Conclusion

I've always heard about all these new technologies and even have seen them in the corners of different websites. Now understanding what they are and being able to use them is so exciting. My favorite one is Del.icio.us. Now I can view all the favorites I make from any computer. This whole program was useful for me in that I can learn new technologies that I need to know at my own pace going step by step. What surprised me was that they were not as complicated as I thought and by following the instructions I was successful in everything I learned. The only thing that could have been done differently would be to give the process more time. Along with all my other duties I had at work, it was hard to give this project as much attention to detail as I would have wanted. I felt rushed to quickly get it done. I would have liked to have had a month to play with each new concept so that I could fit it in when I had time.

Digital Media Collection

I listened to Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders. The British male's voice made it more interesting to listen to. Following along to to see who or what Christie will use for the next letter of the alphabet makes the story even more interesting to listen to.

Podcasts

Looking at Postcast Alley and typing in French, I found tons of podcasts to learn and listen to French. What a wonderful discovery. This can be so helpful not only for myself but also to recommend to patrons who are looking for more language learning audio.

YouTube

There was a Spanish soap opera I used to love to watch but it ended several years ago. I typed in the name of the soap "El Amor no tiene Precio" and was able to see some of the best scenes from that soap. It brought back memories.

Web 2.0 tools

Although there are a great number of interesting sites and tools to use, I found the indexing of other people's documents difficult to access. The variety of formats, backrounds and tools that one could use to create documents and power point presentations gives people room to be creative.

Zoho Writer

Now I can type up a document on any computer and edit it from any computer. I see a lot of possibilities with that. There's a lot of features on Zoho and they're easy to use.

PBCLS Wiki

I like how easy it is to add anything to the pbcls wiki. Seeing what others submitted is very interesting. Being able to link directly to a website for more information is useful.

Wiki

The SJCPL subject guides page was interesting but it needs more subheadings. I stumbled upon a language learning site called Mango languages under the subject of education. Under the initial page, the subject education could have had additional categories for education as well as a separate link to language learning.

The library success wiki has a lot of interesting stuff that I'd like to eventually read.

I can see where having a wiki for an ALA conference would be useful since often the times and places of meetings change and new information can be updated at any time.

I absolutely love the Bull Run Library wiki. One thing that I think is great is you can search a book in Worldcat. It'll tell you what library has it as well as give you the option to buy the book through Amazon. The library will get a certain percent of Amazon's profit. It would be good for our library system to do this. Also I love the links on the side. One that I see as useful as a librarian is the dewey decimal chart. Often I have patrons who don't understand the numbering system for non-fiction books. This would be helpful in showing them how the system works. Having a library website as a wiki is a good idea because you can get everyone to contribute and update the site rather than relying on the webmaster to do all the work.

Technorati

A lot of people are blogging about PBCLS especially promoting the mousing tutorial. I experimented with searching a variety of different subjects and was fascinated by the number of blogs that go into great detail about topics that interest me.

Del.icio.us

I have different favorites on every computer I use. It would be nice to have the same group of favorites to use even on other computers I might come across. This could be a wonderful tool for librarians to add useful sites to, using logical categories and be able to access these sites quickly and frequently.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 opens the door to do so much more with libraries. As one of the articles mentioned, we need to bring the library to users wherever they may be, accessing computers rather than expecting them to come to us. This means having more and more of our resources available online. But libraries will always be a special place to go to and libraries can be so much more. I liked what one article said: "We will need libraries as mind gyms; libraries as idea labs; libraries as art salons."

Webfeat

I found a shortcut to get information from ReferenceUSA when I typed in my hometown's high school. From there I got additional links to schools nearby.

LibraryThing

A sampling of my language learning collection. This could be a good tool to help recommend books to others. http://www.librarything.com/catalog/lgbks

Image Generators

Never again, after reading this book, will I ever write 'West Palm Beach' instead of Greenacres on the return address. The things the library could do with the image generators are incredible. We could make some really interesting flyers.

RSS

Learning about RSS was a great experience. Not only do I have a bunch of interesting things to read from one location but I also discovered many new sites with the search tool.

Life before the Internet

When I look back to when I was in school and didn't have the Internet and all the wonderful things you can do now with the Internet, I find that finding information and learning is so much more fun.

Middelfart Bibliotek

Middelfart Bibliotek
Originally uploaded by Fasan Foto Inc.

Wouldn't it be cool to have one of these in our library?

Blogging in the libraries

It would be nice to post reference questions that are stumpers. Maybe another librarian reading the post might know the answer or be intrigued to find out the answer.

Knowing what other librarians are reading would be interesting.

If students are looking for a certain topic and a librarian came up with a bibliography of books for that topic, it would be useful to share bibliographies with other libraries in our system.

Online Training

I think independent learning is great and hope to see more online training related to our work in libraries.

My goal is to learn the technologies presented well enough to recommend them to others and be able to get people started on them.

I like being able to work on the 23 things at my own pace yet have a deadline to finish a certain amount every week.

I love challenges. My first challenge was coming up with a blog name. I wish there were more tools and ideas for making a name. I didn't like the names the different name sites gave.

The last habit is the best. The more fun learning something is, the more one wants to do it. If learning something is boring, too difficult or frustrating, then I do it just to do it because I have to but I resent doing it and it won't be learned well.

I think the most difficult part will be podcasting since it'll need extra equipment.