Thing 23: Reflection

It has been some journey! Many times I felt frustrated and others I thought I couldn't go on.

The best compliment came when a young and computer savvy coworker asked me something about Wiki. I couldn't believe my ears! he was really asking me something and I was able to show him the little I knew!

Some of the Things were really of no use for me personally: like Facebook , Ning and Twitter (I have no plans to keep track of them) and naturally I would never consider having a personal YouTube account but said that... I think we can make good use of YouTube and Twitter at the library, if only we can get approval to have a direct link on our website. I would love to see a YouTube video showcasing our library and branches and some of the great programs we offer. We can also do a virtual tour of the Central library to show patrons where are the Large Print books, the Spanish section, the Teen Center, the Youth Library, Genealogy, Media, etc. Many patrons would appreciate that.

I am sure many patrons will appreciate also the Librarything site: they can organize their private libraries or the books they have already read, find other people with similar reading interests, read some book reviews and learn what is new and get suggestions based on their book preferences. We could advertise it as an RSS feeder, having a link to the video they can watch and learn how to use the site.

I loved the Flickr Mashups and Image Generators for the many possibilities to personalize your images and showcase photographs. Perhaps we can use it also to show attendance to the library events, special presentations and classes and why not?, we can even advertise our services using Flickr.

Delicious is certainly a delicious site to store all my favorite websites. Now I use it very often since I don't want to try to remember on which PC I store a particular site of interest. At the library I have 5 different PCs from where to work and, you guess it right, I don't have all my favorites on all of them! With Delicious I can just go there and find what I am looking for. It could be also very helpful for our patrons. We just need to have a link with instructions on how to use it on the library's website.

Instant Messaging... is so common now that I am pretty sure everyone doing the 23 Things has done it before. I like it better that talking by phone to receive instructions on how to fix my computer!

Google Docs, this was enlightening for me. I found it very useful and easy to use and I am sure our patrons will love it, provided we show them how to use it. We can add some computer classes on how to use several of the 23 Things, only if we can add hours to the day and staff to our library.

Thanks for offering this opportunity.
I truly learned many Things and some more about myself!

Thing 22: Developing your own 23 Things for your library

How to adapt this program to my library?

Well, I know for sure that several of my coworkers are participating in the program but not all of them. It would be great if all the library staff could be able to take it. In some cases some staff members are pretty knowledgeable and would only need to learn some of the Things they haven't used.

Since not all the library staff have work stations with PCs and access to Internet I don't think it would be feasible to make it mandatory (Also, many of us do not have a computer at home). I know for sure that many of my colleagues would love to steal some time from their daily duties to browse at least some of the Things but, they simply have too many chores to complete (we are short staffed at the library).

I know there are also other gadgets that we should know how to use like the famous and popular iPods or MP3-players. Knowing how to use them could be handy at the library since we have audio books that can be downloaded to such devices and patrons that request help but, for example, I do not own neither an iPod or an MP3-player and I know many coworkers that can't afford to buy one neither.

Our library has been rotating a Kindle reader and that is wonderful because not everyone can afford to buy one in order to learn how to use it. Kudos for my library for thinking about it! Hopefully very soon I will have the opportunity to try it.

Thing 21: Podcasts

This is another example of a Thing that can be very attractive for some people but not exactly for me. The thing is I do not own an iPod nor an MP3-player and do not plan to acquire one soon. Maybe a should!

I have to admit that the first two podcasts I "listened" to I was expecting to also see images or a video... Yeah... then I got it! This was just for listening.

First I visited the City of Los Angeles Public Library Teen Podcast and I listened to an interview and also learned about the Teen services. The sound seems to be good quality but from my computer I can only barely hear what they were saying. The problem was not the podcast but that I don't have earphones to better listen or that from my PCs the highest volume is not enough for me. This, I am afraid, applied to all the podcasts I tried.

Also I visited the Education Podcast Network in the hope to listen to some educational podcasts but whenever I tried to listen to any of them I received the following Note: "Unable to open RSS feed".

