ahead and click it if you want to visit the site. Upcoming is a fantastic concept in action: Join a community of people interested in catching the best events in their favorite locations and areas of interest. It's neat that you can register a location, then search by a topic, such as gardening. I did this, and found out about the CT Flower and Garden show coming up in Hartford on February 23rd. If you'd like to meet up with folks in a particular interest group visiting the same event as you, this tool connects you. In some cases, you can subscribe to RSS feeds. For example, someone registered the Cloisters in this tool, and there was an RSS feed for Cloisters events. The only problem was that that person registered it in 2004, and no events were ever loaded, apparently, so it's a dead area in the site (and while the Cloisters lists upcoming events on their web site, there is no convenient RSS feed there, either). You can also monitor a particular location. Doing so for Fairfield, CT, is easy, because not much is in there. The Fairfield Theater Company is listed though.

I wish every cultural institution/park/venue/community group would become a member of this tool. I don't care if it would amount to a lot of self-promotion--at least it would be very convenient and useful. I for one need some easy help with planning events on the fly. With a busy life, it's hard to keep track of all the great things going on and pick one before it all passes by. This tool isn't that useful to me yet, because so much isn't in there, but the potential is great. Of course, I could by-pass this tool entirely if places like the Cloisters would just publish an RSS feed. On the other hand, this tool offers something extra: serendipity and social networking. You can join groups, add your own events, tag things by topic, and connect with others who share your interests.

Library applications? Who has time, but if we had time, we might keep track of local events of interest in our liaison areas, post them in here, and guide students to them--some extracurricular learning for the kids! I don't see why we couldn't also post philanthropic activities in the local area. That reminds me, there was a whole category for philanthropy on the Web 2.0 Awards page.

zohonobozo

No Kidding Zoho, You're no Bozo!

by Ray of Hype

I almost took the easiest route and used Google Docs & Spreadsheets, because I already have an account in that. I'm glad I tried Zoho, instead!

Yeah, this document was published FROM ZOHO DIRECTLY TO THIS BLOG!! Wow. I'm impressed with Zoho. It offers more features than Goole Docs & Spreadsheets. Nice formatting! Zoho is NO BOZO. Very exciting.

Zoho Writer is what this document is. But Zoho also offers an online meeting tool. I downloaded the Zoho Meeting thing. I played with the spreadsheet, too. Wow! It does so much of what Excel offers. This blows me away. The notebook feature is pretty cool, too, because you can upload images and sound and share it! This almost makes Google Docs look clownish. I have to revisit this!

#17 Famous on PBWiki

As suggested, I logged into the PLCMC Wiki on PBWiki, and I listed Ray of Hype among the favorite blogs! Now, kiddo, we're famous. Who knew that becoming a star was nearly as easy as putting together a peanut butter & jelly sandwich, or as easy as using a Wiki, specificially PBWiki? Now, that's wicked cool!

#16 Wiki Wanderings

I wandered around in the recommended Wikis, and I noticed something good about a few of them. The Library Success Wiki is an ambitious venture, and a great idea, but to be great, it needs greater participation. Then, I realized that it also could become overwhelming. The idea to have a wiki for all library best practices is terrific, but not workable yet. The Bull Run wiki seemed to immitate a traditional web page, so it's function didn't seem to solve a novel problem, but maybe allows people to easily update the library's web page, a fairly old problem. Or, maybe I didn't "get it." The subject guides wiki was lots of fun. I like how users can view the guides by title (topic) or may instead choose to browse by category (type of resource, such as book, directory, government info, etc.) What I didn't like was that you couldn't do both. Right now, tools like PirateSource do a better job at this than wikis do. Finally, my favorite wiki on the list was the Book Lovers' Wiki. I can imagine library users participating in something like this, reviewing books in the library's collection. Even better would be patron's participation in the library catalog, directly, though.

#15 Once Upon a Library 2.0

The perspective on library 2.0 that resonated the most with me was "A Temporary Place in Time," by Dr. Wendy Schultz. She recognizes library 2.0 as one stage in a continuum of libraries serving their communities. This continuum emphasized the role of libraries as repositories in its earliest stages. Then, libraries began to offer data retrieval. With library 2.0, we're seeing libraries blossom in the areas of commentary and annotation. What I love most about Shultz's perspective is the acknowledgment that no function of the library will necessarily go away. We may decrease our participation as repositories, but there will always be rare materials or censored materials or out of print materials we'll want to hold on to. We'll always want to collect the histories of our local communities. So, we keep adding on, without losing sight of any of the services we're relied on to provide. What we may end up with, in Shultz's words, is a "knowledge spa," (in both a physical and virtual sense) with libraries providing a retreat and space to contemplate or meditate. She describes libraries as a place for everyone and anyone to go to be pampered and "immersed in a luxury of ideas and thought." Library as sanctuary--I hope library 2.0 will lead to that, without losing anything that makes libraries so valuable.

