Summary of 23 Things

I think  my favorite program I have learned about this year is Google docs.  I love it and have introduced it to my workplace as a great tool to keep our contacts in one place that we can all edit, instead of all of us screaming across the room, "hey do you have a phone number for so and so?"

I think I have learned quite a few tools that will help me out in the future as a school librarian, however I think it is going to be difficult to try and stay ahead of what my students already know.  I am afraid that anything I have learned while doing this and while take LIS 506 will no longer be relevant when I graduate in a few years.

I did have a few unexpected outcomes when going through many of the sites.  When I was going through each site and learning about them, half the time I thought "I don't understand this, what good is this."  When I started to write my reflections I would always think of someway that I could use the program in a school setting.  I am surprised how much I learned when I felt like I learned nothing at the beginning.

I do wish that we could have used more programs without having to make an account with them.  I feel like I will never use all of them again as I will forget how many of them I am connected to.  Or how long with any of these sites be active. 

WorldCat

Now I would have to say that WorldCat is my favorite thing in the world!  Now let me tell you why.  I am sure that the other websites in the top 3 are just as good, however I love how easily you can search for a title and find out if it is in a location near you. 

I simply chose books and did a keyword search for "A Density of Souls" one of my favorite books from when I was in high school.  I put in my zip code and find that the closest location to me that has the book is the Buffalo Central Library and is 3 miles from my zip code.  I can then click on to the link to that library to find out if they have the book available currently for me to take a quick drive over and pick it up.  I think everyone should know about this website, it can save a lot of time and effort on going to a library and finding that they do not have what you need.

Libraries of the Future

While reading through some blogs there are some very interesting points that I would like to talk about.  In "Away from the 'icebergs'" by Rick Anderson, I love that he speaks about how with the age of technology we need to become teachers.  I agree with this wholeheartedly, with more and more technologies coming out every single day someone needs to teach the general public how these work.  There are hundreds of technologies that I do not know about, think about the regular person, the one without a computer who steps into the library for the first time and needs say an employment link, we need to teach them how to find them.  We can teach them to help themselves and there will always be a new line of people needing to be taught, and maybe they can teach you a thing or two also. 

I also like in "To a temporary place in time..." by Dr. Wendy Shultz that she speaks about the fact that reviews can be written for books on Amazon.  This can help an individual decide whether they wish to purchase a book or even read it.  Why not have this option in your library system?  I love it!  People who check out the book can right a review on whether they liked it or not and what they liked about it.  Hopefully with no spoilers, you could even search by what those reviewers also liked, say you love a certain book, and they do too, what other books did they love?  Do you now want to take out this book?  This is hugely beneficial to libraries in a world where we all read at least 10 reviews before we decide to read a book or buy a product.

Zotero

I wish I had Zotero when I did my internship during my senior year of my Undergraduate education.  I believe that it would have made my life so much easier on keeping track of the articles I was finding.  The best I had at the time was a folder full of articles and a word document.

This tool can be used so well for a student to do research and not lose their searches because they believe they can find them again.  (You never can!) This is a great tool for research specialists, and can also be used in the same ways as some of the other items that I have taken a look at to make lists of resources of certain topics or age groups.  Below I have included the link to some Information Literacy links in my zotero library:

http://www.zotero.org/drjackal31/items

P.S. I seem to be having a few syncing problems, please be patient if the link does not work right away.  Thanks!

Adaptive Reuse

I find Rollyo an interesting concept to share websites on certain subjects in the same way you can use LibraryThing as I have focused on in a previous post.  One thing that I did not like about Rollyo is that when making my search I had to have the Rollyo page open in one screen and then find all the websites that I would like to add to another screen.  It would be really cool if you could do a search and pick and choose out of the search which items you would like to enter your search page.  Below is the following link to my grouping:

http://rollyo.com/drjackal31/adaptive_reuse/

Virtual Personal Library

I think that LibraryThing is a valuable application for teachers to use with their students.  It can be used to publish summer reading lists, or recommended readings for parents to use to choose books to read with their children which will support what they are learning in class.  I also find that in a public library, the librarian can put a book list together for each age group to assist parents and individuals to find books that fit their reading level and helping expand their reading.  This could also be used to put virtual library groups together of books that are like other books, did you like "The Wizard of Oz"  you might like "Alice in Wonderland" or The "Harry Potter" series.

