Ah, I have come to the end of these 23 things, though I am most certainly not done exploring in general. I did learn quite a bit along the way despite the fact that I was already familiar with and a user of many of the things on the list. One thing that I did learn is that 23 things may have been a bit to tackle in an 8 week period given the complexity of some of these items, as well as just life getting in the way. We plan to continue this program next semester, but perhaps encourage participants to bite off smaller chunks. I would like to say thanks to everyone that participated, and encourage them to keep on going. The great thing about these discovery exercises is that you can jump around and explore where you are interested, and not necessarily in a linear fashion.

Some of my favorite things I'd have to say had to do with image sharing and manipulation, as well as podcasting. We hope to use podcasting a bit more on the library website. Our hope is that students will be able to access useful information from our site 24/7.

We plan to meet up today in the library to help participants with any issues that they encountered along the way, and encourage further exploration.

Thing #23.......Check.

I'm a big fan of eBooks and eAudiobooks. They offer instantaneous delivery of a title (if it's not already checked out) from within and outside your library 24/7. CSM has both varieties from a few different collections such as NetLibrary and Overdrive. The NetLibrary collection accessible from the CSM Library website offers mainly academic titles in text and audio format useful for writing college level research papers. However, if you feel the need for a popular title I go straight to the Overdrive (Digital Book Library from the eBooks page on the library site) collection. This collection is more useful when working from your own personal computer because you will have to download their platform. But once that is done, you have access to thousands of titles. One issue, however, is that these titles don't work with Apple devices. As a workaround, you can burn some titles to CD for more portability.

Other than using your library's resources for paid subscriptions (free to you) to eBooks and eAudiobooks, you can find free content within the public domain. Of course, this means that titles will have been written previous to 1923, so it's a good source for classic books. You might also find books operating under a Creative Commons license. One really good source for materials like this is at the Internet Archive.

Thing #22......chEcK!!!!!!

Podcasts, podcasts, oh how I love podcasts. To me they are convenient ways to get really useful or entertaining information when you need it, in audio format. You can listen to your podcasts at your desk, or take them to go with you on your mp3 player. I like to listen to the many great podcasts available on NPR. Podcasts are also great for educational purposes. While getting my MLIS at San Jose State, I took a few online courses, and a few of them used podcast technologies for the lecture portion of the class. From this exercise, I learned that podcasting is already in practice here at the College of San Mateo which is a really great thing. This means that any faculty wanting to use this technology for distance learning is already partway there. With IT support and a place to host podcasts, they merely have to create the podcasts (and it is easier than it seems). From the listed directories in this exercise, I suggest exploring the Educational Podcast Network for ideas or inspiration on creating your own podcasts, or The beginner's Guide to podcasts and podcasting.

Thing #21......oh, check.

Ah, here I am at Thing #20. This is one of the trickier ones because I can't actually post my video of choice because I am certain that it would be a copyright infringement. It's a scene from the film "Party Girl" in which Parker Posey, aspiring librarian, lashes out a library patron for reshelving a book in a random spot. It's a funny little bit (and not as mean-spirited as it sounds)from one of the funnier movies about librarians that I have seen. The point here is that a YouTube user edited this piece from a copyrighted movie and uploaded it to YouTube. Because I believe that this snippet was posted outside of copyright, it would be wrong of me to post it here.

I found another video titled "Building Academic Library 2.0", and I've embedded it into my page. Be warned that this video is over an hour long, but once you get past the first 15 minutes of "housekeeping" it has some great content worth viewing, as it talks about implementing new technologies (including distance) to serve faculty, staff and students at UC Berkeley. This might be a good model for any academic library to follow.



First, I love YouTube for its humorous videos, but have also used its content for instructional purposes in both my personal and professional life. I have been stumped and needed to figure out how to knit a specific stitch, and found it more useful to watch a YouTube video rather than try to follow along in a book. In my professional life, I use YouTube to find videos on library services in other communities. For instance, I've seen libraries create video snippets demonstrating how to access the library catalog, or snippets on how to differentiate between scholarly journal article and magazine articles. These types of vidoes can greatly help library communities to access important information 24/7, and in digestible bits. I would like to see this type of instruction implemented in the CSM Library website someday.

Thing #20.....CHECK!!!!!!

Hello again. I know you thought that maybe you'd heard enough from me today, but I'm working the late shift at the library and am using this time to "burn rubber" through some things on this list. I am so very excited to have gotten to the LibraryThing portion of this project because I sure do like LibraryThing. I alluded a bit to its usefulness in a previous posting (see thing #14 posting, but I'm also going to elaborate here). It's a great way for librarians and non-librarians alike to catalog what's on their bookshelf. I've taken a crack at it and cataloged a few of my books. I'll add the rest of my collection at a later date, but this will just give you a taste of my small collection....you see, i don't own many books because I use the public library for all my reading needs, and I do read a lot. i can't possibly afford to buy all the books I read, so I would love to give a big virtual hug to libraries all over the world right now. I love you, libraries. Did I happen to mention that I'm a librarian?

