#23 Summarize your thoughts about this program on your blog

* What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

The fllickr add on and the image generators were fun. From the strictly practical side I loved discovering Google reader. I like it because it brings info to me. It has also been an exercise in skimming or skipping over info that I really do not need. I am a hoarder by nature, but you can’t really “keep” all the feed. I know they aren’t gone – they will stay out there and could be retrieved if I really need them.

I am also very excited about Aviary – the free photoshop app.

* How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

it has pushed me to be familiar with things I may not need right now, but now I know they exist. The feeds at least pass information in front of me, and hopefully in a place where I can retrieve it when I need it.
I have learned more from looking at how other libraries use blogs, video, podcasts etc than just learning about the things themselves.

* Were there any experiences from this program that surprised you?

The amount of time it took and how easily I could get derailed.

* Please mention any of the things that you have used after learning about them that have benefited your work.

Well – I was using some of the things before I blogged about them. Google reader is the one big thing that will help me – even if it does nothing but let me know about new posts on the gMLC wiki.

* What technologies do you think you’ll continue to use either personally or at work?

Online apps, wikis, reader, blogs and facebook. Hopefully aviary too.

* Are there any technologies or websites we didn’t look at that you would like to share with everyone?

remember the milk and evernote were only mentioned in passing (not that I foulnd them personally helpful…)

* Any other parting thoughts to share with us?

I think it’s ironic that since I have found out about 23 things I have been encouraging everyone I know to try, saying just invest 30 minutes a week to look at all this stuff and try it and then here I am cramming in 10 things in a week because I never took that 30 minutes a week. There are many things and links that I will probably go back to and look at more closely.

* What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

I really liked the kick-off meeting. It would be nice to have a closing meeting to, to interact live and in person. (and I just like hanging out with Mara).

* If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you chose to participate?

ABSOLUTELY (eventually)

Thanks Mara!!!

#15 Read a few perspectives on Web 2.0, Library 2.0, and the future of libraries and blog your thoughts.

I think my favorite of the essays was Dr. Wendy Schultz’ – the 4 stages of libraries. In a nutshell it stressed that libraries need to change and evolve. Librarians come out from behind the desk and patrons are librarians too – cataloging and classifying. Libraries are becoming co-operative environments.

At one of the DOL workshops with Pat Wagner on leadership, she talked about the different levels of responsibility in the library and compared them to birds – the library director is the hawk – flying high taking in lots of landscape at one time – looking ahead to the future. The clerical duties are like the birds that peck away at the bottom of the bird feeder – they never stray very far and have very little variety. The middle bird would be one who dwells at the edge of the woods, taking forays across the field and then seeking shelter in the woods – sort of the middle managers (of people and information). (Okay – I made that middle bird up. I don’t remember what Pat really said about the middle bird – I must have gotten up to go to the restroom or was lost in a daydream about being a hawk soaring high in the sky on a summer afternoon, spying a juicy mouse down in the field below, swooping in and grabbing it in my sharp and gleaming talons, squeezing and squeezing until the poor little mouse stopped struggling against my grasp……oh sorry I got carried away again)

ANYWAY – All of our libraries can fit into the same sort of metaphor – the hawks are the large libraries in urban areas that have more patrons and more patrons are tech savvy. They can lead the way trying new things, can afford to take more risks. They can blaze the trails. The other end is the small one person library, usually in rural or very rural areas, perhaps struggling just to stay open. If there is no cell service they don’t really need to have a catalog with an app for the cell phone (yet). It’s not that tech developments won’t ever get there, but they are at the back of the line. (And nationwide I think Vermont is closer to the back of the line than most) Then there are those in the middle who can take some risk and follow in the lead taken by others.
Co-operation is essential in this new environment, no one can succeed in an information vacuum (although I think some trustees think their libraries should). I think the GMLC is a great example of co-operation and giving smaller libraries the chance to move up the ladder of technological advancement than they could have alone. Another way libraries need to co-operate is by sharing with each other and having conversations across the state, whether by wiki, or at the conference, or at regional meetings. I have found meeting with the Franklin County librarian as informative and educational as the classes from the DOL. Libraries are people and we are just drawing the circle of that definition to include more and more. I don’t think libraries will ever live exclusively in the cloud.

