Thing #23!!! In which Stacey does the happy dance because she is DONE!!

Wow! I can't believe I did the whole thing!

I found this to be a very interesting and informative experience. I was given an excuse/incentive to look at some things I've only heard about. I certainly feel better for the experience and for the knowledge gained. I also feel more plugged into the Library 2.0 concept. There are still some things that aren't necessarily my cup of tea, but knowing about them is helpful.

Wouldn't this be an interesting idea to offer to customers? Adapted for them, of course, but we could be quite user-friendly by offering customers an opportunity to become more User 2.0. It would certainly tie-in with life-long learning!

I was able to blast through these things for one reason only. I spent A LOT of time doing these at home. Not so much because I had to, but because I wanted to. Many were fun to do and I didn't mind spending the time. Also, this came right at the time of my transition from Glenwood to Miller. I wanted this to be off my plate as early as possible so I'd be free to concentrate on my new surroundings. I know most people will take much longer to do this, because it is hard to carve out time. One suggestion is to have people work in pairs or a small groups for some of the things, mainly because it's fun to bounce ideas off of one another and it seems to go faster when you work together.

I always enjoy learning and trying new things, so I would enjoy taking another learning journey such as this one.

Thanks for the opportunity!
mahjchick aka stacey

Thing #21: In which Stacey listens to some podcasts

Right around the time I was starting to look at podcasts, I saw this from the comic strip Zits.
Jeremy is obviously a digital native and the irony is awesome! :)

I am not necessarily one for podcasts. They are not things I actively look for, but if I find something interesting, I'll give it a listen. I did try out the various podcast directories, and quite frankly, I found them a bit more trouble than they are worth (to me, at least). The searching was a bit clunky and you had to wade through a lot of stuff to possibly find something that I was interested. Also, many of the podcasts seemed old, so not necessarily what I was looking for.

Since I heard Garrison Keillor's speech from ALA, I decided to look for some podcasts with him. I was more successful googling "Garrison Keillor podcasts" than using any of the directories. The first hit from Google was A Prarie Home Companion's podcast page. From there, I was able to add the podcast to my iGoogle page.

I will confess that this was the most disappointing of my 23 Things. Especially since I was halfway through my post when Mozilla crashed on me and I had to start over.

Despite this, I am enjoying listening to the latest news from Lake Wobegone.

Thing #17: In which Stacey plays in the Sandbox

I have to admit that when someone tells me to just write about anything, my mind goes completely blank. Oh well. I created a login for myself, posted my blog (mahjchick's musings) under the Howard County banner in favorite blogs and created a wiki page for the sandbox: 23 of mahjchick's favorite romance authors. I also added some random thoughts to the Random Thoughts wiki page.

All of this was quite easy to do. In fact, the hardest part was thinking of content as opposed getting it up there.

Thing #16: In which Stacey goes a little Wiki

I am, of course, familiar with Wikipedia and have used it on many occasions. I've found interesting information there, but have also heard the stories about people posting incorrect info. With the librarian mantra of "cite your source!", that worries me a bit. I've decided to use it with a shaker of salt and try and verify information with another source, before completely believing it.

That being said, there are lots of good ways to use wikis in the library. Skimming through the examples, the first thought that came to mind was about the Book Lovers wiki from Princeton Public Library. This struck me as a way we could get customers to post reviews of their favorite books...a great tie-in to the adult summer reading program. We could also use it as a place for staff to recommend titles/provide reviews.

The other wiki I liked was Library 2.0 in 15 minutes per day. This one seemed a little less wiki-ish, but it seemed easy to navigate and a good structure for independent training. This might be an interesting way to create a training page for customers.

I also had the opportunity to look at some wikis posted on another library system's intranet. They used wikis for a variety of purposes, including their staff update newsletter. Each branch posted staff happenings and pictures. They used the wikis as a means of communication and to gather information about different topics. Almost like a long-distance brainstorming session. I'm betting these help cut down on some meetings and was a way to get information from a larger group of people.

