Thing 23 -- The Party's Over

For me It’s Just Begun !
I found this program to be a lot of fun but for me it was very time consuming. I think this was because the way I learn new things is to become totally engrossed in reading information about them and then trying them out. This takes time. But I feel that it was well worth the investment. I have taken many new discoveries away from the program and will be utilizing them in my future work ie, Bloglines, Del.Icio.us, Facebook, GoogleDocs, Flickr, and BackPack (BackPack looks like a neat organizing tool that I discovered as a result of Thing # 18)

I would like to see this program of learning new technologies continue, maybe as a thread on the QL Chat forum. Maybe each week or two a new technology “Thing” could be introduced and opened on the chat area where people could be exposed to it and have the chance to explore it and then discuss it.

If this or another similar program were to be offered in the future, I would definitely be interested in participating.

I would sincerely like to thank the people who were behind the scenes working on posting the things for us to do. I know that it involved a lot of work and we all appreciate your efforts.

Thing 22 - e-Media Audiobooks & eBooks

I have in the past, successfully downloaded several Audiobooks from my Itunes account on my home computer. However, when I tried downloading a couple of Audiobooks from the library eMedia I kept running into the message of a Security block for a security upgrade which is mentioned in the instructions on the library website. I was however unable to get around the message. I gave up and tried downloading an eBook for which I was successful. I used the Adobe program to read the item and particularly liked the fact that I could add comments and Markups to the eBook. I think this will be useful for someone like me who likes to write notes in the margins of pages.

Thing 21 --Podcasts

In the past I have downloaded and listened to many Podcasts but for this exercise I downloaded the RSS feed for a Podcast from the BBC radio. I totally love the podcast ideas. There are a tremendous amount of resources available as Podcasts.
I also downloaded a Podcast from ACRL of ALA regarding their special committe report “Establishing a Research Agenda for Scholarly Communication: A Call for Community Engagement”

Thing 20 - I Tube, You Tube

I chose the YouTube video titled Concept Mapping: How to Start Your Term Paper Research” as an example of how libraries can use videos in helping their customers.

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In general I found that the MetaCafe.com site to be much more conservative than You Tube which seems to be more socially oriented. As soon as I went to MetaCafe I found a few videos that I found interesting for various thngs I would be able to use in libraries. There were: Science experiments such as how to make a sundial, Origami How to make a Kawasaki Rose, and one on the Titanic sinking. The Titanic video caused me to realize that these types of sights might bring out some never before seen footage and photos to public viewing. I think the Libraries and Schools ought to embrace these new technologies as a way to further engage their customers.

Thing 19 - Web 2.0 Application Review

For my review of web 2.0 applications I chose the area of Lists & Polls because I am very much a personal list maker. I have lists of things to do today, Lists of things to buy when I go shopping, Chores that I have to do but not right now, Lists of people to call and touch base with, and even a list of the dates of important occurrences in my life. Similar to a timeline which I hope to use someday when I write a book about my experiences growing up on a lighthouse.
I looked at both 43 things and Listdump. I liked 43 Things better because it was more personal. You make up your own lists and other people can see your list and copy items from your list to theirs or they can comment on things in your lists but they don’t contribute to your list directly. Listdump is more like a group list. Anyone can edit the lists.

Thing 18 - Collaboration

For this Thing, I looked at all three applications (Google Docs Writeboard and ThinkFree) although I only signed up for Google Docs which I found to be a very useful tool for those times when multiple people must collaborate and share a document. I wish this were available for those times in Library school when I had to work on Group Projects. It would have made things a lot easier. I also like the idea that you can access the documents from any PC which has Internet Access. My concern in these and any other application where you are relying on the Internet for saving material is how to insure the permanent retention of your information. Suppose for example the company whose web site you are using decides to go out of business or not support the particular application. What do you do?

Thing 17 1/2 - Facebook

I like Facebook better than MySpace for networking because of the ability to search for people in various groups and linkup to them. However, It seems that this is also a negative because of the fact that everyone can see exactly what you’re doing on Facebook. Security seems to be a very real concern.

Things 16 & 17 -- Wiki's

Thing 16 – Wikis
Wikis are great. In addition to Wikipedia which I use on a regular basis, I looked at the Library Success Best Practices Wiki and The St Josephs County Public Library use of a Wiki to present Subject guides. Both are very interesting. I think the subject guides are an area where all libraries can probably use Wiki’s.