#14 Technorati, it's a hottie!

To get started on this task, I visited Technorati and clicked the advanced link, which led me to a bunch of search boxes. When I searched for blog posts, several results turned up. The first among them were "SEMLS workshop on Wednesday 2/3," from librarian.net; "Jane Knight's Weekly Bulletin;" a Wordpress screencast by Kyle Jones (from Tame the Web); and a posting out of the UK from a blog called "Minds on Fire." Searching by tags, my results were somewhat similar, but not exactly. Different items were at the top of the list. It was interesting to note that the tag search wasn't exact, as I found one posting, titled "Teaching an online course using educational social tools," that was tagged "E-Learning 2.0." Finally, searching the blog directory was quite different. This was similar to searching a subject index, and found blogs, not just postings, focused on "Learning 2.0."

Looking around Technorati's popular area, I found out that Sarah Silverman is having a good time with Matt Damon and Boing Boing is still the most popular blog around. Relevant to 23 Things, there is a blog called "Mashable: the Social Networking Blog." I visited this Mashable post, at
http://mashable.com/2008/02/03/13-tools-for-tracking-discussions-in-the-blogosphere/#more-19987

and found out about cool things called Memetrackers, very mysterious! A memetracker will help you find and track bloggers' discussions about a topic or story you're interested in. A couple meme trackers reported in that posting include BallBug.com for baseball fans, and CoComment.com. Pretty cool!

Now, I'm being ambitious. I'm going to tag my post DNLibrary right here:
[DNLibrary].

Technorati is very much a hottie, but I didn't get an account yet. Too many accounts to keep track of just yet. It will be very cool, however, to search blogs and try memetracking!

#13 Mmmm, yumm, TASTY!

I love del.icio.us. It's so convenient to store up links to my favorite websites on one web page. It's also very cool to find out whether a page that I link to is popular with others or not. When I've just found out about a great website and link to it in del.icio.us, I'm sometimes dumbfounded that I hadn't discovered it sooner, because thousands of others have it on their list! Other times, I seem to be one of the tiniest handful of people (or the only person) who likes a particular website.

We're trying to use del.icio.us for faculty/staff workshops, to share the tools we talk about with those who attended so they may revisit them later. So far, the faculty love it. Their only suggestion is that we use fewer tags (they're getting lost in the forest of tags!). Here's the URL for that del.icio.us page: http://del.icio.us/dnlworkshops. We call it "Past Faculty Library Workshops."

#12 Rolling My Own Search Engline with Rollyo

Rollyo--very cool! I had read a bit about it, but never took the time to explore it. Thanks, 23 Things! So far, I haven't exploited it to a great degree, but I'm psyched. I've created a short list of trusted librarians' blogs that Rollyo will search for me, in one fell swoop. I called my Rollyo searchroll "Library Blogs." You can see my search box below. The blogs included are "Research Buzz," "Librarian in Black," "The Ubiquitous Librarian," and "The Shifted Librarian." I tried looking for what these bigshots had to say about movies (or the singular, "movie"), and they had lots to say! For instance, they told me about a Google "Hack" called Moogle, that allows you to search specifically for movie reviews in Google news. Something tells me this Google hacking is not much different from rollyo, which allows you to design special searches. The world of web 2.0 is opening up!

Select Search Engine...Library BlogsSearch The Web

Powered by Rollyo

#11 LibraryThing

I had been using Shelfari before, but I do like this LibraryThing better. It's so much more powerful. I love that you can organize your books with it on top of using it to compare your favorite books with your friends' choices. I haven't had a chance to add many books, but you can take a peek at my shelf that I made with LibraryThing's "random book covers" Preset Widget under "Tools."

Image Generator Alligator

Well, there are no alligators here, but I do think that Tom Cruise's face mixed with Salma Hayek's hair and body (using the HairMixer Generator at URL below) makes for a scary photograph.

To ease the pain, I've included this pretty sketch made from a cat's photograph using "Sketch Generator" at the second URL listed below.

Finally, I couldn't stop myself from creating an image that's not just creepy or cute, but annoying. I did that one using the "Dummies Book Generator" at the URL listed last. Check below to see this book cover image!




http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/hairmixer-generator.html
http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/sketch-generator.html
http://www.signgenerator.org/books/dummies/