Thing Seventeen

Elm Productivity Tools

I hate to admit it, but I actually had a hard time with this. Far more then usual, or what I would have expected myself. Though I've worked full time at the library for over a year now, I'm not a librarian and I haven't had to deal with any of our databases like our librarians do. I went to the ELM website, and was really confused as to where to go to find things. There general layout when you first log on, sorted by categories seems nice if you're just looking around. But looking for something specific, wasn't as easy. I browsed around, and it did seem a little intimidating. I also tried to setup that RSS feed to track the search results, but it didn't work for me. All in all, I'm sure this is pretty useful to those that actually have something they're searching for specifically, or know what they're doing, but I didn't feel totally comfortable just browsing around with no real intent or purpose. Obviously lots of libraries use this on a regular basis, and many people are helped because of it, so I understand why it's one of the 23 things.

Thing Sixteen

Student 2.0 Tools

I checked out the University of Minnesota Assignment Calculator and the Research Project Calendar, both of which I found only slightly useful. They both allow you to input dates and a broad subject choice for assignment. While both give you guidelines on where you should be at according to the time line you entered, they're both just that, guidelines. I think it could be useful in the sense that it could get people in the habit of planning things out a little more thoroughly if nothing else. I don't know how useful it would be with library projects however. A library project can vary wildly from one library to the next, unless there was something made specifically regarding libraries I don't see it as being all that helpful, at least not at my library. I still like the idea, and with the addition of mostly user created projects, it could definitely be useful, if perhaps a supervisor could set up a timeline and deadlines and such.

Thing Fifteen - Waiter, there's a game in my library!!!

Oh boy!

There are very few subjects that I would consider myself an expert in and I was surprised to find one in the 23 things list, gaming. This could definitely be considered a generational trait. I'm 24 years old, and video games really only gained immense popularity within the past 20 or so years. I grew up with video games, and technology in general. To give a small example of the popularity of gaming in society, the video game industry has made more money then the movie industry by over $1 billion for several years in a row now. I have been playing games since I was a wee lad and is now definitely an almost daily part of life. Games have expanded from the "toys" for little boys in the 80's, to serious pieces of electronics and to some, centerpieces for home theaters.

I'm definitely no stranger to online games, MMO's, (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games) specifically the world's most popular one, World of Warcraft (WoW). WoW has now exceeded 10 million subscribers worldwide, which is unprecedented. Each subscriber is paying $15 per month to play the game, so to soar to over $10 million is nothing short of astounding. Now seeing as WoW has nothing to do with 23 things no library would have a practical use for it, I will stop discussing it, though believe me I could fill multiple blog posts just talking about my experiences.

Second Life is an interesting title. Like they stated, it's really not a game, there's no goal or points and clear purpose. You kinda have to make a game out of it yourself, if you're looking to be entertained. As far as I could tell from using it, was people using it as a social tool, a place to gather in e-form. I can kind of see the appeal to it in that regard, much like chat rooms were fun and exciting for me when I first got the internet, I can see people have a similar experience and feelings in second life. Personally, Second Life to me is incredibly boring and pointless. I don't have friends that play this, I'm far past the point of randomly talking to strangers on the internet, so there's not a lot of appeal for me. Though from the videos, I can see the use of it educationally, to reach out to younger students that might not otherwise be involved. Putting assignments and challenges along with videos of teachers and information in this digital format was forward thinking kind of move, and I think we've yet to see if it's a practical use of our time.

Thing Fourteen - My Library Thang!

Hello,

I've never used Library Thing before, nor have I heard of anyone at the library using it, so this was a new experience to me. Creating an account with Library Thing literally just took a few seconds, extremely fast and easy. After creating my account I easily started adding books to my virtual shelf. It seems that it searches Amazon.com for the titles and images, so I can only assume almost all popular titles are going to be found.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/danbuckanaga

That link should take you to my catalog I've created so far.

After choosing some of my favorite titles and series for the catalog I looked at the details for all of them. I was surprised how popular a few of my books were with Library Thing users, the Harry Potter titles are obviously going to have a strong following, but I didn't expect that from the others.

I added the library thing widget to the side bar of the blog. Setting that up in the blog was pretty easy, and I like the effect of book covers.

If you had a really really small library, this could be useful for you, and easy to setup. Or if you're a larger sized library, I could see this being used to highlight a smaller selection. A series from an author, or a particular genre could easily be added to this and accessible from the website.

Thing Thirteen - Online Productivity

Hello,

I chose to use iGoogle as my homepage, mostly because I've used Google as my homepage for years now. It was pretty easy to setup, and it's convenient having this Blog, RSS reader and my favorite search engine all connected. Seeing how Google is my home page on my home PC, I setup the "iGoogle" feature available from google. It places your RSS feeds on the home page, as well as other widgets like local weather, the time and date, movie listings among other things, most importantly sudoku.

