Thing 23

I've thoroughly enjoyed the 23 Things experience, and really feel like I've learnt a great deal about Web 2.0. As both a computer scientist and a 'young person' I feel it's expected of me to understand all these technologies, and I now feel that I do! I've got a whole new set of skills and platforms to add to my experience, and if in the future a need for a certain technology arises, I feel confident I would know how to use it.

Some of my particular favourite things were Twitter and Google docs. Twitter has provided a great opportunity for me to network with library staff both at Warwick and further afield. I had a conversation with a cataloguer in Cambridge, who turned out to be on the CILIP Cataloguing and Indexing committee, and might be a useful contact. I've enjoyed tweeting about various aspects of my day to day job, hopefully making people more aware of the job of a cataloguer. I think Google docs is a great tool for collaboration. Unlike Twitter, I can't see an immediate use for it, but I'm very glad to have found out about it and I'm sure it will be useful in the future. While I can see little use for some of the tools at the moment, such as Slideshare, or Flickr, it is great to know that they exist, and that I could use them if I needed to.

It was also interesting to assess how relevant the tools were for use in libraries. Investigating, for example, the British Library’s use of Facebook has made me more aware of the benefits Web 2.0 can bring a library. I was very cynical at the beginning of the course, believing that librraies pushing things onto Facebook and Twitter, that were never read, was actually not getting any where. I can see how certain tools are brilliant for individuals within libraries, but I'm not sure whether a library having a Facebook page or a Twitter account makes a lot of difference. Maybe I will discover new ways that a library can utilise these tools in the future. For now, I'm happy to make use of the tools as an individual librarian, and I'm sure that they will contribute in some way to my future working life.

Thing 22

A quick search for Web 2.0 on SlideShare came up with many hits - the majority of those on the first page were actually about web 3.0. I am actually very interested in web 3 - the semantic web, and soon got immersed in looking at these presentations. It is very odd to view a presentation that was, presumably, designed to be delivered with audio. A good presentation won't have many words per slide, and will simply act as a cue for the speaker, and provide helpful pointers for the listeners. There is therefore limited use in simply looking at a set of slides.Despite this, I feel I have learnt a little more about the semantic web from my browsing.

Back on topic, and there seem to be a mass of presentations about Twitter. 'How Twitter Changed My Life' was quite interesting towards the end, emphasising how personal versions of events can be spread around the world in real time, and also the impact an individual's tweet can have.

Really, as someone who hates giving presentations with a passion, just the sight of this site sends shivers down my spine. Other than finding some of the presentations interesting to look at, I don't think I would find the content particularly useful. Even if I were to be in the unfortunate position of having to give a presentation, I feel as though I would prefer to fit my slides around what I wanted to say, rather than finding someone else's slides and fitting my talk around that. I guess it may be useful for getting ideas, or useful images or quotes. Who knows whether I would use it or not. It's nice to know of its existence, but that is as far as I will go at this stage!

Thing 21

I've used Google docs once or twice before, earlier on in the 23 Things experience. As part of leading my week I experimented with uploading my PDF instructions, and then linking to them in my blog. I've also had one or two documents sent to me in the last few weeks. But I hadn't created one from scratch before today. I thought creating a Word document was fairly boring, so I had a go with the drawing tool instead. It wasn't the easiest thing to use - I couldn't have created a masterpiece! But I was quite impressed with the flower that I created. I then shared it with Seri and Christina, but haven't yet heard if they received it. I shall have to investigate when I next see them. I can see how Google docs can be a really powerful tool for collaboration. It makes collaborative tasks, such as the 23 Things leadership group thinking of awards for the award ceremony, so much easier and simpler.

I would like to investigate a bit more how it deals with two people editing a document at once, and how it copes with clashes that this could cause. But I shall definitely keep Google docs in mind in the future, and will feel a lot more confident in using it now that I have got the hang of it.

