Thing 20- You Tube

I have previously viewed many videos on YouTube. So this aspect of the assignment was pretty fun and familiar. But, I thought I would try to embed a video on the blog. We'll see how it goes. In honor of Thanksgiving a picked a video on Roasting a Turkey by Alton Brown. Bon Appetit!!

Thing 19- Web 2.0 Awards

For this Thing (19) , I accessed the Web 2.0 awards and the 1st Place Winner for

Food- A site called imcooked-Cook It, Film, It, Share it. It offered a variety of interesting aspects including videos. I was able to watch a video of Christopher Walken Roasting a Chicken called ManMaking Chicken With Pears and Paul McCartney Making Mashed Potatoes! Hysterical, if not a bit surreal! Just in time for Thanksgiving :)

Thing 18- Online Productivity

Hooray! Below this post you will find an entry I created through Zohowriter and posted directly from there to this blog! What a great asset! I am definitely going to play with Zoho some more.

blogpost in Zoho

As part of the 23 Things Assignment I created this post through Zohowiter and will attempt to post it directly from the Zohowriter site.

Wikis- Things 16 & 17

In the assigned PLCMC blog entry entitled Wiki, Wiki, Wiki the philosophy behind the wiki is explained - "The English language has always been a very fluid thing, incorporating new phrases as quickly as there are new concepts to explain, and so a wide variety of terms has arisen to describe the changing technology of the modern world."

Collaboration is the watchword describing the importance and desirability of the the Wiki. I was fascinated to discover the origin of the word Wiki- a Hawaiian phrase for doing something fast "wiki wiki." In the case of online wiki's, the attraction is that information may be quickly added to the collective knowledge base by the users of the wiki, without dependence on HTML. The concept of information as a fluid entity makes the prospect of diverse and dynamic information sources very attractive. Obviously there may be source problems, as anyone can edit or add information. But, wiki's remain a great way to obtain basic ideas and information fast. I loved the idea of Book Review Wikis.

For the Creation aspect of this exercise I created a short Wiki @ http://refthoughts.pbwiki.com/ listing a few of the good books I've read recently. It was suprisingly easy. I wonder if anyone will read it?

Things 13, 14 & 15-Tags, Technorati & 2.0

For this exercise I had a look at Delicious, Technorati and Library 2.0.

Delicious- This was my first experience with Delicious. I had viewed the site before, but never really used it. For this exercise I created a Delicious account and bookmark list for our library staff. This is a great tool for me because I have long ago lost the ability to manage the bookmarks that I find useful AND I needed a way to efficiently organize and develop a tool that is easily accessible to our staff. So far, I have imported some Reference and Readers'Advisory bookmarks I like. I won't make the list public until I have a more complete list. I experimented with one bookmark and created tags I think will work for the staff and other users, once it is made public. When I have more time, I will create additional tags for the remaining bookmarks and further streamline the list. But, for now I am impressed and optimistic on the ways I will be able to use this tool in the future. Keeping lists on paper and in hard copy files just wasn't getting the job done. So, I think this will be great.

Technorati- I was already familiar with Technorati as a RSS feed for News and Political blogs. I really like this site because of its design. It's tabs and tags are really effective navigators. I also like the "rising news stories" and "rising blog posts" sections. But, before this exercise, I hadn't really paid much attention to the tag cloud before. This time I used the tags to navigate the site. Very interesting!

Library 2.0

This is truly one of the most exciting aspects of this lesson and course, so far. The #15 article on Library 2.0 sums it up perfectly : a term that can be used to describe both physical and mindset changes that are occurring within libraries to make our spaces and services more user-centric and inviting. That says it all!

Especially for small libraries without much staff, some of these 2.0 initiatives allow administrators to increase access to resources for staff and patrons in a much more organized and user friendly fashion. But, as this quote suggests, it does describe (and require) changes in mindset and services that will increase the accessibility or usability of library and reference resources. The mindset must change from relying on 1.0 or even paper resources to these types of resources that take advisory to the next level. Quite exciting indeed.

One of the articles I read was Into a New World of Librarianship by Michael Stephens. He aptly defines Web 2.0 as the “strategy guide' for helping users find information, gather knowledge and create content." Users and staff don't just want access to information they want to interact with it. 2.0 provides a strategy and opportunity enabling them to do so in ways that allow the user to contribute their knowledge to the interaction. He also outlines some of the most effective methods for librarians to utilize in promoting 2.0 technologies to staff, users and the communities they serve.