Thing 16: How do I get this report done on time?

Nice tool for those in school. Now, back in my day. . .(insert sad story where main character has to walk to school; a long grueling walk, uphill both ways.)

When I was a girl, I walked 10 miles to get to school..., originally uploaded by SusanNobleSmith Photos.

Hasn't technology made some things in life easier? I certainly would have used Research Project Calculator or U of M Assignment Calculator to keep on task with those big reports that I had in school. Maybe some of those C papers would have benefited from more than 3/14 days of work on them. Of course, if you start using this tool on day 11 of 14 it isn't going to help much. There is a little pre-report reading that you should really do. For kids who have trouble getting started and staying the course, this would be a good tool to help them develop strategies for getting their work done. I can think of a couple of patrons whom I would like to show this to. It seemed that both worked in the same way. With both you could sign up to get emails about the next task to complete in your work. Good reminders for those students prone to procrastination and daydreaming.

Looks like I have 21 days to finish these 23 Things. I guess I've improved my getting started and staying on task skills since school.

Thing 15: Aarghh, there's gaming in the library!

Sail ho! There be the dread ship The Pirate's Ransom flyin' the Jolly Roger!, originally uploaded by lunawhimsy.

Guess which Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game I played? Yohoho, I played Puzzle Pirates. This game is more game-y, than the other MMORPGs that are so common in our library (everyone heard of Runescape and World of Warcraft?) I didn't get onto a pirating ship that attacks others, so I'm still a pirate novice. Played some games, talked to a couple people, got the gist of it. I probably spent way more time than I needed to playing the games and less time than I should have exploring the pirating world and talking to my pirate peers. From the looks of it, this is a much more "kid friendly" site than WoW, but I haven't done much with that, so I can't say for sure. Pirates were friendly for the most part, although I wasn't sure a couple of times with all the pirate lingo going on. Guess I better go read a pirate book next if I want to communicate better.

Thing 14: What's in your library?

I really liked this thing! What a great place to put all my books, and find out what others who love the same books as I do are reading. Should I ever be at a loss as to what to read next, now I know where to go. I did already place an ILL order for a book I saw on another list.

I noticed that the first 200 books you post are free, but after that you need to pay, guess we wouldn't be using this for our public library (we may be small, but not that small.) It would be a good place to search for the next book club selection though. Find out what other people love based on the books we've loved. I liked the discussions you could find with most books, it gives a better idea about what to expect.

How do we now share booklists with patrons? We have a list of new books displayed on our desk, and a monthly list gets published in the local paper. We're so small that when we see or read about a book that one of our patrons might enjoy, we just order it for them (or ILL it.) Our most avid readers don't seem to spend a lot of time online (too busy reading the latest books,) but for those that do, we may be able to point them in this direction when they are at a loss for what to read next (yeah, like that ever happens.) Once again, I'm wishing our library had a website. Yet another site we could link our patrons to.

Thing 13: What was I supposed to do today?

To start with, I already have My Yahoo! as my homepage. I have what I want on there, and it's easy to use. Up to today, I hadn't added the calendar to My Yahoo! but now I have. Another place to put all those appointments I'm bound to forget. I checked out SpongeCell and even added a SpongeCell calendar to this blog. I looked at Backpack, and even temporarily set up a free account there. There wasn't a whole lot to offer for those not willing to pay, so I dropped the account almost as quickly as I started it. I don't see online calendars as being a time saver for me. I've got appointments written on my home calendar and the date-book in my purse. I think it's just a bit easier for me to check those than to get online to check things out. Maybe if my days were all filled with appointment after appointment it would be a better option for me. Of all the calendars I looked at I did like 30 Boxes the best. Why; I don't know, for aesthetic reasons? I may use that one; but again, it's just a repeat of the other calendars in my life, so it's redundant (good if my house and purse burn to the ground though.)

Remember The Milk is much the same complaint from me. I don't have so much going on that I can't just write it on my calendar or the grocery list hanging on my fridge. I suppose it would be handy if I were working more than one afternoon a week and thought of things I needed then, but not as my life is now. I do love the name of the site though!

I can see where these tools are useful for those people on the go all the time. Nice to get that text message reminding you to go to the meeting with your supervisor, pick up the dry cleaning, pick up Billy from baseball practice, and pick up milk.

Thing 12: You digg, Doug?

Big World for Small Lego, originally uploaded by miwaza.

