Thing 23: The End

I LOVED THIS.

What a great way to learn something new and think about applying it to the library world. In the blog prompts it asked how we have taken Library 2.0 and what have we done with our own library. Well, I have brought to the attention of the director a need for some form of virtual reference...tomorrow is our trial launch with the staff. We'll see how it goes.

Facebook and MySpace and other social networking sites, also, very interesting. I think I will investigate on how to make a library Facebook page next.

I would also like to keep learning about how else to network with other libraries. More things to read and connect with would be great.

I haven't had a perfect experience as some things were difficult and I couldn't log into quite right or the video wouldn't play. I would like to see something done about that to improve the experience in the future. Perhaps that is on my side of the house.

I would love to hear from someone, anyone on if I did this correctly and how I could do it better in the future. Thanks.

Thing 22:

I will promise to try to maintain my blog and continue to learn. The learning part may be easier than the maintaining the blog part. I think it is important to keep a commitment to not being afraid of new technology. I found myself doing this at times during 23 things. I also think it will be important for me to keep talking with students. Now that I am no longer a student it will be important for me to be intentional about bridging the gap.

This has been an over all great experience. A little frustrating when I couldn't access everything right away, but over all great. :) Can't wait to use some of what I have learned.

I think that I will have to start an NCU library facebook as we look to the future and how to be relevant to our students.

Thing 21: Other Social Networking

I don't belong to any of the suggested social networking sites, however I think that the movie and book sites are interesting and may join.

I found Ning to be a little complicated. I couldn't even successfully change my picture. I'm not entirely sure why as I think I followed the instructions correctly.

In the future I think these specific sights will be helpful to me in enriching what I know about what I am interested in. It is nice to know that there are grown-up versions of social networking sites that I can use when I decide to grow up. :)

Thing 20: Social Networking

I can appreciate the use of social networking sites. Even now I can stay connected to people all over the country that I went to high school with. I love myspace and facebook. However, I do think that one is better than the other. Myspace, seems to have been hacked some much that people can post anything anywhere, whereas I feel like Facebook is a bit more secure.

I chose to join the facebook group that was Library 2.0 interest. It is a great way to network with other people and see what is going on.

I think that the IRC can use this page to network with other libraries, to network with authors, speakers, students, faculty...the list goes on. I am a believe that this will be even more successful move in the future.

Thing 19: Podcasts.

This thing was interesting. I had no idea there were so many ways to get a podcast out there. Very cool what iTunes is doing to with putting up professors podcasts. I think that podcasts could be specifically helpful for those who may miss a class from time to time but still need to hear the lecture. I think this would also be helpful for our own library with the IRC instruction.

I think that the easiest website to search for podcasts was the Yahoo! Audio section.

In addition to these thoughts I also found that the podcast you can make from the phone is pretty incredible. It will have to be something that I look into personally for use here in the IRC.

http://web.stcloudstate.edu/schoolmediapodcast/podcasts/podcast_wanda.mp3 (the podcast I listened to).

Thing 18: YouTube

Love this thing!!! How fun! I had to run into my director's office with ideas and excitement the moment I finished it.

I think this could be used for a number of purposes in the IRC. I think that we could use it to be informative in a fun way. It would engaged the student as well as keep them up to date.

Because of the 2.0 tools has prompted me to think more about how to engage students electronically and keep them involved. How can we help them to create something and learn something at the same time. YouTube could be an answer.

Thing 17: ELM

ELM

Our IRC has many of the features in ELM already. It greatly expands our research for students and is a quicker way to get materials and sources sometimes.

It helps our library staff now by making reference easy. We can answer questions faster with information provided by ELM

It helps our students in research papers and in countless other projects. I am very pleased with its service so far and will continue to get to know ELM a little more as time goes by. :)

Thing 16: Research Calculator

I really like the research calculator and the other tool. It is nice to see that there is something that students can look at to help them organize themselves for their research.

