Reflection

The 23 things was a great learning experience and I enjoyed every minute of it. My favorite parts about it were the social networks like Facebook and Twitter. I also enjoyed the Digg website and the Google docs. My least favorite were the Libworm and creating my own wiki. I had some difficulty but overall these things are just not for me. I am so glad that I got to participate in this exercise and am thrilled that I got to learn all of them. I will continue to use all of these and I may even give my least favorite a second try!

Developing 23 Things for my Library

Fortunately for me all the staff at my location participated in 23 so they are well equipped with these new skills. But I think it would be a good thing for the rest of our library system to learn these tools, although our library system already uses Wiki and Flickr. The programs learned in this series can benefit everyone who has learned and in turn benefit our library. In the future Twitter may be an option that we can use since everyone is going mobile. I found some great promotions on YouTube of our library and they may be helpful if really pushed. Most of the 23 things learned are all used by our patrons and for us to keep up with them then we must know the latest and greatest in up and coming technology. For example several patrons ask if our computer system keeps track of the books they have read, unfortunately it does not but after learning 23 I can suggest LibraryThing as a way for them to store and keep titles as well as learn new ones.

Podcasts

So I checked out a couple of podcasts, one was from Cornell University Library on the history of hip-hop and the other was from the County of Los Angeles Public Library addressing teen books old and new. Both were interesting and takes me back to the times when all people had were radios and they listened to broadcasts and stories. I think that podcasts may be for the older crowd (no offense) and people on the run, that like listen to stories. I'm interested in all subjects so I think having a variety of podcasts from which they can choose from would be good. I think podcasts would interest our patrons if the downloads are easy and the material is worthwhile.

YouTube

I must admit that I am a fan and user of YouTube. I usually look up videos of my favorite artists and some of the skits from Saturday Night Live, but never thought to look up the library. I found some interesting things about them however, like the library book cart drill team. I not really sure what they where trying to promote but I thought it was cute. Then I found quite a few things on the Fort Worth Library itself. They are good promotions for the library but they haven't been publicized very well. Check out the one I posted below. :)

Google Docs

I like google docs, it is just like Microsoft but free. And the best thing is you don't have to worry if document will open or not if your home computer isn't compatiable with your work computer. There's no disk or jump drive to tote around, all you have to do is log into google, it's fast and best of all it's FREE!

Wikis

Fortunately I am a user of wikipedia, however I don't use it frequently because some of the information is not correct and some of it is incomplete. For example my search today of So You Think You Can Dance winner Joshua Allen. It says he was born here in Fort Worth and that he played sports in high school, but that was all the background information that it gave. The rest of the information was about the show, who he partnered and what dances he did. I was looking for more on him as a person. As for creating my own wiki, that didn't go so well and I don't think I would try it again.

LibWorm

LibWorm is not for me. I feel like I was pretty specific with my searches, but I didn't always get the result I wanted or thought I would get. I typed in new postings under search-any word and got job postings. When I typed in Wedgwood Library under phrase search there were no matches, but when I put in Fort Worth Library I got to results. One was from the keynote speaker from our staff day saying how wonderful it was and the other was about our Central Library location unveiling their new gaming program, that was described as an undeniable hit.