20th Thing: The Final Thing

Well, I've done it; I've done it all! It was in turns fun, intriguing, frustrating, rewarding, time-consuming, but above all, educational.

There is stuff out there that I never dreamed existed. There are some things, like LibraryThing, the image generators, YouTube and Flickr that I'll no doubt use again and again. There are other things that I doubt will become a regular part of my life. Nonetheless, I am happy to have learned about each of them.

If you were a little timid about playing around on the internet and trying new things I hope that this project has emboldened you. So keep exploring! Continue to check out new applications. If a patron comes into your branch and mentions an application you're not familiar with -- check it out! And share what you learn with your co-workers and our patrons.

The web changes so quickly. No doubt we could repeat this project in another year and have 20 completely new things to explore. So let's try to take a little time each week to explore some new website or application.

19th Thing -- Podcasts

Well, I think I'm more of a visual person. I do like music and enjoy listening to it but I'd rather attend a live concert than listen to a CD or an mp3. This may explain why I love to read but don't care for talking books and why I only listen to the radio while I'm doing something else. It may also explain why podcasting just isn't my cup of tea. But I did explore some podcasts and I even subscribed to 2 cruise-related podcasts. I had them sent to my Google Reader account rather than my Bloglines account.

There are lots of library-related blogs and I'm sure that many of them are quite useful. At this stage of things what I really wanted was a library humor blog. I haven't found one but I may check back from time to time.

I can't imagine ever wanting to publish a podcast of my own. I don't have anything to talk about that I think more than a handful of people would be interested in hearing. But that limitation has not stopped thousands of other podcasters and bloggers.

18th Thing -- Web 2.0 Tools

There are such a lot of nifty web 2.0 tools that it will consume as much time as you choose to devote to them. As a result, it took me many long minutes to settle on just one to write about. I limited my exploration to the award winners and, after dabbling with the travel sites, decided to write about Zillow. Zillow is a tool that provides a great deal of information on real estate. You can enter the address of a property and very quickly retrieve - among much other information - the estimated value of the property, the number of square feet, how much property tax was paid and - in most cases - photos of the property. I know that all of this information is public record but it is still amazing how much information can be gathered in a very short time. In addition to seeing how my house compared to others in my neighborhood I also looked at the listings for the other houses that I've lived in. Zillow is a useful - and fun - tool.

17th Thing -- Online Productivity Tools -- Google Docs

I was introduced to Google Docs at a Library of Virginia workshop a couple of years ago. Although it's a great collaborative tool I hadn't used it regularly since that workshop. Now Bill and I are preparing a workshop for our Managers and Librarians. Any time you need to learn something well enough to teach it to others you invariably learn about the idiosyncrasies of the thing. Google Docs does have some but the usefulness of the product outweighs them.

Although I've created this post in Google Docs and uploaded it to my blog I'm not really sure what the advantage is in doing it this way. It seems easier to go directly to the blog and create my post there.

The ability to work in real time with others in different locations and to maintain and easily view all revisions to a document is the real benefit of Google Docs. When several people are working together on the same document it can be very useful to know who made which revisions and be able to compare versions and, if necessary, go back to an older version of a document.

I'm looking forward to having our Managers and Librarians adopt Google Docs as a useful tool for the collaborative work that we all do.

16th Thing -- Wikis

There has been some really interesting use of wikis. I particularly like the SJCPL subject guides wiki. The PRL R&T department has recently been talking about pathfinders but we're finding the traditional printed format much too limiting. A PRL pathfinder wiki is very likely in our future! Near future or distant future remains to be seen.

The Best Library Practices and the Library Instruction wikis are also places that I'm sure I'll be visiting frequently. I'm always looking for ways to make our training better and these sites seem very useful, I'd like to think that I might one day have something helpful to add to the wikis.