Thing #23: The Survey

TELL ME WHEN IT'S OVER

I took the survey. I told it like it was and tried to be nice about it. I worked hard to be succinct. Is it over now?

I'm wondering if I should go back and spiff up a few things. Proofread. Add some images. Do some of the challenges. Read more of others' blogs.

There wasn't time to do everything I wanted to the first time around. Hmm. . . .

THING #1 CHALLENGE: BLOGGER GADGET

I returned to Thing #1 and decided to add a gadget to the layout of my blog. I saw were lots of cool possibilities (originally from Feedburner) from which to choose.

I was torn between Cat Quote of the Day, The Zip Zap Game (a game about grabbing books), and Google Book Search.

I finally settled on Google Book Search because it required no lateral scrolling. The four searches I tried were--can you guess?--unicorns, bengal cats, harps, and perfume. All yielded interesting results. Try it!

NOTE: It's a little glitchy, but still cool. If, when you first arrive at Techgnos, the windoid for Google Book Search seems to expand and expand all the way down the left side of the window, just click on the Refresh button. That seems to stop it.


THING #5 CHALLENGE: PIKNIK

This looked interesting, so I clicked on the link to learn more about the Piknik / Flickr partnership. I took a look at the Piknik FAQs and took the tour.

Creating a collage looked fun, so I put together a (slightly kooky) collage of some of the photos I shot for this year's Summer Reading Program Training.

Here it is!

Notice how I've learned to insert pictures where I want them in the text?

They still paste in at the top of the blogpost, but I've learned how to click on the Edit HTML tab so I can cut-and-paste the code to appear where I want it.

I feel such a sense of accomplishment!

THING #8 CHALLENGE: TWITTER

Twitter looked intriguing when I flashed by it while doing Thing #8 a few weeks ago. Because I was so far behind, I couldn't take time to do any of the challenges.

I reluctantly had to give Twitter a pass. I'm delighted to have finished up early (just barely!) and had time to go back and check it out.

The Common Craft Show video was succinct and informative, as always.

I signed up and decided to stalk--sorry, follow--four celebrities: NPR's Scott Simon, Weird Al Yankovic, actor LeVar Burton (may Reading Rainbow and Star Trek--The Next Generation live forever) and fantasist Neil Gaiman.

I didn't think it would be a good idea to hand over my email password to let Twitter search for tweating friends, so I didn't.

I posted my first tweat. In plain English, no abbreviations. I'll have to learn those.

I wandered around the Twitter site looking for people I know. I decided to follow five people who have names that are the same as those of people in my department.

I'm not sure if these are actual colleagues or just namesakes. Perhaps their tweats will reveal this to me.

I uploaded an image to my profile and added three Twitter related gadgets to my iGoogle page: TwitterGadget, TwitterLit, and KidderLit.

Twitter Gagdet lets me access Twitter from iGoogle, and TwitterLit posts the first lines of fiction books with a link to the book on Amazon.com.

TwitterLit was mentioned in Thing #20, but I didn't look into it at the time. KidderLit is the kiddy lit version of TwitterLit. Intriguing idea!

THING #9 CHALLENGE: FLICKS & BLIST (INSTEAD OF LAZYBASE)

I went back to PictureTrail to sign up for a free account. I then created a rotating cube flick of six of my favorite small pedal harp models: the Salvi Arion, the Camac Clio, the Lyon & Healy Style 85 Grand Petite, the Salvi Daphne 40, the Venus Penti Chamber, and the Venus Prodigy Chamber. Take a look.

Next stop, Lazybase. I'd been able to look at it, but it just didn't work properly the first time around, which is why I didn't explore it further. I gave it another try.

Alas, it was still no go. So I googled around to see if I could find something similar. I found a website for blist, which presents itself as an easy, sharable online database.

I signed up for a free account and created a database called Small Pedal Harps which lists make, model, features, and retail price of various 40- and 44-string pedal harps currently available in the U.S.

Check it out.

Small Pedal Harps

Get your own blist widget

THING #10 CHALLENGE: FURL MORPHS INTO DIIGO

I clicked on the link to Furl, only to discover it has been absorbed by Diigo.com and is being phased out. While all the information about Furl remained on their site, I decided it wouldn't do me much good to learn about Furl if it would soon be subsumed into Diigo.

