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.