Thing #23: The End

Woo Hoo! I'm done...!...? But not really, because I don't think I'll ever be done learning about technology that's out there. Here are the questions from the 23 Things website that I'm supposed to answer in this final post:

Q: What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
A: I liked expanding my horizons, and I'm glad I discovered the Google Reader.

Q: How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
A: It's not only made me more aware of what's out there, but it made me dig deeper into technology I already knew and I explored new technology.

Q: Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
A: There really were not. I'm a pretty technologically savvy person, and as my blog posts show, I pretty much either knew of, had been using, or had tried each of the 23 things already.

Q: What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
A: Add more things!

Q: And last but not least… If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?
A: YES!

Thing #22: Audiobooks

I am not one of those people who can listen to audiobooks and retain information. I've tried, oh how I've tried. I listened to one with a very nice voice of an older British gentleman. Before I knew it, I was lulled by his voice and we were on chapter 3, but I had no idea what had happened!

My library provides My Media Mall to library card holders. I've used it in order to help customers with it. You need to download a special program in order for it to work. You find the title(s) you want, check them out, download them to your computer, then put them on your portable device. The MMM titles are now even in the catalog.

Downloadable audiobooks are really good for people who like to listen to books, but they just don't work for me.

Thing #21: Podcasts

I don't have a lot of experience with podcasts, so this was interesting. I have a friend who produces podcasts, and my library had a podcast created for the teen Battle of the Bands.

Podcasts would be so useful to libraries to explain how to use library services (like the catalog, placing holds, using the microfilm machine, etc). It would be neat to podcast programs to show what happened to those who couldn't attend or to show how a certain thing is done for a teaching program.

At Podcast Alley there were a lot of neat how-to podcasts. How to remove DRM, how to burn a DVD...and they showed you how to do it, which is a bonus for a lot of people.

Thing #20: You Tube

Oh, You Tube, I am so very aware of you already! My son and his BFF post dippy things to You Tube all the time. I'd tell you how to find them, but I'm too embarrassed! I did a search using my name and thankfully, nothing came up (I wouldn't put it past them to post me sleeping or unaware!).

You Tube allows people to have their 15 minutes of fame. However, I don't think some people are careful enough and post themselves and their friends doing questionable things.

Thing #19: Explore Web 2.0 Award Site

I checked out Care2 under the Philanthropy title. My mom's always sending me e-cards from Care2, so I thought I'd check it out.

There are several organizations you can get connected to in order to help take action - like stopping the hunting of seals in Canada (did you know that 98% of seals killed in Canada are between the ages of 2 weeks to 3 months old???!!!).

There are recipes and healthy living guides, as well as health and wellness answers.

You can also sign online petitions or start a petition of your own.

It's a neat site to play around on.

Thing #18: Online Productivity

The concept of being able to access word processing and spreadsheet documents on any computer, without having to use discs or flash drives is intriguing! I tried to create an account at Zoho, but there were technical difficulties. That's pretty fine by me anyway since I'm trying to reduce the number of log ons I have, so using Google Docs is perfect.

I like the way the Google Documents screen looks - so similar to the screen of the files on my computer. It was simple to create a new document. This is such a great idea for people who collaborate on projects because there's the Share feature.

After uploading a file, I got an error message when I wanted to Save and Close it, then find it from my list. Google Docs stopped working. I don['t know if it's the computer I'm using or if there's something wrong with the site. I'll have to test it at another computer.

In all, I think this is a great product that could have real value in both personal and business life.

Thing #17: Playing Around with PBWiki

Well, cool! Since my project for this class will be setting up a wiki, this is pretty cool that I can access the Learning2.0 wiki and add to it.

Well...I don't have an invite key, so I cannot add to this wiki...I'll "play around with PBWiki" as I try to set mine up.

Instead I randomly clicked through blogs on the list with interesting names.

Thing #16: Wikis

I am especially interested in this exercise because as my final project for this class, I am going to create a wiki of YA resources. I already have a wiki name picked out and registered at pbwiki, but I'm not quite sure of where to go from there. I've looked at other librarys' wikis and have been intrigued. I would love for the library I work for to have a wiki that staff could use to access information that is located in several different binders.