I dugg, but I'm not entirely sure how this will work into my professional career. I looked at a bunch of news sites; and noticed that they all had a digg area, but only 3 out of the 6 used a sharing tool besides digg. So I dugg a article from the Wall Street Journal that I had read a couple of weeks ago. I was the 32nd to digg it. If libraries are supposed to be on the cutting edge of all things, I guess this is a way for us to see what's being talked about (or looked up online.) Other than that, I don't know how to apply this to our library. I'm not even sure how I would personally use this. In order of "professionalness", I rated the sites like this: #1:Newsvine #2: tied between Mixx and Digg #3: Reddit. Does that mean our younger patrons would prefer Reddit? When looking for answers to homework research questions I suppose I would first show them Newsvine just because it looked like it had more articles by affiliated sources.

Productivity enhancer or detractor? I'm not sure. I guess it's an enhancer if you're trying to keep abreast of things the world wide web has to offer. I tend to just stick with what I know, guess I'll be sticking to a few more things now.

I did end up reading a couple of articles that I wouldn't have otherwise. I couldn't tell you where I found them or what they were at the moment though, and chances are those top dugg stories have been replaced already. Maybe this would be a detractor after all.

Thing 11: My compliments to the chef!

I did learn about del.icio.us when I watched a Webinar in Thing 7, so this wasn't entirely new to me. I started an account there shortly after finishing Thing 7, just so that I would have all my bookmarks in one accessible spot once we had switched over to a new computer at work. This is a nice thing to know how use. This way I can figure out what craft we're making in storyhour no matter which computer I use! Ingenious! That is how I'll use it in my library.

I think it may help me out in ways other than just keeping a record of the sites I like though. I can search out other people who have tagged some of the same sites and see what other sites they have bookmarked. I can just search out tags and see what comes up. Who knows what sites are out there that are favorites of hundreds and unknown to me? What a great place to keep a list of sites for those leaf, cell, and other reports the local school kids come over to research. I can see where this may come in handy in the future. Looks like I'll no longer have to remember exactly where it was that I found that great information about amoebas.

Mmmmm, delicious!
Green eggs and ham

Thing 10: It's a wiki, wiki world

What a handy-dandy tool when you're trying to compose a list with other people. I used PBWiki and Zoho Wiki, just to try to figure out the difference. I also used Zoho Wiki to try to help me comprehend the difference between a wiki and online collaboration tools. So; if I've got it down, wiki's are start from scratch fix it there and leave it there and with the collaboration tools users can use their own format to edit the document. Somehow, I think that's the absolute basic idea behind it. But, maybe I'm a little off (yes, yes, I've heard it before; I know I'm a little off.)

I enjoyed the Book Lover's Wiki. A great place to head for when you're searching for a book to read, or a book for your book club to read. I scanned the Library Success wiki and hope to have time to actually read some of it after I finish up my Things. I edited the 23 Things On a Stick wiki. Not much more than I "I was here" for those doing these 23 Things.

Wikis are an interesting idea. I'm not sure about how factual they may or may not end up being. For a student doing research, I would think they aren't the final say. I would want some other "real" information to back-up what someone said on a wiki. Since anyone can add anything, it's hard for me to call this true information. How would we use this in our library? I don't know. I do like the book lover's wiki idea. A place for patrons to post about the books they've checked out and loved or the books they've checked out and hated. Now, if only more of our voracious readers were truly internet savvy (but that's a task for another day.)

P.S. Did you notice I learned how to put links on here. Good grief, going a little crazy with it too.

Thing 9: Can you help me compose this?

Gee, I wish I had gotten to this thing a week ago. It would have been handy as I typed a document at work, emailed it to my home address, worked on it some more, forgot to save it, and had to email my not-very updated document back to my work address. Google Docs or Zoho would have saved me some time (and a big head-ache as I searched my brain for what I had already written.)

I don't know which is better. I was able to easily do both. (Not that I doctored the Zoho document provided by 23things.) I did set up an account in case I need to type up a project in the future.

Wouldn't the founding fathers be happy to have had this at their disposal. "Glad we don't have to get together to work on this again, that John Hancock can be such a bore. And don't even get me started on T.J."

Oozing Freedom, originally uploaded by quick5pnt0.

Thing 8: It's called sharing. . .

Share, share, share. So, there's my slide show. Pretty nifty if I do say so myself. I used slideroll. How did I find that website? Good question. I must have gotten there through the 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story link. There were lots of good sites on there. A great thing to know how to do if your library has a website (mine doesn't.) I suppose I could personally compose a montage of pictures of the kids to send to far-flung family members, but I don't imagine I will in the near future. Guess they'll just have to check out the blog.

I did put together a database on Lazybase for our library book club. I can see where that will be a handy tool. Instead of scraps of paper all over with titles of books on them, I can enter them into the database to call up when the need arises.

I took a look at eFolio, but didn't really find a use for it for me. Too forward thinking -- I haven't caught up to the idea perhaps. A place to have your resume online, easy to update, ready to send to a perspective employee? Wow, whatever will we do with those file folders hanging in the desk drawer filled with our resumes, goals accomplished and such?