Oh, how I ramble......anywho, i was talking about LibraryThing and its wonderfulness. So, you can catalog your own collection of books and use your own tags when doing so. This is of the mindset that books are cataloged by users for users. I am most certainly not knocking cataloging by librarians (because did I mention also that i catalog?), it's just that all users are not always going to find materials cataloged via subject headings or via the way a librarian thinks. SF State Library found a great way to use the "collective" mind of LibraryThing users, and integrated this wonderful app into their catalog. Anything that SF State Library owns that has also been cataloged in LibraryThing is searchable via tags, or via the terminology of the LT masses, within the library catalog. Users can also modify their search using the tag clouds in the catalog record. Lookie here for more information on LT at SF State's J. Paul Leonard Library.

So, that's my take on LibraryThing. I went the extra step and placed the LT widget in my sidebar. Thing #19........check, please.

hello world. I'm writing to you from Zoho Writer. I usually choose Google's online productivity tools to create an online workspace for me and my colleagues. I can also make pages only accessible by me. Google apps have many great features, but I am focusing on Zoho since I have never used this app.

I am liking Zoho so far. It's just like working in a normal word doc. you can format and add pictures and tables and links and even and highlight...blah blah blah. You can also decide if you want your documents to be public or private, and there are a number of ways that you can share or format your docs (i.e. email, web page, pdf, doc file). You can also assign "read only" or "write" rights for collaboration purposes. No longer do you have to circulate one coffee stained copy of a document from person to person.

The real test of Zohos's powers is if this actually shows up as a blog posting. I'm going to use their publishing tools to go straight there. *So, obviously, if you're reading this, it worked. Thing #18....check check check.

*Okay, it didn't work when I tried to publish to this blog from Zoho, and I am thinking it's because this blog is technically a Blogger blog, but I post it to my own domain and is being blocked due to ftp rights. I was successful sending it to another of my blogs that is officially a blogger blog with a blogspot address, but I am not going to provide a link to that blog here because you probably don't want to know all about my battles with gophers in my backyard. So, technically it did work......and it was a super easy process.

Wikis are a lot easier to use than you might think. As I stated in my earlier post, you don't need any programming or html experience to create new pages. It also eliminates all that going back and forth with group emails, and I can always use a few less emails landing in my inbox. Wikis are easy to edit and customize. So, as part of this discovery exercise, I went to the CSM Learning 2.0 wiki and edited a page or two. It was easy peasy as my favorite English chef Jamie Oliver says. You oughta try it. All the kids are doing it.....

Thing #17.....CHECK!

Wikis! Wikis! Oh, how I like Wikis! In the library world, i find them to be a useful tool for completing a group project, or for disseminating information in an easy to edit and publishable format. Basically, it allows users in the group with little or no knowledge of publishing web pages to go DIY (i.e. post, upload, comment, and add new pages). A few of the wiki apps that I have used out there are pbWiki and wetpaint if you can get past the ads. However, there are a few wikis that offer special sites or deals for educators. It's worth researching to go ad-free, and to get more storage. I can envision how something like this might be useful in the classroom, as it can provide a way for faculty and students to interact virtually from one url.

In terms of services to library users, I like the St. Joseph County Public Library's use of a wiki to create Subject Guides. Their oh so wonderful librarians have compiled handy subject lists for their users. They even provide recommended books with links to their catalog making for a user-friendly experience. This is certainly something that we would like to implement at the CSM Library, well, one of many things. Thing #16....check.

Thing #15

The concept of Creative Commons is not new to me, particularly since I heard a lot of buzz about it at Internet Librarian 2007. I like the whole warm fuzzy feeling about the ability to share images and content. While I believe that stock photo companies have a right to make money off of the content they produce, I think it's hard to justify that expense to an already stressed library budget when you're trying to get a really great image for a promotional or outreach flyer. Creative Commons gives protections to the artist and/or creator, while also giving liberties (or limited rights to their works) to users that stay within the stated licensing agreement. So, I use Flickr's advanced search option to return only results that return only Creative Commons-licensed content (i.e. non-commercial purposes). For example, I just searched using CC restrictions on the keyword knitting, and this is one of the images I get back. I am posting, andlinking back to the creator. Thank you SewPixie for this image of a Blythe doll. I'm a big fan.

As for the Library 2.0 part of this exercise, I really enjoyed Michael Stephens' perspective on the new world of librarianship. I agree that libraries need to design their services around their users, and to make good and fast decisions. Libraries need to keep pace with their users technology and information needs. They (some, not all) are operating in a Web 2.0 world and we need to be able to meet them there. Ah, how I love technology. Thing #15.....check-a-rooni.