I particularly like Grand Rapids Public Library wiki because of all the resources for teens in it. I'm hoping I'll be able to use a number of the teen resources in my own blog! Looking within each of the teen resource sections, I see how time consuming this could be and see now what Charlet meant when she said I didn't need to do quite so many sections.

Thing #15: Web 2.0, Library 2.0, and the Future of Libraries

For this exercise I read several sections of OCLC's Next Space report, as outlined below:

Away from Icebergs:
Rick Anderson talks about the "just in case collection." While I agree that many of the items we collect that may have been harder to get in the past no longer are, there is still validity for some print resources. He mentions his library has had a 55% drop in circulation...well, mine has not; in fact, it has steadily increased. I think you need to take into consideration your population and what it is they want. He works for a university, so it's more likely that more people will be computer savvy, and will be more database and online-information inspired. My branch at the public library, however, is more interested in the hot DVD and latest fiction.

I wholeheartedly agree that we need to move away from expecting our library customers to know and learn research skills. We need to cut the barriers that prohibit our customers from getting the information they need. Why is a cookbook categorized with the subject term "cookery" instead of "cookbook?" It's crazy.

I also agree with Rick's last point that we need to give the customer what they want and where they want it. If they want to be able to download a book from home, we need to allow them to do that.


Into a New World of Librarianship
I love Michael Stephens. I subscribe to his blog and love to read what he has to say. I aspire to be the librarian he describes in this article. Even more, I hope there's a library out there that will recognize the Librarian 2.0 in me and embrace me and my ideas.

Thing #14: Technorati

I was aware of Technorati, but wasn't exactly sure what it was. It's essentially a place where blogs go to be noticed. It's a pretty overwhelming site just because of all the information it holds. I like the "authority" rating that is attached to each blog which shows the reader how accurate the information in this blog is.

I did not claim my blog because I don't want this one to be something that a lot of people look at - it's essentially just a school assignment. But, I've been playing around with the idea of creating a blog that I will market to the masses (don't we all want a little notoriety?!), but I haven't figured out the particulars yet: like what to call it or whether or not I want to be anonymous.

It was interesting to watch the tag clouds for each category move around as the tags in them became more or less used. I also liked how, within each category, there were several subcategories, such as under Lifestyle I could go straight to blogs pertaining to Green living.

Thing #13: Delicious

I already blogged about the wonders of Delicious earlier, so I'm not going to do it again. Instead, I'll talk about the importance of tagging. When I first started on Delicious, I didn't tag anything. Then I thought to myself how it would be great if I could have different pages so that I could get to the topics I wanted to quickly, without sifting through all of my bookmarks. Well, duh, that's exactly what tagging is!



The most important thing to me about tagging is for me to use tag terms I'll, 1) remember and, 2) mean something to me and what the website is about. here's a picture of my current tag cloud (using the 164 tags I've indicated):




If you'd like to check out all of my bookmarks, click here: Tattooed Librarian's Delicious

Thing #12: Rollyo

This should be interesting, I've never heard of Rollyo. This is a site where you can create lists of websites you use under a particular subject. You can also browse other users' search rolls.

Okay, so I added a search roll...it took me to automatically back to the main screen, and now...nothing. I have no idea where my Reference Websites search roll is. I found it to edit it, but I cannot find it to access it. This is dumb.

Okay, so apparently I had to go back to my Dashboard in order to access it. Even there it's not intuitive as to what I'm supposed to do or where my list is. I found it, finally, but I cannot access the websites that are on my roll. It's just giving a listing.

I don't like this website. I'm going to stick with Delicious.

Thing #11: Library Thing

I used to have an account with Library Thing, well, I'm sure I still do, but I don't remember my user name. For quite some time now, I've used Good Reads to catalog my personal library and the books I've read. My sister-in-law is on that site, so we can see what we're both reading and make recommendations to each other.

The thing I like most about Good Reads is that I'm keeping track of what I'm reading and what I have already read.