Thing #15: In Which Stacey goes 2.0

Well I read the 5 perspectives on Web 2.0 and where it will take libraries. Each had interesting points, although I did glaze over a bit as I was reading about the cataloging. And I did find it amusing that the entry about cooperating had the guy holding the big stick.

Away from the icebergs is an interesting perspective on overcoming obstacles. I remember in library school, professors telling us that nothing would ever remain static again. It is exciting to look into new things and stay on top of trends. I really want to avoid being on the Titanic!

Into a new world of librarianship was interesting, talking about how to be librarian 2.0. It reminds me of listening to Stacey Aldrich talk about being a futurist. Reading this and other articles about being a librarian of the future frustrates me sometimes, because I want to do these things, but I also want to be a children's librarian. And while I know I can be both, there just aren't enough hours in a day, which would explain why I'm doing this @ 11pm.

To a temporary place in time... was my favorite. I like how Dr. Schultz describes the library's progression to meet the needs of customers and how it always morphs into what they need. I'd like to hang out at the knowledge spa. And how fun would that be for each of us to have our own library avatar. Love it! :)

I guess Library 2.0 is not afraid to be on the cutting edge, but not for cutting edge's sake. It's services are there, not because they are the first to have something, but because it is what people are looking for. Almost like cruise directors making sure customers have what they are looking for, plus that little extra that they didn't know they wanted, but how nice to have, now that you mention it. [Hey, the Love Boat theme is better than Titanic! At least you're not plunging to your death!]

Thing #14: In which Stacey goes back to Technorati

I went back to Technorati to claim and tag my blog. It seemed fairly easy and I think it worked. I did a search on mahjchick and my blog came up. Here's my rank: 7,901,430. I'm so proud! :)

I looked at the top tags and top searches. No surprise that there is a lot of mention of Harry Potter and spoilers (2 days before the release of book #7). I don't want to look at them, because I don't want to know yet. Definitely pop culture and hot topics are what's out there on top.

Searching for Learning 2.0 does net different results under Blog posts, in tags and in the Blog Directory. It just depends on how people tag their work. I'm not so sure how much I'd actually use this. Oh well. Good to know about. Maybe my ranking will go up.

Thing #9.5: In which Stacey uses Zoho again, hon

This is the e-mail I was talking about in my MERLIN post.

You know you're from Maryland when:

• You know how to pronounce 'Towson'.
• You remember what the Inner Harbor looked like before it was the Inner Harbor.
• You ate at Haussner's.
• You remember Friendship Airport.
• You remember driving over the Kent Narrows Draw-Bridge that snarled weekend traffic coming home from down the ocean, hon.
• You love the Domino Sugar sign you can see across the harbor.
• You remember the rotating restaurant on top of the Holiday Inn on Light Street.
• You know Annapolis and Hopkins are national treasures and you get a kick out of hearing them named in movies or TV.
• You know B&O is not body odor.
• That downtown smelled great near McCormick's.
• Every kitchen has a can of Old Bay.
• You refer to your state as 'Marilyn' (or 'Merlin')
• You and your mom shopped at Brager Gutmans, Hutzlers, The Hub, Stewart's, The May Company.
• You know where 'Downey Ocean' is.
• You remember the Civic Center.
• You know Pam Shriver is from Maryland.
• You know how to eat steamed crabs, but also know how to tell the males from the females.
• You don't think that Assawoman Bay is a strange name.
• M R Ducks makes perfect sense.
• You have fond memories of Memorial Stadium.
• You still root for the Orioles, even when they aren't doing well.
• Everybody knows what a 'zink' and a 'payment' are.
• When anywhere else, you can only laugh when you see signs saying 'Maryland Crab Cakes!'
• You say 'Blare Road' for Bel Air Road.
• You remember Jerry Turner and Al Sanders.
• You remember Oprah and Richard Scher together in the mornings on channel 13.
• Vince Bagli was "the" sports announcer on TV
• You remember Mayor Schaeffer swimming with the seals (in his old fashioned bathing suit) at the National Aquarium.
• You swore Frank Perdue kinda looked like one of his tender chickens.
• You know which bridge they're talking about, when someone says, "The bridge traffic is backed up."
• You revere the names of Johnny U, Brooks and Frank.
• You actually understand all of these and pass them on to other Marylanders to enjoy!

