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Thing #23

I was teasing the rest of the Web Challenge committee at our meeting #14 (yikes!) yesterday, that my entire post for Thing #23 would be one word:

Whew!

It has been a lot of work and its not done yet, of course. There is the final prep for Staff Development Day and all the blog reading yet to be done to track all the progress of every player.
Then writing the final report, deciding if we want to do it again (yes!), planning a budget for next year, etc., etc.

What did I get out of it? I learned new things like I hope every player did. I used Web 2.0 tools for a real project in a more extensive way that ever before. I don't think we could have managed the Web Challenge without Google Docs and Google Reader. I also had a wonderful time with a committee that embraced the concept of learning and fun with enthusiasm. Performing as the voice of a toy T. Rex complaining about short arms making blogging difficult is not anything I thought I'd ever do at work but it was great fun. (It was a tiny piece of the committee's presentation at the Spring 2008 Admin Forums).

The combination of skills, good humor and hard work displayed by the committee members made my work as chair a real pleasure. I don't think I've ever laughed so much and gotten so much done at the same time. Thank you, Chris, Lara, Sally, Jill, Kristen, Elizabeth, and Glynis.

I've enjoyed helping people with the different things. I have to find a way to teach more at work.

I'm sure the library should continue as part of Open World Cat, we should use Google Docs and Zoho to work with other staff more smoothly, establish our own Reference Best Practices Wiki, add Library Thing tags to our catalog, and establish and promote more RSS feeds from OCL (how about one about new titles?). Is that enough for now?

Come back to my blog sometime since I hope to continue to write about information, searching, hints and tips and interesting reference questions.

Happy playing!

Thing #22

I bought my treasured SanDisk Sansa M200 MP3 player when OCL first added ListenNJ to the list of databases/electronic resources. It has three different books on it right now plus some music that I transferred from my CDs. My Sansa player is different from the Sansa Clip that will be the prize in the Web Challenge in one important way. It takes one AAA battery instead of a rechargeable battery. I carry the player and an extra battery in a little soft sided change purse. I never have to worry if I've remembered to charge the battery and AAA batteries are available everywhere. An important advantage to all flash memory based MP3 players (like SanDisk's) is that the books don't expire off the player ever. You have to remove them when you want them gone to make room for new material. MP3 players with mini spinning harddrives have the books expire after the lending period is over.

What do I like about ListenNJ?

* Free
* Has full cast audio titles from Bruce Coville.
* Easy to download

What I don't like

* Not enough titles, new and backlist. Overdrive, please license
Recorded Books titles!
* Doesn't have all the full cast audio titles from Bruce Coville
* If I'm not careful when I download titles, they end up on my player
interspersed with my music.
* Waiting lists
* Email notification that I'm at the top of the waiting list and then
forgetting to download the title
* Not enough ways to search. You have to know to search
Bruce Coville as an author to get a list of the full cast audio books
that he publishes.

I'm sorry that some players have had problems using ListenNJ at work. You really have to use the PC Plus machines. At home, you shouldn't have any problem.

Thing #21

I admit to listening to Harry Potter podcasts right before the last book came out. The speculation on what was going to happen was very entertaining (wrong as it turned out but entertaining).

I don't think there is not enough time in my life for me to start listening to podcasts regularly. In moments using the podcast.com search engine, I found hours that looked interesting enough to listen to. Maybe I'd listen more if I had that gadget that Glynis showed me that lets her MP3 player connect to her car sound system. I could listen as I drive to a custom list of podcasts instead of radio or CDs or audiobooks.

Odeo confused me as I couldn't get the podcasts to play but with all the promising hours I found on podcast.com I don't have to worry about that for now.

Here's a link to a science fiction podcast (I only listened to about half of it): Slice of Sci Fi Show #160. It reminded me of conversations at different SF conventions and club meetings. It did have some interesting news about upcoming genre films. I added the show to my Bloglines so I can track future shows.

If we could get permission from speakers, podcasts could be useful to archive some talks on our website so customers could hear programs they couldn't attend.

