Thing 47 – Evaluation and Final Thoughts

It looked at first as if this round of 23 things would take a lot longer to complete than the last one (and I think it did.) It may have also seemed longer because it started at the same time as two other massive projects that had been on hold. Then we ran into Twitter. If all the Things had required as much time as Twitter, I wouldn’t be writing this now. Fortunately, they didn’t and I did find the time enough to work on everything, either at work and at home.

And, yes, it was worth doing. Although a lot of the Things don’t apply directly to my special library, many are useful and we will remember and use them. Many of the productivity tools will have benefits across the spectrum of work and personal activities. Other things, such as online TV, were just fun to play with. Everything—whether useful for the library, in my personal life, or just good to be aware of—was worth exploring and becoming familiar with.

I hope the More 23 Things Web site doesn’t go away. It is useful for finding things again and for review. Many thanks to the people who put this project together.

Thing 44 -- The Economy

This is certainly a timely Thing. I spent a lot of time browsing through it. Looking at FuelEconomy.gov, it was nice to see that I get at least as good mileage as the average for my cars. GasBuddy confirmed that the Holiday Station that seems to consistently have cheaper gas than other Holiday stations really does.

Frugal Dad had some good hints. We actually switched to cloth napkins within the last year. Wisebread, though, had a link to an 80% off clearance for one of my favorite catalogs. Don’t tempt me; I don’t need more clothes.

I didn’t spend too much time on cell phone plans. The cheapest plan is still not to have a cell phone.

I haven’t used any of the online classifieds services, but there is a new one serving neighborhoods in the Twin Cities called buythechange. Check it out at http://www.buythechange.com/neighborhood-list. I don’t tend to go out of my way for garage sales, but I do like thrift stores and there are a lot listed on the Thrift Store Finder.

Retailmenot was not just coupons. One item was just an introductory price. Still, these sites are worth checking if only to find a free shipping coupon (usually expired, but worth the look.)

I’ve used the U of MN Extension gardening site before. It couldn’t tell me how to get more sunshine on my heavily wooded block, but was otherwise helpful for this transplanted southerner. I’ve got one word for the chicken farmers out there, though: H5N1.

Some of the most useful-looking sites were the financial sites. After exploring WhatBills.com and ClearCheckbook, I decided that—slick as they are—they didn’t do anything that Quicken didn’t except send e-mails. I just don’t trust putting critical information like my check register online.

Thing 43 -- Online TV and Video

Oh, boy, time for the aliens to turn my brain to pudding. I found the episode of Chuck I had missed and added it to my queue on Hulu. Still have to find time to watch it. Did watch a few things—Harry Potter trailer, outtakes from Krod Mandoon, mainly clips that are not easy to watch on the regular TV. This Thing has numerous possibilities for wasting time. (I love it.)

The drawback to watching videos on my home computer is that the screen isn’t large. The longest online thing I have watched to date was about 45 minutes. (Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. It is now available on Hulu. If you are a Buffy fan and have not seen this yet, look it up.) Even in full screen mode, it isn’t as comfortable and curling up in front of the TV. Until I can hook the computer and the TV together, online will not be my first choice for viewing. On the other hand, when viewing over the Internet becomes more comfortable, online TV may do the same thing to the DVD industry that iTunes has done to the CD industry.

Thing 41 -- Mashup Your Life

If more of my life was online, this Thing might be useful, but so far I still live most of my life in the real world. Only a few of my friends are even on FaceBook. I signed up for LifeStream and found it less useful than my NetVibes page (which I will continue to use.) Why would anyone want to broadcast their entire online activity to the world anyway? This Thing is downright scary. (Don’t look for me, I made the site private. I only wish I could delete it.) I guess I just don’t get some of this (and I don’t think I ever will.)

Thing 46 -- WebJunction Minnesota

I was impressed with the calendar of events on Web Junction—it included the MALL spring conference as well as the More Things on a Stick deadline. This is pretty complete. The pop-up window showing what the event is about was also slick.

