Method #12 Reflection and Evaluation

*First off, I enjoy the "in plain English" videos. Lee Lefever does a great job. Maybe my favorite discovery in this program was finding some good groups to join in the social networking lesson. It is very important to try and learn something new on a daily basis in order to provide the best service possible. My favorite exercise was YouTube. I can see how patrons can sit in the library all day watching them. *TSLAC's A Dozen Ways to Two Step program has enhanced what I learned during the North Texas 23 things program. I have set up accounts for the library in many of these applications and this learning experience will be helpful as we set up our virtual library in the future. *One takeaway from this program that surprised me was the number of social networking sites. I had no idea how many there were. I am thinking about ways to explore marketing our library and libraries in the international market through an international social networking site. * The way this program is put together is very good. Please keep the "in plain English" videos. One improvement would be to introduce the next level of 2.0. New sites that people probably have not heard of so that libraries can be ahead of the game with new concepts. *I would definitely participate in another program. Thank you for providing this opportunity and the CE credits.

Method #10 Wiki Can Be Wicked

Funny thing, I had a hard time with this during the North Texas 23 Things training and I am still having a hard time. Though I am in awe of how others have used Wiki's because it does have major potential, for some reason it is still confusing how to get the information into the various wiki parts. I would like to put together some type of ready reference wiki but I need to understand wiki better. Another thing for my to-do-list :-) I did add a comment to the favorite fundraising page. Under recent activity of the Favorite Things Frontpage, I saw that people added and edited so I hope I followed the instructions correctly by adding a comment. Wiki's are so confusing!

Method #7 Tags Are Delicious!

Tags are definitely more user friendly and laid back than regular subject headings that librarians try to adhere to. For example, in Amazon, funny was a tag used to describe an item whereas librarians would tend to use the term humor as a subject heading. Whenever I tag my work I try to think how others would look up the information so that I would get the most amount of hits. I actually set up a Delicious account when I took the North Texas 23 Things training and have been using it ever since but I did learn some new things with the TSLAC 2.0 as well. When I took the NT23, I bookmarked a lot of the sites that I add my weekly library newsletter so that I don't have to look each one up separately each time. In the TSLAC 2.0 training, I added Tampa Bay Library Association and TSLAC IDCEC bookmarks to my Delicious network because I saw a lot of good information. After reading the article "Several Habits of Wildly Successful Del.icio.us users" blog, I shared the website with my boss and other department heads and I also requested updates from the Bizzia site because it had a lot of good information as well. I am looking forward to using the information that I learned from both trainings to continue improving how I use Delicious and tagging.

Method #5: Smile You're On Flickr!

First off, I always enjoy watching any "In Plain English" videos by Lee LeFever. I really like how he puts things in general terms so it is easy to understand and the background humming at times and the hand signs are hilarious. I am familiar with Flickr but have not done anything with it since my North Texas 23 Things online experience. In checking out what other libraries are doing with Flickr, I was glad to see a discussion list. This will be a great place to see how libraries are handling certain things or to ask questions. The picture that I have uploaded is from our library's 2008 haunted house. It is one of my favorites. I use the caption "old librarians never die, they just bone up on good books." On a personal note, I can see how Flickr would be useful to categorize all my pictures but one thing that I would need to do first is get my pictures on disk because most of my photos are from Poloroids or disposible cameras (old school) and second of all it would help if I had a home computer. On a professional level, Flickr has a lot of potential for organizing library photos it just gets a little complicated sometimes when there are people in the picture. The hard part is that you want people in the pictures, you just have to be careful how you use them when promoting and marketing programs. It is also very time consuming organizing the pictures. I still would like to do more with Flickr in the future.

When comparing Flickr with Picasa, wow, they both have a lot of good features and it seems like they both do a lot of the same things. Usually when one site does something different, it isn't long before the other site starts doing it too. What was interesting is when I pulled up Picasa, I saw that I already had a couple of photos there already. I can't really say which I like more because I have not used either one a lot but I would probably start working with Flickr, only because the name is familiar. I did like the fact that Picasa could upload pictures into YouTube but Flickr might do that too, I just may not have noticed that in my readings. Can you say "information overload?"

