Thing #23---The End!!!

Well, I have finally completed all of my 23 Things exercises. All in all, it was a pretty positive experience. I did have a few problems with a few exercises, but the positive experiences outweighed the negatives. I can't say for sure whether I will keep up with all of the technology introduced in 23 Things. However, it certainly taught me about many of the technologies that are out there and that people are using on an everyday basis. I simply do not have the time for all of these kinds of technologies. But, continuing to use some of my favorites will be easy to do!

I especially liked Flickr, LibraryThing, Project Gutenberg, the web-based apps (very techie sounding :-) of Zoho and Google Docs. I do see Zoho and Google Docs being very useful to me. I also really liked the Flickr possibilities. As I said in my original blog post for Flickr---I now actually will have to buy a digital camera if I want to use this site for all of the creative and fun things one can do.

I would like to say that this was a very difficult several months at my branch to try to complete the entire 23 Things project. We were down several full-time staff members and finding time to even do some of the easiest exercises was very difficult. I worked on several of the more time-consuming activites at home on my own time because there just was not enough time to complete these at work---let alone concentrate on what needed to be done in the order some of the exercises needed to be done. I believe there could have been better directions for some of the exercises (and realize this was not HCPL's fault) because had you going back and forth trying to setup the free accounts, then searching, then posting to one account into another account, etc. I realize that for some this was not a problem whatsoever, but to the average person some directions could have been better.

I know I still have a floating blog post for the Sandbox 2.0 exercise. My blog name will not show up in the listing of Harford County Public Library's listings because this was one I just could not figure out.

All in all, I found this whole thing to be positive. I am glad I decided to stick with it all and complete everything. Thank you for the experience.

Thing #22

I chose to start with Project Gutenberg since I was not aware this site had downloadable audiobooks before this exercise. I did find several books I would want to download (favorite children's books from my childhood) and a collection of Christmas Stories by various authors. I decided to browse the listing of "human-read" e-audiobooks because I do not think I could enjoy listening to the "computer-read" e-audiobooks. I did not try to download any of the titles I found because it was a very busy time of day here at the branch and I was afraid it would really slow down the computer speed, etc.

Project Gutenberg is a wonderful free service/site for anyone who wants to find hard-to-find downloadable e-audiobooks or for anyone who just wants to browse what is available on the web.

Thing #21

Well, this whole exercise seemed to take quite a bit of time. I did get help from two staff members who have completed this exercise already. Once I completed and added my podcast to my Bloglines account, it made much more sense. I chose to add a podcast for Teen Librarians which will be very helpful, I'm sure, in the future.

Thing #20

I searched around on YouTube for a subject I know quite well. Since I seem to spend almost all of my free time outside of work either at swim practices or swim meets for both of my children, I thought I would search the subject of swim meets. I refined the search to "olympic swim meets" and came across the short video of "Coco the Wonder Dog" swimming in her backyard kiddie pool. I thought this was really cute and decided this would be the video clip to add to my bog post.


http://youtube.com/watch?v=Zw1_z5tTjZ8

Thing #19

I picked Zillow, a real estate site, because it has tons of information . I was familiar with Realtor.com before using Zillow.com. However, Zillow seems to have so much useful information. I liked just how exact you could get in your search. You could look for homes for sale by realtors, for-sale-by-owners, places to rent, etc. The information is very specific and very detailed. I can see this being quite useful for library patrons who are either thinking of moving to this area or who will be moving to another area and need to research housing prices and other information before deciding on a move. Really like this site!

Thing #18

I created a very simple document in Zoho and then posted it to my bog. However, when the blog post showed up in my blog it shows as "Untitled." (See blog post below)

Untitled

This is my introduction and test document to Zoho.  I like the fact that these web-based applications are available.  Not everyone has Microsoft Office installed on their personal pc's.  Many pc's come with Microsoft Works instead.  So, I think Zoho and Google Docs will be very useful.