23 Things - #23

I thought the best way for me to reflect on the experience of working through the Learning 2.0 - 23 Things would be to answer the questions listed on the 2.0 Web Site...

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

My favorite discoveries would include:

• Setting up and maintaining the blog. This was my very first blog, and this entire experience has realy helped to cement in my brain how the whole process works.
• Reading other blogs. As always, I thoroughly enjoyed the insight and input from all of my classmates. I also realized, both along the way and here at the end, just how many more possibilities there are with regards to creating and maintaining a great blog, thanks to the amazing creativity and know-how of others in our group.
• Library Thing. When the time comes when school, work, family, etc. allow (whenever that may be), I look forward to returning to Library Thing and cataloging all of my books with them.

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

Right after going through the initial "Seven Habits for Highly Successful Librarians" tutorial, I decided to re-commit myself to a daily regimen of planning and solitude time - to map out my day, and to use it as a means of working daily toward my personal, professional and educational goals.

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

I was surprised how much I enjoyed maintaining a blog. I also would have to admit that although I was certain that much would be learned from beginning to end of this process, the amount of exposure to tools, resources, and applications available, if not vital, to librarians today has really astounded me. The process also is very true to its namesake; that it is the just the beginning of a lifetime of learning.

What could we do differently to improve upon the program's format or concept?

I am not sure if the links we were using are really to blame, as they were certainly meant at least initially for the staff at the PLCMC. But the only thing I would mention is that some of the links to sites, tutorials, sign-up pages, etc. did not work. Again, I am not sure if that could be helped.

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

I have to be honest, that I probably would not have even known about this program had it not been for taking LIS 635 with Charlet. That said, I am sure glad that this was part of our course. If a follow-up program were part of a course or staff development project in the future, I will be very pleased to go through it, knowing of what great benefit this program has been.

23 Things - #22

I actually had set an account up with NetLibrary about a year ago so I could locate an e book needed for one of my classes. Kankakee Public Library apparently had done away with their Netlibrary link, so a colleague of mine helped me locate one on the Bourbonnais Public Library page on the "Links" link. From there I set up my account. Naturally I have long since forgotten my username and password, but Netlibrary emailed my forgotten password to me.

Unfortunately, the subscription that the Bourbonnais Public Library must maintain does not include eaudiobooks, so my attempt to download an eaudiobook to play on Windows Media Player did not pan out. However, the web site is very user friendly, and the process would not be much if at all different from downloading a ebook in pdf format.

The 12-Minute tutorial link called "Introduction to Netlibrary" is outstanding. I highly recommend watching it.

23 Things - #21

Spent quite a bit of time navigating through the Yahoo Podcasts Help web site. It does a great job answering questions, and keeps the language easy to understand. I hope to become better actuainted with podcasts as my studies and library career progresses.

23 Things - #20

I was hoping to find this on YouTube. My dad sent this to me some time ago in an email with the following description...

"This incredible machine was built as a collaborative effort between the Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory and the SharonWick School of Engineering at the University of Iowa . Amazingly, 97% of the machines components came from John Deere Industries and Irrigation Equipment of Bancroft Iowa , yes farm equipment! It took the team a combined 13,029 hours of set-up, alignment, calibration, and tuning before filming this video but as you can see it was WELL worth the effort. It is now on display in the Matthew Gerhard Alumni Hall at the University and is already slated to be donated to the Smithsonian."

It's completely non-library related, but I hope you like it...

23 Things - #19

From: seomoz.org - The Web's Best SEO Resources

What: 2008 Web 2.0 Award Winners

Award Winner Spotlight: Biblio.com

Award: 2nd Place in the "Books" Category

Likes:

• Easy search interface
• 50 million used and rare books in database
• Searchable by ISBN
• Lists book prices by price and vendor
• Browse book section with several helpful search categories
• Book vendors searchable by state/country/name
• Extensive llisting of rare books and collectibles links
• Numerous options for searching textbooks
• Free account set up and "shopping cart" shopping

Dislikes:

• Not many
• Unlike alibris.com, no music and/or movies available

Useful Features:

• Booksearch, Browsebooks, Booksellers, Rare Books, Textbooks tabs across top
• Wide variety of search categories within each tab
• Shopping Cart
• Search options
• Site map
• Community forum link
• About page

Application in a Library Setting:

• Ideal as a place for libraries to sell weeded books of sufficient value
• Good tool to determine value of books in collection
• An excellent search tool for rare books and collectibles
• Potential for networking through the community forum

23 Things - #18

The post below was sent directly from Zoho Writer. I tried a second time to see if I would be able to proficiently navigate through some of the editing tools. Truthfully, I did not have a great deal of success. I did also visit the GoogleDocs site, and was interested in the numerous templates available if users so choose. I did not take the time to set up an account with GoogleDocs, but may do so in the future.

