#26 and #27 Final thoughts

I don't want to gush too much here and be uncool (or more so than usual, anyway), but I think this has been a fantastic learning experience. I'm very happy to have been offered this opportunity and I learned a lot. The only drawback has been finding the time to really explore these things; which I haven't done yet. I will definitely go back and look more closely at the things we covered and explore more on my own. I think I had been stuck in a bit of a rut, just Googling and using the Web resources I already felt comfortable with, and now I realize how much more there is out there... how the Web is evolving and changing so quickly. I would like to do more continuing education like this in the future as more new resources emerge.

The most difficult part of this experience for me, aside from the time factor, has been blogging. I'm just not very comfortable writing a blog. I thought I would probably be completely comfortable with this by the end of the 27 things, and I am a lot more comfortable than I was at the beginning (and less self-conscious), but I still find blogging to be the most difficult part of the whole thing.

Some of the most surprising things for me were things that we didn't actually cover, but I took note of during Stephen Abram's talk, like Second Life. I realize that we couldn't cover it in this exercise because of the software and time involved in getting set up, but I have found Second Life interesting in many ways, both good and bad -- does this type of "virtual world" represent the next stage of the Web? Maybe a couple of years from now, we will all have avatars representing us running around on the Web and interacting with each other.

Other surprises were simply the amount and variety of tools that are available on the Web, for free, these days. I loved Library Thing and couldn't stop cataloging my books, and I'm amazed at all of the free software applications that are available now. I didn't realize the extent to which most of these things have a social networking aspect to them.

I don't know which discovery exercise I would choose as a favorite; I enjoyed them all in their own ways. The ones that required us to create or upload photos were a bit less enjoyable for me because of the time involved. I'm also reticent about having a lot of personal information about myself on the internet, so I tend to not fill in online profiles much.

I found the discovery exercises to be so well-written that I didn't need much help along the way, but I would like to thank our advocates for volunteering to be there to help us; we had plenty of great help available in my department. As for the last question, would I do it again? Absolutely! I've been telling all of my friends about the cool learning program we're doing at work (the more technology-oriented ones are excited; the technophobes are a bit horrified... but I've told them it was not mandatory participation...). I would do it even if we weren't getting an mp3 player; it's just icing on the cake, and I don't have one so I'll be happy to accept it.

Thanks to everyone who made this possible, and I hope we can do more of this in the future!

#25 OverDrive

I might as well reveal that I am one of the eBooks troubleshooters at Answer Line (a shout out to my fellow eBooks support folks!). When patrons are having trouble with eBooks, they fill out the web support form (the "support" link at the bottom of the eCollection page) and the Webmaster forwards those to us. We then take a look at them and either answer them if we know the answer, or forward them to OverDrive's technical support staff. OverDrive will then get back to us within 24 hours with an answer. We also help people who call in with eBooks questions.

Working with eBooks has been a great learning experience for me and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to learn, although it was a bit of "trial by fire" at first. When we first launched our eBooks service, we had people call us from literally all over the world, asking if they could have access to our eBooks, because we were one of the first public libraries to offer them and word got around, I guess. I had a call from Sweden and more than one call from India, as well as several from other parts of the U.S.

Now if only we had eBooks that were compatible with iPods... but we know that's not up to us.

#24 Podcasts

Podcasts -- what can I say? At this point, I think I'm feeling a bit of burnout from our whirlwind tour of Web 2.0. I can see the usefulness podcasts, especially since they are so quick and easy to create. In a library setting, we could have podcasts on our website explaining how to do various things, like placing holds. Some people are better at following instructions when they hear them instead of reading them. Or we could have podcasts announcing upcoming activities or events at the library. Maybe even book talks or other library presentations could be available as podcasts...

For our discovery exercise, I found an interesting book review podcast and added it to my Bloglines rss feeds.

#23 You Tube

I have been looking at You Tube for a while, just for entertainment. But recently, I started using it for information more than entertainment. For example, I was working the day of the Kentucky Derby and forgot to tape the race, but the next morning I was able to watch it (from many different angles) on You Tube. I've made the jump now to looking first at You Tube for any video that I want to find on the web.

For the part of this exercise where we embed a video from You Tube, I have chosen a great speech by Michelle Obama that I first saw on www.barackobama.com.

