Closing Out 23 Things

I think the project has been super and most staff seem positive about it too with only a minimal amount of grumbling.  I honestly don't think I can pick one topic to choose as the one I "most" enjoyed but I did get more out of the areas where I had little or no experience:  all of the many and various Google tools, RSS feeds, Wikis, and believe it or not, the database training.  I believe it would be interesting to try something similar like this with the public.  I'm not sure what exactly it would cover but a tutorial of some kind for our databases and so forth might be cool.  I'd like to see similar trainings in regard to Skype, E Books, and other technologies our patrons are beginning or have already discovered. 

Online Reader Tools

I recommended the book we are doing at Fern Creek for our May bookclub, Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking.

I subscribed to the "New Fiction" newsletter.  This seems like a really cool tool and especially could be used at branches with many and regular Fiction readers.  Not only could you use it to keep up with new titles for your own recommendations, you could easily direct patrons to the site as well. 

In Noelist I did a search for Adult Fiction A-Z Classics Revisited.  This yielded a kind of humorous result as I thought I was going to be seeing "Classic" titles, but instead I got relatively new works inspired by classic Fiction, such as the work Finn a novel about Huck Finn's father and other characters in the original Mark Twain work.  Once again, I think this is a super cool tool reader's advisory type thing that is a benefit to any library. 

Wikis

I found the Wikis info to be really informative and well presented.  Great job, folks!  I posted in the Favorite Restaurants and Favorite Musicians sections and found it to be ridiculously easy to do so.

I see the potential of Wikis in a variety of ways.  Of course, the collaborative aspect means you'd be able to work with your patrons/public directly on things; however, my mind immediately shot to the idea of a Wiki for Circulation/Polaris issues.  This would not be an area to mainly discuss problems with Polaris, but rather, it would more be about training and tips.  Anyhow, it's just something that came to mind when I thought of Wikis for library use. 

RSS Feeds

I subscribed to the Album Reviews portion of the Pitchfork.com site that reviews new music.  I also subscribed to the motorcycles/scooters portion of the Louisville Craigslist.  I can see how this could be really neat but I will first have to get familiar with the clicking and linking around needed in the Google Reader.  Because of my current lack of experience with this, it almost seems easier to just go to the sites.  I would say, however, this could mostly be due to the fact that RSS feeds are very new to me. 

Podcasts

I first went to Storynory and listened to a podcast of a Wordsworth reading of "The Daffodils - I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud".  The site was pretty easy to use and the podcast was fun. 

Next, I went to PodcastAlley.com.  Here, I found the site not at all intuitive and you had to fish around a good bit even to just get access to the listening point; regardless, I sampled from "On the Menu", a podcast discussing wine and food.  The edition I sampled was on "Sensible Food" and quite boring :)

Finally, I went to CNN's podcast area and quickly got a cool news update on the terrible disaster in Japan.  I found the CNN podcast section to be easy to use and useful. 

NetLibrary Recommendation

Room With a View by E.M. Forster (8 hours, 20 minutes).

23 Things Video

Great movie.



Shameless motorcycle promotion.

23 Things Research Tools

10b) The obit was published on March 18, 2008.  She had four sons.
10c) No Telos, but EBSCO (Academic Premiere) does carry the other two in full text.
11a) Manager Duane F. Kelly, Grade B, overall Mstar rating 4 Stars
11b) Yep, Masterfile Premiere
11c) Looks like there are 94 coffee shops in the 402* area.  Biggest competition in 40202 is Starbucks.

12) At the reference desk I find the most useful tool(s) for me personally are the biographical databases as I often get questions in this regard.  Also, another choice would be any of the databases containing Consumer Reports articles as I get regular questions for those as well.  I think we should be telling more people about the business databases as I think it might present opportunities to network/connect with local businesses.  If we could keep only one then I use the Academic Search Premiere the most so I would likely say that one.

Flickr

I've used Flickr and Photobucket in the past, even once presenting managers with a quick walk through of Flickr and its potential use for librarians and organizations.  Alas, this was quite a while back and I had forgotten a number of cool things I covered back then.  Still yet, was fun to revisit the site.  Of course, the map searching is great but I, of course, chose to search under "motorcycles", yielding some cool pictures of bikes at various points around the globe and also finding the "motorcycles" group as well.  I think Flickr could be used as a neat reference and networking tool.  I often get questions from young adults needing a photo of the individual they are covering for school.  Just a cursory search under "thomas jefferson" will land you some cool images.  On the flip side, I honestly very rarely get questions about photo sharing per se.  Regardless, I think Flickr is great for the organization in terms of posting photos from various events/programs held at the library.  

Twitter/Facebook 23 Things

Cool stuff.  While I consider myself reasonably savvy with technology, this is one area (social networking) where I'm sorely behind the general populace.  I can't greatly imagine a scenerio where Twitter would prove beneficial in terms of reference work; yet, this could largely be due to the fact I've never used Twitter before now.  I can, however, easily imagine where Twitter or Facebook could be a great pubicity/networking tool for a library.  Also, I can imagine too that it would be a cool way to get instant feedback about potential library services and such by merely posting the question to your own followers.  As far as what's important to know for our patrons, it seems I get an occasional question about how to post pictures or how to "friend" someone, but these are mostly rare in comparison with other general computer, Office, or Web questions.  I've generally been one of the so called "haters" in regard to Facebook and other social networking.  Granted, this has not been a well thought out dislike; rather, it's often jokingly been one of "Do I really need to make that baby face kid any richer than he already is" type of thing :)  Having said this, I am starting to come around a bit in regard to it.

First Post

First blog ever, first post ever.  Oh the sweetness.  A blog about my daily moment to moment feelings and or thoughts could put a charging rhino to rest, so as indicated by the title, I will focus mostly on one of my passions, motorcycling...and 23 Things of course.  Hopefully, here you will eventually find trip reports, bike updates, adventures, and the like.  I'm not great with daily journaling but we'll see how this goes.  Among the things mentioned, I've found Google Docs teh most useful personally; however, this is only because I do not own the Office package on my laptop at home.  GD lets me view items I normally would not have access to while at home.