Thing #23 Is this really the end? Or just the beginning ...

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
RSS Feeds, LibraryThing, tagging and the online productivity tools were all new to me, so I found them all fun to learn. The Play Week introduced some new mash-ups I didn't know about as well. I also really enjoyed reading the blogs.

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
I now know many other places to look for my Mork and Mindy episodes. I like what I've learned so far, but I'd like to know more of "what's out there".

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
I learned more about our staff members by reading their blogs, including a couple of people in CLS Office. Non-CLMs have very little contact with CLS Office staff, but the blogs changed that.
I tried to apply what I learned to my job, which I hope may have sparked some ideas in anyone who read my blog.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
Having three sets of instructions for each Thing - a very basic one aimed at newbies, a general set for most and an advanced set for techy people, with all the additional links and reading.

And last but not least…
If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?
Absolutely!

Thing #22 Audiobooks (or "The end is in sight ")

I've been downloading audiobooks from the QL website for awhile. They are wonderful to listen to while doing needlecrafts.

There are also children's audiobooks in TumbleBooks. Access to these ebooks and audiobooks requires returning to the Digital Media home page.

I tried to listen to an Agatha Christie book on my mac, but it would not accept my library card # and PIN. I signed up on a pc, maybe the information won't transfer.

Thing #21 Podcasts, Smodcasts!

podcast.net
Only one result came up for "school library journal", thus I think that multiple words are automatically combined in an "and" search. I liked the user interface of this one the most. Doing a search for "children literature review", I found the podcast "Book Voyages" here, which is "a podcast about children's literature from the point of view of a school library/media specialist. It features reviews of books as well as inteviews with students and authors." http://www.podcast.net/show/39068. (11/29/07)
I added this to my Bloglines account. I haven't listened to it yet because it takes a long time to buffer.

podcastalley.com
200 results for "school library journal" suggests that this engine does an "or" search when there is more than one word in one's query.

Yahoo Audio
I didn't see a way to limit one's search to podcasts. Three results came up for "school library journal", thus it must be doing an "and" search.

Thing #20 I Tube, YouTube

There is a great video clip for library training on YouTube. It is called Angry Librarian and can be found here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=7XvAakX__cQ
Although not filmed at QL, the issues that this library worker deals with (often inappropriately) are common at QL.

But YouTube is also great for entertainment. My favorite clip is from the Carol Burnett Show with Robin Williams as the guest, performing a black comedy skit called The Funeral. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfDyTUiL8xs

I liked that the site is easy to use and easy to search. I really like the "cloud" results, bringing up videos similar to what one is looking for. I found the Angry Librarian and The Funeral during a bubble or cloud search. I was looking for something else, and serendipity lead me to them.

Thing #19 Discovering Web 2.0 tools

I'm happy that the tool that won my little feed contest a few Things ago (Technorati) also won 1st place under Blog Guides.

One of my friends is in computer school right now and has thanked me for sending her the list of web 2.0 awards. Her professor is talking about all these things too.

I'm going to explore 43 things and write up my observations. It wants me to decide what to do with my life. "Sleep" doesn't seem to be an option, so I'll need to think about this a bit. Maybe learn reiki. I'll write more later.

Later:

The reiki link in 43 things was gone the next time I checked and now the short list and full list are both down. This seems to be a list for browsing, although it can be searched if you create an account. I'll have to come back to this one.

EDIT: The site is back up. I've given up on reiki, and chosen "live in a foreign country" instead. I chose this because America is the 4th country that I've lived in.

I read all the comments by various people and I agree that living in another country is extremely mind expanding. Some things that are considered to be inherent truths in one country are not in another. It was interesting to see that many of those who post about living in other countries also have military experience. I grew up in the military. This experience makes working for Queens easier - being transferred around the borough seems natural to me.

There are user questions at the bottom. One person asks if you need to quit your job to live in another country. One of the reasons that I decided to become a librarian is that it allows me to live in work in Canada, America or Mexico. It's very exciting to be in NYC and staying in one place is a brand new experience as well.