I would have to say that the courses and training opportunities (including through the calendar of events) are the most immediately valuable part of Web Junction. The discussion groups could also be valuable because of the national reach of the membership. I admit I haven’t used it much although it seems as if every time I turn around there is another reference to Web Junction somewhere in the library news. Looking for “friends” I found the same people from FaceBook and the Law Librarians Ning. Web Junction needs to distinguish itself among the other networking sites in order to prosper, but it seems to be on the right track.

Thing 45 -- Cloud Computing

Personally, I’ve been cloud computing ever since I set up my first Yahoo Mail account. Anyone who uses more than one computer during the day can understand the convenience of being able to check your e-mail from anywhere. It would also be nice to be able to work on any app from anywhere with just a cheap notebook computer, using the cloud for most of the processing and memory. I have noticed during this session of 23 Things, however, that several sites did not work well due apparently to overloaded servers. This does not bode well for using any critical app from the cloud, much less an operating system. At the rate things change in the computer world, however, it may not take long for technology to catch up to aspiration. In the meantime, I am more concerned with privacy and security issues. If companies that handle credit card information are not using adequate security features, how far can we trust the free versions of cloud software? So far, photos are the major thing after e-mail that I have used cloud computing for. I even back up at home.

Let’s get back to libraries here for a minute. Ours, as part of a larger organization, has its own type of “cloud” in the organization’s network. (Would this be a “fog” because it is closer to the ground?) We use SharePoint for our calendar and have document- sharing capability as well. We are investigating SharePoint’s wiki capabilities with an eye toward transferring our PBWorks wikis to it. The advantages of using network applications are security and backup. Of course if the network goes down we don’t have access, but we wouldn’t have access to the cloud, either.

Also of interest to libraries is how cloud computing will affect our public access PCs. Our library has a limited number of public PCs and our policies limit their use to legal research. We offer word processing only on a non-networked PC, which functions basically as an emergency typewriter. This way, users can’t monopolize the computers writing their briefs. But what happens when the user’s document is in the cloud? We do offer WiFi, but that won’t get you our premium subscription services. On one occasion, we had a patron camped at one of the public PCs with his laptop beside him. The future is complicated.

Thing 42 -- Music 2.0

I have been meaning to connect to Radio Heartland, now I did it. I also created a Pandora account and set up classical and rock-and-roll stations. I do enjoy listening to music, but I am not one of those people who can concentrate while listening to anything that has words (much less pledge drives.)

Here is a radio station for the space geeks out there—WMMB. My home town radio station is the only one that still live-broadcasts every shot from Cape Canaveral. It played big band music when I was a kid and let the high school band take it over for a day as a fund-raiser. We sold the ads for that day and kept the revenue. The extroverts also enjoyed being DJs for a day.

Thing 38—Screencasting

I registered for ScreenToaster (don’t want to download software right now) and pressed record. It said it was recording but nothing happened. Thinking it might be our network security, I tried it from home. There it just hung up, not able to download, so I tried it again from work early in the morning. Bingo. That is the trouble with some of these Internet sites—they are too popular and get overloaded. Once I got it working, however, it was pretty easy to use. Since it was a tour of the Web site, I chose full screen format. Here is the result.

This is a technology that I can see our library using. We have an active e-mail reference practice and screencasts would make a nice supplementary resource. All I need now is a microphone.

Thing 40 – Mashups

One thing I love about my neighborhood is its walkability, so I had to check its score on the Walk Score site. It earned 72 out of 100; not bad. I was very impressed with how many local businesses, parks, libraries, etc. were listed.

Even though it was after lunchtime, I had to try the wheel of food. There are not many places to eat that you can walk to around where I work. This was confirmed by LunchBox. That is why many of us own cool lunchboxes.

Looking for mashups I discovered that the Dilbert comic strip lets you write your own punchlines. See http://www.dilbert.com/mashups/ . And here is a guy who does it regularly: http://mydilbertmashups.blogspot.com/ . Sort of fits in with our Thing 36.

As someone who likes to travel, I wanted to try travelr. Darn, it requires a download; something I’d prefer not to do and my IT Dept. agrees. So I decided to try Bubblr instead. I thought it would be fun to turn our tour into a comic strip. To my annoyance, I wasn’t able to access the Library’s photostream, either by username or by tags. Very frustrating. Bubblr doesn’t seem to be able to handle more than two words. Rather than giving up, I made this instead.