All of this stuff is relatively new to me, so I don't have any other sites that I use for sharing that I could recommend. Slideroll was pretty easy to use; it took a little tinkering to figure it out, but I managed to. I've used Big Huge Labs on previous Things, and some of those are easier to use than others. (Mosaic Maker being the most difficult of the ones I used.) I think I have had the most fun with Big Huge Labs, lots of stuff to play around with and create there.

Thing 7: Where do they offer texting 101??

Email, IMing, texting, all great ways of communication in type. I personally love email. I can send information to a bunch of people at one time, which is great and certainly is a time saver. I'm not a big fan of IMing. To me it's a lot easier to just pick up the phone. Maybe if I could type as fast as I read, speak, and think I would like it better; but my typing skills aren't that proficient. SMS is something else entirely. I need SMS 101: Texting as a second language. That's one Webinar I would be sure to "attend".

In our small (tiny really) library, I don't see us using IM or SMS anytime in the near future. (Hey, we don't even have our own library website--I think we would need to get that first.)

I viewed the Minitex Webinar about del.icio.us 2.0. Kind of felt like I was cheating, as I'm not to that thing yet. Ah well, I learned a little before I had to what del.icio.us is and how to use it. Now I feel like I should jump ahead to that thing before I forget, or just hurry through the next few things.

ttfn! (Guess I've learned a few SMS shortcuts.)

Book Baby trading card

deck2632257, originally uploaded by aawikstrom.

Thing SIX

Lots of fun stuff with Thing 6! I tried my hand at creating trading cards. I'm sure the kids will have a blast with these if we can create some for those participating in the Summer Library Program.


ImageChef had some neat stuff on it. I can see where this stuff would be great for a library's website (which we don't have.) Makes me wish we had one for our small little library. I don't know if our patrons would use it much, but we'd have fun with it.


I don't know that I'm "creative" enough to come up with anything/way we could use ToonDoo. Okay; I probably am creative enough, but I can't think of anything right now.

Thing FIVE

What fun this stuff is! I could play around with this for hours (not that I haven't already!) We've already thought about using some of these tools to make a magazine-type flyer for people in our area. Trading cards may be in the cards for the up-coming summer reading program. I think the kids will have a blast getting trading cards featuring themselves. The mash-ups are fun to play around with, but I haven't exactly figured out how we may use them in the library. Perhaps just as an addition to our magazine.

I still don't feel completely comfortable having all of my pictures online for any Joe Blow off the street to peruse. But, I'm getting used to the idea.

My creation

My creation, originally uploaded by aawikstrom.

Reading to little sister--sepia

Reading to little sister--sepia, originally uploaded by aawikstrom.

Thing FOUR

Reading to little sister, originally uploaded by aawikstrom.

Two of my favorite library patrons. (Okay, my two youngest daughters.)

Thing Four:

I don't know what our library would use Flickr for. We're small and I don't think we'd have time to do some of the really cool stuff that other libraries have done with it. (How fun to scroll over the books in a picture and be given a link to the library to see if they're available!)

I'd heard of Flickr, but never really explored it before now. How handy to have a place to download and share all those pictures that are stagnating on my computer. I'm sure I'll slowly download a bunch of them in the weeks and months to come for my own personal use. The only other place I've downloaded pictures to is Snapfish--you know, then get them made into actual hand-held photos. Although you can share your pictures there, it doesn't have a space for others to post comments about them. I sent an invite to my Mother-in-law who is spending a couple cold winter months down south. What a great place for me to send her photo updates on how her grand-girls are growing! I think Flickr is great!

It was a bit intimidating to try to come up with tags for the public photos though. I must admit it does make me a bit nervous to have them out there for the world to see. At the same time, I do wonder if anyone would have anything to say about them or if they'd think of other tags that should be added.

I played around with Picnik. Fun options there for things to do with your pictures. I do still need to figure out how to get the picture I want onto my blog in the way I want it. What fun! This is my first experience with messing around with photos, so I don't have any cons on this one. I set up a picture to go along with my name and postings. I doodled over a picture of myself. I didn't have the steadiest hand, so it didn't come out exactly the way I would have liked, but in the end I guess it's something like abstract art.

I went to the Picasa and SmugMug websites. Picasa is another free offering from Google, and I found it a little difficult to figure out. SmugMug has some fabulous shots on it, but from the looks of it, it seemed more geared toward professional photographers than rank amateurs like myself.

I put some of my pictures into sets on Flickr. Great tool, now I can find all the pictures from January 2008 in one spot. I'll be sure to use that more in the future.

