Looking Back

I've had a little time to think about the 23 Things project over the past two weeks. Although some weeks it was hard to keep up, I find that I actually miss looking for each week's assignment and having the excuse to experiment. The 'things' that I continue to use: RSS feeds, sharing documents (already did this before 23 Things), bookmarking. I was glad to have a bit of experience or exposure to some of the social sites and photo-sharing, though I won't be using them regularly. I wonder whether there might have been a way for participants to share their views more easily (other than following individual blogs). When I took the time to read posts from other participants I did find them encouraging and helpful. I'm grateful to the colleagues who set up the assignments and kept us going--I think the whole exercise was worthwhile.

Gadgets etc

The greatest challenge throughout the whole 23 Things programme has been remembering where I wrote down all the various user names and passwords. This really brought home to me the problem of identity on the internet. How linked-up should one's activities be? Are there risks in having Flickr, Yahoo, bookmarks etc all linked together? Surely people must be working on better ways to protect identity other than increasingly complicated passwords.
I am pleased that after only a few attempts, I managed to load my Flickr photos onto my blog page, and I enjoyed browsing the gadgets for iGoogle (success there as well). I realized that since I use the University homepage as my PC homepage, I never look at the iGoogle page. On the other hand, I have been using the RSS reader even when not called on to do so by assignments, so I suppose that's progress.

Cloud working

Having worked with Google docs regularly and Buzzword a bit for the past two years, it was interesting to try Thinkfree. The possibilities for formating were useful, but I found the advertising a real disincentive to working on the site. There also seemed to be periodic delays when between typing and the characters appearing on the screen. In situations where you need to share a document or calendar, cloud computer comes into its own, but needing an internet connection to access these documents is a disadvantage in some locations. Are there any recommended readings about possible concerns about storing files in giant servers, many of which are in other countries?

Wikipedia

Completing this week's task by making a small change to a Widipedia article gave me the opportunity to read their instructions and guidelines on editing. It was fascinating to see both the editing tools and how the site editors try to keep the multitude of those involved in some kind of order. For all its faults, they've done a pretty good job! I also feel that I've crossed some kind of boundary, having thought I would never ever edit a wikipedia article. It's getting a little confusing having so many usernames and passwords--every week a new incarnation. When will the IT world come up with a different way of establishing identify?
On a different note, having seen colleagues busily tweeting at the staff conference, I did revisit Twitter to look at some of their thoughts. Thanks!

Wiki week

Pressed for time this week, I had a quick look at the Bodleian Libraries wiki information page on wetpaint. My first thought (sorry guys) was that if I were to need to use a wiki regularly, I'd use a service that didn't have all those popups and maddening moving ads (I was tempted by the Gossip Girl update but resisted). I can see that wikis can be useful, especially for a particular group project where momentum was maintained, so that the wiki didn't become the electronic equivalent of the tattered pages of a ring binder. Guess I'm suffering from the equivalent of Hilary Term slump, but it's harder to get enthusiastic about doing things for the sake of doing them. I like using RSS feeds, however, and parking bookmarks in the cloud for easy access and for sharing. Meanwhile, I'll keep on.

Tweeting

Having just read a recent article in the IHT about Getting the Most out of Twitter (5.3.10--read in print format!) I was psyched for this week's Things. I found negotiating Twitter searches a bit harder going than anticipated. Setting up the account was easy, and there's the minor interest of seeing what people are tweeting about most today. Finding people or postings that I would follow? not so easy or perhaps I just need to devote more time to it. I can see the use for conferences, and I'm looking forward to seeing how #olc10 works out. If I can't get to ALA this year (very unlikely), I'll try to follow on Twitter.

