Thing - 13 Online Productivity Tools

I set up a homepage on Yahoo. This was easy to do and if I needed a homepage this is the one I would use. The calendars all have interesting features. Right now GroupWise is adequate for using at work. It does almost everything I want. For now I wouldn't use the homepage or calendar at home since there's no need.

Of all the tools we've learned so far the calendars seem the most useful for productivity. We can track meetings, time away from office, program attendance, schedules, etc. I depend on GroupWise for a lot of information every day. Whe I have some time I'd like to explore more of the productivity tools.

Thing 12 Newsvine

As usual for so many of these "things" the directions looked easy but evidently steps were skipped assuming one would already know what to do. I find this extremely frustrating and the whole social networking phenomenon truly weird. Who cares what I read or think about an article? I certainly don't want to read what some other person thinks about the news, I just want to read the news. It makes no sense to me.

As usual I can't get the link to work the way the directions say it will and there is no other help available.

Seed Newsvine

Thing 11 - tagging and del.icio.us

This Thing was fairly easy to do and I tagged some of my posts. I can see the uses for del.iciu.us for tagging and marking things on the web but I have to admit I would be extremely uncomfortable having so much of my personal information or choices available for just anyone to see. I guess I'm not the social networking type; I see it as a rather strange form of narcissism in our society today. Everyone thinks everyone else is deeply interested in what they do and think - and I guess some of them are!

Thing 10 - wikis

It's fun and easy to edit the wiki. I see that they are a useful resource for patron input, staff sharing, etc. but I wouldn't count on any wiki for sound, accurate information since anyone with a bias can alter it.

Thing 9 - Collaboration

Well GoogleDocs wouldn't let me edit it. If we're supposed to sign up for an account that ought to be noted in the instructions. I see others are having the same types of problems so I suspect there's glitch somewhere. I've send email to be invited to edit with ZohoWriter. Perhaps that will work better.

Later the same day: I could get into the Zohowriter document but couldn't edit it. I then signed up for an account but then could no longer access the guest document. I give up.

Thing 8 - Sharing photos

This was a fun exercise and I found it easy to navigate PictureTrail and Flicks but difficult to figure out how to paste the slideshow to the blog. That's where the directions on the 23 Things pages seems to fall down. It says copy the posting code and paste in the blog but it won't let me do that and the directions don't say how. Too much knowledge is taken for granted I'm afreaid. I only managed to get the link in, not the slideshow.

The library applications of photo and image sharing are vast and would be great to do. Albums of storytimes, programs, etc., could add zing to our homepage.

http://www.picturetrail.com/flicks/4576754/preview

Thing 7 - Communication

Email and electronic calendars have certainly changed life in the library. Email now allows me to inform everyone on my staff of updates, news, procedure changes, etc., at the same time. No more routing slips -hooray! We get so much more done by sending information by email and only meeting when absolutely necessary.

Reference staff use instant messaging and chat to serve patrons and I hope that our division will begin to use some of these tools after everyone has had a chance to sample them with the 23 Things program. We already get emails from patrons to which we respond. I don't use chat or IM myself (no one to chat with) and texting is beyond my eyesight capabilities but I certainly see uses for them in the library world. If we could receive texting on our work screens it would be another way to give service to our patrons.

I haven't yet attended an OPAL or MINITEX webinar but I've attended a Sirsi webinar. The format is somewhat cumbersome but useful for getting information out to a widely scattered audience. As long as they are short ( 1 hour or less) I think they are handy but much longer than that and you lose the audience.