Thing #23

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey? Anything that worked smoothly. The 2.0 award-winning sites, the avatar.
How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals? It's helped me to become more "with it" when it comes to new sites. Technology didn't stop in 2005 when I graduated college, and I feel more up to date than before I started.
Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you? It tickled me to be allowed to work on some of the assignments for this program at my work computer. It's nice to be able to play around with things and not have disapproval that what I am doing isn't work related, even if it's not directly for an active customer transaction. Being allowed to play better enables us to help others.
What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?And last but not least… the program itself worked well, was nice and neat and easy to do, where equipment allowed.
If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate? I would agree to participate but only if there were more of an effort on my library system's part to ensure that all the equipment is updated and working so that the exercises can be completed in a normal amount of time. I can't tell you how many of my precious planning hours were wasted on just trying to get some of this stuff to work!
How would you describe your learning experience in a few words or a few sentences, so we can share our successes and promote this program? Rushed, frustrated, distracted, but all the more worldy for it. Better able to help customers with techie questions.

23things I am almost done with!

This is typed with Zoho! I don't feel anything moving to say bubbling up into my brain. I could talk about my glorious planning time that I got today! I was able to complete the notes that I had taken during my gaming team meeting, and I continued work on the storytime packets I have been reviewing. And of course, I worked on my ever-lovin' 23 things.

More Aliens

More Aliens
Originally uploaded by shuggamagnolia

These Aliens made me REALLY REALLY HAPPY!

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Thing #22

I've used Overdrive before and it's a great service. I have downloaded audio books, and e books, and both worked great (although I don't know if I actually finished them.) The fact that they don't work with my iPod has put a little bit of a damper on using the audio book feature more, but perhaps Project Gutenburg has licensing that works with Apple products. Customers who own non-apple mP3 players rave about skipping out on the $1.00/day fines, since the audio book just comes back off the computer after the checkout period expires.

Thing #21

Podcasts are pretty neat....I've always seen that option in my iTunes at home, and never really played around with it. I had no idea that there was so much content! I thought that podcasts were all boring, stodgy library-related things, but there is actually stuff on podcast.net that might interest me on some level. Well, well. It looks like my iPod is going to fill up a little faster now.

Thing #20

I went on YouTube, but I wasn't able to watch anything. I thought that the Haunted Ships video looked good, so I'll watch that when I get home. My favorite webcartoonists post tons of videos on YouTube, so I've been using that site for some time. I like the feature that allows one to comment on videos (or in some cases, the comments that people have left before you).

Thing #19

I played with Yourminis, omnidrive, and Digg. These are all really good sites, and I am excited about widgets!

Thing #18

I am always helping customers set up email accounts so that they can save the work they've been doing on the public computers as an attachment and email it to themselves. Many people don't want to purchase a diskette or USB storage device, and they might lose it even if they do. Zoho is wonderful because one can work on a number of different types of productivity tools, and once a document is created, it can be saved to one's login! That is good for everyone, and I may need to change the name of my blog because I definitely didn't know about it.

Thing #17

I added my blog to the Sandbox, but in the interest of getting this monkey off of my back, forewent any extra sandplay.

Thing #16

I played around on the "Best Practices" wiki for a bit today. It's pretty neat to have all the libraries that are doing one thing on a page together. I started up the Calvert Library's Gaming wiki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ThorpAvant. There's not much there right now, so don't look, or Sarah and I will be embarrased. The link is just to prove that I did it. Hopefully, once we set up some content, and once we host a few of the gaming programs, we can be added to the gaming portion of the aforementioned "Best Practices" wiki.

Thing #15

I read "Away from the Icebergs", "Into a New World of Librarianship", and "More Powerful Ways to Cooperate".

In "Away", I agreed with Rick Anderson in that we need to shift the modes of our service to work with us instead of against us. I've heard and seen the result of the collections that bog us down, to the point that our library recieves VHS tapes from the other, smaller branches that it just doesn't have room to shelve. If there weren't as big of a non-fiction collection, maybe there would be more space for the types of materials that customers check out more frequently. On the other side of that issue, not everyone has a computer and access to the internet, or training on how to research things in a format other than books. Much more training would have to be done in order to eliminate the collection excess.

"New World" had some good points, and it's funny, but I think that our director must have either read this article long ago or was the example for the librarian 2.0, because she's got those pointers on lock down! It's very important for us all to reach out to our customers and be available to them in the growing points of contact.

The "Powerful" article was a little more difficult to digest, mainly because of the grandiosity of what OCLC is attempting to accomplish. I think that it's going to be just amazing when one can search for a book and have all the libraries that own it in the world come up. As someone who doesn't do acquisitions, it's harder to envision all the ways in which this will simplify our jobs, but from a customer standpoint, it is looking pretty excellent.

Thing #14

Tagging. I've done it with Flickr, but never with Blogs. I guess it is an important thing to let people quickly know how to find your blogs, photos, and videos, but once there are so many things online with the same tag, doesn't it become just as effective as searching the web? I suppose if one types in more than one tag, that helps to narrow it down a bit. I will try to make more of an effort to label what I do.

