Thing #8

I spent a lot of time checking out some of the Share Your Creations sites. Because I work in an academic environment I found that many of these applications were not suitable to our environment. I was impressed with Zoho (which I had seen before, but forgotten) and Slideshare. I created a Flickr badge and will attempt to upload it to my blog. I did not see a way to grab the code.

As I go through these Things I keep reminding myself to turn off my critical eye that wonders 'How can that be useful?' and instead just explore and have fun.

Thing 7

Gosh, at this rate I'll be done with my 23 Things in the year 2323! Luckily for me this wonderful initiative has been brought back for a second (2.o) time.

My library and or me is already doing many of the things mentioned in Thing #7. We've used email for years, of course, through our Ask A Librarian reference service and I recently added an IM component. This is through Pidgin and Meebo. The latter is utilized only as a means for patrons to contact us with research questions without having to have or to connect to their IM accounts. Personally, I don't IM much. Most of our librarian staff have IM accounts, but because we're so small we do most of our conversation face-to-face or send an email so we have a copy.

If you knew you'd know that I don't text message much. My cell phone location is often a mystery to me and even if I have it with me I often forget to turn it on. In the library world in terms of reference service texting is big and will get much bigger. As librarians we struggle to keep up with our users use of technology only to find that they have already moved on. IM would be a good example of technology that while not passe' is certainly in danger of being overtaken by texting. Our library and campus hasn't seriously looked at texting for communication or reference. The one exception is emergency communication. I wasn't aware of Google SMS and will certainly look into it. In order to fully take advantage of mobile technology our website would have to be reconfigured. Perhaps in the future the library could incorporate a Librarian Reference Blackberry or the equivalent to at least handle texting calls.

I have taken myriad number of webinars and enjoyed them very much. They have all been through the phone, though, and I wonder if VOIP would be less hassle and cheaper. I haven't presented a webinar as of yet.

Twitter is a funny little application. I'll register and check it out. I do admit to skepticism. Not every technology works for every library setting, and I think there would be better choices for some of our upcoming projects (community book read, banned books event) such as a wiki or blog.

All for now.

-Peter