So I darted over to Diigo and discovered that it, like Del.icio.us, is a social bookmarking site--but with the attractive feature of allowing you to highlight text of interest in the websites you bookmark.

By highlight, I mean you can click and drag to choose the text, then click on a setting to cause that text to be overlaid with a broad swatch of transparent color--just as though you had taken a highlighter and used it on a text book you were reading.

You can also write a comment and attach that to your own private view of the webpage--just like glossing the text, adding a stickynote, or writing in the margin of your college textbook. You can tag, too.

The service seems to be aimed not so much at people casually surfing the Web, but at those who are information-gathering or conducting research of some sort.

A social networking aspect is also available, in that you can make your bookmark collections and commentary available for others to view. Users can join forums based on their common interests as well as chat with friends online.

I confess to finding this three-fold combination of bookmarks, highlighting, and commentary a pretty compelling idea. I am infinitely more interested in discovering what other people are reading and researching than I am in listening to them talk about themselves.

I am impressed by doers, not talkers. Talk is cheap. I'm afraid that over the years I have found most self-description to be neither interesting nor scrupulously truthful. I'd rather watch what people do than listen to them yak any day.

For this reason, the unique brand of social networking offered by Diigo (revolving as it does around the social bookmarking of informational sites) holds a certain amount of intrigue for me. Far more so than Gather's vapid chatter.

Having been unpleasantly surprised by an earlier social networking experience, I did not screw up the courage to join Diigo--yet. But I am actually thinking about it. I think I would like to return when I have greater leisure and check out the site more thoroughly.

THING #11 CHALLENGE: DIGG TOOLS

I'd already registered for Digg when I did Thing #11, so my challenge was to return and explore the tools in greater depth.

I took a look at the site before logging in: oodles of newsfeeds on all sorts of topics. Logging in didn't appear to change the view.

I clicked on Customize as perhaps the best bet for finding tools. I wandered around through the usual profile settings, uploaded my image, rejoiced in my lack of friends.

I wasn't able to successfully crop my image in Safari, so I logged off and logged in again using Firefox. The cropping function worked properly this time.

I saw absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in the profile section, finally stumbled across a link entitled Digg Tools. This page featured various widgets. I added a Digg 2.0 gadget to my iGoogle page and dugg three articles (one about personality, one about IQ, and one about neurology).

I tried other links: How Digg Works, Take a Tour, Diggbar Tools, Digg Dialogg. All pretty standard stuff.

Diggbar Tools lets you view Digg from any webpage you're on while websurfing. Digg Dialogg chooses celebrities as guests, of whom Digg members can ask questions. Current guests are 3 politicians and a popular musician. Yawn.

The Partnership Opportunities link mentioned a few more possibilities: add a Digg This button to a website so visitors can submit stories to Digg about their visit to the site. An RSS feed, an API (Application Programming Interface) to request information about Digg stories, other ways to feature Digg stories and videos on a website.

I just didn't see anything that groundbreaking. I have this eerie feeling that there must have been some neat feature I was supposed to find but didn't. Hope I didn't miss anything, but I gave the site a pretty thorough once-over.

THING #12 CHALLENGE: CREATE A WIKI

Already done. See my Thing #12 blogpost.

THING #13 CHALLENGE: LIBRARY THING WIDGET & GOODREADS

I tried to add a Library Thing widget to my blog once before and failed. I will try again.

When I logged into LibraryThing, I immediately saw a link entitled Widgets Get a Whole Lot Better. That looked promising, so I started there.

I didn't have enough books (only 7 so far) in my Library to choose the basic animation setting, so I opted for a basic list, showing three random books, expandable to fill the space it occupies.

I chose a book with its pages turning as my preloader image and customized the link setting to link to Library rather than to my profile.

Let's see what happens.

Alas, nothing. I experimented with different types of widget, different settings, different browsers, different points of insertion into the blog's HTML, but unfortunately, the widget still was not showing up.

I searched Blogger's gadgets to see if anybody had designed a different way to embed my LibraryThing Library into the blog, but only found a gadget to allow me to embed somebody else's Library. No thanks.

