Just a click away......

My colleague and I had great fun trying to set up our delicious accounts, it was a good thing that Voyager has been down this week as it enabled us to catch up and have fun at the same time. Lots of giggling and laughter emanated from our office much to the confusion of passers by - Librarian are not supposed to have fun!

The great thing about this is that access to ones favourites is no longer restricted to a specific computer. As someone who often works from home this is a great boon and I also like the idea of being of being alerted to interesting sites. Unfortunately I do not have as much time as I would like to spend on flickr, slideshare or delicious but at least I know how easy it is to use and will be able to visit the sites in the future.

When to share...?

I was initially skeptical about this Thing as I tend to use Powerpoint, although not that often. However I found some interesting presentations that could be of use to our new PhD students. I particularly liked "The Art of Doing a PhD" and will refer our new students to it.

The Art of Doing a PhD

View more presentations from Jakob Bardram.

I am not convinced that Slideshare has a use in our libraries at present but am prepared to keep an open mind about it. I found several relating to Cambridge University and the UTube/slideshow by Tony Hirst. I found that some of the presentations were familiar and I wondered if the same presentation could be accessed from a number of different sites?. A disadvantage of this site is that some of the presentation descriptions are unhelpful, keywords might be better?

Every picture tells a story.....

What a fascinating website. Having never used it before I spent rather a long time looking for images of my favourite places. I can see lots of potential for library usage. It could certainly liven up our library web pages. I particularly like the photo of the Library at Ephesus. I recall that the library is opposite a brothel, this gives a whole new meaning to "I'm just popping down to the library dear ........"

New classification?

This was an interesting assignment. I have always believed that classifying is very subjective and I think that Thing 8 proves it. If you classify using LC you will realise that it can also be a cultural thing too. However, I believe that there is no such thing as a perfect classification for as Shirky's article illustrates, classifications as well as libraries are ever evolving and have to adapt to changing circumstances. My own libraries tend to be small and are never likely to increase significantly, therefore we are able to use broad terms that users can recognise. I have followed this rule with my tags.

A Twit or twitterer?

Have been away for a couple of weeks and had to spend ages reminding myself of all the Things I have done.

Managed to sign up to Twitter eventually, had a lot of trouble with the email account that I used so had to sign up to a Gmail account - I think that Google are trying to take over the world!

I looked at some of the Judge Library tweets - it was like entering a different world. I was surprised that many used 'texting' language. I found this rather off putting. At the moment I am not comfortable tweeting, to be honest I cannot see the point of it. Perhaps my attitude will change as I progress through the course, time will tell..........

Whats Occurring....?

What fun, I enjoyed doing this. As a weather obsessive, I like the little weather icons. Got a bit carried away and filled in the whole month! Am I sad or what!

Have just had an email reminder for a meeting I am to attend, I look forward to seeing the pop-up reminder next. I can see a lot of potential for using this particularly as I move from library to library. I usually maintain 2 diaries, from now on, one will be my Google Calendar.

Our IT Officer is very interested in 23Thing and we have been discussing how I can apply some of the things that I have learnt to our libraries. I never thought that this course would be as interesting or as useful as it is turning out to be!

To Doodle or not to Doodle that is the question?

As far as I'm concerned this is the best thing since sliced bread!. Have been using this for 2 years now to arrange our library committees, yes I really do mean committees - each college has its own library committee each term and we also have a joint one each term. Joanna Ball put me onto this and our academic staff were most impressed when I first used it.

It is quick and easy to set up and easy to fill in. Even our computer shy academics have managed to complete it. It saves a great deal of time and ensures that everyone is aware of the date/s and times. Many of our other committees now use it to. I have even converted my husband and he uses it to arrange his dance band engagements (35 band members).

Challenging Times

This experience proves that sometimes you have to be inventive. I had terrible trouble with is Thing. Not having a Photo Editor package on my computer and the fact that our IT Officer is on leave has certainly challenged me. Not being very interested in photography has meant that I have never edited photos etc... so I had no idea how to undertake the task. I should add that our IT Officer is extremely security conscience so I am not able to download anything. I therefore had to play around with the packages that I had. I eventually found that I could add a screen shot to Paint and then save etc... and successfully complete the task.

Although the whole process took about 4 hours, its something I shall never forget. If nothing else I shall certainly try and use a Photo Editor for future pictures as I can see lots of potential in acquiring this skill. Without 23Things I probably would not have bothered!

Getting started

After Thing 1 was greatly encouraged but Thing 2 presented more of a challenge. It took a while to work out how to do it but I got there eventually. I decided to add the BBC News RSS, it was great to have up to date news. Good News is interesting to follow but I was horrified at the events in Cumbria and followed that with trepidation as I have a friend that lives near Whitehaven. She is fine, fortunately, more than can be said for those who died and those who have lived through this dredful experience.



As I reflect on Thing 2 I realise that whilst it can be good to be able to provide/have instant information there is also a downside - we might not always be prepared for what it reveals.

The Story So Far

Setting up the iGoogle account was fairly straightforward although I was thrown at first as I didn't see the screen I was meant to. However I managed to work it out and felt rather pleased to have accomplish the first task. I found it fun to design the page although it is only basic and to the outsider may look somewhat boring. I have filled it with the things that I use the most so it is personal to me. I also set up a library tab to include the things I think might be of use to our students, although looking at it now it looks rather boring so will have to consider it work in progress....

What a surprise!

I am somewhat surprised to find how easy it has been to set this up. I thought that it would be much more complicated and would require some technical expertise. 23 Things has certainly introduced me to technology that I did not think I would ever use and it is only week 2!

Demystifying the processes required to set up an iGoggle account and a blog has certainly encouraged me and I look forward to the next 10 weeks. I must confess I was somewhat sceptical at first but can now see how some of the things I have learnt can be applied in our libraries. The majority of our users are mature students and lack the confidence to try new things so placing myself in the position of a learner rather than a trainer for a change has made me reflect upon our existing training practices. Hopefully this will be to the benefit to our students.