~created in Zoho Writer
(cut and paste didn't work so well...had to retype)

Thing #9: In which Stacey visits MERLIN

I'm from Bawlmor, hon and for some reason, every time I see Merlin in this context, I think it's how we say our state's name. You know, Bawlmor, Merlin. Okay, not really, but my uncle had just sent me a list of "You Know You're From Maryland When...", so it stuck in my head.

Seriously, though, I had taken a training on MERLIN sometime last year. An interesting place. I was all excited about the training we were supposed to take, only to discover that, at the time, the classes were all about Microsoft Office products. So much for that. I think the disappointment left me a bit disenchanted with MERLIN (pardon the pun). There are some interesting things on this site, but to be brutally honest about it, I'm not sure how much I'd use it at this time. I think if technology was my workplace raison d être, I'd feel differently. Right now, I think I'd mainly use it if I was directed to go there.

As far as searching for other library blogs and feeds, I tried Technorati. I did a blog search on libraries and Maryland (not Merlin) to see if any of my friends' 23 Things blogs would show up. Amazingly enough, one did. My friend Christina's blog came up and as I was reading through it, I read about something called Library Elf. This is a cool service that allows you to keep track of the books checked out on your library card. It goes beyond what our e-mail reminders do. First of all, you can enter more than one library card, so you can have your whole family signed up or even check your cards from different counties. But even better, in the e-mail, it gives you a list of everything out, when it is due, what holds you have waiting for you, etc. Plus, there is a calendar with due dates highlighted. Way cool!

Back to the blog/feed searching. I must confess that I'm not into the RSS feeds as much as some of these other technologies. Having a Bloglines account isn't as helpful to me, because it's yet another thing I have to remember to check. I did discover a compromise. At home, I use iGoogle as my homepage and have discovered how to select my homepage as the spot for all of my RSS feeds. It doesn't work (yet) for all feeds, but enough to make me happy. I have created for myself another tab just for these feeds.

Thing #19: In which Stacey opens Pandora's...Radio

I've never been good at figuring out the online radio thing. Probably just didn't have time to bother. When I was looking at the various Web 2.0 Award Winners, I was having trouble finding something that I wanted to look at. I figured I'd give Pandora's Radio a shot, mainly because I couldn't think of anything pithy to say for the OneSentence link, but also because I wanted to try a radio program and I'm a sucker for Greek myths.

I love this! It asks for an artist and then plays songs by that artist and others like it. You can create "radio stations" for each artist. You can also decide if the song playing is what you are looking for and it will adjust what it plays based on your answer. You can ask it why that song is playing and it will give you an answer something like this:

This selection features a subtle use of vocal harmony, acoustic rhythm piano, major key tonality, emotional male lead vocal performance and a subtle use of strings.*

Awesome!

While this particular site may not have a direct use in the library, I think it is a good one to recommend to other staff and customers, just for their own enjoyment. Sort of a "listeners' advisory" recommendation.

A nice feature is you can navigate around the site while the music plays. Some sites kick you out of what you were doing when you click on something and that is annoying. That is not the case here. There are certain restrictions about what they are allowed to play and how often. You are also not allowed to go back or replay a song for a certain amount of time. I haven't used it long enough to decide if that is frustrating or not, but so far, not.

*In case you were wondering, the artist was Meat Loaf.

Thing #18: In which Stacey is productive online

Okay, first I should say that when it says "If you are up to the challenge....," I think, "Oh yeah, bring it on!"