As much fun as these mashup tools are, my special library doesn’t deal in a very visual subject matter. The profession tends to be rather stuffy, too, so there is not too much call for visuals or flights of fancy in our day-to-day operations.

Thing 39—Digital Storytelling

I used Scrapblog to create the following. It was intuitive to use, especially since I recently finished making a digital photo album of the pictures we shot in Egypt using another service. This would be useful for library events. In fact, if this were a month later, the link below would be to a scrapbook of a retirement party we are currently planning.

Thing 37—Photo Tales

We have a library tour on Flickr and so far nothing else. I used that photo set to create a slide show using flickrSLiDR. It was pretty easy to use. The drawback was that the text explaining what each picture was is lost. That is important for a tour, but not so much if this was a montage of photos from a library event. (We have a library event coming up, so that will be a good time to try anaother one of these out.) The upside was that the slide show pictures are larger. I noticed that one needs to be retaken because the artwork on the wall behind the subject has been changed since the picture was taken—a continuity problem we hadn’t noticed in the smaller size.

And now on with the show:


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Thing 36: Comic Relief-Generate Some Fun

ToonDoo was both fun to work with and annoying. After creating my comic it told me it was published and then it never appeared, so I had to do it over. When I went back today, the original version had reappeared as a private cartoon. The site has also been generally slow to respond and keeps logging me off. It must be too popular for its own good. Here is my cartoon:

Here is a good example of using the cartoon generator for a useful library purpose:
http://www.toondoo.com/cartoon/737442.

I am ambivalent about the Fairy Name Generator, too:
Your fairy is called Gossamer Moonglitter
She is the moon goddess's messenger.
She lives in spiderwebbed wonderlands and insect grottos.
She is only seen in the light of a shooting star.
She wears tiny black spiders on her dresses. She has beautiful blue butterfly wings.
Spiders? Insects! Yikes! I like the moon, let’s just lose the spiders.

The label maker is a handy tool. I made signs for our PCs and copiers. I tried the tag generator, too. Here they are:



The Free Printable Paper site is now on my Delicious list. How handy for when you just need one or two sheets.

Let me recommend the Hero Machine generator at http://www.ugo.com/channels/comics/heromachine2/heroMachine2.asp . I used it to create pictures of the main characters for the latest Conan the Librarian adventure.

Thing 35—Books 2.0

As a reference librarian, I spent more time with the readers’ advisory-type tools than with the cataloging tools. I really liked Library Thing in the last 23 Things, but I have no desire to catalog my home library. I usually find more suggestions for books that I would like to read than I could possibly ever get to just from skimming the print issues of Library Journal. Still, there was a lot to love here.

Book tagger, with its ability to create book clubs, is an example of the way that the social web can enhance the reading experience. If you lend your books out a lot, the tracking feature would also be useful. When I looked at the top page where Book tagger lists the most recently added and the most popular, though, I had to laugh. Four of the five most popular were Twilight books and the fifth was the last of the Harry Potter books. I guess we know who the users of this site are (and we applaud anything that encourages kids and teens to read.) The most recently added included two poetry books (and I have read that no one reads poetry anymore) and no NYT bestsellers. So I guess we know who else uses the site.

Books for mobile phones sounds like an idea whose time has come. Having one less thing (the paperback) to carry around would be nice. What would it be like to read on that tiny screen? Like watching a ball game through a knothole? I guess I’ll have to get a cell phone to find out. You just gotta love the idea of reading War and Peace on a cell phone.

The Kent District Library’s What’s Next site was able to find every series I looked for. This is a great tool that is now in my Delicious links. It isn’t that easy to create a series list just from a library catalog. Catalogs get cluttered up with all the various formats that popular books come in. Reading Trails is also a fascinating concept. I could browse through that all day.

Book Glutton offers that social interaction that the kids in the NYT article enjoyed. Talking about books with your friends, or even strangers, isn’t new but now people who spend all their time glued to their computers can do it too. Is this progress? I like the comment feature and the way it can build a conversation.

Bookvideos.tv seems to alphabetize their authors by first name in the browse feature. Ah, the machine mind at work. It worked so well for the title. I had to browse because none of my searches retrieved anything. Another work in progress, I guess.