#21 Discover YouTube and a few sites that allow users to upload and share videos

Okay, so the video I chose has nothing to do with libraries. I searched for Richford on youtube and this was one of the hits I got. WHERE DOES THIS POOR WOMAN THINK SHE IS? She doesn’t seem to know – her caption (at the bottom of the screen 0:12) says Swanton (which isn’t very close to Richford) and she starts out saying she is in Richmond (0:24 which is also not very close to Richford and does not border Canada). By the end (2:04) of the piece she seems to have checked a map and acknowledges actually being in Richford. The funny thing is she seems to have posted this herself. I’d take this embarrassing piece of video “journalism” out of the public domain.

But on the library front there are a surprising large number of clips tagged library – from the sacred to profane. I loved the Barbie book club with the Magic 8 Ball as guest speaker. I love some of the book reviews the kids do. This is a great place to involve patrons, especially younger patrons. I think I could see have a video on the website that “toured” the library. grant it we are not in a large building but we have a lot of stuff crammed in here. Definitely a project to put on the wish list.
I don’t get the japanese silent library game show – not even the version that MTV did in English (but it’s silent). It’s on MTV – that’s why I guess I don’t get it.

I love the chain reaction of watching a video and then clicking on a suggested similar video and seeing where you end up after a half an hour or so – I found myself watching Dr Who episode re-enacted in stop motion animation with lego!

Sharing a site I haven’t seen listed in 23 Things: Unshelved Answers

We probably all read the Unshelved comic everyday, but have you looked at their answer page – which is kind of a blog and kind of a wiki.  Someone recently asked about library podcasts – there was only one answer, so I posted some of the links from 23 things.

#8 Locate a few useful library related blogs and/or news feeds.

I must have skipped this one the first time through – Oh my oh my I can’t believe the list of world wide blogs!  What fun to read about libraries in other countries.  I subscribe to the Librarian in Black who is from California – I thought that was exotic!  Too many to go through right now, but this is a list I will keep coming back to.

The other lists are all so comprehensive (translate – too much information to take in).  In one I found this link to Sandusky Ohio, a place I have visited many times.  What a good idea for the Historical Society to use to share all their treasures.  I have a hard time reading the strictly library related blogs when tempted to sites called things like Evil Mad scientists with directions for making Atomic Cookies!!  And then I got sidetracked reading the pickled lemon post which led to the marmalade post which as tons of fascinating comments offering variations!

And thanks to some of the commenters I have added more review sites to my feed.

#22 Discover some useful search tools for locating podcasts

I love podcasts!  The idea of adding them to the library’s webpage is great.  I love Sprinfield’s “Listen to This” podcast – where all it says is that you have won a prize – some Pavlov training – if you listen to the podcasts you are in for a treat!  I also love the story podcast – I wonder if publishers would give permission for a virtual story hour (OK that takes it out of the realm of podcast when you add visuals).  I can see reading, say, a Llama Llama book and inviting the kids to come in and find the other Llama Llama books!

Another great idea would be to feature the beginning or an excerpt from each of the DCF or GMA books.  This might be an ambitious project but could be a collaboration among libraries and have the link all posted on a unified page with each library having the link to that page on their own sites.

I did not find many book review podcasts – the best were Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust and NPR’s books.  I’d really like it if Booklist did a podacst.  And someone refered to School Library Journal’s podcast, but when I searched for them, none seemed to be current, so perhaps they have discontinued that.

This thing was good because it reminded me that it’s possible to search out the type of podcasts I might be interested in instead of just waiting to stumble upon them.

#20 Explore any site from Web 2.0 awards lists, play with it, and write a blog post about your findings

Aviary – I love Aviary which is an image editor – a free photoshop. Well it seems like a wonderful thing, but after playing around with it for over an hour, I have nothing to show for it.  Even the image that I did create, pretty much following the same steps as the intro video, cannot be shared.  They give you 5 different variations of code to cover all of the sharing possibilities (forums, html, html launcher..) anyway none of them seem to work.  I think this can do wonderful things, but I’m not sure how!

Aviary’s website

my creation

#19 Track what people are saying about your Library

Social mention

I searched for Arvin A Brown and these results (I see when you click that link it will do the search all over again – so the results may look different each time)

The first 2 items are from October 2008 (and yes I have posted other things since then).  I don’t even want to know why the japanese lesbian site it connected to us.  I’d hardly say this provides current results!  At least in addictomatic my blog post were in the search results!