Thing #18 Let's Collaborate and Have a Good Time

I've created a Writeboard account and invited a few friends to edit sentences that I placed there. If they make changes, then I'll comment.

About 15 years ago, we used to email Word documents around at work for editing. One problem was that you never knew whether you were applying your changes to the most recent version of the document.

It would be useful to write the Quarterly Report in this format.

I found the sidebar with information about updates useful.

It was quite fun to write something with others. My whiteboard is here:
http://123.writeboard.com/c3a1db1bda3c7fa68

Thing #17 1/2 Explore Facebook and Social Networking

The apps I think are useful:

30 boxes calendar
Store bought calendars can be very expensive. Making your own in Word is time consuming. I think this one could be used by me or our customers.

Likeness
This one reminds me of the website bored.com. It seems to be a fun way to waste time. However, I don't know if it would be blocked at QL for resembling a game.

Aquarium
My cell phone has more life-like fish! :-) This one could be entertaining for kids though.

Books iRead
This one looks interesting both for me and our customers. It seems to have more networking opportunities than LibraryThing.

Word a Day
I subscribed to one of these years ago. It's how I learned the word chi-chi. I forget why I canceled it. It may have been because I was only reading it once a week and it became overwhelming. Some customers may like it. When I'm doing homework help after school I notice that there are many words in my BOOST kids' homework that they don't understand.

How-to of the day
This one may draw the attention of any do-it-yourself-er. It's something that I should use but probably won't. I'm more of a hire-someone-to-do-it-er.

I'm not a fan of Facebook. It seems like a great way to get stalked.

I think it is important to learn how to use it, though, because many of our customers are using it. If I could create an account with a false name and have my identity kept secret, I probably would.

Thing #17 Playing Around With Wikis

This exercise has me stumped for two reasons:

1. I don't think I'm enough of an expert at anything to add anything useful.
and
2. I don't know how to add to a wiki even if I did have something to say.

I will work on these two problems and post more later.

Later:

My class visit called today to cancel because of the rain. While I was feeling disappointed, I realized that class visits are something that I am really good at.

Now I have a topic to wiki and just need to find a proper place to put it. WikiHow may be too broad, and I don't know whether the library services wiki has a how-to component. I check and try to post something later.

Later:

I found a great spot for my class visit wiki - LISWiki which stands for Library and Information Science Wiki. Here is the link for my wiki about class visits:
Class Visits

Thing #16 Wiki Me This

I love the idea of library pathfinders. Perhaps we could put our booklists on one.

A good use for a staff wiki could be "Tips and Tricks" for each job. We are sharing tips & tricks in QL Chat a little. For example, one of the best "tricks" that I have learned is to apply a strip of invisible tape to the edge of the staff schedule before you 3-hole-punch it to put it in the staff schedule binder. In every branch I've worked in, those schedules are always falling out of their binder from overuse. One of my old CLMs told me that one. Almost everyone who works here has picked up little kernels of wisdom. It would be incredibly useful to have them all in one spot.

I love the way that amazon.com has reviews from customers for their books. It would be interesting to do that for our catalog.

And of course, announcing our programs on a wiki would be great.

I must confess that I worry whether a wiki would work with all the potential cussing. It's a lot of work to read all the kids' book reviews in the summer to check for swearing. I'm happy to say that I only found some once or twice.

Thing #15 On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0 ...

I am going to look at a few of the links suggested and post comments as I go.

Web 2.0: Where will the next generation Web take libraries?

The line in this article "You and your mobile and nonmobile devices—...—are always online, connected to one another and to the Web" reminded me of the chilling book Feed by M.T. Anderson, a science fiction novel in which people have feeds wired into their brains permanently, feeding them information and commercials. The idea is that this makes people always connected, but in reality it causes people to live inside their heads and not connect as human beings.