Then I tried a podcast about Frank Sinatra called "The Frank Truth". Since I don't like Frankie well I moved out pretty soon.

One that I found interesting was the "Free talk live", a radio show where they were talking about the profiling from some Border Patrol agents towards people with Hispanic names. They talked about the case of a Carlos González guy who frankly has been constantly persecuted by the Border Patrol agents in Laredo, Texas.

I also tried something called "Great Smokey Mountains" where a professor teaches people how to make clicking sounds like African Bushmen but again... a Note appeared telling me: "Quick Time is missing software required to perform this operation. Unfortunately not available on Quick Time server".

Could a Podcast work on a library? Perhaps. There seems to be many patrons listening to something on their iPods or MP3-players so why not!

Thing 20: YouTube

Oh, my! I never thought I would be raving about the YouTube possibilities. This experience has been enlightening, I have been forced to visit YouTube and watch some videos, library related videos, and now I want my library to do something about it. I wish we could have a link in our web page directing patrons to the Library's own video at YouTube.
I have seen some great examples of attracting videos that our patrons might love to see about their own Fort Worth Library:

The video "Discover a new world at Columbus, Ohio" is a wonderful example to show Columbus, Ohio citizens know all the resources the library has to offer like Story times, ILL, High Speed Internet, quantity of books own by the library, meeting rooms, helpful staff and much more!

There was another interesting video called "Ray of Light" by the St. Joseph County Public Library version, in which you can see from before the sun arises what is going on at the library: the guard does his rounds, opens the door, staff arrives and start pulling off the books and doing all sorts of activities the people never see when they visit the library.

There is one video for the New York Library where different recognized personalities talk about their love for libraries and what a library can do to help other people in these dire times. The "Shout it Out for Your Library" video ask for public support in the voices of Bette Middler, Ellen Burstyn, Nora Ephron, Jeff Daniels, Mario Batalli, Amy Tan and her little Yorkie and many more.

There are also videos to explain the TexShare Databases 24/7 services available for Public Libraries. Even the City of Plano, Texas has one advertising their library services. Surely we at the Fort Worth Library can have one too, can't we?

Thing 19: Google Docs

Again, there is nothing mentioned about writing our comments on this Thing.
It is easy to work with Google Docs, apparently, because I wasn't able to find the Share with others option from the drop down menu after clicking on the Share button.

Hopefully someone will understand what am I saying and help me with it. Is anyone revising my work? I haven't received any comments and a fellow coworker says he receives comments anytime he posts something new!

Thing 18: Wikis

Ok. It doesn't say to post anything about Wikis but I decided to at least made some brief comments.
I like working with Wiki but I couldn't find the way to change the title of one of my sub-pages.
I was able to upload some photographs but not others because of size and, of course, I don't know how to change the size of the photos so you will find that I don't have enough photos in one of the sub-pages.
It has been fun working with this Thing!

Thing 17: LibWorm

I like the idea of not having to open accounts. So far I have so many (I can't use the same user name on all of them--it beats me!!!) that even though I wrote almost all the user names and passwords I still have some problems! I totally forgot the password for my e-mail account and had to change it. Now I have it on paper. I guess I can't rely on my memory anymore!

Using the name of my library I found many entries... the last one from April 29 of this year but many are very old.

It also has older job postings for positions that have been already fulfilled and since we are on a freeze hiring I don't think we will be seeing anymore of those postings (at least for the time being...hopefully!).

I tried the Feed Categories... have you read the Art Librarian? All I can say is that I don't find it "interesting" but "boring". Please go and read it and tell me what you think. This is similar to Twitter but with more words.

By Subject Categories is more interesting since you can choose which subject you are interested in and read the latest news. Other thing I like is that you can save some articles to read them later, if you happen to find the time to do it, and save your own comments too!

