Thing 12

Wikis--
I do agree with the teachers asking students to look further than wikipedia when doing the usual school report that is easily findable in a more authoritative source. They should be teaching the kids to look further than than their noses (ie a google search that brings up a wikipedia article)-- that's what school is for and they should be establishing good habits they'll hold onto.

Hey, I confess I have read Wikipedia articles -- sometimes it's the only place to find out about a defunct tv series or some celebrity gossip. I admire it for its far-reaching subject matter --there's lots of stuff that only a wikipedist will cover.
Of course all this self publishing and treating everyone in hearing range to your telephone conversations is a change for society that we won't understand the impact of for decades.

I added a comment to the 23things Wiki. Just an exercise to join my comment and my name to others I saw there.

I have tried the floating collection wiki we're using at work. Good idea in theory and I admire the creator for putting it up. Wikis have amazing potential if you have avid followers. My son (sorry if you're tired of hearing about them, folks) used a wiki to plan a group camping trip to great advantage.

I read through the library practices wiki and some of the others. Some looked like they had been started and abandoned or at least didn't seem recently used. I can see that easily happening. I will have to think hard about doing anything like that because it seems that once on the web, always on the web and I don't find abandoned property desirable.

Thing 11

I think Common Craft is awesome -- they do a fabulous job of boiling things down.

Social Media. I was familiar with Reddit already because my son uses it and he had recommended it to me. I hadn't taken the tour until now though and my reactions was not as positive as when Paul showed me his Reddit page. The conclusion I would make now is that you have to choose your content according to your interests and refine it to what you'll enjoy reading because otherwise it would be overwhelming and be altogether too much. Sort of like receiving a Sunday New York Times every day and feeling guilty that you haven't got time to read all the fascinating articles. But on watching him, he gets it up on his iphone and thus never is at a loss for news articles to read wherever he is.

Looked at the other choices. I'm not motivated personally to use these for myself -- part of it is that doing these Things I've found myself using hours of my off time on the computer every night getting lost looking at blogs and sites I wasn't aware of before. That's not bad but it is a huge user of time. So I guess the answer to the blog prompt is - productivity detractor

I don't know how I'd use this for the Library but I'm glad to have explored it some.

Thing 10 continued

Yes, I too wanted to explore delicious since I've heard it bandied about since forever. I established an account on one computer and happily found my delicious bookmarks when I went to another. Very handy especially since I do travel and use multiple computers.
I looked at Lansing Public's bookmarks and thought we too could use delicious to organize our public library bookmarks. The only drawback being that reference librarians can go wild adding bookmarks and then there's just too much to go through. I know, I know, the tags are there to keep it organized but I'm still more comfortable looking through fewer well selected bookmarks than 100's. I'd rather just search for a website that satisfies a patron's needs than go through a co-worker's delicious tags but of course if it was my delicious list, then I'd know what was there was eminently helpful. So that means that I will make my own great reference list with great tags and then sign into delicious every time I am on a public service desk. That is, of course, possible and maybe it'll happen.
I'm glad to have been pushed by 23 things into exploring delicious.
I haven't yet seen the value of looking into other people's great bookmark collection but I know I can do it and will if the situation calls for it.

Thing 10

It took me two nights of beating myself up to accomplish Thing 9 and 10 isn't coming easily either. I couldn't find the labels place in the edit view on the blog but now I see an option for a label at the bottom of this. I'll see if it works.

Thing 9 - trying again

Thing 9

I tried two ways to create a flickr badge but I must not be cutting and pasting the code properly. I'll see if I can get help. I end up getting error messages that the blog will not accept the HTML I put in.

Thing 8

I signed up for Twitter just to see my reaction to it. (My son wrote that the "mom barrier" had been broken :). Not impressed so far. I am following 4 people and can't say there is much of interest. However my facebook account is getting more stuff in it now that friends are reporting their activities- I can see that being something I am will watch more often.
I do Ask a Librarian chat and have IMed with my sons. I have watched over their shoulders as they IM with 4 people at a time. At least you never feel that you are missing a call...
Library purposes? AAL serves a function -- especially the afterhours contact when most libraries are not answering their phones. I guess we can twitter our news just like we can blog it. "Guitar hero starting up"? We could give instructions on downloading audiobooks on IM. But I still like hearing people ask their questions on the phone. Voice inflections are better than emoticons.
I think AAL attracts customers who really don't have a clue and would feel foolish calling so they like the anonymity of asking questions online. So again AAL serves a purpose.
My family has gone in strongly for a genealogy social networking website called Geni -- we're having fun adding stuff and figuring out the birth order of the generation who landed in this country 100 years ago-- good we're starting now before their children are completely gone. I applaud Geni for getting us started on something we've talked about for years. Maybe I'll do a library program on it if I feel comfortable enough....

