Thing 23: One Last Thing - Evaluation & Final Thoughts

Overall, I'm extremely pleased with 23 Things On a Stick - both as a promoter and as a participant. A LOT of Minnesota librarians participated and we had interest from people all over the country - and all over the world! Obviously there is a need out there that 23 Things helped to fill.

My favorite Things? Probably Google Docs and del.icio.us. I regularly use three different computers (two for work and one for personal use) and being able to keep track of documents and links from all three is proving to be a real bonus. I think wikis are also very useful, but don't have much occasion to use them at this point.

What would I change about this program? I would try to have more people involved in commenting on participants' blogs. I think there's a real thrill in knowing someone has read what you've written, even if it's just a one-line "Hey, that was interesting." Hopefully if/when we (the multitypes) do 23 More Things we'll build in some method of making sure there's more commenting, whether that means volunteer readers or some way of encouraging people to read and comment on each others' blogs or...

Congratulations to all of us who've finished! And to those who haven't, keep plugging along - it's worth it!

Thing 22: Staying Current

The first thing I happened to read after Thing 22 encourages me to keep blogging is this post by Scott McLeod. It seems discouraging, but it's so true - there are zillions of blogs out there, and most of them aren't read by anyone but the owner or, if you're lucky, a few friends or co-workers. But blogging can be a great way to explore ideas and reflect on what you've learned, or just to share your opinion about whatever you want. If you're lucky, someone (or multiple someones) will be interested. Maybe you'll even make a new friend.

As for keeping up, I took a quick look at LifeHacker, and it looks like there might be some interesting items there. I also keep up a bit through American Libraries Direct, the emailed weekly newsletter from ALA. There are usually a few tech-tips in there and I post links on Metronet's homepage. I may not use a lot of these 2.0 applications in my work or personal life, but I do believe that it's important to be aware of them, so I will try to keep up at least with the "biggies."

Thing 21: Other Social Networks

As crabby as I may have sounded in Thing 20, I don't hate all social networking sites. I didn't join the 23 Things ning because I've already joined the MEMO Tech-SID ning as part of my job as the administrative assistant for MEMO. I like a lot of the features - forums, calendar, and the fact that you can use RSS to keep track of activity. And - as with anything - it gets even more functional if you pay for it. In fact, MEMO is currently exploring ning as an alternative for web hosting, partly for the forums so that we don't lose all the valuable information that gets lost via the email lists.

Anyway... the one social networking site I do use, at least somewhat, is Ravelry, which is for fiber addicts (knitters, crocheters, spinners, etc). I'm fairly new to the site so I haven't had time to play with it much, but some of the features are being able to add and track your current and future projects, show others your stash, find and share patterns, etc. There are also the traditional site features - forums, favorites, friends, and so on. If you have an interest - your location, your preferred yarn, your age group, whatever you can think of - there is a group for you (or you can create one). I know there are some other knitters doing 23 Things, so if you're interested you should sign up - but be aware that there is a waiting list and they add people a bunch at a time. (Probably smart, so they don't crash the server or otherwise create havoc.) For me, I think the most appealing feature is being able to track my projects. I made and gave away a lot of quilts over the years and didn't keep any record or picture of most of them, so I'm trying to do better with knitting. Other than that... eh. But we'll see - if there are 23 More Things On a Stick someday maybe I'll be raving about Ravelry (or some other social networking site).

Thing 20: Facebook and MySpace

First of all I have to say to Dakota County Library: Your MySpace page? OUCH. The big "Dakota" wallpaper, the red background, the yellow text... wow. I think it's great that you're out there, but... yikes.

That being said, I like how the libraries are using MySpace to highlight new books, authors, events, and so on. The Denver teen site is really well done and appears to be very active. I also liked Hennepin County and St. Paul Public Library's sites - lots going on.