By Tags is even better. I found an article about Texas Librarians raising money for damaged libraries by showing off their tattoos in a calendar! The comments are fun to read.

Could it be useful at our libraries?... perhaps, but in these times when libraries are short of staff and overloaded with work one has to ponder: Does librarians have enough time for all these Things?

Thing 16: LibraryThing

How to start explaining my tribulations? I thought I was doing fairly well, with some ups and downs, but I never thought LibraryThing would be the one to break me.

I have been very, very frustrated because I simply haven't been able to find the ThingLang, or MarcThing or ISBN check. I have tried looking on "search" with obviously no results.

On the positive side I was able to start cataloguing some of my favorite books but the process is slow since it doesn't recognize my lists: I for sure never wrote the ISBN numbers or saved an image of the cover and therefore I have to be doing it one by one (searching by author and selecting the books I have read from them). I would like to know if is possible to select several book to be added with just one key stroke. I haven't been able to find that either.

I also like the book recommendations and the possibility to write a review for new books.

I quit writing my advance on the 23 Things because of my frustration... now I am just going to continue with the next one hoping it won't be as frustrating as this one.

Thing 15: Digg

I went to Digg and digged and after lots of browsing came to the conclusion that it is not useful for me personally. For that case a prefer to read the online newspapers instead of relying on other peoples idea of which type of information is more viewed.

As for the use of this Thing at my library... perhaps patrons can rate the quality of the workshops or events they attend at their libraries?

I need to kepp asking my eternal question: Who has the time to keep up with so many Things and still be able to work and have a personal life?

Thing 14: Delicious

This Delicious site is really delicious! I like the idea of having all my bookmarks accessible from one site instead of trying to copy or add bookmarks to all the PCs I use at work. I just added 4 bookmarks but I will adding and organizing the tons of sites I have added as favorites in several years. I imagine that during the process I will be able to delete some and find better tags to locate others.

The video was very informative and after a little glitch on trying to remember my password (I have so many different log-ins and passwords that I will need to carry a bracelet with all of them or tattoo them on my arm!) I was able to start saving bookmarks.

You can see my four bookmarks here.

Thing 13: Tagging

Tagging... my stuff, what I love, 23 Library Things, North Texas 23, by date, by year, by name or nickname, you name it! You can tagg it anyway you want. Will I be able to remember how I tagged it? THAT is the question.

I think it would be great to look up for books by tagging! The way it is now is hard for our patrons to browse on our catalogue so if our system can support tagging, let's do it! But I have no idea how hard that would be to add this option.

In Flickr and Blogspot is very easy to add tags and since you can use more than one...chances are you might remember at least one of them and plus you give other people more chances to find your information (if that is what you want).

Thing 12: Twitter

It is sooooo good that by signing for the 23 Things I am being forced to try lots of new things, including Twitter because otherwise I would have never made up time to sign into it. Now that I am in... my user name is MiniMati... I don't think I will be using it a lot. The more I am into these Things the more I am convinced that in order to keep up with them is by not working and being devoted to the hand held device to answer or post comments.

Not for me! As for the Library... I am not so sure either. The idea would be to Twitter patrons about the library's activities? What books or movies are new? or perhaps to let them know their books, CDs or movies are waiting for them? I don't think the majority of our patrons taking out books has a twitter account yet and as for the new generation... they are not checking out books. Uhh ho, I forgot, they are checking movies and we can notify them by twitter!

Every time I watch the news on TV they mention twitter, and of course I can't forget that Ashton and Demi twitter a lot and everyone follows them (well not me!).

Thing 11: Instant Messaging

I choose AIM Express (AOL) for Instant Messaging (no need to download anything, hurrah!)
My screen name is Minimati1 so, please feel free to contact me whenever you have some spare time. I guess the idea is to say hi and try the site.

I think that Instant Messaging is one of the easiest things since, at least for me, I have used it before, not only when the Library offered the service of answering questions via Instant Messaging (forgot the name!) but also to request help from certain websites.