If I had this tool when I was in college I know I would have used it for my senior project. So would many of my friends. It would have definitely saved some people from pulling an all-nighter.

I also think that this could be very helpful to what we do here in the IRC. We are in a state of change and are looking for ways to help ourselves and help our students to really know what needs to be done when.

Good tool. I think I will talk to the director about getting a link on our library page and including it with our in-class presentations.

Thing 15: Games Games Games

I found the games, interesting, but very hard to use. I didn't always understand what was happening. I'm not sure I see how a virtual library in Second Life would play in to actual library use. However, it would have possibilities.

The pirate game I could not get at all and think it isn't very useful to the work world right now. However, I'm willing to be proved wrong.

Thing 14: LibraryThing

Fun, fun, fun tool. However, I'm not sure how accurate or how useful it would be to a small academic library with an older than average collection.

I do think it is a great tool for personal libraries and for public libraries. It was easy to use and easy to find. It was very cool seeing who else had the same book as you. It was fun to see how they were rated.

Our library doesn't particular share book lists. This would be a good way to start doing that. I guess I was previously thinking of it as a tool to make cataloging for specific things easier. When one would use it for book list sharing that seems more logical for the small library I work at.

I liked that there were tons of discussions on my all time favorite book, "Pride and Prejudice." Classic. :) Good tool. I think I will bring it up at the next staff meeting.

Thing 13: Productivity Enhancers.

I tried all sorts of the productivity enhancers. I think that sticky note could be used for marking weather or not a page is worth looking at for a research paper and things of that nature. I really liked the countdown...as you can see...and also the weather. I believe that those are the three most useful tools that I can use.

The compounding google features one was a not helpful to me as it is easier for me to keep track of them by keeping them separate.

I think the countdown would be a great tool to advertise for National Library Week at our IRC.

Interesting indeed.

Thing 12: Do you digg?

I think this is a neat tool. I like that you can see what others are viewing and that what is viewed is based on popularity with people rather than 'the man.' Ha. Anyway, I think that the library could keep track of it's most popular feature on the website and then work on improving those. It could be a very good thing.

I think that these tools could definitely be a productivity enhancer. A person could get around faster and get more done. It's all about navigation sometimes and where the right place to look is.

I have never read a story or an article through this way that I know of, but it is really interesting so I may start reading articles and stories that way more often.

Thing 11: Tagging and Del.icio.us

I think that del.icio.us could be a helpful tool. I can see where it would be useful to tag website and other things to be better organized. It would also be convenient to be able to access the IRC's websites and databases from anywhere. Students could grab those off campus. They would have an easy way of finding what they need to.

My one complaint is that the whole del.icio.us experience was a little confusing for me. I didn't understand at first exactly what the point of it all was, so I'm not sure how user friendly it is upfront. Still, once something is learned it can be exceedingly helpful.

Thing 10: The Wiki

I'm not sure I exactly understand what a wiki is. I get that it is public information that can be edited, but I'm not sure how to properly incorporate this in to the IRC I work at. I could not view the video, which was discouraging, but I did investigate the wikis as best I could.

I think I really may have missed something here. I wasn't even able to edit or add to anything on the 23wiki. If I have missed a step I would really appreciate someone pointing me in the right direction.

Wikipedia has been banned from scholarly papers here at the institution I work at. I think it is because anyone can edit it or post anything to it. I know that if something wrong were posted it wouldn't last long, but I wonder how Wikipedia is regulated.

Thing 9: Online Document Editing

Online document editing sounds like it could really do good. I'm wondering though, if it has it's down falls. What happens if, for example, Google Docs crashes. Are there systems in place that would save that file online as well? Just curious.

I think both of them you needed an account so unfortunately I wasn't able to try them through the 23 things. However, I've tried it before using another program and I do like it. I think that Google's features are easier to use and understand, plus the Google video really breaks the service down to what it would do. Zoho is pretty similar and carries the same idea. What would our founding fathers think? I think that they would think it is forward thinking and I believe that they were pretty forward thinking guys.