If you'd like to add me on Good Reads, you can click this link to find me: http://www.goodreads.com/profile/amybyrne'>Check out my books on Goodreads

Thing #10: Online Image Generator

I thought this would be an exercise where I'd upload my picture to a website and it would do funny things to me. Nope. There are all sorts of things I found to do, and hardly any of them required my own picture!


The Generator Blog: This is a really cool blog, of which I am now subscribed!, that posts different image generators like this:


Upside Down Writing


Amy Byrne is amazing!


Looks like this upside down:


¡ƃuızɐɯɐ sı ǝuɹʎq ʎɯɐ


Eternal Life Coupon:

Thing #9: Locate Library-Related Blogs or Newsfeeds

I have a large number of blogs I follow on my Google Reader, and many of those are library-related. Here's a list of some of my favorites:

Free Range Librarian: K.G. Schneider’s blog on librarianship, writing, and everything else, since 2003.
Librarian Avengers: Want to be a librarian? Got chutzpah? This is the blog for you.
A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette: A polite librarian is a good librarian.
Annoyed Librarian: Whatever it is, I'm against it
In the Library with the Lead Pipe: The murder victim? Your library assumptions. Suspects? It could have been any of us.
Librarian in Black: Resources and discussions for the "tech-librarians-by-default" among us...
Miss Information: The desperate life of a tormented library clerk.
Stephen's Lighthouse: By Sirsi-Dynix's Vice President of Innovation Stephen Abram
Swiss Army Librarian: or, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Fear and Loathing at a Public Library Reference Desk
What I Learned Today: Web 2.0 and programming tips from a library technology enthusiast, What I Learned Today… covers blogs, rss, wikis and more as they relate to libraries.

P.S. This is not the full list of library blogs to which I subscribe...that would have taken me a loooong time to list here!

Some non-library-related blogs I enjoy:
Passive Aggressive Notes: painfully polite and hilariously hostile writings from shared spaces the world over
Blogography: Blogography is a place to learn and grow by exposing yourself to the mind of David Simmer II, a brilliant commentator on world events and popular culture (or so he claims).
Mashable: All that's new on the web

My Delicious Bookmarks in a Cloud

If you look to the left, under About Me and What I'm Reading Now, you'll see a tag cloud of my bookmarks on Delicious. It's not quite how I wanted my Delicious bookmarks to look on here (I wanted there to be an automatic blog posting each day of the bookmarks I created that day), but it's still pretty cool!

If you click on one of the tags, you'll be taken to my Delicious page where you'll see all the websites I've saved for that particular tag.

TattooedLibrarian's Delicious Bookmarks

For the past week I've been playing around with getting my Delicious bookmarks to automatically upload to my blog each day, to no avail. There's an area in Delicious where you can do this, but it's asking for XML-RCP code - and I don't know what that is. I searched the Help files and thought I had it...nope.

Next I searched the gadgets in Blogger to see what I could add directly to my blog page. So, you will now see a very lame box with my most recent Delicious bookmarks. There were all sorts of gadgets for Delicious you could add, but none of them would work. This is the only one that would.

I'm going to keep searching for something better. If you have any ideas for me, let me know! In the meantime, if you'd like to check out my Delicious bookmarks, I'm TattooedLibrarian. You can also click on the title of this post to get to my bookmarks.

Thing #8: RSS Feeds & Set Up a News Reader Account

I've been using the news aggregator Newsgator about a year and a half now. There were some functionality issues that I'm not happy about, so I took this opportunity to check out some of the competition. In Newsgator I was unhappy with the load time for the blogs, sometimes pictures wouldn't load or be shown, and it was time consuming to add and delete blogs from my list.



I started by looking at the news reader 23 Things suggests, Bloglines. I created an account and played around with it for a bit. I didn't really like the look of this news reader...it was plain and basic-looking. I also don't like how little space there is in the left-hand column to display the blogs I read. I read on one of our discussion boards that another classmate decided to go with Google Reader, so I thought I'd check that out.



I'm trying to create as few logons to websites as I can. With Google Reader, I'm not only aggregating my blogs and news feeds, but I'm also aggregating my logons. I like the look and feel of the Google Reader. I can get right to it after I log on my iGoogle home page. Like Bloglines, I'm not happy with the limited amount of space there is on the left-hand side of the page for the listing of the blogs I'm following, but it's a small price to pay when I consider the features I do like such as, easy addition and deletion of subscriptions, the top recommendations that have lead me to add to my subscriptions, the look of it, the sorting capabilities, and the one simple log on.