I don't know how useful would be at the Library unless we have the option to answer questions from patrons that way. The issue, again, would be if the Libraries will have the resources to offer this kind of service. When libraries are short on staff it is hard to add a service that requires "INSTANT" access/response because we are not only helping patrons at the library but also answering phones as well.

Thing 10: Ning

I watched the video tutorial and found it very easy to navigate trough the Ning without having to open an account, for which I was very pleased, since I prefer to remain private.

I browsed for libraries around the world, vegetarian groups and communities, animal welfare groups, etc. I went, as suggested, to the video section for the ALA site but was unable to watch the video because...well, my library computer doesn't allow me to.

It was an interesting experience but I will leave it as that. I don't know that at this moment my library has the resources to devote someone to keep up with the Library's Ning site since we haven't yet a Facebook page either. Perhaps, in the future, we will be able to 'connect' with patrons through these mediums and attract a younger generation to the library's activities. Of course I can see posting tutorials on how to navigate through these sites as opposed to offering special courses for each one of them (with the shortage of staff and resources libraries can't afford much these days and have to be resourceful).

Thing 9: More Facebook

I went and found friends. It seems many of them have a Facebook account. I made sure to let them know I won't be contacting them a lot through Facebook since, let's face it, I simply don't have the time to check regular e-mails plus Facebook.

I also became a fan of a group called "IDA - In defense of animals" and learnt more abhorrent (or should I just say unethical?) acts done to defenseless animals. I can't process the horrors committed to cats and dogs in the name of better taste and virility.

And finally, yes, I did join tree groups: "Stop the Seal Killers", "Animal Welfare" and "VEDA - Volunteers in defense of animals".

Joining Facebook has been a bit traumatic for me. I am a private person and although I tried to set up my privacy configuration to the minimum I found out that no matter how much you try -- by just sending an e-mail-- Facebook somehow is able to trace the names and offer them as your possible friends. Then some of your friends write incessantly and suddenly you have tons of comments to read.
It has been an experience... one I don't know I will be able to keep up with!

I guess now I will be able to answer some questions regarding Facebook and hopefully help some of our library's patrons.

Thing 8: Facebook

Up until now I had enjoyed all the things, a little reluctant at the beginning but as I got a bit of confidence then I had a very good time working with them.
I opened a Facebook account while on vacation on my aunt's PC. Although it is very easy to open an account I don't like the idea of everyone peering into my life, or portions of it. I am very private and can't understand people wanting to share personal information, and photographs!, through the web. Since I forgot my password and which e-mail account I used now I have to retrace my steps and see if I can do something to recover it in order to continue with the next Thing! or open a new account ...

I will try Thing 9 as long as I can be as anonymous as possible but if not... I am in a predicament.

Thing 7... RSS Feeds

I am not sure what to comment for this Thing 7. I browsed all the suggested feeds and added some of those, and others, to my Google Reader.
Watching the video on this activity gave me the idea to create a video, not very complicated, to offer some 'tutorials' to our Library patrons: they could learn how to use, for instance, Power Point. At our library we do offer computer classes in both English and Spanish but with the shortage on staff and service hours we can't offer all the classes that patrons all always requesting. Naturally this project, the creation of a video to teach Power Point or how to blogg, twitter, etc., will require preparation and extra time to finalize but I am very excited at the possibility of adding something like this to our Library's website.

Thing 6... Blog Readers

The process of using an aggregator, in this case Google Reader, certainly wasn't difficult. I was able to make a couple of folders and insert several blogs on each folder and renamed them. What I was expecting is something different: I thought I was going to see the information in the same type of format I see it while going to the direct source, for example The New York Times website. I guess I will need some time to get used to the layout.
On the other hand I keep thinking how time consuming these "Things" are. I have to admit that after the initial frustration while getting used to the "Things" I have enjoyed working with them (so far!). Whenever I have some little time to expand on the "Things" I end up spending much more time than the initially thought and that keeps me away from some other projects. Now I can see why people (youngsters) never seem to have enough time in YouTube, My Space, or while twittering or blogging.
How to use them in libraries? I guess libraries would loved to be in their patron's 'subscriptions', provided we offer up-to-date information on a regular basis (which brings me to the staff that undoubtedly would have to be assigned that duty).