#22 Choose your own adventure

I looked at both Web 2.0 Award nominees and Webware, and I found Web 2.0 easier to use and faster for finding the applications I wanted to try. I wanted to use one of the nominated Personal Organizers on Web 2.0, but the first two that I tried gave me errors instead of going to the page (so I guess they were down... not a good sign). I ended up signing up for Voo2do but I don't really like the layout of it. Still, I'll check these sites out from time to time to see what's new.

#21 Google labs

My favorites in Google labs are Google Mars and Google Sets. In Google Sets, I put in boots and tent, and the list came back with "the ten essentials" in the number 3 spot -- pretty impressive!

#20 Online Software

This is something that I didn't know about -- these are very useful tools. I first went to Google and tried their word processing software; it was nice and the layout was familiar since I use Word usually. Then I tried Zoho, and I must say, it looks much snazzier and in my brief assessment it appears to have much more to offer than Google.

#19 Library 2.0

I read all 5 articles and, while the new technology in the library is exciting, I think we need to be careful not to completely discard everything that is not exciting. While it sometimes can seem to us that everybody is online and plugged in, we still have a lot of patrons who are not and prefer their library experience to be familiar, and their books to be printed on paper. Hasn't our circulation actually increased in recent years, or am I wrong about that?

I love technology and think it has improved our lives, but there is also a cost. And speaking of cost, since libraries are using business models more and more, I wonder how often they use a cost/benefit analysis when deciding which technologies to buy for the library?

Custom searches

I tried searching for "library cards" and for "story times" in both Rollyo and Google Custom Search, and I have to say that I liked Google better. Rollyo took a little longer to search (OK, it was only a few seconds, but still not as fast as Google) and all of the results on the first page on Rollyo were KCLS. Also, I found their advertising very distracting. Google brought up some results for SPL and Sno-Isle on the first page in addition to KCLS, and also suggested a spelling alternative ("Storytimes"), which brought up different results. Maybe it's just the familiarity of Google that made me more comfortable with it, but in my limited test, Google Custom Search beats Rollyo.

I created a quick Google Custom Search for sites about Ballard. I can see the benefit of a custom search if you like to search the same sites often... it's nice to just search those sites all at once, without the extraneous stuff.

#17 Random generation

OK, this is fun for a while... but I don't see much actual use for it. Here is my randomly generated kitten.

#15 Looking at Wikis

I especially think the wikis for conferences or events are useful, or the very specialized ones such as BookLoversWiki. One use that would be handy for us would be having a wiki for updates on library closures due to inclement weather. This past winter, it was a lot of work to keep everyone updated on closures during the windstorm... a wiki might have made that task easier.

I've got a Library Thing

I love LIbrary Thing! Well, who wouldn't? I haven't had a chance to do a lot with it yet, but I started grabbing random books off of my bookshelves at home and adding them, and it was hard to stop. I also created a search widget and added it to this blog. Fun!

#13 Technorati and popularity

I'm late posting this, but the week that we did Technorati, both Learning 2.0 and kcls27things were on the Technorati's list of most popular searches. There was even a guy in Maryland who blogged about us, saying that there was this thing that was creating quite a bit of buzz that was apparently a staff learning experience for a library. I don't think he realized that all the buzz was created by 400 KCLS staff members all searching for the same things on Technorati that week.

I've just gone back there and, alas, we are no longer in the list of most popular searches...

#12 Tagging and Social bookmarking

I thought this might be an easier way for people to access Answer Line's favorites, so I uploaded them to Del.icio.us and started adding the toolbar icons to our computers. But, I need to tag all of the bookmarks in order to make any sense of them on Del.icio.us... at the moment they are all just listed out in alphabetical order. I was thinking that people could add their own tags so that they can easily find the bookmarked sites. This will have to be an ongoing project, but I'll see if I can make it work for us.

#10 & #11 My Space and friends

I admit that I set up a My Space account a couple of weeks ago so that Barack Obama would be my friend! I know he has over 77,000 other friends, but I'm sure I'm special!