Thing #20

I discovered YouTube in early 2006 when a friend recommended it as a source of really obscure SF TV shows. Since then, I've watched a lot of clips from tv to movies to Broadway Tony award shows. Things I used to go to the Museum of Television and Broadcasting to see, I can now see at least bits of on YouTube. Unfortunately, this is almost all illegal and a violation of copyright. Almost every time I review my favorite videos, at least one has been removed for copyright violation. Goodbye, the ending of the last Newhart, so long to the excerpts from Cinderella (the good 1950's version with Julie Andrews), adieu, the entire movie Slipper and the Rose, and well, you get the idea. The good thing is that many of the lost videos get reposted at least until they're noticed again! I believe in copyright but I think short clips should be allowed under fair use. I think they can be an advantage to the copyright holder. I want to buy the Julie Andrews Cinderella now that I've seen parts of it again.

Well, for now, please enjoy the amazing Audra McDonald singing "The Glamorous Life" from Steven Sondheim's A Little Night Music.

Thing #19

I am now a Pandora addict. I pay for XM radio and this is better. I've created a Steeleye Span channel with the greatest classic British folk rock, a Dr. John channel for the blues, Mandy Patinkin, John Pizzarelli, Johnny Mercer, Mel Torme , Ella Fitzgerald and other stations for American high standards, a Broadway station featuring Barbara Cook and Audra McDonald among others, a Antonio Carlos Jobim station for Brazilian influenced jazz and a Phil Ochs station I'm teaching not to play me Dylan! Right now, I'm listening to the great George Shearing playing with John Pizzarelli singing a Harry Warren tune. oops, now it is Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto playing a samba, hey shouldn't that be on the Jobim station and not the Pizzarelli station? Is Pandora cross pollinating my channels?

I noticed esnips on the Web 2.0 awards list. I used that several years ago and just forgot about it. It saves material from the web and not just the address like del.icio.us. Sites that disappear are less of a problem with esnips. I think I need to try it again and see if it is easier to use this time.

I'm having fun with Picnik, too. That photo editing tool that converts photos into what looks like a pencil sketch is something I could really use for creating cards and other items. Some of the other editing choices are fairly silly.

Etsy is a site I visit often. I think if I plan ahead for once, several Christmas presents will be bought here. I'm not crafty but I've recommended it to friends that are crafters.

Thing #18

Almost two years ago, frustrated that I couldn't read a Word document at home (I have WordPerfect on my home computer and don't get me started on why it is superior to Word), I discovered Google docs. Problem solved. I also use Google docs as a backup to critical documents that I can access anywhere. I find that much more useful that saving to the OCL server.

I didn't do much document sharing until this web challenge. I can't image how the committee could have functioned without Google docs. We do all the participation tracking on a Google docs spreadsheet. HR gave us a spreadsheet with all the OCL employee names that we imported to Google docs, then columns for all the Things were added. Now as we track the blog posts, (through Google Reader) , the committee members initial things that have been done by each player in the spreadsheet. I'm in awe of how much work some committee members have put into tracking especially when so many posts aren't labeled as to what thing they're for. Sometimes this is hard to figure out. (Is that a scanned image for thing 7 or a Flickr picture for thing 5 or a digital picture the player took for thing 6? AAARRGH!)

I'm looking forward to trying Zoho but I'm not in any hurry. Google apps have everything I need right now but I can see some projects coming where I'm going to check Zoho for useful apps. Zoho meeting sounds great.

Thing #17

Jill set up the pbwiki for oclwebthings for Thing #17 and then I played with it to make it work with the discovery exercise that Sally and I edited. Every couple of days, I revisit the sandbox and marvel at what is happening. I thought people would play a bit with the fonts and colors but its been an explosion of colors and interactivity with one person commenting on a favorite food or book and other people responding. I'm leaving the creativity alone but if you do post your "favorite place to be" under "favorite candy", I'm moving it to the right heading. That is how wikis work.

I wish more people posted their favorite computer tips but I have plans for our own OCL Reference best practices wiki so there will be plenty of chances later. For one of my favorite shortcut hints, check out tinyurl.com. You'll never have to struggle to write down a very long web address for a customer again or even worst try to do it over the phone (tilde, what? its that squiggly thing to the left of the number one, you have to hold down the shift key, help!).

What is really fun is that later in Thing #18, everyone just had to add their name to the shared document in Google docs. There was no requirement to do it in color or play with the fonts but almost everyone did that anyway. Has the web challenge released a dormant font playing instinct? If you really want to play with fonts, try www.dafont.com for some amazing ones.

Thing #16

I feel a certain amount of ownership about Thing #16 and #17 because I worked on the editing of both things with another member of the OCL Web Challenge committee. It was a great learning experience to edit and update the great material from the original version of the wiki things from Helene Blowers's 23 things at PCLMC. We replaced the original podcast with the great Youtube video from Common Craft. I learned how to embed that video for Thing #16. I was amazingly proud of myself for figuring that out on my own.

