Thing 6 - Image Generators

Ok, here's another serious time sucker. But fun (of course). Might think about adding these to our website every once in a while. The trading cards are pretty fun too. I'll have to come up with a cool "library" game to go with them.

Thing 5 - More Flickr

...so you see what's on my mind right now.

Some neat toys, but much potential for being time suckers! Don't see a whole lot of potential for use at the library except for as fun graphics to plop on the site or blog every once in a while.

Thing 10 update

Well, the wiki is up and running and has withstood a day and a half of kids signing up. Good news: it works, and works from any computer.
Bad news: it is SLOW. Don't know if it's just pbwiki, but as I'm typing in each child's info, we have to wait 5-10 seconds for just about every field until the computer can catch up. It's just as slow from my home computer, so it's not the machine. Might just use Excel next year.

Thing 10 - Wikis

Ok, so I'm doing things a little bit out of order here, but we're getting ready for summer reading to start (Thursday) and we were talking about how to best have things set up for the rush of kids expected to arrive on the first few days. Previously, the library had used a database program to sign up all the kids. Which is fine, but it's over 10 years old, and only installed on one computer. So I thought a little, and since I've been busy redesigning the website anyway, added an online signup. You can also get your reading contracts and coloring contest pages at home, since I put them up as pdf's. Slowly, slowly, we'll get this site up and actually used. As an aside, I really like the emailmeform that Tom showed us in the last users meeting. :)

Anyway, our library director is a little farther along on the 23 things that I am, and she just finished Thing 10... And I have to admit, now that I've explored wikis a bit, it seems like a good option.

Yes, I've used wikipedia before, but never edited anything before. I also didn't realize that there were wikis out there that you could set up yourself. But I added my post to the 23 Things wiki, and then went ahead and created a wiki for our summer reading signup. Was a little concerned about privacy, but it looks like you can restrict who can see the site, so that's good. So here's what the wiki looks so far:


So we'll see how it works under fire. Might end up being useful, or we may just revert to the old database.

Thing 4- Flikr

I set up my very own Flickr account. Just two photos to post, but it's a start. I also played around a bit with our library's account, including lightening some of the photos with Picnik. It's handy to have the photo editing capability right there instead of using a separate program and then uploading.

I've been uploading photos for a few years now, but have used Snapfish and Kodak's EasyShare for the most part. I think I'll continue to use Kodak for my family photos, since I'm familiar with it and the photos are always private. However, for library photos that are mostly going to be viewed online by whomever, Flickr seems the way to go.

Mostly the photos we have been posting for our library are of storytime and other children's activities. And so far no parents have objected to having their child's photo publicly posted online. I think privacy is something that has to be done with a little common sense. We're not going to be able to go around to each person every week and get them to sign a consent form. But if we post the pictures, but leave names and identifying information off, I think that is secure enough for most. Seems to work for the newspapers.

I thought the Clemens and Alcuin libraries had a great idea with their bookshelf photos. It doesn't seem like it would take that much time - at least the online part. Selecting and arranging the books would probably take a bit though. May have to try that soon.

Thing 3 - RSS

Played around a bit with adding some RSS feeds to my Google. Added a few news feeds, our own library blog feed, as well as this here blog, just for fun. So I'll get notified when I post this. :) I can see how a lot of people would like this. I haven't used it before because, to be honest, I just don't have that many blogs and sites that I look at regularly. But I may use it anyway. We'll see.

I have seen that Google and others have a little RSS news feed box that you can add to your website. At least, I think it's an RSS. I'll have to look at it again. But that might be a nice thing to add to a library website, especially with local news. Hmm. I'll have to check to see if our paper or Rochester's has a feed and add that to my list.

I also wish the link for adding a blog to your feed was a little more prominent. Maybe it's just because I'm just venturing into the blogosphere, but it took me a while to figure out that it was at the bottom of the page. Silly me, I was looking for that little orange icon...

Thing 2 - Library 2.0

Library 2.0 appears to be different things to different people, and each defend or blast it depending on their own view of what it is. Ok, so I suppose that's not much different from other abstract concepts such as "test-based learning" or even "democracy". But after reading the blog post by John Blyberg, and the OCLC newsletter, and after meaning to watch the video (but being hampered by having no speakers on my 'puter), what I'm taking from it is basically "be more interactive", both technology-wise and other-wise.

Hmm, let me think for a minute. Yup, that makes sense. Isn't that what libraries have been doing for a while now? You want it - we'll get it for you. I think Library 2.0 is just about "taking it to the next level" or "thinking outside of the box". Let's add "work smarter, not harder" to that list of corporate catchphrases. So we'll add blogs and wikis and other technologies to our existing mission of reaching out to people.

So doing this 23 things is part of my part to add some interaction. Redo our website, maybe do a myspace page, but also expand some of the things we're currently doing (and doing well) like book deliveries for daycares, intergenerational storytime, cooperation with the schools, etc.

So those are my disorganized thoughts about that. Trying not to edit myself too much, since from what I've seen, blogs are generally supposed to be a bit rambling... :)

Setting up the blog

Ok, so this is my '23 things' blog. Let's see how it goes! I haven't had a blog before, but have a Facebook page, so I don't think this should be too hard. It was pretty easy to set up, anyway.