Thing 13, part 2

What I meant to add to my last post is that I've tried online calendaring before with an Outlook calendar, and, because I'm not as tied to my computer as others are, it was difficult for me to keep it up in any organized way. One of the lessons I'm taking away from all of these tools is that unless an individual was organized prior to the appearance of these Web tools, all of online tools will not help someone to get organized. Or maybe it's just that I'm not all that interested in being that organized. I can see the allure of the group calendaring function for those who need to schedule meetings, and I've looked with interest at online reference desk scheduling programs; but for the type of scheduling I do for me as an individual, my little pocket calendar that I bought for $2.00 at WalMart does what I need it to. And it comes with me wherever I go.

Thing 13

I think I've figured out why I'm not really interested in these so-called productivity tools. In order for them to really help improve my productivity, they would have to help me organize or streamline activities which I am already undertaking. If I had, for example, a dozen or more web sites that I routinely checked for updates, having a site like PageFlakes organize them on my homepage would be very useful. That's what Bloglines does for the blogs that I follow. However, and this is a BIG however, I don't have that pre-existing set of sites to watch, so anything I do with one of these tools is extra work, and I'm just not that interested in keeping up with a bunch of specific sites.
That being said, I did create a PageFlakes page for myself, and put a bunch of stuff on it that I probably won't be able to keep up with. I'd make it my home page on the computer on my desk at work, but there are some days when I never log it on, and I can see the stuff piling up, much like posts from "Stephen's Lighthouse" does on my Bloglines account.
I tried to put a countdown to my vacation to Europe widget here, but the code wouldn't transfer right. I'm not sure if it's not working because it's not working, or because I'm incompetent--"the nut behind the wheel" as my father-in-law puts it. I'd like to believe that it's the former, but it's probably the latter. Oh well. On to Thing 14.

Thing 12--I'm halfway there!

Coincidental to looking at the sites related to this thing, I was watching Almanac on Friday night, when they had a guest talking about the consolidation of broadcast and print media and how that meant that the audiences did not hear about lots and lots of stories, important or otherwise, because of it.  The guest was representing an organization that is trying to use the web to counteract that tendency.  It's an important issue, I know.  But, that being said, I don't think I'm willing to spend the time to become my own editor.  I want someone to distill the events of the day me and tell me what I need to know.  Admittedly, that's not necessarily what the mainstream media is doing, what with its fascination with Brittany, et al, but that's what the hoi polloi seem to want, so that's what we all get.  But the blogosphere  doesn't really do what I'm asking either, and the question arises about who's news selections I should trust.  So I don't think I'll be using any of these services; both because i don't have time, and because I'm a little too lazy.  And so on to Thing 13.

Thing 11

Well, I read through the stuff on tagging and del.icio.us and have to say that, as an old fuddy-duddy librarian, I want a controlled vocabulary for tagging. I looked through the tags used in the minn23 account on del.icio.us, and there were numerous examples of the use of both singular and plural forms of individual tags as well as multiple synonyms for the same concept. While I understand the idea that the tags should represent the language we would use to describe something, if what we call something is not consistent over time, and we don't call something the same thing as someone else does, the collaborative nature of the process breaks down. That being said, I can see how valuable applying a consistent set of tags could be to someone who needs to create the online equivalent of a filing cabinet, especially given the ability to apply more than one tag to a particular document. But as one who uses the "create a couple of really messy looking piles on the top of your desk, and then paw through them until you find the paper for which you are looking" method of organization, the idea that I'm any more likely to follow through on any organized way of maintaining access to online resources is pretty laughable. As we move forward on the major building program over the next year, however, I might be much more motivated to try to make something like this work for me.

I'm up to double digits--Thing 10

We've been using pbwiki software for over a year to do a reference department wiki. I have to say that it's pretty clunky to use and kind of ugly-looking, compared to the software packages that cost money like wikia or mediawiki. Although it wasn't just the software that led us not to use the wiki very much. I think we just didn't develop a sense of the value of communicating in this way.
I was impressed with the range of uses to which others have put the wiki, and was really impressed by the Library Blogger's Wiki--the list of public libraries having there own blogs was both impressive and depressing at the same time. I noticed, for example, that Hennepin County supports 5 different blogs, and that many very small libraries all over the country have their own, while we here where I work have none. But I'm supposed to be talking about wiki's here, so I won't go on a blog rant. But honestly--it's embarrassing. Anyway, I really liked the look of the Library Success Wiki--clean look, clear outline and lots of direct links to other places. Same look as the Wikipedia.
As opposed to my comments on Thing 9, I really think the wiki is a marvelous tool to capture the expertise of the online community, but of course, there does seem to be a need for some monitoring of the contributions. I noticed that one of the wikis required an email confirmation prior to allowing contributions to articles. That's an unfortunate, but probably necessary precaution.
I'm hoping that the exposure to wikis during the 23 things process will give us here more interest in using our own wiki, and that we come up with more uses for it. We'll see.

Thing 9

Well, it's been a while since I've been here, but I have to admit I haven't been excited enough about the idea of collaborative editing of documents to forgo using Micorsoft Word--which I admit to hating, but at least it's familiar. On the rare occasions that I work on a document with someone else, sending attachments back and forth works just fine. Also the whole thing of inviting collaborators into the editing process just seems kind of clunky compared to just sending an email with attachment. And I never did get to the document in Zoho Writer. I kept getting a message saying "Document not found". And after playing around with Google Docs for awhile, I wasn't intrigued enough to follow up with Zoho. I suppose if a large enough community wanted to collaborate on something--say an online encylopedia--these kinds of tools would seem more useful to me. Oh yeah, that's Thing 10.

Thing 8

I know I should be more excited about all these photo editing and display tools, but I'm not really a picture guy, and while the photo box thingie is kind of fun, I can't say that I'll use it or really any of them routinely. I barely care to look at pictures generated by my family, much less other people's. I mean, my grandson is pretty freakin' cute, but really, how many pictures of a six month old baby do people want to look at. It's not like he's actually doing anything yet.
I can see the use of providing a set of pictures for the library's public of, say, the progress of a library construction project(in fact, I hope we do something like that when we start our major addition next year), but all the add-ons like the flicks seem a little over the top to me. But we'll see how I feel when I get around to thinking about sharing the pictures from my trip to Europe this summer. Course with my lame-o photography skills, they probably won't be interesting to me, much less anyone else.
Well, in any case, on to thing 9.