Thing 23

Thing 23

Huzzah! I have reached the end and ahead of schedule.

I am glad that I have made the effort to complete all the things, though it has been far more time-consuming than I ever imagined and I know that I have barely scratched the surface with many of the applications I've been introduced to. I know that I would have to engage more with Twitter and LinkedIn to get the full benefit of them, but I really can't see what use to put them too. I know with the latter it is mainly a case of needing a critical mass of people I know to use it, but I have other, more useful, ways of contacting them.

• The form in Google Docs is really useful and I had only been on the receiving end of them before.
  
• We seem to be getting a lot of hits on our facebook page, so I need to have a real think about how to make it better and work out how to add gadgets to it (I notice other Libraries have boxes for Copac and WorldCat searches on their Facebook pages - how does one do that?)
• Ideally, I would probably connect my Google Reader page through to iGoogle if they were set up for feeds I want in perpetuity, rather than just for 23 Things. I'd also want fewer gadgets - less clutter if I were using iGoogle every day. At the same time, I'd want to centre my web focus in one place, so I guess it would be a case of working out what I would actually use - something you can't know until you try. I worry with linking all the applications about privacy though, knowing that Googlemail reads what you write and targets the sidebar advertising in relation to it. One could end up putting pretty much all one's life out into the public domain without realising that way.
  
• I guess that means that realising how easy it can be to add gadgets to connect pages together has been the most useful lesson and the one I wish to investigate more in the workplace.

Thank you to the organisers of 23 Things for giving us this opportunity to explore with direction through the mass of web 2.0 technologies. But can anyone tell me how to use Twitter for the Library, PLEASE?

Thing 22

Thing 22

I have added the My Del.icio.us gadget to my iGoogle page, which then made me rearrange the layout of the page and also learn how to minimise some of the gadgets so I can see most of them at a glance without having to scroll them and can put the daily interest changing things like Optical Illusion of the Day, Word of the Day, Picture of the Day and Weather at the top and reference gadgets like Wikipedia, Trainline and Translate further down the screen so I can refer to them when I need them without them being in the way.

From Editor's Picks I added a Literary Quotation of the Day, which may or may not interest me depending on the kind of quotations that come up. Looking through the Library gadgets (for some reason the search term "Library" didn't bring anything up, "Libraries" did at the second attempt, despite some of them being called "Library x"), I can see a use for the Library Accounts management gadget and if I were in a school or public library, I would definitely add the Children's Book of the Day gadget. The Librarians' Book Revoogle provides access to book reviews written by Librarians, Library Staff and Users and could be useful, but is the kind of resource I'd want to go to when I wish to use it, rather than flash up new stuff everytime I log in which may not be relevant. I am Quite Tempted by the Libraries Photos gadget though...

I am amazed how many libraries have a gadget to connect through to their OPACS, mainly American. The Google Books gadget to create your own Library and reviews and get personalised recommendations is tempting, but I think another distraction. If I wanted to buy into the whole Google experience, it would be worth adding! I amused by the Escape the Library game.

Gave in and added the Libraries Photos gadget.

Thing 21

Thing 21

The end is in sight - hurrah!

It didn't look as if I'd remembered my Flickr name correctly from the Layout page, but when I viewed Blog, there were my four photos (two are the "improved" versions of the original). Not desperately exciting, I'm afraid. I didn't want a newsreel because I want to keep my blog uncluttered. I added a Twitter gadget instead, since that is part of the whole 23 Things experience and rearranged the layout so that the About Me was at the top (the idea being to keep the profile picture at the top, but Blogger seems to have lost it at the moment).

Thing 20

Thing 20

Well, this task took far longer than the brief description implied. I find it annoying that when you clicked the link to download the necessary Java application, it took you to a page with a whole load of option so you had to have remembered which one it was you were meant to be downloading. I got it wrong the first time, so have downloaded stuff I don't need. When I did get the right one, it took ages to download. Having downloaded it, getting ThinkFree to open me a new document took ages and is still catching up with itself, having allowed me to type three letters, but not delete them. It then keeps popping up as I write this and putting my words into ThinkFree instead. Bah humbug!