Below is my test post from Zoho Writer. Very easy to use and very easy to publish to my blog. And if I update my document, I can also update my posting!
Cool beans!

test blog

Pretty cool!  Since we are in an environment that hates "the man" aka Microsoft, having other options is very nice.  Open Office is a great tool, but something like Zoho is an awesome alternative for a library setting.  How often do we hear, "I have to write a paper, but I don't have a disk"?  This would be an awesome solution!    All it needs now is a power point-type program!

I've used GoogleDocs, mainly as a sharing tool.  This came up when the children's librarians, yes, we were called children's librarians back then, needed to have a series meeting, without having an actual meeting.  VAP had created a spreadsheet with was posted on the evil s: drive.  Very uncondusive (is that a word?) to sharing ideas.  I called her to share my frustrations and she suggested GoogleDocs.  It worked very well for our purposes.  We could all contribute to the same document and share opinions, as well.  Plus, we could all be on at the same time!  Yay!

Here I am publishing in Zoho Writer.  Very easy to use and convenient, as well!  Two thumbs up!

Thing #22: In which Stacey goes into Overdrive

I will confess that once I heard we could go out of order, I decided to take complete advantage and do all of the fun ones first. :)

I'm already familiar with Overdrive and NetLibrary and have demonstrated it to customers. It became personal last year when I decided to ask for an mp3 player for Hanukkah. The big decision...to iPod or not to iPod. Price aside, the biggest reason I decided not to iPod was the fact that for audiobooks, iPod only works with iTunes. Not very civil of them. Since I did not want my life controlled by Apple, I went with a Sansa and have been very happy. (Plus for the same price as a Nano, I got twice as much storage space!)

Anywho, I've downloaded several audiobooks onto my Sansa using Overdrive and NetLibrary. I have found Overdrive to be much more user-friendly and was not sad at all when we decided to discontinue our NetLibrary subscription. I have listened to a few of the books that I've downloaded, but a drawback for me is that the main time I get to listen to the book is right before I go to bed and then I fall asleep and have missed huge chunks of story! Oh well, I'll have to work on that!

The reserve feature works very well. I received an e-mail when my title was in and then was able to download it. Probably the most important thing to remember is to be sure to download the Overdrive software before downloading any books. Otherwise, the books won't open up correctly. I learned that the hard way.

I had planned to give my 23Things mp3 player to Sophie, since I already have a very nice one, but then a friend had mentioned that she was going to use hers just for audiobooks and use her old one for music. Hmmm.....

Thing #20: In which Stacey cracks up watching YouTube

I've already experienced YouTube, good for hours of entertainment! One of my favorite searches was when I heard that Dancing With the Stars judge Bruno, was in the Elton John video, I'm Still Standing. I was able to find it on YouTube and I laughed so hard I was crying. For a somewhat related video that I found originally on YouTube, but then found it on MySpaceTV, look on the sidebar under myspace tv for Billy Ray Cyrus's I Want My Mullet Back.

I am also a huge fan of House and Hugh Laurie. And if you want to talk about one end of the spectrum to another, think about his character on House and then watch a few minutes of Stuart Little. Or for even more fun, check out this video, "Mother Liker" from A Bit of Fry and Laurie, with Hugh's former comedy partner, Stephen Fry. Despite the few curse words, it's all about Choosing Civility. Enjoy!





Humor aside, YouTube or other sites are great ways to show mini-movies for training and such for customers and staff. We've been directed to many already.

Thing #13: In which Stacey finds something del.icio.us

This site is pretty cool. I like how I can put home and work bookmarks together online so I don't have to try and remember them again. Right now, I'm not as interested in the social networking portion so much as the convenience of having the bookmarks together. I'm online waaaay too much as it is. :)

Everything was easy to do (love those tag clouds!) and I was able to add buttons to my toolbar to make it even easier to add bookmarks.

For research assistance, I think this would be very helpful. The library could set up a del.icio.us account and group trusted websites by topic. Helpfulness and convenience from anywhere!