Open Culture is another that is now on my Delicious list. I was intrigued by the language courses as well as the books.

BookCrossing is another one of those creative ideas that the Internet helps to facilitate. A cross between fishing and reading? Dunn Bros Coffee @ E Lake & W River looks like the place to go if you want to play this game in the Twin Cities.

As I mentioned, I don’t need more books to add to my “must read” list. That is why BookBrowse looked like the one to try. I decided to look for books set in Pharaohnic Egypt. Oops, that is in the members only section. Too bad. Too bad also that MetaCritic has decided to stop covering books.

Storyline.net is a great thing to recommend for those kids whose parents don’t read to them.

The Visual Bookshelf is nice for those who spend a lot of time on FaceBook. So is the ability to search WorldCat. With a public library right down the street and a book exchange in the building where I work, I just don’t see the need for book rental services.

Things in General

It is time to push to the end. This 23 Things got off to a slower start for me than the first one because it began at the same time two previously dormant large projects also ramped up. (A long-planned 2-week vacation in the middle of it didn’t help, either.) I respect the administrators’ decision not to repeat this program. It has taken me a lot of time to work on it so far and, therefore, it must have taken the planners three times that amount to put it together. Great job guys. Even if we don’t all finish, we have learned an awful lot.

Thing 34 – Is This Our Competition--Online Answer Sites

As a public law library, a lot of our questions come from the general public (frequently looking for legal advice, which we cannot give.) Many of these questions come in through our askalibrarian e-mail service. Sometimes people find the link on the court’s Web page or find our page (often our FAQ page) through a Google search. We had a question just the other day from out-of-state by a person who had found our information and hoped we could help her find similar information for her own state. So, in some ways Google is increasing our business.

The useful thing about these answer sites is the possibility of finding answers to questions that may not be in reference books. One can hope for a specialist in—or someone with personal knowledge of—your obscure subject to just happen by. Don’t know how often that would really happen. I was not overly impressed with a lot of the answers I did see. This makes Slam the Boards a great marketing opportunity for librarians.

There are specialized online answer sites for law. Just glancing through the answers to legal questions on some of the sites listed in this Thing, I think people would be better served by a dedicated law answer site such as FreeAdvice.com. The answers there are more likely to be posted by attorneys who will be able to give the proper caveats with their answer. (The answer to most quick questions for legal advice is “it depends.”)

David Lee King’s article was interesting. Most of the policies he mentions were probably written when libraries were just starting to offer e-mail service and didn’t know what to expect from it. At our library, e-mail questions are answered by the person on the desk. Very rarely do any have to be passed on to the next desk shift, even though people visiting in person or calling on the phone get priority. Did we know this would balance out so smoothly when we started? No. The idea of warning people that there might be a delay in answering their e-mail is now archaic.

E-mail has advantages over telephone reference. E-mail gives you time to put together a more thoughtful and in-depth response without having to break the transaction by taking a phone number and calling the person back. It is also much easier to refer someone to a Web resource (such as our FAQ page) in an e-mail than over the phone. Of course, it is harder to do a reference interview with e-mail. (We haven’t started any kind of chat reference yet.)

Thing 33 – Travel 2.0

Travel is part of the reason I am not farther along on the Things. As you can see, my avatar is still on vacation. So this thing was of particular interest to me. Having a friend who is an airline junkie, I decided to read the Cranky Flier. I was afraid it would be too industry-centric, but I found a nice mix of posts, from the efforts of the airlines to offer electrical outlets in coach (a great boon for business fliers) to video from an air trip to the South Seas (looks like fun.)

Igougo has a nice clean and uniform layout with ads pretty clearly marked. It tested the layout by picking Antarctica as a destination (a place I have been, so I know something about it.) All the options are there that exist for every other destination. Clicking on Antarctica Nightlife I found headings for bars, casinos, concerts, nightclubs and theaters—and was relieved to find them all empty. The site did apologize (“Sorry, we don't yet have any Antarctica nightlife reviews. Be the first to share your own!”)

The Twitchhiking around the World journal on MapVivo has to be the ultimate 23 Things Mashup, combining travel journals, Twitter and Google Maps (and don’t forget it includes pictures.) Peoples’ creative use of Web 2.0 tools is just amazing.