However, while searching, I did come across two other gadgets that looked neat. The first was Librarian's Book Revoogle, a search engine for finding online book reviews written by library staff and users.

The second was Children's Book of the Day, which features a new book each day from the Interational Children's Digital Library's free collection. (This was mentioned as a possibility under Thing #20, but I didn't investigate it at the time.)

Nifty! I installed both on my blog.

As for the second half of this challenge, I signed up for GoodReads as documented in my Thing #19 blogpost. I still have no friends. I looked once more for a dozen or so people I know, but nobody yet belongs to GoodReads. If I can chip loose a little spare time, I'll invite some to join.

Puttering about, I added another book to my shelf. When I saved the review, I saw an option to "blog this review" so I copied the code.

I'll paste it below and see what happens.

Adventures Of Cow by Lori Korchek

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Thoroughly clever and charming. Miraculously obtuse, Cow misinterprets everything that happens, yet still manages to come out right in the end. As funny for adults to read as it is for kids. Highly recommended.


View all my reviews.

Why look--there it is! I only had to clean up the code a little bit (insert a missing angle-bracket) to get it to display properly. A miracle.

I feel I have fulfilled the spirit of this challenge. Only three more to go. (I'm not doing the one listed under Thing #18.) Forward.

THING #14 CHALLENGE: BASECAMP VERSUS ZOHO PROJECTS

BaseCamp by 37 Signals, the outfit that also offers Backpack, is a project management software used by many major companies.

Its focus is on facilitating communication between collaborators online. Business Week praises it as being "so simple" and "addictively easy-to-use." Testimonials speak of the software being intuitive enough that staff and clients require no training.

The software enables companies to keep track of multiple concurrent projects and communicate with their clients online. Project managers assign tasks and deadlines, while staff and clients share files and keep track of time spent.

Dozens of add-ons such as mobile phone and desktop widgets, software development and time tracking tools, as well as billing and accounting apps broaden the software's functionality.

Basecamp offers a 30-day free trial and various pricing plans from $25 - $150 per month.

Zoho Projects is obviously gunning for the same market, advertising itself as software for "Online Project Managemtent and Collaboration. Plan, Track, Collaborate and Manage Your Projects Online."

Rather than dropping names of well-known clients, Zoho Projects pushes its functionality, quoting enthusiasts who praise its "feature-rich" setup which offers "TONS more features than other platforms out there" and is "by far my favourite."

Major features of the software include facilitating collaboration and file-sharing, time management, deadlines, and reports. It, too, represents itself as easy to use.

On the other hand, Zoho Projects is much less expensive. Zoho offers one project per month free, 10 projects for $12 per month, and an unlimited number of projects for $80 per month, about half what BaseCamp charges.

Both products seems to have a loyal following of satisfied customers. If I had a single project that I wanted to use as a test case for either software, I'd most likely try Zoho Projects first--unless the project were compressed enough to require no more than 30 days.

In that case, I might sign up for BaseCamp, then cancel before the first month's bill. However, I think that might be a risky proposition, since even short-term projects often run longer than initially anticipated.

Zoho Projects would definitely be the lower-cost option.

THING #15 CHALLENGE: SEARCHBOX FOR MY ROLLYO SEARCHROLL

I didn't understand this challenge at first. I wasn't sure if it was telling me to create aRollyo searchroll that includes my blog, or to create a Rollyo searchbox to include on my blog. The instructions seemed to be telling me to complete two separate operations.

I took my best guess and proceeded accordingly. Here is the result:

Select Search Engine...Harps for SaleSearch The Web

Powered by Rollyo

It looks like it might have worked. Appears to be a Rollyo searchbox, appearing in my blog, that will enable me to search my Rollyo Harps for Sale searchroll.

Simple enough. I wonder why the Rollyo Tools directions were so ambiguous?

THING #18 CHALLENGE: FACEBOOK VERSUS MYSPACE

Flashback to the trauma of joining Facebook. Am I foolish enough to take on MySpace as well?

Negative! One must draw the line somewhere.

Eyes rolling, nostrils flaring, my unicorn skin all aquiver, I wheel and plunge away, leaving this particular optional assignment unassayed.