Thing 20

As a shy, retiring sort I was not particularly keen on advertising my blog on the Library blogs wiki, although I did find some useful blogs for my Chartership application on the site! So, that leaves me with editing a Wikipedia page, something I have never done before. I'm trying to think of a subject that I know about, but which no one else will be interested in, so if I write something stupid no one will ever know...

Well, I've fallen back to my old employer, The Queen's College Library in Oxford again. The paragraph about the library was quite short, and I added a sentence about the history that I knew to be accurate: "The open cloister below the Upper Library was enclosed in the 19th century to form the Lower Library, which now houses the bulk of the lending collection."

I think wikis are a great idea and can be really useful. In fact, I considered using one to record my Chartership process. I had started a blog, but felt very frustrated and constrained by the linear, chronological nature of the blog. As I was retrospectively recording things, and also wanted to structure my entries in themes rather than by time, a blog really wasn't the right tool to use. So instead, I thought about starting my own wiki. I discovered www.tiddlyspaces.com, which while not a wiki as such, is absolutely brilliant for my purposes. I can add entries, or 'tiddlers', and link them together how I please. It works a lot like a wiki in many respects, and I couldn't be without it now.

So, that's Thing 20 done, and I can now say I've contributed to Wikipedia!

Things 18 and 19

Now, having said what I said in my last post, Thing 18 has made me wonder again about whether there could be a useful side to Flickr! I can definitely see the benefits of having access to so many images. I had fun looking around for an image to put into my blog, and chose these two of my old workplace, The Queen's College in Oxford, taken by bez_uk.





I haven't saved it to my computer as instructed, but played around with the 'Share this' options provided by Flickr. I'm still a bit confused about how to attribute a photo - is saying bez_uk took it enough? Maybe I should add a link to him on Flickr? And I notice in Emma's blog post, she's got a link to the Creative Commons licence. Aah, after a bit of digging I found this:


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.

Right, I think that's enough? Now onto YouTube.

Other than my Dad occasionally recommending videos to me, which I've never followed up, I've never had anyone tell me anything about YouTube. So, I've dug out my MP3 player headphones, and here goes.

 Well, I had some fun watching some videos - I watched two on the BL's video stream, and and interesting round-up of the year by Warwick's Vice-Chancellor. As with Flickr, I can see this is a great tool for people in their personal lives to have some fun. It's certainly made me want to have a bit more of an explore once I am out of work time. I found it was very distracting - after watching one video, there were links down the side to more that I wanted to watch! I think I could have easily wasted the day on it. As for its use for organisations, and libraries in particular, I'm again still to be convinced. I guess it's nice for ex-Warwick students to catch up with activities on campus, but I can't really see anyone searching for Library related content.

But then, maybe if the Library creates and actively promotes a certain video, say with instructions on how to use the self-check machines, this could be a good use for the site. I did a search for University of Warwick Library, and saw that there were some tutorials for using the catalogue. I think if promoted well, this could be a really good resource. Not being a student, I have no idea how well known about these videos are. The 30 views for 'How to access MyLibrary' suggest not very.

I'm glad to have finally visited and had a go at Flickr and YouTube. I'm sure I shall be re-visiting them again in the future.

Thing 17

Well this is another week I've been looking forward to. I've never used Flickr, and until recently had never looked at YouTube. I'd just never had the time or inclination to work out how they worked. So this was a good opportunity to have a play around.

It was easy to register with Flickr with my Google credentials. And uploading photos seemed quite straightforward. I can see why Flickr could be a really useful tool for friends or family who want to share photos. I'm not convinced by whether libraries can make much use of it though - it was interesting to browse the BL's photo stream, but I certainly wouldn't take the time to revisit it again to see what new photos they had uploaded. I wonder how useful it actually is for an organisation to be able to post lots of photos on-line.

I can't see myself using Flickr, either in my professional or personal life. I don't take a lot of photos, and those that I do I doubt anyone would be interested in! If I want to share photos I would probably put them on Facebook, or just put them on a CD to send to someone. So, Flickr has yet to convince me...

