Goodbye 23 Things. I will miss you!

My favorite discoveries during 23 things were the blog Adventures in Procreating, and the tools One Sentence,de.lic.ous and the website Boing Boing.
I found delicious,google docs and some of the articles on library 2.0 very useful for grad school. There were no surprises,but when I wasn't pulling out my hair in frustration,I did have fun. I felt like I was procrastinating or playing hooky when I did this at work because I was enjoying myself.

There were a few things I would change: I would make 23 things helpers much more accessible and I would do something about the access to audio. My computer at my desk does not have speakers and it was always a pain to go find a computer in the basement with speakers and a headphone.
It was very frustrating at times because it was difficult to find a patient 23 things expert with time on their hands. I got stuck a lot. There are some exercises such as podcasting and some stuff from the wiki sandbox that I still don't understand.
If I thought that help was going to be more readily available, I would happily participate in another training exercise like this.

I know I didn't win any prizes,but that's ok. I had a good time and in some cases I really didn't understand what the prizes were. What's and ipod touch, for example?
In some ways, I remain proudly luddite to the last.

Good night and good luck. I shan't return.
Cindy

audio books

I listened to both the overdrive and netlibrary ebook orientations.
There was one confusing aspect of netlibrary:the login. The orientation on the netlbrary sent you to the netlibrary homepage where there was no place to create a log in.
In order to create a log in,you have to do everything through the library homepage.Somewhere it does suggest calling the library. I can tell your from experience that most people do end up calling us. Other than that glitch,netlibrary seems fairly straightforward.

I wish I could say the same for overdrive. It seems impossibly convoluted and difficult to navigate through. The orientation is really,really long and you have to go through page after page of stuff. I gave up. too complicated and time consuming. I don't really want to listen to a book that badly. No wonder our patrons get so confused.

very frustrated

I tried to look up stuff about libraries in podcast directories. From there I would try to search and somehow move the podcast to my reader but I got nowhere. Stuff would come up,but I had no idea how to get the stuff onto my reader. No help available. Several times during this 23 things project I have felt like screaming and hitting my head against the wall in frustration. This is one of those times.

podcasts-could not make them work

tried about ten times to get a podcast to go to my googlereader.
Couldn't figure out how to make it work. It would take me to other sites and from there I would get totally lost.

Sorry

youtube 23 things

Youtube features would be very useful for a library website. For example, a librarian could be filmed giving a booktalk and that could be on the website.
Don't we have a film about the big read on our website currently?

Youtube videos would be useful for work because they could be used as training videos.

Several years ago the city automatically blocked our access to youtube didn't it?
BTW, I picked this video at random. I am indifferent to Monty Python.

Patron Utterance

"It's amazing how they can make dope, but they can't make smart pills."
Now,he's saying something about how boring it would be to talk to God.

SEO web tools 23 things

I looked at several tools listed as award winners. Are they all Search Engine Optimizers?
I looked at one sentence, google docs, wufoo,going, upcoming and urban spoon.
GoogleDocs is very useful for library school since I can share my documents with my classmates ,but it does not allow me to upload a file I have on my home computer because it is the newest version of word.
Wufoo also seemed very useful for creating user surveys for the library.
I had high hopes for the site Upcoming and the site Going because I LOVE to go out, but I was disappointed by both. They just repeated the stuff that is in the Weekender and the Current and did not have enough variety. I learned that Going is more for a younger crowd and that Upcoming is for people my age. I did like the photo booth feature in Going,though.
Learning about the LULU sight was very useful because I had read about it in a Library Trends article about self-publishing.
I also explored Urbanspoon because I thought that site would be useful for the LibGuides on cooking. It would be good to use on the Ref desk if we ever got Library ref. questions about Restaurant recommendations. We do get these occasionally because we are downtown. I was disappointed by the descriptions of the restaurant addresses. It listed Zaki restaurant as being on the Westside. Since when is the NW Loop 410 area the West Side? The West Side is a cultural term to describe the area around Calaveras street or the Guadalupe theatre immediately WEST of downtown. No San Antonian would describe the area where Zaki is as the WEST SIDE. Very wrong.
I did,however, like the blog on this site.It was a good place to look for current reviews.
My absolutely favorite site was One Sentence. I recommended it to everyone and have become quite addicted to the concise poetry of the sentences generated there. It would be a good site for writers searching for inspiration.

On/Off Fred. Road studio tour

http://www.onandofffred.org/
My twin and I went on this studio tour and had a wonderful time looking in the backyards and workshops of the Monticello Heights neighborhood. It was a blast!

Library 2.0 reaction to articles 23 things

I enjoyed the articles on Library 2.0 and I like the "patron-first"spirit behind them.However,it's clear that those authors have never been to a place like Central Library. I think that getting everybody to blog about the library and post tags on our opac searches,etc sounds great,but I know that we are light years away from that reality when I help people sign up for INFOPASS and job searches. Our patrons need so much basic help to become tech savvy and our budgets for training and classes get cut every day. I don't want to be negative. I LOVE my job and I love the challenges here at the library.
What is the solution? How do we adapt to 2.0 and meet our patrons'needs?

Technorati Profile

technorati

It says in 23 things to put tags on your blog. Where do you find the tags?
Yet more frustration. AAAAArgh. Are labels the same as tags? That is where the confusion comes from.

rollyo

After many attempts, I finally got Rollyo to work. Jody had to stand over me and lead me through step by step. It seemed like I would create a search and it would just disappear. I am not really sure what happened.
Now, I know that the search rolls appear on the 2nd page of options and the whole process seems addictive.

Image Generator 23 Things