Thing 17 – Wiki Update
For thing 17 I chose to update an entry on Wikipedia. If you look up Coney Island Light in Wikipedia you’ll see an article about a lighthouse in Brooklyn, NY. I grew up at this lighthouse I was able to edit this article adding information about my dad Frank Schubert who was the last resident keeper of the light. “The most recent resident keeper was Frank Schubert (1915 - 2003). Frank was the last civilian lighthouse keeper in the United States. He worked for the United States Coast Guard since 1939, serving at Coney Island since 1960.” It is interesting and easy to be able to add information to an online encyclopedia.

Thing 15 - Web 2.0 & Library 2.0

Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 both sound good to me in theory. Of course Web 2.0 was being tossed around in the late 1990’s in research circles with all of the work on usability studies. The Librarians Anti – 2.0Manifesto sounds like a transcript of the Andy Rooney segment of “60 Minutes”. It’s OK for a little while but much longer and it sounds whiney! Of course it seems to me that Queens Library is far along in the transition to Library 2.0

Thing 14 - Technorati

When I entered Learning 2.0 in the Technorati search engine and the results came up I got so involved in reading the various posts and following threads that I had to remind myself to get back to the task at hand. The results I got were:
Searching by Blog Posts (all Blogs) – 2217
Searching by Tag – 727
Searching in the Blog Directory 831.
I noticed there is an Authority rating, I have to go back and try to understand what this is and how it is derived.

Thing 13 - Del.icio.us Tagging

Informally Del.icio.us sounds great. The idea of accessing my bookmarks from any PC is something that would be very helpful to me. I’m already familiar with tagging from other fields but I’ve always found the issue to be that you need some authority control so that you don’t end up with three similar but different tags. I have set up my own del.icio.us account and have started moving my bookmarks over. When I have more time I’ll look at importing and exporting them.

Thing 12 - Rollyo

What is a Rollyo ? A Custom Search Engine for the web. I created a Rollyo account for books I might want to look up in Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and Strandbooks.com. I then tried searching for a book called Free for all. Rollyo returned 106,000,000 results. This is when I found out that in addition to the three sites I set up it was also searching the entire web. I’m not sure why it does this since it is supposed to make it easy to search my specific web sites. Anyway, when I tried another book called Weird England, I had more success with 455 results returned and the most relevant being brought to the forefront. I’m not sure I like to service and that I’ll continue to use it but it’s nice to know it exists.

Thing 11 - Library Thing

Although I created a Library Thing account weeks ago I didn’t post a link so here it is:

London Walks

Thing 10 -Image Generators

How much time do I have left to complete these tasks ?



This Image was created with the Generator Blog

Oh Well it’s week whatever and Thing # 23 has been posted on the Library Learning 2.0 Blog and I have to go back and catch up. Well here goes. Although I may not do them in exact order I will complete all the things including the supplemental halvesJ

Thing 3

In reviewing the 3^rd thing I note that I haven’t posted the hardest and easiest learning habit. Well the easiest for me is Confidence in my learning ability. I have continued to learn about new and exciting things during my career. (Unfortunately Technology wasn’t one of them.) For example deciding to change careers and join Librarianship after many years in another industry has opened up many new horizons for me. Probably the hardest challenge was keeping the end in mind. Sometimes I have trouble deciding what the end should look like.

Thing 5

Posting a link to my Flickr pictures.

These are some of the sites in london from my most recent trip (2/2007)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14984374@N03/

Thing 6 – Mashups

Since the assignment was to explore mashups and write about one I first had to understand what they were. The Wikipedia articles were very helpful.

The mashup I chose to explore was FLIGHTWAIT ( www.flightwait.com ) which graphically displays the flight delays out of airports across the country. I thought this was great and I will be reviewing it the next time I travel domestically.

Thing 7 – Previously Posted

Thing 8 – Create a Bloglines Account

Creating the account was easy. But again first I had to “Read all about It” since I wasn’t sure what it was or how it could be useful. Of course once you know what it is you easily see how useful it can be.

Thing 9 – RSS Feeds

For the purposes of this exercise I selected two feeds add to my Bloglines Account. First is the BBC News site because of my interest in all things British and the second was engadget to further my goal of trying to keep up with new technology. Each of these serves my goals and I now check my bloglines account almost daily.