I've also noticed that - of course - people have discovered that they can use these sites - as well as blogs - to advertise. I don't know if they were invited or not, but I did see quite a few "Hey, buy my new book at amazon.com" type posts on the library sites. And did anyone else notice the comment on the Thing 20 blog from "Fortune Park Hotels, Ltd"? Anything to make a buck.

I'm not personally very interested in having my own page on either MySpace or Facebook. Maybe I'm a fuddy-duddy, I don't know. I check in with my niece's MySpace page every couple weeks, but that's about it. I have taken a stab or two at seeking out old friends with whom I've lost touch, but without much luck. Maybe later, when it's not "cool" anymore. ;)

Thing 19: Explore Podcasts

Wow, this Thing turned into a lot more work than I expected! Finding a podcast I wanted to listen to was the first step, probably made all the more complicated by the fact that I'm at work so I try to keep my music (or whatever) quiet so as not to bother other people. Listening to music at a really low volume doesn't bother me, but when it's someone speaking and I can't make out what they're saying I get frustrated. But I settled on something from MPR since it was just a test. I downloaded the podcast, only to discover that Windows Media Player wouldn't play it, even though mp3 is supposed to be a supported file format. (Was I surprised? Not really.) After some investigation I decided to download Winamp, which is a long-time favorite MP3 player I've used before. Voila - it worked like a charm and the podcast started playing without a hitch. Unfortunately I wasn't interested enough to listen, so I moved on.

Next I tried podcast.com. Since I prefer to listen to music at work, I decided to see what kind of podcasts I could find under "music." After some browsing I landed on "Relaxation Music for Sleep, Stress and Anxiety Relief from Enhanced Healing." I decided to try "Relaxing Ocean" or some such title. I clicked on "play now" and, sure enough, I was soon awash (pardon the pun) in the sounds of ocean waves and new-agey music. The problem was, I couldn't figure out where the control was to turn it OFF. Turns out the control shows up in a small window in the upper right-hand corner of the browser window - of the original window, not the one where you click on "play now." And it blends in with the ads so well that by the time I figured it out - with my boss standing behind me teasing me about listening to sleep music at work - I was so irritated that even the best stress-relieving podcast wasn't going to help me. Talk about poor web design - and I pride myself on being pretty quick to see things like that. A real novice user would have been doomed to listen to ocean waves forever!!

That being said, I do think that podcasts are pretty interesting and definitely merit some more investigation. For now, though, I'm happy with good ol' Napster keeping me company while I work.

In the meantime, here's an interesting take on podcasts. (I admit, I just skimmed it, but thought the writer made some good points.)

Thing 18: Discover YouTube

Ahh, YouTube, how do I love thee? Another one of those wonderful sites where, if you're willing to wade through a lot of crap, there are some true gems. I've found YouTube to be an excellent place to find those 80's music videos I grew up on, lots of humor, and quite a bit of instructional info. Two of my favorites are the "Simon's Cat" videos. If you like cats, you'll probably laugh. If you HAVE cats, you'll be in hysterics. (At least I was.) The first is "Cat Man Do," and the second is "Let Me In!"

Thing 17: ELM Productivity Tools

I think ELM is a wonderful resource for Minnesotans, but I do think it's rather daunting for the average user to get to the information they want without some expert help. I've been working around librarians for a lot of years now, but apparently the skills haven't sunk in by osmosis, as I still find myself struggling with the databases. I took a few minutes this morning and did a couple searches: one for "World of Warcraft," and the other for "knitting patterns." I found some success with each search, although I was frustrated that the knitting patterns only had a notation of "Photo (color)" without the actual photo. Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. Then again, I don't think the databases are best used for searching out knitting patterns. But the next time I need to do research on a purchase or I'm just looking for some news about a particular topic, I'd certainly give ELM another try.

I do love that we now have IP authentication so that we don't have to bother with login information anymore - yay!! And in the end, maybe the degree of difficulty for the average user to search ELM is an opportunity to highlight the value of our expert searchers. Perhaps next year for lobbying efforts we should conduct interviews with happy patrons who've successfully found the information they needed with the help of a librarian!