That scary thought aside, I am excited that I am familiar with and have used all the examples that the author brings up - Flickr, MySpace, FaceBook, del.icio.us, YouTube, LibraryThing - mostly because of Learning 2.0.

Away from the icebergs

a. "Just-in-case collection" - this has been a stumbling block that QL is conquering with the radical weeding necessary for RFID. I love to weed and love that QL has embraced it so strongly. I truly believe that less is more.
I wish I could practice this philosophy in my home life - my apartment is a haven of clutter. I have boxes that I brought from Canada full of "junk" that I feel that I need.
For me, I like work to be clean and sparse because my personal life is full of clutter. I wonder if those who hate to weed their library collections have tidy houses with lots of clear surfaces. :-)

b. "Reliance on user education" - I'm going guess that our patron-to-librarian ratio at QL is about 2,000,000 to 500, or 4,000 to 1. I welcome any comments if this is incorrect. One way that I try to help is by walking a patron over to the public catalog when they ask for a book or movie, looking it up there in front of them while I explain everything I'm doing, and staying with them so they can look up the next book themselves. As to be expected, kids pick up using the catalog the fastest. I wish there was a catalog computer in the J room.

Into a new world of librarianship

The concept of technolust, or buying technology simply because it exists, seems to be gripping our country. Some have said that our abundance of databases is an example of this.

Rather than filling a need, technology sometimes creates a need. For example, many people rushed out to get their iPhones and PlayStation 3s as soon as these products came out because they "needed" these products that have never existed before.

Thing #14 Getting not-so-technical with Technorati

Courtesy of Wikipedia:

"Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs"

I include that here in case this is being read by anyone else who didn't know that. EDIT: Our instructions say that too, but they use bigger words and a longer sentence. :-)

--------

Our instructions ask "So how does a person get their blog listed as part of the blogosphere"?

I have a different question - how can a person make sure that their blog is not listed in Technorati? I think that 99.99% of users are good people, but I don't wish to be found by one of the remaining 0.01%. If there are 110 million blogs being tracked, that adds up to 1,100,000 unstable criminals in the mix, if I did the math properly.

I searched my username and was happy to find no results.

By clicking on "advanced search", I found:
484 results for "Learning 2.0" in blog posts.
658 results in tags
802 results in Blog Directory.

I clicked on "Popular" then clicked on "advanced search" and found:
506 results for "Learning 2.0" in blog posts.
605 results in tags
807 results in Blog Directory.

The most interesting thing that I discovered is that Paris Hilton was one of the top searches - I thought she was over years ago. :-O

I will search some of my hobbies and write up my results.

EDIT: I missed that the Technorati used here is the same one that won my "Hunt for Feed" contest a few Things ago. It is one of the tools to search for feeds, and it looks like it searches for blogs too.

Thing Tag, You're It

I have found a use for this tagging already.

In exploring the QL L2.0 account (http://del.icio.us/ql.things), I read a bit of each link, but nothing was grabbing me. Then I clicked on the word "earlier" at the bottom of the page, and just read the names of the links until something grabbed my attention.

On page 3, I found a link for "meditation room" in the links. http://www.lime.com/meditation_room

This was exciting because I meditate every day. I have never met anyone else in the city who does, which baffles me. There is an Open Learning Center in Soho that you can go meditate in for free (with candles, pillows, incense and QUIET) if there are too many distractions at home.

The "meditation room" has links of slideshows with relaxing music. You can choose between the space room, winter room, floral room, forest room, water room and zen room (my favorite one). I spent almost as much time in the Japanese garden at the Met as I did in the Open Learning Center after 9-11 and just before my separation a few years ago.

The benefit of these online meditation rooms is that you can go there at work, during lunch or after a difficult customer. I was very entertained by reading others' comments afterwards. There is a discussion of shrooms and smoking a fatty!? but someone posted a useful link for free soothing music http://www.freesoothingmusic.com/category.php?cat_id=2
that I have been listening to while typing this.

I am curious about what a "fatty" is, but not enough to google it.

Breaktime!