"Hey, come back here," Princess Spanky Pants calls after me. "It's okay. Trust me. You'll like it. It's fun!"

"Eat my dust, social networking siren!" I neigh over my shoulder as I gallop toward the final challenge.

THING #20 CHALLENGE: BOOKS 2.0 IN DEPTH

In fulfilling this challenge, I took a closer look at some of the Books 2.0 sites mentioned in Thing #20: TwitterLit (and its juvenile version, KidderLit), BookLamp, What Should I Read Next?, Which Book, BookStumpers, Book Glutton and the Unbound Reader, Podiobooks, Open Culture, Facebook's Visual Bookshelf, Lookybook, Storyline, and Sillybooks, to be precise.

TwitterLit and KidderLit are such a great idea. I added a TwitterLit feed to my BlogLines feed sometime back and just recently put a TwitterLit gadget on my iGoogle page. I just added a KidderLit one as well to iGoogle--but I can't find a feed for BlogLines.

Both services are a ton of fun. I always click. I can't stand not knowing the book that first line is from.

My only thought on these two feeds is I wish there were a library version which would link subscribers to a nearby library's catalog rather than to Amazon.com.

If there isn't one (and TwitterLit and KidderLit aren't interested in starting one), perhaps someone in the library world should look into creating one. Just a suggestion!

BookLamp appeared absolutely fascinating to me. What an innovative concept in reader's advisory! By tracking six or eight key factors (pacing, plot density, level of action, etc.), the BookLamp team is--apparently quite successfully--creating graphs for works of fiction that a computer can interpret and upon which it can make recommendations.

More exciting still, because a computer can store information on far more books than any single reader or advisor (your friendly neighborhood librarian, for example) could ever have in his or her own personal mental database, BookLamp holds the potential to be able to fulfill one of the toughest tasks librarians ever get asked to do: help a patron find the next good read.

There wasn't an iGoogle gadget for BookLamp, alas, but I don't want to lose track of this site. It's undergoing development, still in beta, so I added an RSS feed to the BookLamp blog to my Bloglines account so I can keep up with the site as it matures. BookLamp was my cool find of the day.

What Should I Read Next? malfunctioned after just one try, although the results for that try were in the ballpark. I asked it to recommend readalikes for The Darkangel by Meredith Ann Pierce. I love reader's advisory sites.

Which Book is a site that I discovered years ago (I think it had a different name then) and I use whenever I'm trying to help someone with a tough reader's advisory question. The patron has to be reasonably articulate and self aware about his or her reading tastes and preferences for the results to be useful.

The way it works is you adjust a sliding scale for your choice of four from among a dozen possible characteristics of a book in order to tell Which Book how happy or sad, funny or serious, predictable or unpredictable, sexy or unsexy (and so on) a book you are looking for.

For example, do you want a book that is very happy, medium happy, halfway between happy and sad, a little bit sad, pretty sad--or what? Just adjust the slider in between the two extremes of each scale to define how much of a certain quality you want the book you seek to have.

Alternatively, you could choose various characteristics of the main character, setting, or plot that you want to read a book about and choose them instead.

Once you've made your choices, just click on Go to generate reading recommendations. This is a wonderful, useful site!

I regret to say that Loganberry Books' BookStumpers costs money.  It's a great idea, however, and if you're really stuck, $2 isn't too much to pay for help solving the riddle of that imperfectly remembered book haunting you from way back when.

From time to time I get questions like this on the public service desk.  Not too long ago, a querent asked after a children's book about a strange animal--part lion, part elephant--that protects children from nightmares by devouring their bad dreams.

I was able to track down what the mythological beast was that the story is about (the Japanese baku or dream-eater) and suggest several possibilities, but none of those books were the one for which  the patron was searching.

Had I known about BookStumpers, I could have mentioned it to the patron as alternative avenue for finding help. I'll be sure to let people I'm helping know about it in the future.

Book Glutton and the Unbound Reader looked wonderful. I'm assuming it carries only titles in the public domain. Still, what a great resource for students assigned to read a classic. Students can chat with others online while reading, leave comments on what they read, and later check back for responses. It's like a literature study group online.  Keen.