Things 15 and 16

I've had a look at the Zotero website, and I've had a browse through the Endnote web workbook. I'm not going to sign up for an account as I don't have any reason to use it, and I feel I've got enough new accounts for the time being! It seems like it could be a really useful thing to have - I can understand why students find it extremely useful. When writing my dissertations I used BibTeX in my LaTeX documents, and this has some of the advantages of these tools - it allows you to store all the details of your references, and then formats them for you into the referencing style of your choice. I always found this a great help, and I can see why these tools would be even better - BibTeX requires that all your references are typed manually into a text file, and these tools seem far more sophisticated than that.

It seems a bit odd that users have to enter a comma after corporate authors in Endnote web - this seems a very strange thing to have to remember to do. I'd have thought it would be easier to have a check box to say that the author is a corporation, and then have the software add in the comma for you.

Zotero looks very easy to use from the instructions on the website - citations seem to be added by simply clicking on a button in the address bar. I don't know how this works in practice, but this is how I expected the tools to work. Endnote web looks a bit more complicated, with saving to files and then uploading these files. But maybe you get more functionality with the added complexity. Without a thorough examination it's hard to tell, but I can easily see why either of these tools would be an enormous help to a student writing a dissertation or thesis.

Thing 14

Well I'm more impressed with Diigo than I expected to be. I've heard of Delicious but never used it before, and was a bit suspicious about its usefulness. I didn't really understand how it was different from a browser's bookmarking facilities. Registering for Diigo and installing the toolbar was remarkably easy. And from my initial investigations it seems very easy to use. I can see that if you do a lot of work on the Internet it may be a very useful place to collect a large amount of websites. I sometimes find it annoying that all my favourites don't fit onto my bookmarks bar, and I spend time shortening their names to make everything fit. I do like having easy to access buttons at the top of my screen for the websites I use on a day-to-day basis. But I can see myself adding websites to Diigo that I just need to remember about, or might need again in a week's time.

I'm not so sure about the highlighting and post-it notes facility - again, I can see why a researcher might find it useful, but to a web-user such as myself, I think it is a bit of a gimmick that I can't image myself using too much. As with all these technologies, the test will be time, and we shall see if I actively do start adding websites to Diigo, and maybe using some of the other facilities.

Thing 13: Reflection week

Well here we are, officially half-way, although in some respects not really half way at all for me. I feel the first few weeks were a nice gentle introduction, as they were mostly things I had encountered before. It was only this last week that I actually had to get to grips with a completely new technology, Twitter. And I'm really glad I have! It's nice to finally know what everyone else has been going on about, and it's also filled two holes for me: Firstly, a few weeks ago the Data Services team had a meeting about how we could make ourselves more known around the Library, and Twitter seems one very good way to go about this. Secondly, I'm also starting to work towards my CILIP chartership, a large portion of which seems to focus on networking with the wider librarianship professional. Again, Twitter seems one obvious way of going about this. I'm hoping more uses will emerge. Several members of staff have sung its praises, and described how they have used it to network with other professionals. However, in order to do this you have to be 'out there', getting yourself followers and regularly tweeting interesting things. I like the idea of communicating with other librarians, particularly other cataloguers, and am willing to give it a go. I've already sent a tweet that was re-tweeted by at least 4 librarians, which gave me a lot of pleasure. There's quite a lot of pressure to think of interesting things to say though!

So that's my reflection on my favourite 'thing'. I'm also enjoying blogging, and again am finding it useful as I begin on my Chartership journey. I'm not sure I would blog without some express purpose, but for the purpose of Chartership it is a great way of recording my thoughts and feelings on my work and experiences.

The next three weeks are packed full of technologies I haven't used before, so I'm looking forward to adding them to my repertoire.