Thing #12: In which Stacey is on a Rollyo

This was fairly easy to create and use. Mainly because I had bunches of bookmarks that I could copy and paste into the box. It will definitely be a time-saver when trying to find something.
I created three Rollyos: one for work (booktalking), one for home (Brownies...Girl Scouts, not the snacks), and one for fun (House). Check them out on my sidebar!

I can see this being a great tool for the library website. Almost a web version of WebFeat, which searches our databases.

Thing #11: In which Stacey does that LibraryThing

Wow. How cool is this?! I had heard of LibraryThing, but had never looked too closely. To be honest, I was a bit intimidated. How the heck was I going to catalog all of my books? What a PITA that would be. Boy, was I wrong!

I peeked at the intro and gamely got started. Surprisingly easy! And fun. Okay, fun might be pushing it a bit, but way cool. My only (slight) disappointment is that you can only do one book at a time. I tend to collect books by the same authors and it could have gone a lot quicker if I typed in, for example, Julia Quinn, and checked off all of the books by her that I have. And since the ones I have are from her Bridgerton series, I could have done just one tag, as well.

I love that you can change the covers, too! And another example of a tag cloud.

I could see this being a great readers' advisory tool at HCL, not only for customers, but from librarian to librarian. What a great way to have customers connect with librarians with similar reading tastes and then go to them for recommendations. So here's how it could work: On the Reader's Corner page there could be a section where librarian's have their LibraryThing posted as an author cloud or even a tag cloud. Customers could look at those clouds and see who has the authors or topics that they are looking for. Then there'd be a way to connect the customer with the librarian, perhaps via e-mail and then you could start up a reader's advisory/reference interview to put some fabulous books into that customer's hands. And staff could use the info to know that when the person is asking for another great romance book, go give Stacey a call. Just a thought.

In some ways, there is almost too much stuff there. I think it will take many visits to a) get my stuff cataloged onto there and b) appreciate all of the extras. And considering I have about 5 bookshelves of books, 3 or which are romance books (and that includes about 2 boxes worth of Nora Roberts' books), this could take some time (and possibly $).

And for those of you who didn't know, yes, I am a HUGE fan of romances and yes, Nora Roberts is a favorite. Next time you're @ Miller, stop by my office to see my signed Nora Roberts limited-edition bobblehead. So awful, it's awesome! :)

Thing #8: In which Stacey acquires some RSS feeds

We did training on this several months ago. I actually use my iGoogle homepage for RSS feeds. This is where I have the really important stuff, like my link to Zits (the comic strip), Unshelved, my horoscope (which has been frighteningly accurate), the latest headlines from People.com and, of course, updates on House. I figured I'd give Bloglines a try and create some RSS feeds for library-related info. It was very easy to do, just lots of cutting and pasting. I was even able to create a link to my feeds. Ultimately, I'm going to try and figure out a way to combine the two readers, but that is a task for another day.

Thing #10: In which Stacey goes out of order and makes a Meez

Here's me working on 23 Things. I guess I'm sitting on the floor because I'm sort of in limbo between branches. I can't imagine why I'm always tired. Must because I sucked into the computer all of the time. Darn you, 23 Things!!

Seriously, though, this was a lot of fun. I can also picture Sophie spending hours on it. Uh oh, better not tell her about it just yet! ;)

I might try another site for fun, but maybe later. Up way too late!

Thing #6: In which Stacey plays with Flickr mashups

Well, I've always wanted my own trading card! I used the program recommended by 23 Things (fd's Flickr Toys) and came up with a Fancy Nancy card. The options were a little limited, but I'm sure if I searched, I could find other templates. This one suited my purposes. I do hate trying to figure out what to write. :)

I also tried the hockneyized picture. It was interesting, but a little frustrating because it took a lot of shuffling to get the prints to go the way I wanted.

I'd love to try the motivational poster, but I'd have to think of some text. I can see why teachers are into Flickr. Lots of fun things to do with pictures for students.

