23 hamsters

23 Things has been, for me, a good motivator to try some new stuff and also has me thinking about practical library applications.  

The author of ”Into a new World of Librarianship” makes a very good point: in order for libraries to be truly about the “users” (hate that word), we need to involve them in the planning process and make information available anywhere. 

But, I have some concerns: there are some very effective Web 2.0 tools out there, but what of those tools can our customers benefit from the most?  I agree with the author that these tools are fun, shiny, and new, but we have to ask of them: do they add real value?  I think that is the biggest challenge for libraries…more and more, we’ll use these tools, but it’s how we use them that counts.

checked out podcastally and found something called “kobe beef.”  I downloaded an aggregator (newsfire) to my desktop and still trying to figure out how it works.  I was able to find the feed on newsfire, but as of yet, nothing…will need to play with this a little more.  This is a part of 23 things which is very interesting, as podcasting is a big mystery for me (I subscribe to a couple through itunes, but that’s the extent of it).  Oooh, something just happened with newsfire…I think I’m live…just was linked to “kobe beef” blog…so, as far as I can tell, newsfire just lets me know when something new is published and takes me there?  guess so!

Posted my first youtube video, so I’m no longer just a barnacle on the web 2.0 vessel *terrible–it’s getting late*

Found the whole process to be painless and a little exciting.  To think I may get strangers to watch this terrible and confusing clip!

(trying to get this clip embedded, but having a hard time…here is the link= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLG8ih43yDo

couldn’t figure out the YourMinis activity, so I decided to download a new widget to my dashboard on my mac.  I went with “earth view,” a little thing that lets you view the earth from different perspectives, like the sun, topographically, with current cloud cover and Nasa Visible Earth.  Widgets are another “thing” that I often forget I have and don’t often use.

Just tried out the “aquarium” widget.  It’s supposed to show little fishes swimming across the screen accompanied by a bubbling sound (relaxing). So far, only the bubbling…where are the fishes?

After checking out the Web 2.0 award winners, I decided to try something fun and useful: cocktail builder.  This site lets you search for drinks by inputing what you actually have in your cupboard and begins aggregating possible drink combinations.  This is especially pertinent for me since I get the occasional itch to try a fancy drink but have no idea what I’m doing.  I’d have to give this site a huge thumbs up for being very fun and quite handy in a pinch (no pun).

Gave this site a try and so far so good.  Since I have a Mac at home, I was able to creat a link to ical.  I’ll have to play around with this one a little because none of the events I added in RTM were imported to ical…not sure why, maybe it’s obvious.  I’ll try to use RTM a little each day and see if sticks.  For me, I usually end up writing tasks on paper…

Del.icio.us is a site that I’ve used on and off for a little while now.  At first, I was bookmarking and tagging everything I’d come across, which appealed to my basest librarian-y instincts.  I have since slowed down a good deal.  I had only one pal to share my bookmarks with (very sad, I know), but our interests are different enough that his bookmarks could keep wandering through the internets for days.

I’ve been a “user” of Facebook for about 2.5 years now and have some mixed feelings on it.  It’s been a powerfull way to connect with people I’ve lost contact wit over the years.  However, I find this social networking utility to be clunky and confusing.  I’ve never quite understood the diference between writing on ones “wall” and using the ”wall to wall,” for example, or where things are generally located.  I am also a bit torn on how effective these tools would be in the library.  For, me using Facebook is a private experience and I tend to avoid outside organizations and groups as a rule…but then again, others don’t seem to have this issue at all.

I also signed up recently for Linkedin and that seems like a good tool, but one that requires a little more time than I can give at the moment

Took a look around these news aggregators and was impressed (mostly).  I liked Digg enough to get lost there for 10 minutes or so, Reddit was OK, but Newsvine is my favorite.  All these sites seem to allow a varying degree of personalization, so that more and more, all your looking at is news that you find interesting, for better or worse.

Played around with creating a map in Google.  This was my first time doing this and can really see the benefits. 

I created this map in about 15 minutes…very simple and kind of fun.  This tool would be excellent for creating a map for an organization that has more than one location within a certain area…like CHUH!