It is time to make summer travel plans, so, I chose GreenRoutes from the Mashups list. Alas, there were no markers in the Dakotas. Considering all the tourist destinations in the Black Hills, I was surprised. Guess this site is a work in progress.

Thing 32 – Google Maps & Mashups

Oh, good, an excuse to learn more about Google Maps, one of the most exciting new products on the Web. Also one of the quirkiest. A search for William Mitchell College of Law returned the correct address, but the marker was in White Bear Lake. A search for the Minnesota State Law Library returned an address on the East Side. Searches for the Minnesota Judicial Center or by our street address fared no better. Our street name—Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.—is a mouthful. Also it was changed in the not-too-distant past from Constitution Ave. Take a look at the correct information on my map, then try searching it yourself so see the weirdness that results. The map I made shows the law libraries in St. Paul. Maybe someone will find it helpful.


View Law Libraries in St Paul Minnesota in a larger map

There were some interesting mashups on the lists, such as the map of UFO sightings. Our library doesn’t deal with geographical questions very often, but it is good to know that if a map would make a good visual, we can now make one.

Thing 31 – More Twitter

Oh, gad, not more Twitter. After Thing 27, I was at the presence stage of Twitter, willing to give it a try, but that Thing took so much time for so little reward that now, faced with another Twitter time sink, I am in the denial stage. Twitter is terribly tiresome. My library, on the other hand, is in a form of the dumping stage. We are using Twitter in place of having a blog or press releases.

Personally, I see Twitter more as a black hole than as the big bang right now. Also, I don’t want to give the whole world “enough information about you so they have some sense of who you are as a person.” Haven’t we lost enough privacy in the computer age? We have shovel the rest of it out the door ourselves? Isn’t it bad enough that your FaceBook friends now have instruction on how to turn your FaceBook posts into Tweets without your consent? Do you really trust your friends to get the privacy setting right? And that 9 Ways Twitter Can Help in the Real World article? Admittedly some of those ideas sounded good, especially if you have a mobile device (which I don’t), but an equal number sounded scary.

I may come back and look at Thing 31 again later when I have time to waste, but to sum up, Twitter is not currently part of my social networking plan. You don’t like that? Sue me.

Thing 30 - More Ways to Use RSS and Delicious

RSS and Delicious (typists are glad they dropped the periods) were two of the first 23 Things that I have used the most, so it was good to see them again. I check my RSS reader regularly, usually just skimming the titles of most articles. That is one way to keep up; another is to be selective about what you subscribe to. I try for a balance between the two. For my favorite, read-all-the-posts feeds I also added them to my new NetVibes page.

So far, I have been using Delicious for the bookmarks. The most extensive use of the service is the one I set up for use by the reference librarians.






For my personal page, I have added a subscription for a few tags that I would like to find other sites for. We will see how that works. This isn’t an area where the keywords would be unique. That is the downside of tags—no controlled vocabulary for the subjects that need one.

Thing 29 – Google Tools

I signed up for Google Alerts to track the serial I am writing for the MALL Newsletter and discovered someone who blogs under the name of Conan the Librarian. (I never claimed the play on words was original to me.) Another alert looks for references to my library. That one should not generate so much traffic. Finally, I am tracking an ongoing research interest in case I ever get back to finishing that book. So far, it is retrieving blog traffic and things for sale. This could be a really useful feature though. I have used the update features on ProQuest and WilsonWeb to help me keep research projects and a pathfinder up-to-date. It is nice to find something that works for the Web.

For the other tool, I decided to take a closer look at the Gmail account I had set up for the original 23 Things. After setting a theme (if it is prettier will I use it more?) I tried having my yahoo mail forwarded. Guess what: it doesn’t work with the base account. Figures. I did find some interesting things in the Labs. Under Who Thought That Was a Good Idea? is the Default Reply to All. I know too many people who have gotten themselves in trouble by accidentally replying to all with a message intended only for one. Needless to say, I didn’t pick that one. The forgotten attachment detector, on the other hand, seems like a really good idea. I also added a couple more, such as the task list. If GMail really doesn’t get spammed, I may have to start using it more.