Thing 5...Image Generators

It took me forever to find some "image generator" I could work with. It is fun to be able to add text to a photo or to convert the photo into something else, it takes time though and also patience. It would be great to have lots of free time to discover much more than 23 things but with the way things are right now I can just browse a bit and hope I will remember the basics for the next time I have to use the 'skill'.

There are some very 'cool' image generators that I haven't been able to work with until some programs can be downloaded to my work computer.

... as you can see now I can "generate" some images and loved doing it. The problem I see is that there is not enough time to play with them! As to how to apply these generators to library life, hmmm... adding text to images posted in blogs making them even more fun? the question again is: Who will have the patience and time to do it, perhaps in detriment of other activities, reports, workshops, classes, etc?

Thing 4...More Flickr

After visiting several library websites that are using Flickr I can see it could be fun and informative for the patrons to see which activities had been "posted" by the library and look for their photos or the different events and see how many attended or which programs were on. But... I think it will take a lot of time and dedication to keep the library's page updated and I am not sure who will be assigned that task or if any staff member can post their own programs and images. Does the library will require permission from patrons to post their photographs?

Also, I have to admit that I have tried several of the "image generators" with very frustrating results. Some image generators are hard to figure out, at least for me, and many of our staff computers do not have some of the programs required (Java, Flash 8, etc.), therefore I am unable to finish some projects. I am stressing out a lot with this assignment. I feel that it should be easier for me to figure it out but... no! that is not true in my case.

Thing 3, Flicker

Well... if I did it correctly it was easy to upload photographs: We will see when I post them with a link.

Hopefully you will let me know if I got it wrong!.

I think using Flicker is fun but you can spend so much time browsing that I find it time consuming. Once in a while will be fun to check on friends images but I don't see a point on using it continuously. I am not sure how to use in my library either: Would the idea is to share information via images with patrons? Like let them know how it went the storytime and who participated? Would there be interest from our patrons to look at it? I can see the kids parents, and perhaps the school principal/library managers and teachers/librarians, wanting to see their children's/patrons photos while listening to the storyteller but beyond that I am not sure at all. Perhaps I am not getting it?

If you want to see the images from the 2008 Booker's Alley segment for the Hispanic Heritage Month, please visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/38545060@N03/show/

About North Texas 23... Thing 2

Well... this will be my second post.

As all the Fort Worth Library staff received an e-mail encouraging us to explore the Web 2.0 tools and participate in the North Texas 23 things while we work on them... I am here doing my little bit.

Before I read the suggested articles on the Thing 2 : Learning about Learning 2.0 I knew about Web 2.0 but never had enough time to follow up with the program. This time I will try harder although time is always an issue at my Unit (and I imagine at everyone's workplace too)

Since it is becoming more relevant and urgent to know about new technologies, hoping to attract new and younger patrons --or not so younger but technology savvy--, we also must be able to answer their questions. Would that mean we need to be experts on every new technology? It seems daunting to me. At the library I work at, the majority of patrons using computers fall in two categories (more or less): the ones that know how to use the PCs, including My Space, Twitter, etc., and the ones that have no idea how to send an e-mail, get confused with web addresses and e-mail accounts and need lots of one-on-one help that we, frankly, can't give them since there is not enough staff to help the rest of the patrons.

...will be continued at a later time

New family member

Just a week ago our baby Doberman, Ulli, arrived home. She is a precious 3 months old oversized black/rust Dobie. It has been challenging because we also have three more beautiful dogs (Min Pin, Dachshund and Shih Tzu) and two gorgeous cats that for the moment are having trouble accepting 'little long legs' Ulli's playing antics.