I was glad that my post from Zoho to my blog was successful, albeit rather bland and unexciting.

Zoho First Try

I am currently typing with Zoho Writer, and right from the start, wished I would have read the introductory tutorial a little closer. My expectations for me to even get this to work are low, so at least for now I am going to keep this simple.

23 Things - #'s 16 & 17

I had become relatively familiar with Wikipedia quite some time ago, primarily from conducting Google searches - as I'm sure all can attest, the Wikipedia entry for just about everything is typically first or near first in the list of retrievals. It was not until starting our classes for SLIS last fall, however, that I realized that a "wiki" was by definition any web site which encourages editing and updates by all users. Moreover, it had never really occurred to me that the emergence of Wikipedia as an information source would stir up such a furor regarding its bibliographical credibility. I thought it was interesting to read the comments posted underneath the blog posting called "Wiki, Wiki, Wiki!," on the PLCMC Information Technology Core Competencies. The posting and comments date back to April, 2006, so the comments are interesting to read given what seems to be somewhat universal opinions about Wikipedia today.

I have only been actively involved in a wiki once thus far; it was for a course I took last year. The students in the class were asked to create and update a glossary wiki on terms relevant to the issues surrounding free speech (the subject of the course). We were all given around 5-6 terms to define and post on the glossary wiki page.

After doing some searching on library wikis, I found this link: Libraries Using IM Reference. I thought this was pretty interesting.

It was neat to browse through the PBWiki favorites links, though I thought many of them looked somewhat cluttered. The tutorial links on the PLCMC site did not work, and I will re-visit the notion of listing my blog in the favorite blogs link on this site another time.

23 Things - #15

Rick Anderson's article, questioning the future usefulness of a print collection, is an opinion for which I am going to have to respectfully disagree. Granted, I do see validity to his reasoning that the volume of material and resources available to patrons online could (or perhaps should) make print material obsolete - a paper white elephant if you will. However, a few reasons why print collections should both exist and continue to be replenished with acquisitions come to mind:
1. Patrons still desire for materials in print. This may be a greater truth in a public versus an academic library, I'm not sure. But books remain in demand, despite the always growing presence, accessibility, and awareness of online resources.
2. Even if every library in existence began tomorrow to digitize their entire collection and make them available in digital format, it would take years before they were all digitized, indexed, and accessible. Meanwhile, how many new print publications would be created?
3. I have to preface this one with saying that I completely agree with Mr. Anderson's next two "ice bergs:" educating our patrons on how to find information (i.e. teaching a man to fish), and taking the library to the patrons by all means accessible. However, I think it is important that we as librarians be careful how we pitch our desire to take the library to our patrons, and that we don't out smart ourselves by convincing those who hold the purse strings that the library "as place" is no longer an absolute necessity. I see this as particularly relevant in the academic setting, but certainly applies to all library institutions.

Finally, and for purely self-absorbed reasons, I would like to see the continued presence of print material as the immovable cornerstone of libraries - living side by side in informational harmony with electronic and online resources - at least long enough to be able to absorb and be a part of what "is" before it becomes what "was."

23 Things - #'s 13 & 14 (and 20)

del.icio.us - There is really no way that I will not get lost, sidetracked, and completely diverted from my original objective when visiting this site. I listed #20 in parentheses above in reference to experience using YouTube, because the same kind of time-eating digressions occur during those visits as well. I have visited YouTube several times; today was my first look at del.icio.us. Like YouTube, I personally will have to liken del.icio.us as a guilty pleasure with the power to draw me right in, in much the same way that "I Love the 80's" shows on VH1 can do.

I did four searches, with the number of links listed after each search term...
1. United States Presidents - 244 (got lost among the bookmarks here, but the good news is I did really well on the trivia page by the 34th time I played).

2. Carlisle Indian School - 18 (this was inspired by the miniseries "Into the West," which my wife and I checked out at the library, and have been watching - it's probably overdue).

3. Supreme Court Building - 16 (all sites devoted to the actual building of the Supreme Court - a homework assignment of my daughter's).