I started the Wikipedia article about OCL with the history article from an 1992 community profile, updated from the 2002 community profile. After convincing Wikipedia that I wasn't plagerizing and OCL gave permission to copy the history section from the OCL website, I started to work on the rest. It was surprising to me how quickly strangers stepped in to fix things, to "wikify" correctly as I learned to follow Wikipedia style. Strangers also added the great pictures of the interior of TR branch. There was a little vandalism but that was quickly fixed.

I have to admit, I was taken aback by one person's comment in a blog that the article was badly written but I choose to believe they meant the old stuff I didn't write! Thank you to the person who thought the article was well written. Now if I can only get some paragraphs written by the Diversity Committee, and a paragraph about Teen Services done by the Teen librarians. I've been asking!

I can't use Wikipedia anymore without checking the history and discussion tabs. They provide important clues about the quality of the article. If the article isn't getting attention from editors or if the discussion is very heated, you need to consider the article even more carefully than usual.

Anybody want to help with the Wikipedia article I'm writing about John Bailey Lloyd? It is still in my sandbox so unless someless beats me to it, you won't find it yet on Wikipedia. I think he deserves an article, don't you?

Thing #15

I've been reading about Library 2.0 and Learning 2.0 for nearly two years or more. I'm finding it impossible to distill even a fraction of the discussion down either internally or in a blog post. Both my initial support of bringing Learning 2.0 and the 23 things to OCL and the great satisfaction I'm enjoying as the first OCL 23 things project draws to the end, reinforce my stong opinion that Library 2.0 offers a great deal for the conceptual planning of the future of public libraries.

I followed each of the suggestion links for further reading about Library 2.0 in Thing #15 and made many del.icio.us tags after reading. One point that seems to come from one of my own unexpressed thoughts was about user education in Away from Icebergs. "We need to focus our efforts not on teaching research skills but on eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need, so they can spend as little time as possible wrestling with lousy search interfaces and as much time as possible actually reading and learning. Obviously, we’ll help and educate patrons when we can, and when they want us to, and the more we can integrate our services with local curricula, the better. But if our services can’t be used without training, then it’s the services that need to be fixed—not our patrons. "

For now, I'll keep it simple with Sarah Houghton's Library 2.0 definition quoted in 11 reasons why Library 2.0 exists and matters, it is "interactive, collaborative, and driven by community needs."

Thing #14

I dutifully searched "Learning 2.0" in Technorati and found a post from Helene Blowers asking libraries that have done the 23 Things Challenge to share the number of participants and the completion rate. A library planning to do the 23 things this fall is wondering how many prizes to order. So I tagged the post in my del.icio.us account and added a tickler in my Outlook to email her with the OCL numbers after Staff Development Day. Then I added Ms. Blowers's blog to my Bloglines account. Technorati to del.icio.us to Bloglines....How's that for a Web 2.0 triple play?

Finding that post was a lovely bit of luck but when I started searching blogs for "Learning 2.0", I was by turns overwhelmed by the amount of content and underwhelmed by some of the writing. I was taught that good reading is hard writing and many of the blogs are full of easy writing. I probably will drop by boingboing.net now and then.

I'm not going to claim my blog. I've made it so Google can't search my blog already. I don't think my thoughts are well written enough to inflict them on a wide audience. Maybe with more practice...

Thing #13

I created a Del.icio.us account. It only has a few links so far while I have hundreds on links on my favorites even if you don't count the TR Information Department links. I was distracted a bit by Del.icio.us's web address. It is a domain hack which I used to think was a fun trick but now I tend to think of as annoying.

Anyway, I think that some users are always going to be more comfortable with the organizational structure of folders and others are going to be more comfortable with the visual cues presented by tag clouds. So I think I'll be using both for a long time.

I admit it is fun to see how many other people have tagged a particular webpage. I was surprised that some of the first few I tagged that I was the first to do so. Not many people interested in having a .pdf family tree of the Windsors updated to include Viscount Severn, I suppose.

Googling or any fulltext searching has its limitations and tags bring in the combined human (albeit inconsistent) element that addresses the overall subject of a page.

I'm glad to say that the Toms River Information favorites are being converted to a Del.icio.us account. It will be happily shared with the rest of the staff when it is a little farther along. It will be useful to see what other branches have in their links. I've already heard of several working on making their own branch del.icio.us accounts.