Thing 20 - Libraries and Social Networks

It just so happens that a friend of mine asked me to join Facebook a few weeks ago. I knew this thing was coming up, so I agreed. Wow. I'm addicted. I found friends I haven't talked to in years - now I know what they are doing on almost a daily basis. It's fun and a little creepy.

I posted to several friends' walls and joined a group or two. I added the 23 Things on a Stick and Librarians Against Palin groups. Although I haven't tried MySpace, Facebook seems a bit more mature. I don't know. MySpace seems too teenagery for me. I also tried LinkedIn. LinkedIn could be helpful for finding career connections, but not as much fun for socializing.

Thing 19 - Podcasts

I've listened to podcasts on several occasions, but have never "produced" one. I looked at the site, Gcast, which looks promising if for nothing else but to practice. The podcasts I listed to were: Nancy Pearl, MPR and The Onion Radio News. I used two different directories - podcast.com and Yahoo. They both seemed adequate for finding podcasts. I posted Nancy Pearl's podcast on my Bloglines account.

Thing 18 - YouTube

YouTube. Where would the world be without ya? I use YouTube to check out clips of TV shows I don't get to see because I don't have cable. Oh ya, I'm supposed to be thinking about libraries. I do see some potential in this for a library orientation or a get to know the librarians video. Our intranet doesn't support this type of html code, so it's hard for us to get too creative. A class for librarians on how to produce YouTube videos and podcasts would be great, though!

The video on 23Things with the IT guy explaining how to use a book is hilarious! Here's my post...One of the lead singers of my favorite band posts videos of himself singing in his bathroom. This video is a song off their children's album, Snacktime - this song is called, "There's a Word for That".

Thing 17 - ELM Productivity Tools

ELM is great! We get many of the EBSCO databases for our library through MINITEX. Instead of messing with the proxy, I just used Academic Search Premier from our list of databases. I created an RSS feed and posted it to Bloglines. It worked! What a great way to keep up with topics of interest.

Thing 8 redo

I am finally going to finish Thing 8. PictureTrail is pretty cool. I don't do a lot of PowerPoint presentations but those tools look great too.

Thing 16 - Student 2.0 Tools

I have never even heard of these assignment calculators before! What a great way to expose kids to the art of creating an outline and following steps to complete a project. With that said, procrastination habits start early (trust me, I know) so the sooner teachers and librarians expose students to these calculators the better. I think by college it's probably too late (for some). Great idea, though! It might be something we could put on a "student" page on our intranet. I'll have to bookmark these in Delicious -- oh the interconnectivity of it all!

Thing 15 - Online Games and Libraries

Yikes. I don't get it. I'm uncool - is it uncool to say uncool? I haven't even wrapped my head around using Wii as exercise. As a person in my mid-thirties, it troubles me to say that I'm too old for this stuff. If a teen goes through all the work of accessing a library in Second Life, why can't they just access a physical library (or the library's Internet site) directly? I don't get it. It makes me sad that I don't get it, but it's like they say-- 30 is the new 60. Wait, that's not right either.

Check out this site!