Here is what I've been doing during our break:

- trying to learn what del.li.ci.ous is (dots may be in the wrong spots). I still don't understand.

- glancing at the links in the Learning 2.0 blog

- reading other peoples' blogs

- I thought of a great use for Library Thing. When I go through my fiction to weed, I'm going to try to add the titles in my library to Library Thing with tags. I may not get beyond the B's, but it would be a great reader's advisory tool if I do. I did this on index cards for my picture books many years ago. I didn't finish, but I used what I did all the time. Thanks Dale for commenting on my post - that's what got me thinking about it again.

I'll come back and add more if I do more on the break.

Thing #12 Roll your own search engne

My Online Clothes
http://www.rollyo.com/dashboard.html

Above is the link to my rollyo search engine. It was very easy to make.
Unfortunately, I don't know how to use it. I will explore the site then write more.

...time passes...

Now I've explored. When made my roll viewable to the public, it let me search it. Not straight away though - I had to go in and out a few times. I don't understand why it finally allowed me to search.
Here's the link that can be searched:
http://rollyo.com/search.html?prevsid=323063&q=t-shirt&sid=323063

I noticed two odd things. One is that amazon.com, one of my sites searched, absolutely dominated the results. Few results came up from any other. The second odd thing is that many of my results are from sites not included in my search roll. Perhaps this is because amazon.com outsources their clothing. I will remove them and try again.

...time passes...

I removed amazon.com, no change. Then I noticed on the search page that my rolls were there, in addition to the web and a bunch of others. I went to the edit page, deleted everything except the roll I wanted to search. That worked.

Rollyo was very easy to make, but hard to use. Instructions are nonexistant. I learned:
- the Home screen is where you search your roll
- you need to tell it not to search anything but your roll under Dashboard. If you click on your roll, you get a box that looks like the ones you can search under Explore, except that there is no way to search it.
- Explore links you to other people's searchrolls. I don't understand why they have search boxes but I needed to go to a seperate homepage.
- Tools is about adding rollyo to your toolbar

Thing#11 Thing This: LibraryThing

I lost my reading diary - a book I picked up at ALA where I record what I've read and what I want to read. I was thinking of buying another one at Barnes and Noble, then I discovered this Thing.

Here's the link to the last six books I read plus four of my favorites: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/bconkin

I found a spot in LibraryThing that allows you to display your books in your blog. I coped the code to do this below, but as you can see, it didn't work. Or perhaps it doesn't work on a mac in Firefox, which is where I am now.
EDIT - It didn't display the books under preview post, but here they are after I published:



I haven't figured out how to search other people's libraries yet. I feel a little awkward doing that - it feels a bit like going through a stranger's underwear drawer.

I remember in library school that we talked about how the web is so unmanageable because everyone and their dog posts their own things there. I wonder if LibraryThing isn't online clutter. I can use it, but I don't think it is necessary to tell the world the last six books I read and four of my favorites.

I wish I could merchandise my LibraryThing. I suppose that's what the tags are for, though I'd like to rearrange the covers. While there are many ways to display the list, there is only one way to display the covers.

I like LibraryThing, but would like it a lot more if I could keep my library private.

Thing #10 Play Around with Image Generators

This would be a strange street sign to come across, I think. But I suppose it is safer not to read while driving.
Street Sign Generator http://wigflip.com/easystreet/







I wouldn't mind having my own diamond shop.
Custom Neon Sign Generator http://www.neonmirrors.com/custom/


















Chocolate Bar Generator http://www.glassgiant.com/chocolate_bar/
I think this is my favorite one. Go chocolate! It's also a great segue into another whine about my tummy flu. I hope I am better enough to eat candy before Halloween. I'm only allowed toast now.

Some observant readers may be thinking - hey, didn't you have a flu last week? Yes, and it's the same one! And it has to be completely gone before I can get my flu shot.

