Thing Twenty One, Other Social Networks

I don't consider myself a particularly "social" individual but I am a member of GoodReads (as I have mentioned before) and very much appreciate the community in this network. It is appealing because I am very much a reader and am very much interested in what others are reading. It is the perfect sharing environment while also helping me keep track of what I have and want to read. But as with any social network it is only exciting if the community is spot on to what excites you... I have to admit that Fuzzster is one of the last places you would find me on-line.

Really, even though I am a member of both Facebook and Good Reads I must admit that I most appreciated My Guide to Social Networks by Louderback. While there are definitely sites that take a more serious spin on networking, the majority of socializing I am familiar with and which I witness runs a bit more on the fickle, frivolous side......

Thing Nineteen, Podcasts

I have, for quite some time, been a fan of Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippet and the respective podcast. It is wonderful to have the chance to listen to a program when and where you want to!

For this particular exercise I perused the National Public Radio podcast offerings and settled on a Pop Culture podcast. I did not subscribe to this particular program.

One program I have added to my Bloglines is Book Lust with Nancy Pearl. Reading is, in my opinion, a most perfect past time so I am looking forward to hearing what Ms. Pearl will throw my way.

I spent a bit of time in each of the directories and did not find one more stunningly helpful than another. Honestly, I tend to like a particular show and then seek out its podcast as opposed to liking a particular topic and browsing for a particular broadcast. It's all in the approach, isn't it?

Thing Twenty, Libraries and Social Networking

I have actually been a Facebook member for about eight months now. It is hard to miss this phenom of the web since I work on a college campus; I think students visit the library to check their Facebook accounts more that they come to research.



My network of friends consist mostly of student workers here at the college and colleagues or friends from church. I am of the opinion that others are just not that interested in me and what I happen to be doing at the moment, but....



We have had a lot of success advertising for library events via Facebook. The first time we invited our "I worked and the Berntsen Library" network I noticed a definite increase in attendance; students who do not even pay attention to the fliers on the wall and the announcements in their mailbox definitely check their Facebook account.



Facebook is entertaining and I find it an easy tool to use to help me keep up with acquaintances and schedule coffee dates. It in no way substitute for face to face time but it does facilitate interaction, is super easy to use, and compulsively browsable.

Thing Eighteen, Online Video

As a girl who cannot go a day without peanut butter I could not resist searching YouTube for a vintage peanut butter commercial. One quick search and I was in nut butter heaven.

As far as my overall experience goes one thing that struck me was how ready people were to comment and converse with one another on the site. Again and again in the 23 Things experience I am reminded how powerful an online community is in this day and age. If someone creates a place for dialogue and promotes that venue dialogue will very likely take place.

I also discovered how easy it is to become extremely distracted on YouTube! I work Tuesday evenings which means, sadly, that I miss American Idol. Well, thanks to 23 Things, I discovered video of past Idol performances. I get to satisfy my guilty little pleasure after all!

There are some great reasons to stop off on YouTube, and there are also some reasons to avoid the site. But as with many things in life you must take the good with the bad.

Thing Seventeen, ELM

I use an ELM provided product at least once a day, but looking at it from a 23 Things perspective revealed a few new applications that I had as of yet overlooked. One of the most interesting being the capability in ProQuest Newsstand Complete to "Create a Web Page." It was a nice way to create a persistent list and search history that I could access and share with others. In theory, I could not only create these web pages for myself, I could also (copyright considered) create help pages for common class searches or distance education student in need of research help.

That said, one of the important reminders of this particular "Thing" is that no matter how familiar a tool may be to me I need to pay attention to the changes and improvements so that I can continually adapt my searching and service to the benefit of the student patron.

Thing Sixteen, Student 2.0 Tools

I am very impressed with both the University of Minnesota Assignment Calculator and the Research Project Calculator. The one thing that I hope every student gets from using this tool is that research TAKES TIME!

In an age of instantaneous results and near instant gratification I am beginning to wonder if the students I come into contact with realize that there are necessary time constraints to the finding, physical retrieval, and understanding of information. I like the calculators most because of the space in time they outline takes; whether or not the student follows the suggestions he realizes that he must take a logical and progressive approach to the project.

I also liked the way the UofM Library inserted tutorials and search help within the outline. What a wonderful way to connect the class with the library. Depending upon how much use this tool gets from students it would also be a great place to experiment with live chat and communities built around particular assignments. I even wonder if students would be interested in creating tags for books they found helpful in order to aid other students in their class. As we have already seen in the practice and exploration of the 23 Things the possibilities are seemingly endless!