Addictomatic:

I had to use quotation marks to include the name of the library or else it looks for any of the words anyplace and gives many irrelevant results.  The string search gives few results but all are relevant.  Not that I can see this is any use to us searching for our library.  And honestly I can’t see using any of these personally either – except as occasional curiosity searches – the same way I might google myself or someone else.

Google alerts:

Arvin A. Brown needed to be in quotation marks to yield relevant results again and didn’t give any irrelevant sites, bbut can also be limited to a limited time period (past 30 days).  I like the way google alert looks much better than the other 2 – cleaner and less busy.  I also tried a few other names and found that it would bring up items on eBay (I found a signed photocard of David Hobbs).  The down side is that it doesn’t distinguish between people with the same name, so you could get way too much information if you were searching for “John Smith”.

I don’t know how or when I would ever use these sites (I could just be on gizmo overload right now), but they are fun and I am glad to know about them.

#18 Take a look at some online productivity (wordprocessing, spreadsheet) tools

Ok – I thought this was going to be a quick and easy thing.  But the list includes more programs than I knew about so I had to try and look at them all – though I am tired of signing up for things, so for the most part I just read about them and looked at the trial versions of thinkfree and goffice.  (Writeboard link did not work for me.  Thumbtacks seems to be gone too).  (And I see you already knew about ZAMZAR,,)

I use both google docs and ZOHO.  Mostly I think I prefer zoho – I definitely like their spreadsheet better – I have had problems with the google spreadsheet.  I am an anti-microsoft person so I love that there are alternatives and that they are free.  I also like that they are shareable.  I did try to use gooogle docs to share the paperwork for the trustees about a year ago and they all had some kind of problem with it – whether it was just access to the documents, or ability to open them or the fact that they printed oddly (printed landscaped-ly even though all print setting said portrait.  why??  we’ll never know.  But this is why I tried the wiki and all documents are in PDF form for consistancy).  They were working on rewriting a policy and were nearly done so I put it on google docs and asked them to check it over and make any changes, so it could be printed in its final form at the meeting.  They all (well all the ones who could access it) printed it out, made changes on the copy and handed it to me.  The ability to share things is great, as long as you have someone to share them with.

I like both google docs and zoho better than using microsoft products but not as much as using Apple’s iWork (or even appleworks or clarisworks).  I am still figuring out all the features – like I have just discovered the history tab in zoho writer where I can see all my changes.  I also just discovered that a zoho document can be saved in a pdf (and a few others) format.  I am still looking for a way to sort the zoho spread sheet by any column other than A.

I also like that your “list” has live links – I didn’t know you can do that in either zoho writer or google docs.  Really using these are like using a wiki.

#17 Create a wiki or add an entry to a Vermont’s 23 Things sandbox wiki

Last year when the trustees were working on our long range plan and then when we wanted to send out a fundraising letter (which we hadn’t done in a while) I sent an email to all PUBS@VALS asking for samples.  I received more request to share what I got, than actual samples!  Instead of sending everyone back an email with loads of attachments I hung them all out in a wiki:

Long Range Plan Samples

Fundraising Sample Letters with helpful notes from contributors

Ideally this a wiki I’d like to transfer from me to all librarians in the state.  I thought maybe using the wikimatrix would be helpful to choose which one would do the job.  On my first attempt I was just overwhelmed by all the options and not sure what I actually wanted.  The step by step questions to narrow down the options was helpful, but I wish one of the question had been to just show the free wikis.  But this is a project for another day,  (,,, unless someone else wants to take it one…I would not be offended….)

A useful page I discovered while doing this project was ZAMZAR which will translate files you may not be able to otherwise open – in my case some of the fundraising info was done in MS Publisher and I did not have a copy of that on the computers I was working on.  Uploading the file to Zamzar and they will send a link to download that same file in a word doc.  Very helpful!

My trustees like to get things in the mail before the meeting but often I am running late so they arrive just the evening before the meeting.  Last month I posted the monthly documents as I prepared them so if they wanted more time to look them over they could go to the wiki and download them.  This also would help the people who have dial up service and can’t download big files all at once.  It worked for most of them – I still had one who said when she opened some of the PDFs it printed out in Chinese.  That I couldn’t help her with.

Trustee handouts April 2010