Thing 12

Well, I've had a browse of various libraries on Facebook. I'm torn as to whether I think Facebook is relevant to libraries or not. In some senses, I'm not sure it makes any difference at all. I think that there is a way of communicating with students through Facebook, but as not all users will be on Facebook, let alone a fan of your page, you will always need to send messages out through official channels as well. And then what is the point of repeating the message on Facebook, when one or two students may happen to see it among all the posts from their friends?

That being said, I think Facebook does offer an opportunity to offer a non-intimidating way for people to interact with libraries and librarians. I was very interested to see the British Library's page, where people are posting on the wall to ask questions. And these questions are being answered by a human at the Library. I'm very impressed that someone at the BL is taking the time to respond - and I think that is the key. If you have someone who is going to put the time and effort into making it work, I think Facebook could have benefits for a library.

But, you need the users to engage and interact in order for that to work. I'm tempted to change my mind again - the Warwick Library page is full of notes from library staff, but has no interaction at all from students. So is it worth it? Are the students reading the notes?

I think I'm going to sit safely on the fence on this one!

Things 10 and 11

I'm excited about this week - I've always felt that Twitter was something I should know about, but I've never quite got round to investigating it. So I've now got my own profile: @metadatamonkey. I was disappointed that @metadatamagician was too many characters - Twitter seems to be obsessed with limiting the amount of characters you can use for everything. I've had to change my name and re-write my profile description in order for them to 'fit'. It's no wonder the world is resorting to txt speak!

I've found some people to follow - some Warwick 23 Things participants and some celebrities. Stephen Fry seems to be the most famous tweeter so I'm giving him a go. I've also tweeted with reference to other tweeters. I think I'll monitor progress over the week, and might get more adventurous with my tweeting as more people join. Whether I'll think of anything interesting to say is another matter!

Things 7,8 and 9

Well, this is my week so I've already done plenty of playing with Doodle and Firefox in preparation! I've lost track of how many Doodle accounts I've created and then deleted in order to test things.

I had heard of Doodle before - my colleagues at Queen's College in Oxford used it to schedule meetings quite frequently. It was very useful in order to find a time when all the Library staff, plus the Provost, and various Fellows, could make a meeting. As my job here doesn't necessitate me arranging meetings, I'm not sure I have much use for Doodle at the moment, but it may come in useful in the future.

As for Firefox, as a true Computer Science geek I've been using it for years. However, it wasn't until I came to write my instructions that I really started to understand about the add-ons. I'd always used it in the past because it had the functionality for tabs much earlier than IE. I've used one or two add-ons before - mainly Firebug, which is brilliant for de-bugging websites - but had never really investigated much further. I've now got the weather forecast and current temperature at the bottom of my screen, along with the cool previews functionality, which I think is very funky, but I'm not sure if it will actually save me any time.

So, that's week 3 done, bring on week 4!

Things 4,5 and 6

This week was a very easy week for me as I had done all the tasks already :-) I've had an iGoogle page for a long time, and use it as my home page. I love the fact that I can have the news headlines, the weather, my e-mail, and of course, my Doctor Who RSS feed, all in one place. It means with a quick glance, I can be fully informed in all those areas.

I signed up for the 23 Things RSS feed when the blog was first created. I do like RSS - I like having all sorts of interesting updates appear on my iGoogle page. It was particularly useful when I was job hunting. I signed up for various job feeds, and then just waited for all the job adverts to appear in one place.

Now I just need to put the finishing touches to my instructions for next week!

Things 1,2 and 3

As one of the members of the 23 Things team, I am ashamed to say that this is my first ever blog post. For someone who is supposedly knowledgeable about technology, I know very little about most Web 2.0 tools. I always wondered what it would be like to have a blog, so here I am! I'm looking forward to the 23 Things experience - both running my week and participating in the others. I'm very familiar with some aspects of web 2.0 (Facebook being a prime example
:-S ) however, I've never tweeted, or watched a video on YouTube, or uploaded a photo to Flickr. I'm a bit of a sceptic as to how much use they are to libraries and/or librarians, but I'm enthusiastic about investigating the ways that they could be useful.

So I'm ready to start learning...