Thing Fifteen, Gaming

I have obviously slowed down on my 23 Things. Puzzle Pirates was, however, a nice way to ease back into Blogging.

I must admit to not enjoying video games and cannot say I was terribly impressed with my gaming experience on- line, either. The conversation with other pirates was a bit stilted (I am sure that I had a lot to so with that) and I just knew that more experienced players had to be frustrated with my slow uptake. In a more optimal situation I am sure that the conversation is an added level of enjoyment, much the way that playing board or card games is enriched because of the company, but I cannot say that I will be jumping on the gaming band wagon any time soon.

Thing Fourteen, LibraryThing

I first experimented with LibraryThing some time ago and had added several books when I made the big switch and headed over to GoodReads. I migrated because I had friends using one interface and not the other; I wanted this to be a social, sharing experience and the move made that possible. Additionally, GoodReads has a Facebook function that I use on my profile page and that connects me to more friends via this social networking tool.

In the end I am happier with GoodReads; it allows me the same cataloging functionalities and tagging and includes the same links to reviews and ratings with the added benefit of my being able to create multiple bookshelves. My shelves can be as straight forward as "to-read" and "reading" or as specific as genre or author. I am a huge fan of this site and enjoy all the little bunny trails it leads me on. I've followed many a book trail and have stumbled upon some great reads for myself and my book club already. I look forward to plenty of fun in the future and am quite convinced that if one is willing this can be a fun and useful reader's advisory tool.

Thing Twelve, Social Media Sites

Of all the on-line activities I have experienced I had the hardest time getting excited about the social media sites. While I can understand their popularity and can see how people would be excited about being a "part of" the action and having their "say" in the matter I found most of them difficult to navigate, unattractive in layout, and lacking in valuable information. My hesitation, however, has not stopped this digital discussion, as proven by the fact that Yahoo! now has their own program, buzz, in beta.

I may just be a librarian fuddy duddy, less concerned with what others are thinking (some of the top stories I ran across were American Idol or celebrity focused) and more interested in quality news representation or challenging articles. I've found sites that I prefer, Newsmap or Arts and Letters Daily, for example, and will stick to those. As for the social sites, I found them highly distracting and can only imagine the bunny trails I could get on if I spent any time at all on them.

Thing Thirteen, On-line Productivity Tools

This post, by nature of the task, will be a bit disjointed, just a few comments on my initial reactions to a few of the sites I visited...

I have been using My Yahoo! for sometime now as a means of consolidating some of the information I tend to use on a regular basis. In all honesty, however, I rarely use the site. I prefer Bloglines' interface and like having Minnesota Public Radio as my home page so that I can start my day with a little news and a bit of music.

Scrybe impressed me immensely because of its ability to transcend format, delivery or information types and uniformly create a single place with self-selected information relevant to the my life. Although I hesitate registering for many on-line tools I was disappointed to find that Scrybe has closed registration for the time being; it seems like a wonderful tool. I will definitely want to revisit this site in the future.

Research application came to my mind immediately upon my first visit to My Stickies. What a fantastic tool for distance reference; if I could send e-mail sources to a user and let them know very clearly why I thought they could use the site. I did not sign-up, but am interested to know if there are collaborative possibilities or if the sites are "shareable." It is closest in my mind to the "social annotation" site Diigo that I find wildly interesting but have yet to integrate into any reference interaction.


Above all else, this exercise left me feeling like my life is very calm and manageable. Looking at all of these tools and calendars and widgets and add-ons tired me out. My resolution post "Thing 13" is to maintain a sense of sanity about my life and be thankful for the fact that I don't have to rely on "Remember the Milk" to get through my day!

Thing Eleven, Tagging

My favorite thing about tagging is its availability to both the tagger of the information as well as to other users who may have an interest in that same topic.

As an academic library we create web resource lists for popular needs or recurrent classes. I can see this easily translating from our web site to a tagging program. The added benefit of moving our resources to a tagging site like Del.icio.us is that professors and students could add to our selected sites those sites they find useful as well. Since the resources are for the users it makes since to offer each of them the opportunity to strengthen our offerings with those sites they feel are tried and true.

The drawbacks, of course, include random or unhelpful sites working their way into the list as well as "tags" that do not coordinate or make no sense to other users.

Another issue in transferring information to a tagging site is that we would be creating yet another place to look for information. One of my personal professional concerns with the constant and always expanding profusion of information is the increase in the sheer number of places a person need search in order to get a wide and deep look at the information available.

