23 things-eval

23 things is great. I really wish I could have spent time learning this on the order of an hour per day rather than the disjointed time slots I have had. The teaching/explanations are excellent. Please never delete them.

Thanks for all your hard work in trying to get us up to speed.

Jean

Thing 22-RSS feeds

I set up an RSS feed to my g-mail account -Life-hacker-Top. A glance here will let me know how others have solved some everyday problems and what topics are of current interest to other Lifehacker subscribers.

Thing 13-Library Thing

I listed one book earlier in the year. I posted another entry today. This could be used to get great ideas for readings from people with similar tastes. Referance Librarians or read-a-holics in general could really benefit from it.

thing 18-survey monkey

Survey Monkey can be very useful to "take the temperature" of opinions on a certain topic. However, surveys where respondents just write brief lines often fail to elicit the additional feelings behind these short answers. If you need personnel to get behind a project, you'll need more than a "survey" of their opinions to get everyone actively working toward your goal.

I recently conducted a casual verbal "survey" concerning a Circ. proceedure with the suggestion that some changes be made to benefit other departments. The secondary and tertiary comments made possible by the personal contact and non-threatening presentation of the idea revealed more than the original questions about the likelyhood of getting the changes implemented on a consistent basis.

thing 9-collaboration tools

I fiddled around with Zoho and Google Docs. I added an entry on the Logic of Failure by Dietrich Dorner. That was in February! Since then so many things personal things have happened to distract me from this great endeaver at work, I should do all the 9 things again. I hope you never take these exercises off lint so we can always "start over" or review items when we actually have a use for them. The new Circ Blog for discussions within our own department should prove useful as a collaboration tool too. 7/12/09

thing 10-wiki

I set up a Wiki and had a lot of fun blabbing about corn cobs and their uses. Then I went to lunch. When I came back everything had disappeared because it "timed out". Apparently I had forgotten to save it.

thing 6

Thing 6 -communication tools. Hmm. These "tools" seem to be most useful but many bloggers worry about them being a "time suck". Does MCPL have a written "email etiquette" policy? We all use it constantly and don't seem to have any major problems communicating with it except for the occassional spelling or date/time error. In Circ we have only a few hours to dedicate to answering patron circ questions so patrons can't get "instant" answers. It seems to work pretty well for now.

Instant messaging - The chat slang is a huge amount of new input when you first try to use it. Some are obvious, of course. It could be amusing to keep a chat window open when you have a long day in front of the computer ahead of you. If you use gmail, then google chat would be quick because it doesn't require a download.

"Pidgin "sounds attractive-no ads interrupting your thoughts. In some instances, IM could be better that a phone because you can answer later or post your own "availability" so friends/family/colleagues could know when you prefer to communicate with each of them. Meebo could be good to be familiar with so you could avoid e-mail or phone tag and get certain details/changes hammered out for group work immediately. I don't have a cell phone or a computer always available to me so these technical advances aren't actually useful to me yet.

TEXT MESSAGING-with no cell phone, I am unable to practice this but I know many people that use it to avoid waiting until someone is actually available to speak on the phone. Great for short questions such as, "Hey, what is Joe's first name?" etc.

Webinars-great when you just can't go to hear the real "expert" on your favorite topic.

OPAL- as older or homebound Library Patrons slide over the hump into feeling comfortable with technology, this will allow ever more patrons to really feel included in what is going on at the library and to give us their often valuable input.

new vs old

Web 2.0 is fascinating. What a platform for democracy and startups and even upstarts. Might it not be worthwhile, however, to continue to have access to old-style library ammenities -card catalogs, trained reference librarians, physical books in our hands that have been repaired as necessary, frontline people that smile and say hello to patrons by name, cozy corners with good natural light to read by and a total absence of click, click, click- in at least some part of each library system in case we simply crash the system or run out of electricity.? Perhaps some ideas should actually be "set in stone" so they won't get totally lost. Recent archeological excavations around the world continue to astound us with what we have already "lost" on every continent.