Thing THREE

Good grief, Charlie Brown. Here I was putting other NCLC blogs on my RSS account, scanning what was being said, and wondering how I put one of those icons on my blog so that people can just click it to add me to their RSS accounts. Thank you 23byBeth for sharing the fact that the Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) at the bottom of my blog is what you would click to add me to your RSS account, or what I would click to add you to my RSS account.

I get what RSS is, and I think it will save me some time. I won't have to check out a bunch of un-updated blogs to find out what progress others are making on their 23 things. There are about a million blogs I could get sucked into RSSing. Mostly I'm attracted to the ones that make me laugh: The Laughing Librarian and Unshelved. I also added Paper Cuts - Books - New York Times blog and Reader's Club: Book Reviews. I did add the weather, but I can't imagine checking to see if it's been updated, I imagine I'll get rid of that one before too long. I've got that page already saved in my bookmarks--much easier to just go directly to their website. The same with other news pages, so I haven't put anything beyond blogs and weather in my RSS. I suppose time will tell how much I will use Google Reader to check up on these things I've subscribed to, but for the moment I don't know that it'll be much. I'm not sure how I did it, but I've got a couple of 23things blogs on my tool bar. Wish I could remember how I did that. That is SUPER HANDY, I don't have to go anywhere in order to find out if my fellow bloggers have added anything.


I've heard of classes that have set up blogs--much like 23things--and the teachers that can easily access their students progress. That would be a pretty nifty application for this tool. How we would use this in our library is beyond me at this point. We're too small, and too poorly funded to do most of the interesting/exciting things that bigger/better funded libraries can do. But, I'm keeping an open mind--who knows what the future may hold.

Thing TWO

My goodness, so much is out there that I wasn't aware of. I spent a good part of the day reading about Library 2.0, and although much of it goes right over my head, I hope it won't be over my head for long. The more I learn the more I find out I've got lots to learn. I had never even heard of most of the web tools mentioned by Stephen Abram. Sure, I've heard of MySpace, Facebook and IMing, but I've never really delved into them. Weebo, Skype, and all the other sites mentioned in the video are new to me. Where to find the time to find out more about these things? I suppose I'll have to play a little less Text Twist and Word Racer for the next couple weeks (ha).

Why am I participating in 23 Things On a Stick? You might think that working at a library in a community of less than 700 would mean that these things aren't relevant to me. The two YA's that were in the library yesterday while my director and I were discussing our involvement with the 23 things said they didn't know what blogs are. Hey, let's learn about something before our patrons do! If we know about it first, then when they come with us with questions about these tools, we'll have some personal experience with them and will be better equipped to answer their questions.

And the question, "How has the Internet and the vast resource it can be affected your use of time at work and/or at home?" has me a bit stumped. I no longer have to run to the card catalog when I want to know if we have a book in our collection (small library, we only got rid of it about 5 1/2 years ago.) I regularly use MyFamily to keep up with family and friends. I don't need to phone around to find things out, I use the internet. Hard to believe that for me computers entered my life in 2nd grade (remember programming the turtle to move around the screen?) Any questions you may have, you can find an answer to online (although they may not all be good answers.) How has all this affected my use of time? Good question. Do I have more time than I would if the internet were not such an intrinsic part of my daily life? Perhaps not. I wouldn't have as many choices or as much information available to me as I do now though.

Lots more to learn. What will this mean for our small town library? I don't really know yet. Hopefully we'll be able to come up with some ideas to help our community think of the library as the first line when they have questions, instead of the last line. Hopefully we can spark some dialogue with our patrons and find ways of enticing non-library-users into our fold.

Thing ONE

Would you look at that! I got a monkey counter. So far I've visited my own site 7 times. I used gostats.com. I had looked at feedburner and sitemeter, but I love the monkey meter I settled on. (Not that I got real far with the other two sites.)

I noticed my avatar has the background on it. I don't know why it wasn't showing up in the beginning, maybe I just needed to clean the cookies off the computer.

So far this has been pretty easy, and fun. Now to figure out some more stuff.

Thing ONE

Okay, so we're supposed to add on our avatar. I did but was disappointed that the background of it isn't part of the picture. I'm not sure what part of the directions I missed (if any,) guess I 'll just have to keep playing around with it.

Now to try and figure out some of this other stuff. I think there's a way to add a counter to a blog, but I'm haven't figured it out yet. A little nervous to try new stuff in case I end up in
cyber-la-la land. I think I can, I think I can. . .

Thing ONE

I've never blogged before. This is a new and somewhat daunting adventure. I've read blogs; in fact I have a couple of friends who have blogs, but I can't say that I've done anything beyond reading theirs. This should be interesting.

So far it's kind of fun.