Thing Ten, Wiki's

Wiki's are definitely "on my radar" so to speak. Whether creating them to facilitate behind the scenes communication or teaching our student how to discern the quality of the information provided on Wiki's (see my post: The wonderful world of Wiki) collaborative information tools are a part of the library world.

Those of us who provide reference at my academic library keep a Wiki for the courses and questions that occur year after year without fail. It is a wonderfully easy application, we use PBWiki, that we can add to as needed. It is easily referenced when and where we need it and helps us provide seamless reference service. It is also great for familiarizing those of us who provide reference with the "hot topics" brought to the desk and can therefore inform our acquisitions decisions, as well.

I have far less experience, however, using a Wiki for our front end users, and while some of the book applications were interesting I am not completely sold on them as a worthwhile endeavor in the academic library setting.

Thing Eight, Communication

BigHugeLabs
The idea of creating a mosaic of some of the books our book club had read seemed like a good idea, but I was a bit disappointed in the results. I probably did not spend enough time tweaking, but I do know how I would improve such a project. If our club were intentional, we could photograph ourselves holding the book and create a running photo journal of the books. What would be even more fun is the capability of adding textual comments along with the photos. A photo journal of public library book clubs would be a fun professional use for this BigHugeLabs application; a great way to not only advertise but to create a sense of community amongst the regular atendees.

Zoho Show
Rather than create a slide show of my own I chose to watch the short informational video on the program and decided that this is the way to go if I were to carry out the book club montage I mentioned above. What a fun and easy way to create an interesting Web feature for the library.

This would also be a great tool to use to create "re-caps" of library programs. For example, we had a poetry reading in the library where student read works in languages other than English and then translated them. It was a hit, but what fun if we could have (copyright considered) shared video highlights for the rest of the month on our library's web page. I think students, faculty and staff would have been entertained AND interest in our next program heightened.

If it isn't already obvious, I think the growth and continued improvement in quality of these web tools is a great advantage to the responsibility we have as librarians to market our services. WE know that we offer A TON of great services, resources, and people, but do they? If we can share that FACT with others in an interesting way I think we are making some serious and noteworthy headway.

Thing Seven

E-mail
I appreciate Microsoft Outlook's tools, especially the ability I have organize read messages in folders, flag messages for response, and direct e-mail messages from a particular sender into pre-specified folders. My personal account allows these same functions and I use them there, as well.

But, as the author of Five fast email productivity tips points out no matter how many wonderful tools are available to increase productivity e-mail can also be a HUGE distraction. I've found that checking my messages twice a day is quite sufficient and helps me remain more fully focused on the important tasks at hand. As important as I may believe librarianship is, there is very little of urgent importance in my world. Less checking is, perhaps, the best advice for productivity!

More on Instant Messaging
Although I have already experimented with Google Talk I had yet to watch the University of Buffalo YouTube. My multi-tasking trepidation is now coupled with an anxiety of having to learn a new language. In all seriousness, while I think IM is a great tool and I am very interested in how it might help us be where our students need us I would have to spend time "practicing" my IM skills with co-workers and/or friends before I felt comfortable and confident that I was offering good service. And it appears I am not the only one with this fear: "'Some librarians are afraid of being overwhelmed with questions, are not comfortable handling multitasking…don't type very fast, or just prefer face-to-face interaction,' states Chris Desai, who manages the IM initiative at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale." In the same way that a face to face interview is different from phone reference I believe there are IM skills that I would need to hone and types of phrases I would need to learn to more effectively communicate via IM.

Text Messaging
This would be great for the simple questions we run into everyday: what database should I use? how late are you open? do you have...? I can even imagine students sitting upstairs studying using the function if they are having trouble finding an article in full-text but don't want to bother with running down and finding a librarian. And besides all of that I would be very excited if a user could text message call numbers from the catalog so that they can locate books.

Thing Six, Online Image Generators

My creation
Originally uploaded by dora_yvonne

I have enjoyed the creative possibilities the mash ups and image generators offer and see no reason why I wouldn't choose to use at least one for the various advertisements and programs I generate over the course of the year. Not only are they very easy to use, the added personalization would be far more interesting and eyecatching than many of the "canned" images from which I currently choose. While I am not so sure the students on campus would be particularly interested in a photo of me, there are definitely popular professors and campus figures who would be fabulous faces to use! This would even allow for opportunity to pull other departments into library activity and create an increased feeling of campus unity!