Now we don't "befriend" people, we just "friend" them. And these "friends" could be people we've never met before. Will it become similar to mail, where now, if we are referring to letters that are actually written on paper and mailed to us, we call it "snail mail"? In the future, if we're actually getting together in person with friends, will we have to refer to them as "flesh friends" so that people know we are talking about an actual face-to-face meeting?

I'm not sure about how this will all work out for libraries. I think it is cool that authors have "friended" the KCLS page, and kids who are into reading might find that useful (on the other hand, if the author already has a presence on My Space, the kids have probably already found it). It also seems that kids are going to leave My Space (as I understand they are now doing) because it is becoming too popular with people of all ages, and that ruins the fun. For now, though, having KCLS on My Space so that kids and teens can easily find out about library programs that they might be interested in seems like a good thing.

#9 Social networking

After seeing Stephen Abram's talk, I was curious about some of these social networking environments, especially Second Life, so for the past few weeks I've been spending a little time there. I'm not a gamer, so the learning curve is pretty steep for me in this type of environment, but I think it has a lot of potential. However, after reading the article about the librarian in SL, I wonder how much use it could really be for libraries. The librarian mentioned that most of her questions related to the SL environment itself ("how do I get my avatar to stop dancing?")

I saw a report on CBS Sunday Morning a couple of weeks ago about Second Life, and they mentioned that some people have made a lot of money (up to $200,000 a year) by setting up virtual shops and selling things there. Just another space on the web, but a different one than I'm used to, so I'm finding it interesting right now.

The Joy of RSS

RSS is a useful time-saver! I have seen many references to RSS but haven't bothered before now to learn about it (thanks, Learning 2.0!). It is very handy to have the newest information from my favorite sites in one place (well, not all of my favorites... see below).

At first, I tried to go to several of my favorite sites to add them, but alas, none of them had RSS feeds available. I ended up choosing a few of blogline's suggested sites, and also searching with their search tool to find some other sites that looked interesting. I also tried some of the other search tools but didn't find them as useful as blogline's.

I've added several book review and library sites and blogs, and also some fun sites like the Daily Show Videos (which I found by looking at blogline's recommendations). Now I'm a bit confused... I was doing this while answering phone calls, but I'm sure that when I first set up my bloglines account, there was a place where I clicked and got recomendations broken down into categories; also there was a list of the most popular feeds on bloglines. Now that I've subscribed to some feeds, I don't see these things any more... was I hallucinating? Or maybe those categories only show up for new subscribers. That's what I get for doing two things at once... confusion!

Anyway, I'm sure that's how I found the Daily Show Videos, as well as Scientific American and the Librarians' Internet Index. It was easy. Now if only more of my favorite sites would add RSS feeds...

Flickr mashups

I've been exploring the mashups on Flickr, and I have to say that my favorite one right now is the Montagr. I could waste a lot of time playing with that one!

Actually, they're all fun diversions. The trading cards could be useful. It would be fun to have librarian trading cards -- avidly collected and traded, of course.

Flickr and blogging

I am already behind in my 27 things! I have found it difficult to fit it in at work and haven't had much time at home this week to really work with Flickr. If you have never used Flickr before, it is fairly time-consuming to do all of the things we are asked to do. I have managed to upload a few photos to my Flickr account (awaiting approval, I assume), and I have also explored some of the public photos. Here is a link to a recent photo montage that I particularly liked:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cloudnumber9/415708017/

Too bad we couldn't see the lunar eclipse from here!

I think Flickr is a fun site and I might use it in the future to post photos for friends and family members to view.

The most difficult part of Learning 2.0 for me so far is blogging. I have never had a burning desire to blog, and most of the personal blogs I've seen are, well... boring. "Today I took the bus to Fremont and got my hair cut", for example. I actually read that on someone's blog once! Now, I can see posting about getting your hair cut if you went in just to get a trim and came out with an orange mohawk, or if the hairstylist slipped and lopped off your ear (in which case, it would be a public service to name the salon so I would know to avoid it!), but nothing unusual seems to have happened in this case, so is just getting a haircut blogworthy?

But maybe I'll learn to like blogging by doing this exercise and I, too, can join the ranks of bloggers who write about what they ate for breakfast!

My first post

OK, I'm posting (hi, Matt!). Setting up a blog was easy, but thinking of something interesting to blog about, not so easy.