I successfully typed a document and fiddled with colours, fonts, sizes, borders, drop capitals etc. and just as I am finishing off, it crashes. I was impressed by the nearly Word standard of available fonts, but less impressed by the erratic nature of the application.

Uploading to My Office seemed straightforward enough - though I'm not sure that I'd bother. Currently trying to open a new note, but it is taking ages to do so. I can see that this is a fuller application than Google Docs, but as it takes so long to do anything, I find it too frustrating to use again, I think.

Having the templates is both useful and annoying for notes. I decided to use the book review, but couldn't find out how to fill in the fourth star to give a book a higher billing - neither fill nor font colour affected it. It also has a character limit for file names, which is annoying if the book you're reviewing has a long title!

Thing 19

Thing 19

It's such a relief to be up to date with this! Also that this week's tasks are not too time-consuming.

Google docs seem pretty straightforward. From a simple play, I find the lack of complex options actually helpful, but I suspect that if I was trying to produce something impressive and extensive for a real purpose, it's limitations would begin to frustrate me. I enjoyed being able to ask other participants the question that remains unanswered for me from 23 Things so far (i.e. What use is Twitter for libraries?) and sharing one of the poems from an anthology of one of our Old Members' poems. I made myself a presentation with three of the short poems in it. I was annoyed that centring both horizontally and vertically doesn't actually move the text to the centre of the slide, so I did it manually.

I have actually used the form function as a respondent many times and can see the use for sharing documents outside an organisation with a shared drive and for several people being able to edit the same document - prevents too many versions in circulation.

NB Why is Blogger being SO slow today?

Thing 18

Thing 18

The article on Wikipedia on itself was interesting, but I ran out of steam towards the end.... There were a couple of quotations that particularly tickled me, for different reasons:

"In June 2007, former president of the American Library Association Michael Gorman condemned Wikipedia, along with Google,^[93] stating that academics who endorse the use of Wikipedia are "the intellectual equivalent of a dietitian who recommends a steady diet of Big Macs with everything". He also said that "a generation of intellectual sluggards incapable of moving beyond the Internet" was being produced at universities."

and

"An English version, 2006 Wikipedia CD Selection, contained about 2,000 articles.^[134][135] The Polish version contains nearly 240,000 articles.^[136] There are also German versions.["

and I was intrigued by the subdivisions of subjects "biography, history, geography, society, culture, science, technology, foodstuffs, and mathematics" it aims to cover. I should have guessed, but hadn't thought about, that Africa wasn't really very well covered. There is a page for Juba, Sudan though, which I am pleased about, having been there, but wonder if I should get the friend there to contribute more to the page next time he's in the UK and has sufficient bandwidth.

I corrected a link on a friend's biography because the URL had changed when the website of his place of work changed. I also looked up HP Sauce as we had a discussion the other day about whether the fact that it had a picture of the Houses of Parliament on it and was called HP implied it had been concocted for the Houses of Parliament (answer, no, despite other people's suggestion to the contrary!). I also used Wikipedia earlier today to answer the challenge "If Robert Hardy's such a famous actor, what's he been in? Has he been in 'Spooks'?!" Amusingly, the answer to the second question is yes, but I found that out from IMDb.

I was quite surprised by the pointless vandalism of the Wikipedia on itself article revealed when one looked at the History and Discussion. I ca almost understand if one objects to something, but it just seemed random. Nowt so queer as folk, as they say.

Thing 17

Thing 17

Well, I tried to add Lincoln College Library to the Oxford Case Studies section of the Web 2.0 wiki and found that the "Easy-Edit" wasn't. I couldn't get it to allow me to write any text on the page, so ended up adding what I had to say to the thread instead. I see other people have managed it perfectly well, so I have no idea where I was going wrong!