Method #4 Feed Your RSS, It's Hungry!

I would like it a lot better if my feeds could be fed into my email! I learned about RSS feeds when I took the North Texas 23 and I set up my reader at that time. Since then I have not taken much time to go back and read the feeds. It would be more beneficial to me if my feeds could "feed" into my email inbox which I check more often. When I went to add subscriptions and looked for the "discover" link, it was nowhere to be found so I just typed in a topic anyway. I typed in library politics but the results were not what I expected. I subscribed to feeds in the NT23 but like I said before, had not gotten back to them until now. I decided to look at the Top Recommendations. The four new feeds I have subscribed to include Designing Better Libraries (http://dbl.lishost.org/blog/feed) North Texas Regional Library System (http://blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default) Blog Junction (http://blog.webjunctionworks.org/index.php/feed) and M Word--Marketing Libraries (http://themwordblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default) I really liked the Designing Better Libraries and even sent the information to Laurie (a staff member) for us to keep in mind when planning for current and future library growth. I enjoyed another article from Blog Junction (Twitter Tips for Libraries) so much that I sent a Face Book friend request to the author of the article so I could keep up with other library articles he writes. I do like the idea of RSS feeds but I still would like them to get closer to me, which is my email inbox.

Dozen Ways To Texas Two Step method #1 & #2: On the road with web 2.0 again

I have been writing a library column for many years so that I can keep people informed of library events. What I have learned is that no matter how many people you are reaching, there are other people who are getting their information somewhere else. Trying to figure out how to reach the people who weren't being reached was pretty mind boggling. Then I learned about blogging. For a long time I wanted to turn my library column into a blog so that I could get feedback from people who read it. I like to be walked through new computer experiences but I was not able to find someone who could take the time and I did not have a lot of time to figure it out myself. And then along came the North Texas 23, the online web 2.0 experience. I made sure to sign up myself and staff in order to better serve our patrons. Many library users have been familiar with the web 2.0 tools for a long time so it was time for us to catch up. I have put many of the web 2.0 tools to use. As library 2.0 tools it has been a way to get library news and events out to a greater number of people and reach them where they are in order to keep them informed. Though the Dozen Ways to Two Step is going to be more of a refresher course, it will greater improve what I have already learned. By the way, "The Machine is us/ing us" is my favorite resource that explains Web 2.0.

YaaaaaaaHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

This is supposed to be a reflection, but I have been reflecting all along in my blogs. Some recap worth mentioning (or not depending on who you talk too). I don't know that I really had a favorite. I liked the opportunity to do the 23 because I have been wanting to learn about these applications for a long time and always put it aside for later, where this made me learn it within a time frame. My least favorite I think was the wiki but that may be because that is what I currently remember that gave me a headache. Wiki was challenging (thank goodness my staff member Laurie was around). Laurie also said that Twitter will be the most challenging for me since I have to keep things brief, hah I'll show her. RSS feeds were confusing but maybe it is because I need more practice. As I said in the previous blog, I have already incorporated a lot of what has been learned into daily library applications and plan on adding more. Staff will be required to apply something they have learned and we are also going to work on another 23 things, submitted by staff. We will also come up with other ways that the public will benefit. Some of the things that I have learned I have already been doing in other library projects. So TTFN and keep up with Little Elm Library Page by Page!

Wild Things

The North Texas 23 Things has been a rewarding experience though sometimes challenging (as it should be). I did require all my staff to participate so we all could benefit from the trials and tribulations in order to better serve our patrons. In order to expand on what we have learned, I have not only asked staff to pick something out of the 23 things to focus on and do something for the library I have also asked staff to pick three more sites that they would like for us all to learn so we can do our own 23 things project. From my blogs, you can see that my goal has been to incorporate as much as possible into everyday library use, but I hope that we can also figure out creative ways to share this information with our patrons as classes, bookmark guides, etc.