Last of the 23 Things

Thing 9
Delicious is one of those that I have used for some time now to keep my favorites for browsers. My only issue is that I have such a hard time keeping up with dead links that I am wishful for a link checker with this service!

Thing 10
Library Thing and Good Reads
Library Thing is a duh for us as we have this applied to our catalog currently. Please see my post for tagging. Good Reads is one of those things I have been using for some time. I have the application installed on my phone even! It is useful in finding information about books and about what other users are currently reading.

Thing 11
LinkedIn has been one of those things I have not gotten into until recently when I was thinking about doing some updating to my resume. I created my account and was surprised by how easy it is to join the organizations that I want to belong to. Additionally, it recommends to me who I might want to be linked to which is a great option for a busy person like me.

Thing 12
Facebook--ok really? Do I need to say anything about this? Something new that I would like to see on the library Facebook page would be a big linked banner to things on our site. Currently our page looks just like any individual's page. I want it to have more of a presence(sp?).

Thing 13 and 14
http://tinyurl.com/ytcdar
This is a link I created with tinyurl. You send it is also a nice feature to use when you cannot send things that are too large. This application has been helpful to me at work and at home. Hotmail is a big email service that does not allow you to send larger files so I even recommend this service to our patrons when they need to send things to other folks.

Thing 15
Google Maps is one of those things I use daily whether it is to trek across town or look up addresses for our patrons. I love the options for the different views and adding or taking away layers.

Thing 16
Cloud computing in general has been one of those things that I have been doing for some time and only in the past year learned of what it was actually called. When I was attending college many moons ago, I used Yahoo for storing my documents and now I use Google docs on a daily basis at work as well as in my own account to save docs. Also a good thing to recommend to patrons who want to save their work without a thumb drive.

Thing 17
Music streaming has been something I have been doing for some time. Not only that, but I also have known friends who have streamed their own radio stations from their computers at home using shoutcast.com. There are many ways to use these services now including applications on your phones to listen to music for Last.fm, Pandora, and even NPR and stations that you are interested in hearing from the public. Another free site that was pulling in XM stations for some time was AOL. Not sure if they are still currently.

Thing 18
You Tube has been one of those things that has transitioned over the years. Now many people are even using it to look up how to do things such as how to create pivot tables in Excel. :) With regards to "authoritativeness", I believe that we can certainly advocate the use of training videos but not stand behind the authoritative nature of them in the same way we currently do with Wikipedia. It is a good place to start but not necessarily end.

Thing 19
Hulu and Netflix have been revolutionary in getting us moving in the direction of streaming for users of television shows and even movies. Unfortunately, this model has not been made available for libraries in mass quantity and for the popular consumers. I believe that it is coming, but not sure when and for how much. I think that this will definately drive down numbers of folks coming in to the facility and perhaps cut back on those browesable items that folks pick up on their way out the door etc. But I think this kind of service could also be good in that there is no overhead with no storage essentially and no worries about scratched materials etc.

Thing 20
Podcasting is useful in many ways for libraries. One of the greatest uses I have seen with podcasting for libraries has been with the New York Public Library where they offer podcasts of their programs to the public. I think we could use it for our programs and for special events such as author visits etc.

Thing 21
Wikipedia is one of those things I use at the dinner table during discussion to look up information that we are talking about! Great thing to have access to at my fingertips. I added a restaurant to our wiki. Much like creating a blog entry! Very easy.

Thing 22
My phone. No one here has actually talked about the device itself as a social media tool. And I feel this is a new and exciting world in which we live that has the capability to add new things to these revolutionary devices known as the smart phone. All the things that we have talked about here on social media are capable of doing on our phones. I see such great movement in this realm because of our need to be mobile and I think that libraries should think in these terms as well. If our patrons are using their phones to look up books in our catalog (BookMyne) and are also using services to download their e-content (Overdrive) then we need to be in the know about what tools you can use just like your patrons to get them information about the library.

Thing 23
In the time it took me to finish this assignment, things have advanced from the program itself in things such as the advancement of Hulu and the introduction of Overdrive applications for the smart phone. I think with this program and with the quick progression of the social media team, we are certainly catching up. I would like to see us moving towards more streaming video of our programs and how to things like our classes.

Tagging -- Thing 8

Tagging is an important thing for our patrons to use on our catalog for finding things that are similar to what they are reading. For example, if I have read one of the Shopaholic books and want to read something similar in nature but not the same author, I can look at the tags that are associated with the last book and click on potential tags such as chick lit which is extremely useful when our own catalog system does not have as much cataloging overlay in terms of subject headings. It is important to note that in a busy library system this has been helpful to remove the workload from our catalogers and put in the hands of an external vendor. Is this better? Is this vendor more experienced in terms of what popular culture has deemed as the appropriate structure for these tags? So far, my own experience with our catalog and LibraryThing has been a positive one. I have been able to better assist patrons who are looking for those items that do not have the subject headings assigned to them that will be helpful in assisting me to find other items for them. Let's go back to the chick lit example. LibraryThing does a great job of pulling other titles that are chick lit and providing a link to those titles. What it does not do is provide all formats of those titles so it still takes a little tweaking to find a specific format for the reader. Overall , this is an extremely useful tool for us at FPL. Whether or not it replaces subject headings, I must say yes it does. For other libraries, this option may not be useful!

IM - Thing 7

Instant messaging has been around for some time! Through instant messaging, folks found that they could talk to others on their own time without being seen or heard on the other end of the conversation. This was all before the world of texting too which is what fascinates me.

Today I use this service to communicate with friends who I cannot speak to anymore easily as they are long distance. Or I use it for short communications to friends while I am logged onto my gmail account. But the service is not as useful for me as it was in the past at home.

At work, I have been ready for a communicating device like the one we have. It works well when we need to speak to one another but not interrupt each other's workflow. I have also seen staff use this service as a tool to make announcements about books being missing and to show where a person is located at what time. I have even had IT take over my computer to make updates using this service which frees up their time needed to walk over and do the updates in person. But again, not all instant messaging services provide for this sort of robust computing.

All in all, I feel instant messaging is useful but as the trend moves to more of us having smart phones, I think the service will change some as people text and use their applications for locating and chatting with one another on their personal phones.

Digg - Thing 6

Digg is somewhat new to me as I have seen people posting items on Facebook and Twitter from Digg. I am fascinated by the theory behind it; that the story becomes popular due to how many people "dig" it.

I tend to have my own theory about the trends of certain subcultures and believe that certain groups tend to follow one news source over another. This aggregator tends to show the really zany or crazy top stories that have emerged in the popular section which is true for some aggregators. This tells me something about the groups that are reading and participating. Cool site that I will look at for news on the fly!

Twitter-Thing 5

I have had a really good experience with Twitter but primarily only as a person who likes to watch what other people are posting and not as a person that Tweets themselves. I suffer from a condition where I gain happiness by watching famous and/or infamous people talk about themselves.

But interestingly enough, I had an experience the other day with it that was new for me. I was in a webinar where they said more questions and discussion were taking place on Twitter using a specific hash tag. I thought this was great! I was able to follow the discussion and look hours later at all the Tweets surrounding the webinar.

Ian

Picture Sharing-Thing 4

I am intrigued to see other libraries using photo sharing for their libraries. What interests me most is how these folks get permission to use pictures of the public in the photos as much as they do such as all the students you see in the pics from Alexandrian Public Library. Additionally, you can tell that not everyone is uploading the information as the pictures do not always get labeled in the same manner such as the Old Bridge Public Library where many titles are sometimes capitalized and others not.