Thing 7 Captioner

Okay, this time here's a photo with the caption attached.

This feature will be very useful for captioning library activity photos. We can use it to advertise what we do on our Branch website.

Thing 6 -- Big Huge Labs Captioner

http://bighugelabs.com/photos/01ca749bdd7e93e09c0b531ad6575b08/captioner1019420

Okay, I thought that the captioned photo would materialize but I guess there's only the link to it. I guess next time I should save the captioned photo in my Flickr account or on my computer and then I can add it directly to my blog.
Also I tried for almost an hour to get a slide show of the library going and was frustrated. I'll have to ask for help.

Thing 6

wanderwoman's travels

Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.com

Wow, the list of Flickr apps is overwhelming!! Too much to absorb but plenty to play with if you have the inclination. The Map Maker feature attracted me because, of course, I am wanderwoman. Always ready to travel....
My sister's map would be almost entirely blue.
Okay, I'm going to have to go back and explore more applications that we can use in the Library but it would be fun to use the map maker with a group of senior citizens and have them fill in countries as we talked about their life experiences.
I think it an accomplishment when all I do is download photos succesfully but I want to get back in and do the captioning and the mapping of photos. Sounds like a good idea -- would help jar my memory in my personal life.

Thing 5

As I commented in my posting, I need to be careful about sending things from Flickr to the blog because it's hard to change once they are posted.
However, I'm very glad to have gotten my feet wet with Flickr. It's something I've wanted to try for a long time.
It will be very useful to have a link to Flickr when we get into our Branch page production. I have no idea how many people will look at a Branch page but having more information out there about what we're doing can only be a good thing.

AlachuaLibrary 001

AlachuaLibrary 001
Originally uploaded by carylmckellar

Thing 5
Here is the entrance to the Snuggle Up Center at Alachua Library. I established a Flickr account and add some library shots. We should have photos on our branch page.

Thing 4

I set up Google Reader and added two subscriptions -- Market Watch and the NYTimes Carpetbagger. Yes, I'm interested in Oscar buzz (guilty secret :). I am realizing that this is not so new to me because I have had a "MY Yahoo" page for months and added stuff I wanted to see there. Not blogs but news and websites I wanted to follow. It's been very useful to have that content up there and changing daily without any effort.

I can see that RSS will be handy in the library if we can use it to broadcast information to our avid patrons. Programming for those parents who really follow our free offerings, materials we've added, etc.

I can never remember the hints on what we might put in these posts when I'm blogging so that's my excuse for content-thin blogs on each Thing.
I can see where RSS would really eat into your time. I have had this conversation with my addicted son who watches his iphone constantly for updates on everything.

thing 3

I used the blog search engines for "storytelling" "storytelling Jonesborough". Google was more useful the first time but the second time with Technorati "Jonesborough" brought me videos from YouTube of well known tellers which made me happy. Interesting that they are using YouTube to promote themselves -- the stories stop early to whet your whistle for the teller. The rest of the blogs I found just were boring travel blogs about people's experience at the national festival which is all well and good but not exciting reading. That's what I have against alot of blogs -- diaries important to their writers but not worth my limited internet time.
Went into Ask.com too and tried my sons' names. Did find the older one since he was recognized as a source for people investigating social networking. So I have that connection to Web 2.0 -- we've gone through him developing his website, it becoming an applicaton on Facebook, and then he sold it in January. He received dozens of comments bemoaning him leaving -- that was very nice. But here I am being a proud mom. Better get back to Library 2.0 instead :).

Thing 2
I finally caught up at work with the things I had to do there and worked the weekend. Now after being back and working 7 days I can spend my day at home and can get around to 23 things. But I'm not complaining. It's what I expected to do and I am intrigued with it.
Read about 2.0 and watched the video finally. Not much to say other than what I said before. I would like to be more helpful to patrons and want to do the Branch's website and not depend on others so much. Looking forward to Flickr.