Reflection

Wow, time has flown by. Can't believe we're done with 23 things. The tutorial was a lot of fun to participate in. I've learned about several technologies I didn't know know about before and got better acquainted with those I did.

Aside from Facebook (which I've already been using for a long time), I'm definitely glad to have discovered Flickr. Although it won't fully replace my Photobucket account, I'll definitely use Flickr quite a bit to share my pics. And I'm sure Google docs ap will one day come in handy. Also, I absolutely loved LibraryThing. It's a great way to keep track of the books I read.

As far as my least favorite thing of the 23, or at least, the thing I found to be least useful for libraries, that would be LibWorm. Although it was interesting to learn about, I found it just that. Interesting, but not particularly useful.

Developing your own 23 Things for your library

My home library currently uses several of the 23 things. Internally, the most heavily used tool is our library wiki. That's our way to share forms and documents with other staff memebers and run discussions. We are also using Flikr during this year's summer reading program to conduct a photography contest. Individual library employees also own Facebook accounts and blogs to keep in touch with our patrons and fellow librarians.

I can see Twitter being used more in the future to promote special programming and run announcements, especially that Twitter is accessible to all those patrons who get notifications through their mobile devices. As of yet, our library doesn't have an official Facebook account, but it's something that could be an excellent way to comunicate with local communities. Posting Utube links and podcasts on the library web page would also be a great idea.

Podcasts

Podcasts are a great way to share audio files. They can come pretty handy for recording storytimes, author visits and book talks for those library patrons who use library's electronic resourses.

I sampled several library podcasts from the list given. And though most of them concerned local events not pertinant to my home library, the sound quality was excellent.

Youtube

I've been using and posting to Youtube for many years. It's a wonderful site for finding music videos and different oddities. As far as library-related videos are concerned, I really haven't come across any of great interest when I performed my search. A lot of them are humorous pieces involving library environment and news from local libraries.

I really don't see much promotional value for libraries on Youtube, as most of the site's content is geared toward lighter material, but it could be of use for creating online storytimes and sharing special performances.

Google Docs

Google Docs is a wonderful (and free!) way to create documents, without having to buy expensive software. Although formatting options are slightly more basic than those of MS Office, the sharing functions more than make up for it. No matter what one's geographic location or computer specifications are, groups of people can now collaborate and share their work online.

P.S. I was really excited about the possibility of being able to download my files in PDF format, but alas, the only thing that feature did was give me an error message (???).

Wikis

Wikis are a great way to share information. Wikipedia has been in my most often used bookmarks for a long while. I find its organization of material convenient, to the point and easy to use.

It was fun building my own wiki page on Wetpaint, but I found that particular site rather clumsy to use. Edit tool can be pretty inconvenient; some of the functions are limited (e.g. inability to rename pages) and completed pages often glitch. But overall, it was a good practice excercise.

LibWorm

A pretty cool library-related search engine, LibWorm eliminates the need to sift though unrelated websites and get straight to the point. A good tool to keep up to date with all that's happening in libraries world-wide.