Thing #7: In which Stacey shares a rant about digital cameras (and other technology things)

As techie as I may seem, I'm still old-fashioned in some ways. For example, I truly despise the branch cameras we currently have. Too small and hello...some people still like to use a viewfinder, thank you very much. And here's something scary. When I went booktalking, I asked the art teacher to take a picture (for part of my United Tates of America) booktalk. The first picture he took was very far away. For the next picture, I explained how to use the telephoto feature and he said he couldn't figure out how to see the actual picture. The screen was turned off (I never take pictures that way...too awkward for me). I explained that the camera actually had a viewfinder and he could look through that. Oh.....

Oy vey!

Anyway, here's a picture from the booktalking. Not from the school mentioned above, but this one came out better. And why are the girls holding things in front of their faces? Read United Tates of America, by Paula Danziger, to find out! (Such the librarian!)

update....
This was originally post Thing# 5 1/2, but when I went back, I realized it actually was the beginning of what was needed for Thing #7. Related to my thoughts about the digital camera....
I guess since I was born in 1970, I'm what Jaye calls a Technology Immigrant, although I feel more like that first generation techie. But I think there are times that I feel like an old codger by saying "No! Give me the old-fashioned way.! Digital cameras are on the borderline of that--I accept some advancements, but not all. TiVo is another. I'm sure one of these days I'll get sucked in, but for right now, my feeling is that I watch way too much TV as it is. This would just enable the habit even more!

Thing #5: In which Stacey plays with Flickr

As many of you know, I love taking pictures. Especially of Sophie (aka photographer's magnet). I also love making READ posters of staff (and library guests). Since I am in the process of going from one branch to another, I decided to take a shortcut and use some of the many pictures I've already taken at the branch.

I created a Flickr badge using pictures of my family and Glenwood READ pictures. I tried to do one just of the READ pictures (with the tag mdlearning2), but was having trouble. Maybe later. Also check out the Star Wars guests. :)

Flickr seems fairly easy to use, but the whole online-community-seeing-your-pictures thing still makes me a little nervous. Especially since the majority of pictures are of Sophie and friends.

My dad introduced me to Google's Picasa and I'm really liking that. Especially for the photo organization aspect. It too, is easy to use. I'm going to try a combo of the two and see how that goes. They seem to work well together...all of the pictures I uploaded to Flickr, were taken from my Picasa account.

Thing #4: In which Stacey registers her blog

Yes, well, very exciting, I know. But I wanted to make sure that no one wondered where my #4 was. ;)

Hey, 2 weeks in 2 hours. Not bad!

Thing #2: In which Stacey muses on 7 1/2 Habits

Oops! I guess this is backwards. Oh well. I did watch the 7 1/2 Habits of Life Long Learners and found it very interesting. Probably the hardest thing for me is to begin with the end in mind. Very often I tend to just go along and jump from one interesting thing to another. I guess I will need to focus myself a bit. Truly the hardest part for me will be recording my thoughts in this blog. I know all about metacognition and such, but I was never one for diary writing and in some ways this is hard. But, if I think of it as talking to myself, I think it may be easier. Scary...!

It's hard to choose what will be easiest. I love to try new things and learn about new technologies. I very often teach myself how to do stuff and learn by trying (and messing up)! I'm enough of a perfectionist in these sorts of things to keep at it until I get it right, darn it!

I'm very excited about this (and the mp3 player). ;)

Thing #3: In which Stacey becomes a first-time blogger

Every time I see this "thing 1" or "thing 2" and so forth, I just picture the blue-haired, red-pajamaed troublemakers from Cat in the Hat. So now each time I complete a "thing", I'll just add another one to my mental picture. And now that image is stuck in your head, too!
Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!

Anywho, here it is, my very first blog. It will be interesting to see how this works out. For someone who talks as much as I do, I always find it interesting to discover that I'm not as anxious to write/type stuff out. But since I'm a good do-bee, I'll work to overcome it. Who knows, it may turn out that I type too much, too! ;)