Google Google Google

I am a big fan of Google from the beginning.  I first started using Google "apps" while I was doing an internship my senior year of my Undergrad education.  I am a big fan of using Google scholar, I found hundreds of important and relevant articles through Google scholar that I did not have any access to at SUNY Potsdam.  I then asked the library to retrieve these articles and books for me through Interlibrary loan.  Would I have found any of these resources had I only used the search engines provided to me by my library, I would say it is not likely. 

I am also a huge fan of google earth, which is a great tool to learn about neighborhoods and decide whether it is even worth going to an area.  I am also a fan of using Google labs in Gmail.  I am a fan of Google stars which tells me the importance of emails that I need to take care of.  I have also just learned that in Gmail you can retrieve an email within 30 seconds of sending it in case you sent the wrong email or the wrong information to a customer.  This is very beneficial to libraries in case you perhaps send the wrong research information to the wrong person during our very busy days.

Google Docs!

I have been using Google docs since the beginning of this semester.   I never had used Google docs before, in fact I had never heard of this program.  I think this is a great program in where all of the employees at your location can get into the information and change it to fit the daily needs.  When I worked at the Crane School of Music Library, we had a regular word document with our daily notes to the staff, things as easy as you need to make sure you have all CD's checked in. 

I also find it a really great tool that anyone with a link can get into any file you want to share.  This would be great in a school setting where all the students have a google school email account and they can get into shared projects and resources made specially for them by the librarian and their teachers.

Wikis

I have never been a fan of wikis, most likely because when I was doing my undergraduate degree it was drilled into our head that wikis are unreliable.  We actually received extra credit in one American History class we took if we altered a wiki so that the information was false.  (I changed the post on Wikipedia for James Milton Smith, a Confederate Colonel who shared the same name with my then boyfriend)

I find that wikis that have specific information are hard to use.  On some of the library wikis I took a look at I attempted to search for many subjects with no avail.  Even a simple school, schools or education was pulling up nothing.  I find these hard to use, simply because I do not want to waste my time after searching for three things and not receiving any results.  I believe that most people will not spend the time.  I did really love that one of these wikis had a link to world cat on it, I think that this link should be on every library website. 

Technorati

When I search for "Learning 2.0" in posts I only found one post, however I found no posts in blogs.  If you search without the quote phrasing you still only find one post in posts, but do find 2 pages of results in blogs. 

When going through the Top 100 I realized that I do not really any of these blogs.  I find it very interesting that though I read a few blogs, none of them are the most popular blogs on the web.  I wonder how many people in the world are like me and have not read any of these 100 blogs.  I did find one blog in this list that is interesting to me, which is the Consumerist.  This is a blog about our consumerist world, one post about Nintendo putting a trademark on the phrase "It's on like Donkey Kong" is directly related to the library science venue as we need to understand trademarks and copywrites.

I was also pleasantly surprised to notice that they have a section where you can find DIY blogs.  I will be using that in the future in my personal life.

Del.icio.us

Tagging with Del.icio.us seems like it would be useful in a school setting (which is where I would eventually want to work) where I can put certain links that are needed for or helpful to certain classes in that school or to certain assignments.  This way many students can get help with their projects when the librarian is not available, or when they are crunching to fit their assignment into a few hours before class will start. 

However I am not sure if I would use this in my personal life.  There are not quite a few websites that I really look at in my personal life and any that I do need to find I have saved on my computer or I know how to get to with a few keystrokes.  If I had a desktop computer it may be more beneficial to me to save links so that I may be able to catch them from another computer.

With all of the technologies out there, which ones are going to be the best option?  I could use this option at work to have links to all of the companies we work with.  However I keep all of that information in a google doc which is shared with the rest of my department along with our contacts at those companies and other information.  It makes more sense to me in this sense to keep everything together in one google doc.

Topix

I was looking at these sites which help individuals find news feeds.  To tell you the truth the only website that I had any luck with was Topix.  I liked that I could put in my zipcode and get feeds that were locally relevant.  Don't get me wrong we should all know about what is going on all around the world, but I like to be very knowlegable to what is going on in my own area. 

I find that through the other websites I would have to know exactly what I was looking for to find anything.  Sometimes we are not looking for anything and simply want to know about local events.  In my personal life I do not expect to take much advantage of RSS feeds as I do not always want to look at the same sites everyday.  Sometimes we do not have time to even come on our computers and wasting time catching up on events that you can no longer take advantage of our be a part of is just not worth it.