Thing #7: Blog About Anything Technology Related

I finally did it. I finally broke down and cheated on a long-time love of mine...I cheated on MySpace and created a Facebook profile. It's not that I don't love MySpace anymore, it's just, well...different. I've found that on Facebook I can be myself...I mean my REAL self. There seem to be so many more security features that I actually use my real name instead of my alter ego. It's still difficult for me to navigate around, but everyday I learn something new.

I even downloaded the Facebook application for my BlackBerry, so I'm constantly connected to my friends (when I want to be). MySpace just doesn't offer me that, however MySpace for BlackBerry is in the works and I'm now added to an email list so that when it becomes available for download I'll be one of the first to get it. But, will it be just a little bit too late???

One of the things I like about Facebook are the networks. You belong to one network (that you can change) and you can look at all the people in that network. Right now I'm signed up for the Rockford, IL network. I also have access to the networks for my colleges and high school. I've been able to reconnect with so many people I haven't seen in so many years!

I won't be getting rid of MySpace anytime soon, but it's certainly taken something of a backseat to Facebook these past couple of weeks.

Thing #6: Play with Flickr 3rd Party Mashups and Applications

For the sixth learning experiment we're supposed to play around with Flickr mashups and third party sites. I had heard the term "mashup" before, but I didn't really know what it meant. When you "mashup", you're taking elements from one website and mash it up with another application. I played around with making a trading card of myself, which you can see to the left. This was pretty neat, and I wish i was feeling more clever so that I could come up with some better descriptors about myself. A couple of weeks ago I randomly went to some library's website and all of the reference staff members had her/his own trading card and they looked really cool - way cooler than the one I made for myself. I thought this was a really neat things for this library to have, and it made them appear hip.

The second things I played around with was spelling my name in Flickr images. You type your name into a box, click create, and your name in other people's Flickr images is shown. It gives you the html code so that you can post it in your blog or on your website, like I've done below:

I got different images back each time I entered my name.

This was a fun exercise. Next I'm going to create a map of all of the places I've been. Interestingly, I've been to every state except for Alaska and Hawaii...

Flickr Update

I downloaded the Flickr application for my BlackBerry and I've been playing around with adding the photos I have stored on it to the Flickr site. It would be really cool if my BlackBerry had a camera on it, but it doesn't. It's been very easy to upload pictures. While I think Flickr is useful for some people, I don't see it as having the same kind of value in my life. All of my friends who would want to see my pictures are on MySpace, which is where I post my photos. I have a very small family, and I don't see any of them being interested in going to Flickr to see my pictures. I'd just print off or email any that I thought they'd find interesting.

I have a friend who is a professional photographer and he uses Flickr to show his work. I have another friend with a couple of kids and relatives scattered throughout the country, and she uses Flickr as a way of recording her kids' growing for her relatives. Both of these uses make sense to me. I'll have to play around and think more before I decide if I want Flickr to do more for me.

Thing #5: Explore Flickr

I hadn't ever used Flickr before, but I am well versed in Photo Bucket, which is basically the same thing. I created an account in Flickr using my Yahoo ID. I was hoping Flickr was connected to Google since I'm pretty much switching everything I have to that so that I can have one log on, but it's not.

Since I'm not on my primary computer, I don't have any pictures that I want to upload, but I'm sure it's the same as Photo Bucket. I'll have to check this out in more detail later. One functionality of Photo Bucket I really like that I hope Flickr has is that it puts the pictures into code so that I can post them on my friends' MySpace pages. I hope that Flickr has the same functionality.

Thing #4: Register My Blog

Thing #4 is for me to register my blog at the PLCMC website. However, since I'm not an employee of PLCMC, I can't do this. They give an alternative where non staff members can record their progress at 43Things.com. I created an account, but it seems a bit redundant to me, so I'm not going to do it. Instead, I'll continue to track my progress by using this blog.