Facebook and libraries

Taking the time to browse the Facebook pages of some of Oxford's libraries I was impressed with how they are using Facebook (and LibraryThing) to publicize new acquisitions in an attractive way and in some cases to create a real sense of community (Harris Manchester--I enjoyed the sense of dialogue with your users).
I intend to follow up on this with colleagues--how much time is spent adding new acquisitions and photos? Posting library announcements seems sensible as an adjunct to other means of communication (since only your fans will get these notices, and sometimes the people you need to communicate with are the opposite of fans!) I still haven't taken the step of joining Facebook personally, as it does seem only worthwhile if you put some time into it regularly, but perhaps I'm changing my mind about an institutional page.

YouTube

This week's Things have been fun. I'm familiar with YouTube more for entertainment than for education (who can ever forget the classic 'March of the Librarians'?), so it was useful to see what videos were being posted by universities, from straight forward lectures from MIT to more highly produced films from Cambridge (they ought to lose that noisy introduction) to the very useful, 'How to Read a Library of Congress callnumber'. I hadn't considered this resource for getting information on practical things--like certain hardware questions etc. I won't be uploading films any time soon, but I'm glad to be more aware of 'educational' content out there.

Podcasts

The podcast 'thing' was easy, although I haven't yet listened to any of the podcast feeds to which I subscribed. I can see this would be a good way to keep up with periodic podcasts that one didn't want to miss. It was also worth seeing how much is already available via University podcasts. I'll have to go back to that website sometime and see whether there is information available on which podcasts are the most frequently downloaded.

Delicious and useful

Several of the weekly tasks up to this point had seemed just that, tasks to complete just to get the experience and get on with the familiarization. This week's task on Delicious and tagging was both informative and, I think, will be something I actually use in the future (on the other hand, the digital camera is already back up in the loft). Like most librarians, I use several computers in the course of the day and also have three at home. It's great to have bookmarks readily available and be able to tag them for retrieval. Whether the 'social' side of the tagging will be useful depends on the amount of time at my disposal. I could see using this feature with a particular class or study group. I also would like to use tagging instead of folders to organize and retrieve all my Word and Excel files at work. I'll have to look into this, surely multiple entry points would be a much more efficient way of locating files than trying to figure out which folder I put them in or using the slow and awkward search facility available on Office.

Photos at a dash

Only week four and I'm already stuggling to find time for 23 Things (trouble is that it comes on top of 101 Other Things). I'm glad that I did however, since Thing 7 and 8 encouraged me to find our digital camera and take some pictures that were not medieval documents. Although I hadn't read any of the instructions and the software disc had been lost in the loft, I managed to take a couple of photos and upload them to my PC. Editing with picnik was fun, though the options are limited. Since we have editing software on our work PCs, I'm not sure how useful this will be, but it was certainly straightforward.
Has anyone else found a solution to the problem of having to print out each week's instructions in order to follow them?

Virtual clippings?

I spent some time this week browsing through different types of blogs and feeds. In addition to a selection of colleagues from the 23 Things Group (and I'm very impressed with the care given to layout, images etc on people's blog pages), I've also linked up to several blogs from special collections sections in research libraries (in addition to the Bodleian CSB blog which I already follow). It should be useful to see how these institutions use blogs, incorporating images, involving researchers and patrons etc. I've also included potentially useful links to 'professional' bloggers like Phil Bradley. I still need to do more work on how to display the feeds so that my reader page doesn't have that depressing resemblence to long rows of new emails waiting attention.

Start pages

Personalized start pages--almost too easy to add things. I don't really want to see all this as my 'home page'--maybe I need to learn how to hide those links for when I feel like browsing. Meanwhile have failed to make a screen-capture image of my iGoogle page. Did anyone else have nothing happen when pressing C+Print Screen? Thanks to interactive learning however, Jane was able to help me complete this task and voila.

You never know until you try

I'm always intending to spend time experimenting with social technologies. Sharing calendars, spreadsheets, documents and presentations via Google and other free online facilities has made working life so much easier, but I never felt inspired to experiment with social networking options. 23 Things has deadlines, which I need, so here goes.