For the calendar aspect, naturally I chose Google calendar, staying with the theme of Google and one username and password for all their services. Setting up Google calendar initially was almost ridiculously easy, I just used the same username and password that I used for Blogger, GMail, and iGoogle. Also on my iGoogle start page I found a widget for Google calendar, which is a great addition to the iGoogle home page. I then created an account with the Try to remember the milk list site. A nice feature that offers is it's ability to integrate itself into Google calendar. Still, I don't really see a lot of use for it, if you're already using Google calendar. Also, I wasn't able to see the lists, when viewing Google calendar from my iGoogle home page. The Backpack site seems cool, especially if you don't already have any of the features it uses. If you do however have a calendar, or planner or to do list among other things, I don't see much of a need to switch over. Backpack does however offer more then just those features, so much so that it can actually seem a little intimidating with everything you can do. I went to Zamzar's site, which has a cool premise, converting one file type to another, which could be really useful anywhere. But, one of the most annoying flash ads/popup slowly slid across the screen in front of "Step 1" and I wasn't able to exit out of it, and I quickly left the site out of anger. The idea of easily being able to convert a file that library computers can read is definitely something that would prove useful.

In all, iGoogle is the one thing I might recommend to others. You can access your iGoogle page with your username and password from any computer, and depending how you customize it, gives you a quick glance at your calendar or weather or RSS feeds.

Thing Twelve - Can you Digg it?

Hello peeps,

Social news/media sites and I are no strangers to each other. I was there at the inception, when Kevin Rose from the now extinct TechTV "The Screen Savers", created Digg. Originally Digg was a technology news website that combined social bookmarking, blogging, RSS and non-hierarchal editorial command. They've now expanded to cover popular as well as world news, in addition to the tech news. Digg is one of my favorite websites, as you can see in my "Favorite Links" section on the sidebar of this blog.

I use Digg on a nearly daily basis as a way to learn about some news stories as well as many other tech related things. Due to the user submitted aspect of the site, there's almost never any downtime in regard to new stories hitting the site, though due to an algorhythm only the more popular and relevant stories hit the main page for the general public to view. Reddit, Newsvine and Mixx I'm not as familiar with, though I did look at each of them individually. But it's clear, the Digg is one of if not the most popular of the social news sites, by far.

Although Digg is my personal favorite of the sites listed, I don't really see a lot of uses for that particular site in a library, aside perhaps from reference staff scouting out what's popular today for a potential heads up. It's definitely geared towards a younger tech savvy kind of audience, and the news stories can definitely reflect that. There's definitely more of an emphasis on "popular" stories, over stories that might be more relevant in society. I'm not saying that's always the case, cause there are certain world events like the presidential election that are very popular with the users. That being said, it makes sense that some stories get more attention due to the users being entirely the source of whether or not something hits the home page and flares in popularity.

As much as I like these sites, I'm not so sure they aren't a productivity detractor. Sure, they give you cool news stories and information, but is that really going to increase productivity for most of us? My guess is no. Also as a user of Digg for many years, I have submitted stories on a couple of occasions, none of them gaining any kind of popularity. For every really popular story out there, there's another 10 of the same subject that didn't get picked up for a number of reasons. I love the sites, and will continue to check it out as I've done for years now, though I'm riddled trying to figure out any practical applications for use with the library.

Thing Eleven - Mmmm D.El.iC.o+u-s!?

Howdy,

I have to first say, that the placement of periods in delicious is more then a little confusing to remember. Del.icio.us, it doesn't really roll of the keyboard, so to speak. But in any case it's an interesting tool at our disposable, and actually one I really had no knowledge of. I had however heard of tagging, even if it's not something I was actively doing myself.

The first thing I did for this, was go back to one of my old posts and added tags to it. I tagged about the pictures that I added to the post, which if you click on the links, shows you all the posts that used those tags, or labels as blogger calls them.

I then created an account with del.icio.us, which was very easy and quick to setup. During the account creation, it's suggested that you install the del.icio.us buttons to your internet browser, clearly stating that firefox is the preferred browser. After doing so, adding web pages to your delicious account or viewing pages saved only takes one click. Now I have to be honest, to me personally the ability to bookmark web sites and access that list wherever you want is more useful to me then the tagging aspects. I don't have a strong interest in what's popular with other users, or searching through them in that way. That being said, it could still prove useful in some libraries, most likely among the library staff. Now our library at least, already has a website with links to resources and other such things. But I think that the bookmarking abilities of delicious would make the site more user friendly, in a sense. Just for example, you could be reading a library blog and then look at their list of sites that they keep, using delicious, and find extended information or something entirely new.