I generated five images, but I could only upload three. I made a very pretty plate, but I couldn't save it. The comments said to press 'print screen' but I'm on a mac laptop, which doesn't have a button that says that. I didn't try pressing the apple, and there are tons of pictures on the function keys, I just don't know what they do.
I also made a Hermione doll, a cartoon character and a doll whose makeup, eye and hair color I chose. I couldn't save her to upload either.

This would be a great program for our BOOST kids, but I have 50 of them and only four computers. The crowd of fifty are afterschool kids, so they aren't there on Saturdays. Maybe a Saturday program.

Look - I fixed it! The words aren't all over the images. Making the images was easy, but dumping them here was a little harder. The hardest part was the re-editing so the text wasn't hitting the pictures. But, I did it.

Thing #9 Feeding frenzy

The hunt for feed -

To evaluate these newsfeed search tools, I searched for "increase library circulation", "public libraries" and "afterschool programs" in each.

Feedstar
I was very impressed with the uncluttered look of the Feedstar page in comparison to the others. I really wish that all websites would learn from Google - it's all about the white space.
I wasn't sure where to search on this page - there was a search box and a search widget. Shying away from the unfamiliar word "widget", the search box on top found me no newsfeeds, only blogs, for "increase library circulation". The search for "public libraries" found links for yoga, agriculture and iPods. "Afterschool programs" got me the most accurate results.

Topix
Topix had a nice graph by dates. Again, "library circulation" wasn't a very successful search. I did find one link that went to the 404 not found page, but that was when I used the map to go to May because it had a spike in results. This feed searcher gave the best results for "public libraries". Results for "afterschool programs" were similar.

Syndic8.com
I learned what a syndicated feed was at this site. The site would be better if they hired a graphic artist.
"Increase library circulation" found nothing.
"Public libraries" got four hits.
"Afterschool programs" found nothing, but interestingly, suggested "designer handbags" as an option.
I don't think this feed searcher would be there if it wasn't good for something, so next I searched for the traditional news word "Bush". It found oodles.

Technorati
The main page was constantly updating, which I liked. I also like that the words you are looking for are highlighted in the results. "Increase library circulation" found 77 hits, just when I was starting to think I'd have to go back to the database librarylit exclusively for this. "Public libraries" found over 8500 hits, and even had pictures. The first hit was from 59 seconds ago. "Afterschool programs" was also very successful. I was very happy with the result "Free After-School Activities for NYC Kids and Teenagers". Did it know that my mac and I were in NYC? It bragged about NYPL's afterschool activities and not ours, though.

And the award goes to:

Technorati. Although I was very impressed by Feedstar's lack of clutter and easy to pronounce name, the results that I got from Technorati and their organization was the best. I'm happy to say that their results page wasn't cluttered, and a pretty green color.

Thing #8 Make life simple with RSS

This post is about my RSS experiences. I'm home in bed with a tummy virus, so I may be more negative than usual. Please accept my apologies beforehand.

Despite all my woes, I first want to point out that I am now the proud owner of a bloglines account and am successfully subscribed to 10 feeds.

Now for the woes.

Here are the mistakes I made, which I share so that others can avoid them:

1. I thought a bloglines account meant that I needed to figure out how to install that little orange button into this blog. This blog and bloglines are two different things, thankfully.

2. After hours of reading all the links on Library Learning at home with my head spinning, I realized that you don't need to read everything. Fellow neophytes, you will save a lot of heartache if you just go to the links:

* RSS in Plain English. The link to this is in the "Week End, Week Begin" post on 10/14 after you click"RSS Feeds" in the sentence "This week we'll tackle RSS feeds"
* Feed Me
* Adding RSS Feeds to Bloglines
and
* Using Bloglines Tutorial - but only steps 1 - 3. It's a little tricky, because it isn't just 3 steps, but has a 1a, 1b, 1c etc for each number. Don't do it on a mac, I think that's why step 3g was different for me.

Now, here's what I'm supposed to talk about:

* What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?

