Thing #13--Library Thing

This I adore. Booklists, reading groups, interest group lists, all of these could be linked with this tool to users, programmers, outreach staff,etc. and I can think of dozens of uses, both inter-and intra-library districts and systems. For my own purposes, maintaining a personal bibliography is so easy with this. if I wanted to link to others who share my choices , there I'd go, all set. I don't see me doing this; my choices are wildly eclectic, far-ranging, and have little to do with current popularity--but I can see helping a patron follow a set of interests with others' choices in a kind of "through the side door" approach to booksearching for a what-next read. Gotta love it!

Thing #12: Sticky wiki

I really enjoyed exploring the different wikis we could link to from the 23 Things site, because I could see the utility of this pathway to organizational communication as a fluid and very inclusive medium. I still don't think that in a larger context, everyone has equally valid input as a purveyor of information. A contributor's credentials are necessary to my assessment of the weight to give a reference resource in behalf of a patron or for my own purposes. As an in-house, intra- organization communicating tool, a wiki may be a super route to easily navigated, facile negotiations. However, Wikipedia as an encyclopedia for the dissemination of general information to a naive public is maybe not too cool. Of course, I use it almost every day! But not for citations--just quick peeks at a subject to set me on a fresh trail. For that, it works well.

Thing #11: I don't wanna share

I disliked digg, reddit, mixx, and newsvine--I am capable of filtering my own media searches and have enough to do sorting through general author/editorial bias where the source is purported to be accurate and vetted as such. To waste time entertaining "everyone's" opinion seems a squandering of my time beyond anything I'm willing to consider. In addition, Reddit was even offensive in the language allowed--I was beyond annoyed to have been asked to consider this as a legitimate tool for anything but idle braindoodling.

I explored the NYT site, and found articles of interest I might have been willing to share comments about, but was asked to sign in to yet one more site, and this I would not do for a privilege I deem questionable at best. Therefore, I hopped to the G'ville Sun and shared something inane to Delicious, where I am already registered.

I can see no earthly use for social media sites in my job parameters.Not to be negative or anything... O, well!

Thing #10: Strange tastes--delicious to me

I actually loved this exercise, as it gave me a chance to acknowledge and visit my preferred sites. I see that juxtaposed, these may strike someone else as a bit unnerving, but they exactly represent my interests, and I find for the first time during the "23" stuff that this may be extremely useful for my purposes.

For instance, I find that I need to use preschool sites at least weekly to supplement the programs I do for work. Delicious makes it very easy to check my preferred URL's. The other bookmarks make pursuing personal research a breeze and a pleasure, while helping me track others investigating the obscure and/or esoteric subjects I am following. I found the tool easy to use, the directions very clear, and the process blessedly uncomplicated. Yay!

Thing #9

Thing #9 was a BEAST with Picturetrail. I needed support and advice and thanks to my team here at work, I had to do it 6 times wrong over 4 days but finally got it!

I can certainly see that this will be useful for posting photo albums of programs or outreach events to share. Picturetrail was the tool i used and i found it cumbersome and tricky--but that might just be me.

Thing #8

I spent way too much time in OPAL. At our library, we use email for the usual communications and also for the Ask-a-Librarian staffing slots.I have used IM in the past, when my children lived in Russia and letters were iffy; before they left for their two-year stint, they set up my home computer so that we could talk almost every day. It was so odd--we talked more when they were halfway around the world than we ever did when they lived at home!

While exploring OPAL, I visited a couple of Library of Congress exhibits--their printed ephemera and broadsides collection and an exhibit of book illustration from 1880-1930, which included some pioneeering female illustrators. These were available through the visual arts link on the OPAL offerings list.

This opens up too many possibilities...this is always a situation that freaks me out. Yikes--where's my Old Skool shield? the dragons are approaching.

ImageChef

ImageChef

Thing #7

This was the most fun--loved using image chef to create my own image. However, not so much fun posting it...had to play with cut and paste, desktop save, direct send--I am still not sure which method got it to auntiedote23!

Thing #6

My creation,
originally uploaded by meredith.henry66.

I guess my thinking about "old school" has nothing to do with this kind of Old Skool! But I liked the shield; I feel it is something to protect me from the dragons around the corner. All those Things!