4. CUBS - 3111 - (had to check - lovable losers is big enough to be its own demographic)

technorati - What I enjoyed most about visiting this site is that it was a bit like looking in the "Library 2.0 mirror," so to speak - I know that had I visited this site (most likely by accident) prior to being enrolled in SLIS, none of it would have made much sense. Now, I am able to understand in much greater depth how blogs are created, maintained, searched, tagged, and utilized. That said, I know there is still an enormous amount of learning to do; looking at the technorati web site allowed for the opportunity to see all that still needs to be done as well.

The biggest tags in the tag cloud were those associated with Tuesday's election. It will be interesting to watch how those change as the election comes and goes, and other hot topics of the day gain the spotlight.

23 Things - #12

Familiarized myself with Rollyo, then registered, and created a searchroll. This is a pretty cool site, and it did bring back a big list of search results within my searchroll web sites. However, I did not feel that it saved a great deal of time, and am not sure that searching within the dozen or so sites individually would be any slower in bringing me to valuable information. On the other hand, it may be that old searching habits die hard.

Tried also the Rare Book Library Search roll with decent results. The Amazon and LOC databases associated with Library Thing seem more likely to produce information and existence evidence of rare book titles better than Rollyo. Not sure this site really kept my interest enough to use regularly, but I will keep it bookmarked.

23 Things - #11

Like so many of the tasks which make up the 23 Things, Library Thing was a new experience. I can remember first hearing about Library Thing in our Organization of Information course last spring - it sounded like many in our class, including the instructor, were users of Library Thing to one degree or another.

I started this evening with the tutorial, after which I created a user account and edited some of the user profile info. For now, I kept my profile at a private setting, at least until I had some time to familiarize myself with how it all worked. The first several books were somewhat randomly pulled from my bookshelves (which admittedly are quite random as it is). All but one were identifiable by the ISBN, and so I added them. Then I got curious. For my next round of books, I purposefully pulled what I suspected to be among to most obscure titles on my shelves. Between the LOC and Amazon, all but two books were identifiable.

It was even more bizarre to see that with only two exceptions, there was at least one other person who shared the same titles on all of my added books. The tutorial was right when it spoke of the "eerie similarities." Who knew that there were actually 11 of us with Lord Charnwood's 1917 autobiography of Abraham Lincoln?

I have bookmarked this site, and will definitely be back soon to add more books. I spent easily about 1 1/2 hours more there this evening than originally planned; adding books was really quite addictive.

23 Things - #10

These sites were entertaining. I spent quite a bit of time on the Generator Blog, and chose several random links with some interesting results. Here is a sampling of my discoveries...

On the "Amazing Fact Generator," I randomly pulled up the fact which read, "Two thirds of the world's lawyers live in the United States."

On the "Bar Drink Generator," I randomly selected the "Sandy Hammer" - 1/4 oz. Sherry, 1 oz. White Wine, 1/2 oz Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream, Serve in a Coffee Mug. Mix in Strawberry Quik.

And finally, on the "Extreme Sports Generator," I randomly generated the "Insane, Freestyle, Giraffe Skiing," phenomenon.

Perhaps we could combine all of the above and get something really unusual...

I also spent some time with Big Huge Labs' customized jigsaw puzzles feature. My wife thought perhaps such a thing might make a neat Christmas gift.

23 Things - #'s 8 & 9

I signed myself for a Bloglines newsreader account and promise to play with my settings some more in the next few weeks. I have a few non-library related newsfeeds and also subscribed to librarian.net and Library Stuff. Would like to leave this task for now until I have some time to experience it and make changes to settings if necessary. Will plan on re-visiting this post at a later date with an update of my experience with RSS feeds and Bloglines in particular.

23 Things - #7

At the risk of dwelling on Disney to the inevitable exhaustion of the readers, we had the privilege to visit an exhibit at Disneyland called "Innoventions," housed in a giant circulating convention hall right next to Space Mountain (an equally awesome attraction). Innoventions invited guests to travel from room to room in the home of tomorrow, today.

http://disneyland.disney.go.com/disneyland/en_US/parks/attractions/detail?name=InnoventionsAttractionPage

In the kitchen for example, guests were encouraged to place various items on the counter, which would then "read" the ingredients placed on it, and offer suggestions for what entrees could be prepared with them. In the dining room, nearly every piece of furniture and/or wall was equipped with an interactive touch screen. The dining room table, for example, allowed users to select various decorative photos, recall personal photos, photographic puzzle pieces, and play with images such as water over rocks which would "ripple" at the touch.

The table on the back porch offered interactive games, puzzles, karaoke, and a piano keyboard, all accessible through the touch of the table top.

One of the child bedrooms was wired to be a total multi-dimensional, interactive experience, whose theme was based upon a particular bedtime story - the them on display was the story of "Peter Pan." Our daughters were picked to "shoot the cannon" during a reading of the story. Other effects included the dimming of lights to emulate stars, Tinkerbell flying around, and the shadow of Peter Pan.