Once you know what you are doing, it saves a lot of time.
I must admit, yesterday I hated RSS. I also had a temperature and upset tummy. :-O Now that I understand it a bit better, it's growing on me. My fever is also gone. :-)

* How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your work or personal life?

It will save time monitoring both news headlines and career info.

* How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?

I subscribed to a library's newsfeed. It has all kinds of children's book reviews (with photos). It may have had crafts. I'll check back and post updates.

RSS success

Last night I added a RSS newsfeed to my home computer - called "Latest Headlines". It's right up in my toolbar - very handy. I used the video below to do it.

This week's post starts out "Last week we flickr'd away. This week we'll tackle RSS feeds."

I looked at all the RSS feeds links in order, thinking I was doing the right thing, but was terribly overwhelmed. The last link was the charm. It's a great little video online called RSS in Plain English. It helps to watch it with sound. Your ACLM and/or CLM should know where the headphones are.

I'd recommend looking at this link first, before the other links on Library Learning, if you are not a techy person.

I'm very happy to have my "Latest Headlines" RSS ; its a great timesaver and lets me see what's going on without watching sensationalist TV news, which I hate. I'd like to have a "Library related headlines" link - I'm sure that kind of thing must be out there. Usually, I search some of our databases for the word "library", but this is very time consuming.

Thing #7 Blog About Technology: comment opportunity

In QL Chat, we were discussing the lack of posts vs. the number of members. Many more people are in QL Chat than people who post in QL Chat.

The QL Chat staff has been discussing whether there is anything they can do to encourage more people to post. My idea was that many more may come out of their shells if there was a spell checker. I post almost everything from home in Firefox on my mac, which has a spell checker. However, when I use Internet Explorer at work on the PC, I can't find a spell checker.

I'm not QL Chat staff, just the ACLM/J at East Elmhurst. I've posted a lot because I'm a chatty person, and I have a computer at home. You can use QL Chat at work whenever time permits - a new P&P just came out on that.

This week's Learning 2.0 task is to add a comment to a blog. Feel free to comment here about any ideas to get more people posting in QL Chat.

Thing #6 Flickr mashups and 3rd party tools

I started with Color Fields Colr Pickr
but spent the most time in Spell with Flickr.

As as soon as I figure out how to post my name in Spell with Flickr here, I'll do that. This is an experiment:

Thing # 5 Halloween craft idea

Missing you on Halloween
Originally uploaded by richard_dupont123

This is the first combined Halloween & Missing You card I have ever seen. It would be great for the kids who have can't be with a loved one this Halloween. It gave me an idea for a simple Halloween craft as well.

The BOOST kids could design and decorate letters in small groups in a Halloween theme to spell Happy Halloween. We could hang that on the wall above our book display.

Then I'll have the BOOST kids decorate a letter for each letter in their name. Letters could be simple such as the S's and the I or fancy like the N, O or U for those more artistically inclined. They could take their names home.

My favorite letter is the U.

Things #1-4 - 7 1/2 lifelong learning habits

This post is about which of the habits is the easiest and hardest for me, and why.

The easiest habit for me is play. I am fortunate to have a computer at home, and thus can play on my own time as much as I like. I would feel guilty to do this at work, because none of my job duties were taken away to allow me to fit Learning 2.0 into my work day. However, I may be able to minimize the guilt by telling myself that by doing this at work, I am setting a positive example for the rest of the staff. We'll see what Monday has in store.

My most difficult habit right now is my goal. My goals are always changing. A few weeks ago I found out that I can watch free movies online with my Netflix account, then learned that it doesn't work on my mac. I learned from a friend tonight that I can watch TV shows online by using iTunes, then found out that almost everything costs money to watch. I've been watching short clips on YouTube, but very little of my taste in sitcoms is on YouTube (1970's) and even fewer entire shows. If I had to commit to a specific goal today, it would be "Find out where to find old episodes of "Mork and Mindy" online other than the short clips on YouTube". But a more attainable goal is the vague "Find out what's out there".

test

This is a test post.