Thing #13

I am forever telling my friends to go to different websites for comics, shopping, and videos. Now I am starting to realize that I could just use del.icio.us, tell them to go to my site, and they can view all the magical, hilarious content that I am talking about from one place. This is a really nice service. I had a little trouble at first, because there was a prompt to add buttons to the desktop (which non-administrators may not do), but it allowed me to create an account all the same. I made a separate one for my home computer, with glorious buttons included. :).

Thing #12

I've read the explanation for Rollyo, and tried to watch the tutorial, but the flash player isn't updated, so there you go. I don't understand the why or how of this site, but I signed up for it all the same. To me, it seems like a waste of time. Pretty much everyone I know just uses Google, and there aren't many specialized search engines that I need to use on a daily basis at work. For someone who uses many different types of search engines, I can see a use for this site. It isn't very user-friendly or explanatory, and the garish white and red make the impulse to close that window strong.

Thing #11

Library Thing is one of my favorite "things"!!!! I keep track of books that I check out and never have time to read so that I can (hopefully) one day go back and read them. Now I can make lists upon lists, of my favorite books, things I need to read, things I want to read, and also lists of recommendations for customers. What a great service. I'd been telling customers about it since last spring when I did LATI, but now I actually can rave about it!

Thing #10

Thing #9

MERLIN is the mecca for all things library posting. I couldn't sign up with my email because it's already been used in their system, but I went and snooped around a little bit. It seems like people have some pretty good things to say, and I think it's a great source for new ideas.

Thing #8

RSS feeds are pretty sweet. I am very excited about this, and I am hoping that I can get a lot of local news and entertainment news all on my bloglines account so that when I am at home, I can pull up a lot of good new stuff to read instead of visiting 20 different sites.

Thing #7

This is something unrelated to libraries or 23 things, but I am curious about it all the same, and it is technology related. Everytime I allow an update for QuickTime and iTunes to happen, it messes up my ENTIRE library by adding 5 or 6 copies of each song to it and then I have to spend hours deleting all the extra songs back out. I have a very old version of both now, and don't know why it has to do that. Are there really 8 copies of "pour some sugar on me", a leftover from my ex's bad (or good to some) music collection floating around on my hard drive? If Apple software and iTunes is so technologically advanced, why can it not sense that there are too many of each song and eliminate them for me?

Thing #6

There is a cool third-party site called mappr that I would love to try but can't with this computer. Update: the wonderful tech folks here are working hard to get the flash players updated on all the computers.

Thing #5

I explored flickr, created a username. At home, I upgraded my account and have been uploading pictures like crazay! There is a neat site called Mappr which shows the location of the picture taker and the picture on a map! The only drawback is that this can reveal one's home online and many folks wouldn't like that for security reasons. I keep hoping that someone will like one of my photos, but I think I need a way better camera first!

Thing #4

The lifelong learning tutorial had a good point, but it doesn't do much in the way of getting one pumped up to do the 23 things. There isn't anything to lose by continuing to grow and learn throughout one's life, and a lot to be gained by it. I agreed, but felt so soothed and relaxed by the time I finished it that I was ready for a nap. :)

Thing #3

I have registered my blog and am trying to find time to get this ball rolling! This is a neat opportunity for us all to have, and I think I will learn a lot about techie stuff. Trying new things is always fun, I just hope I can remember all the usernames and passwords!

Thing #2

I watched the tutorial after some wheeling and dealing to get on a flash-updated computer. It's kind of boring, and doesn't do much in the way of motivating me to do this work. I do agree that life long learning is important.

Thing #1

I have read the blog about 23 things and am recording my first "thing", thing #1. Not really sure what I need to say here, since I just started working on this. Okay.

Summer Reading shirts/Relay for Life

Today I'm feeling especially comfortable because I am wearing jeans to work. We all paid 5 dollars a day to wear jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers to work for the Calvert Relay for Life. We're trying to raise money for the American Cancer Society and also have a "white elephant" table and a table with baked goods to sell. I paid $20 for four delightful days of relaxed attire and will wear my Summer Reading T-shirts Today and Wednesday. For Tuesday and Thursday, I am planning to wear a collared polo shirt and jeans with sandals, because I only have two non-Christmas Library related shirts to wear. I really wanted to get a shirt or make a shirt that said "what happens in the library stays in the library", and one that said the same but with storytime. Oh well. Just wearing jeans at work for a few days makes me really happy. I think that in this day and age when all libraries are changing and becoming more progressive, that it's ridiculous to expect the same librarians who no longer stamp books and shush people to continue to wear the stereotypical, dressed up, nerdy librarian outfits. If we want to reach out to teens and kids who are younger, it would help if we looked and felt less out-of-touch, as well as more comfortable. I have always noticed when someone looks uncomfortable in their clothes. I wonder how that comes across to the kids we help? I suppose the main reason that we are supposed to dress up is that it helps to differentiate us from our customers. However, we all are required to wear name tags, so that solves that problem right there. I don't think that anything will be done about this, nor do I think that it's the most important issue at hand, but I do feel strongly about it as someone who hates dressing up for anything. There is a wellspring of material for me to blog about with this one topic.