Thing Five, using mashups

ray of icetrees2
Originally uploaded by 転倒虫

I found this lovely photo using the very fun Retrievr mash-up. What a great way to find images that include desired color scheme or shape and movement. Not to mention a fun and serendipitous little exercise.
Another fun mash-up is Tagnautica. I love browsing and often hear people lament the loss of the serendipitous find because of the move away from the library stacks and into the digital realm. I went from "tea" to "trees" in five clicks and had a blast browsing through the results!

The caption mashup was also fun and would actually be a great tool to use in our library. Adding captions to photos of librarians to advertise for events or provide helpful reminders (Please return materials to the shelving carts, example) would be an interesting and easy way to personalize our services.

Thing Four, Photosharing

Photo sharing was a wonderful discovery. I live a great distance from my family so we have been using Flickr for almost a year now to share vacation photos and slice of life pictures. We appreciate the privacy settings Flickr allows and have found this photo sharing technique keeps us closer and prompts some fun discussion, both real time and virtual.

I had not, however, thought of using this tool in the library setting, but the Clemens Library proves there are some fun ways to share visually with their patrons. Their "bookshelves" actually remind me of two things our library does on site.

One, we have a "new books” shelf that we keep at the entrance of our library in a reading nook. It may be fun to translate that into the digital realm so that distance students (and busy professors) who don't regularly visit our library can keep an "eye" on the new acquisitions. Two, the photos also remind me of elements of our monthly display. Our library briefly expounds on a topic and then highlights resources that viewers can use to learn more. This month's topic is fair trade: digital tools would be a great way to get the information out to a larger population! I even found a wonderful photo of a Ghanaian Primary School that I was able to post in this blog as an example of images that could augment our displays.

I will definitely be more aware of how photo sharing can help visually augment our library's displays and activities. As I sit here I am even reminded of our library social events and how Flickr could be a great way to advertise, organize and, document these programs.

Thing Seven, 2a.

For the sake of a speedy co-worker I skipped ahead to Instant Messaging. It is, I will admit, difficult to talk to oneself in the virtual world.

The two of us spent a very brief seesion experimenting with Google talk. While it was simple enough to install I cannot say that I was terribly impressed with its functionality. At one point we completely lost one another; not a great situation if you are chatting with a distressed (or cranky!) student. Additionally, I found that I had a hard time contining my work and keeping track of chatting developments. I felt it might become challenging to pay attention to the user and perform research simultaneously. Perhaps my difficulties had a bit to do with my distate for multi-tasking, but I had expected a better notification system.

While I would be really interested in trying IM for reference I would like a chance to play around with some different providers. I would also be interested in hearing how other libraries deal with streamling their choice of tools considering the broad number available and the fact each student may prefer a different one.

Thing Two

The concept of Library 2.0 and its application to my profession is a lot to think about.

First, I want to say again how much I value the opportunity to play with these tools. I agree with Stephen Abram when he says that we must spend time with these applications because we are "experienced based" learners. I know all the readings in the world cannot take the place of my experiencing these tools while thinking about their real life applications.

That said, I must admit that Rick Anderson's comment in "Web 2.0: Where will the next generation Web take libraries?" a bit intimidating. His supposition that users want everything is most definitely believable. I cannot, however, figure how I might be able to help provide such an all encompassing service at an acceptable level. All things to all people in all formats using the tools currently available seems like a tall order to me. Worth striving for, I am sure, but attainable, I am not convinced.

Even though intimidated by the call, I am excited about the variety of ways I can now make information available to our users. More avenues for discovery increases chances the information will be discovered, if we as librarians must be very clear and very intentional as we and our patrons create "virtual trails" or maps to the most needed, much wanted resources. Great applications if used thoughtfully and intentionally. As with most tools, the values lies in a person's ability to use it.

Last, I was reminded of the success we as a library have already had using some of the Web 2.0 tools available. By taking to heart Rick Anderson's advice and "placing library services and content in the user’s preferred environment (i.e., the Web)" we have seen an increase in attendance to our library's discussions and social events. Advertising on Facebook yields far greater results than any poster ever could.

All said, my big "take home" message is the importance of constant re-evaluation. In such a volatile information landscape I must 1. continually ask myself what the library is and 2. stay abreast of the technological advances that can and will help me fulfill the library's purpose.

Thing One

The blog is constructed, my avatar created, and I am ready to begin. This will be a helpful set of exercises for me not because I feel I am unfamiliar with these tools but because I will now be forced to use them while keeping in mind my profession and trying to apply them to the library world. I am looking forward to discovering some new applications and having some fun in the process.