A bedroom for older daughters offered a computerized mirror, which allowed for selecting clothes, and seeing what they looked like together before actually trying them on.

Please know that my brief recollections of our visit does not begin to do justice to actually being there. Moreover, I am not sure how prevalent, albeit prohibitive, the technological offerings showcased at "Innovations" are in homes right now, and just completely unknown to those of us still getting around in a 1997 Dodge Grand Caravan and living without Caller ID.

23 Things - #'s 5 & 6

My very first introduction to Flickr came just before my interview for the Circulation job at the Kankakee Public Library in March of last year... http://www.flickr.com/photos/kankakeepubliclibrary/

I wanted to aquaint myself with the library and its web site http://www.lions-online.org/ ,
and at the time really had no point of reference as to how far-reaching the photo sharing site actually was. Then it finally dawned on me in a follow-up visit to this page some time later to click on the "flickr" icon at the top left corner. During that particular visit (I think I had been hired by KPL by then), and in subsequent visits to see the latest KPL photos, I have enjoyed searching for a topic out of the tag cloud and seeing what photos have been shared about a particular topic. And, thanks to our Organization of Information class from last spring, I now know why some tags are bigger than others. : ) Once after my family and I returned from Anaheim this past summer, my daughters had a great time looking at photos taken from others during their visit to Disneyland (of course they still enjoy looking at the gazillion we took ourselves as well).

As far as mashups and 3rd party sites, I had not familarized myself with these other flickr web site resources prior to going through Library 2.0. At the risk of stating the obvious, the applications for which shared photos can be utilized is infinite. Among the examples listed on the mashup and 3rd party link, I particularly enjoyed the "trip planner" and the "photo mosaic." I was immediately reminded of a poster that hung on the door to the NIU Digitization Lab, where I completed my practicum this summer. It was a portrait of Abraham Lincoln made up entirely of hundreds (maybe thousands) of smaller photos taken during the period of the civil war. How it was put together was remarkable to me; maybe the creator used Flickr.

23 Things - #'s 1, 2, and 3

My thoughts on the Library 2.0 program are based on several visits to the blog over a period of time, each one increasing in time, study and ultimate understanding. Recalling the first visit, which was honestly no more than a quick glance, I only remember seeing an over-whelming collection of words, dates, and links. How was I ever going to decipher what was necessary to navigate successfully through the Library 2.0 program...or is it 23 things...or is it lifelong learning...or am I applying to the PLCMC...what is the PLCMC...who am I?

Over the next several visits, each one more in-depth than the next, the purpose and process became more clear. After remembering who I was again, I finally was able to set up my own blog, with hopes that my colleagues and other readers would comment favorably on my clever title, "Reel-time Reference," (my last name is Reel). Moreover, the viewing (and re-viewing) of the tutorial "The 7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners" was exactly what I needed for motivation to right the ship - an elegant application of Steven Covey's 7 Habits to the field of librarianship. It was a powerful reminder of not just having goals, but writing them down, working toward them every day, and committing myself to following through by signing my name.

I have carried around a daily planner (Franklin Covey as it were) for the last six years. I have done well to keep up with buying the new planning pages for each calendar year and keeping current monthly and daily pages in the planner. Regrettably, I have at best floated in and out of establishing a daily routine of planning and solitude time each day, to map out my tasks for the day, and utilizing my daily tasks as a path toward fulfilling goals.

That ends right now.

As of this moment, my first goal (as inspired by re-watching the 7 1/2 habits tutorial again) is to re-commit myself to daily planning and solitude time. From this commitment, I plan to right the course of procrastination with my studies, and re-establish my commitment to lifelong learning, by designating time for professional growth in the library field, particularly in the area of technology, as well as time for reading about history and other subjects for which I have great interest.

I am grateful for reasons both expected and unexpected for the opportunity to work through the Library 2.0 program, which I now understand more clearly than ever.

Getting Started

Dear Friends in LIS 635 and Beyond,

As evidenced by the embarrassingly late writing of this post, I am playing catch-up right now. This is my very first blog, and one of the first postings I have created for any blog. To this point, blogging experience has been mainly imited to the discovery of others' blogs through Internet browsing, and reading through the posts on blogs of both personal and professional appeal.

The bar has been set very high by my colleagues, and I look forward to reading through all of them. I hope that readers of this blog will do so with interest, and that the format and content of the posts are favorable for the assignment.

Until next time...