Podiobooks looked like a great idea to me: audiobooks serialized and syndicated as RSS feeds. The site has lots of interesting (to me) and less mainstream categories (Alternative History, Fantasy, Magical Realism, and Science Fiction, for example).

The reading is not of the stellar, professional quality one would find on a commercial audiobook by, say, Recorded Books or Books on Tape, but it's eminently listenable to. It's more like hearing a teacher or an author read aloud than a professional performance.

And of course, you can't beat the price. It's free (although donations are welcome, with 75% going to the work's author). I like this site.

Open Culture has been described (in Web / Tech, April 8th, 2009) as "a free, online collection of human knowledge," and indeed the site is full of useful categories of learning, including free audiobooks and university classes and foreign language lessons.

Formats vary. Some are MP3 downloads, others iTunes, RSS feeds, streaming audio, or website links. And it's all free. What a great idea!

Living Social's Visual Bookshelf for Facebook was something I'd considered adding on my first pass through Thing #20, but I'd decided against it for lack of time. I'm glad to have had the chance to go back and pick it up.

Signing up was easy. Four of my Facebook friends already use it. By way of getting started, I browsed through popular titles and added three I remembered reading, all titles I enjoyed. During the registration confirmation process, I added 10 more without reviews.

I expected to be able to see my Visual Bookshelf in Facebook, but apparently not so. I have to go to the Living Social homepage, but from there I can see my Facebook friends who belong to Living Social.

Not as cool or as visually exciting as I'd hoped, but good enough. Oh, well.

Lookybook proved to have gone out of business! When I clicked on the link from the 23 Things at NEFLIN blog, I was saddened to see that Lookybook has shut down "due to lack of resources."

Building a library of children's picturebooks online sounded like such a worthy idea.

I was hoping this was going to be a link I could recommend for ACLD's Summer Reading Program. Too bad!

The Storyline link on the NEFLIN blog was broken, but I was able to find www.storylineonline.net by Googling. The site is nicely put together, obviously intended to be appealing to and easily usable by young children.

I listened to the first few minutes of A Bad Case of Stripes, read by Sean Astin and found the production values to be first class. The site also includes suggested activities for each work. A thoughtful offering. This may well be a link we can use for the Summer Reading Program.

Sillybooks looks like another promising bet as a Summer Reader link. Kids can click on (untitled) pictures to see an animated rendering of a picturebook which a narrator reads aloud. There are also puzzles, contests, games, and music.

Some of the books are written by children and are winners of the "Books by Children" contest. The prize for winning the contest appears to be having your book published, narrated and animated online. I think kids will find this idea very appealing!

CHALLENGES MET

Okay. So now I've done all the challenges I'm going to do. (I only skipped the Thing #18 challenge, and that was on moral grounds.) I can hardly see straight. My hooves are tired from typing, and my son is demanding the computer.

So I will stop now and post. It's Monday, April 13th. If I find some time between now and Wednesday, April 15th (the original deadline for completing 23 Things), I'll go back and proofread, double check links and add more images.

If not, so be it. I feel like I put a lot of effort into this learning experience and gotten a tremendous amount out of it. I'm just sorry it had to be under such an unrealistic time pressure. That was sort of like creating an emergency that didn't have to be.

By all means I think we should do more Library and Web 2.0 explorations in the future, but it should be in smaller bursts, with more tightly focussed parameters.

Someone really needs to cut 23 Things into baby bites so that those of us who are still of tender years as far as our technological savvy is concerned won't find ourselves choking to death from biting off more than we can chew.

Enough. I expire.  Virtual Unicorn signing off.

Thing #22: Staying Current

AND WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?

This penultimate Thing begins, "We hope you have learned many new things during 23 Things."

Yes, I certainly have.  I am now much, much more familiar with many of the websites and web tools I have been hearing about, and I have learned of the existence of quite a few I'd never even heard of before.

I feel that I am much more current with lots of the online technology that library patrons are using.  I've learned quite a bit that is interesting and several things that promise to be of real value to me personally and professionally in the near future.

BEGGING TO DIFFER

All this is very much to the good.  However, I must disagree in the strongest possible terms with the assertion, found at the beginning of the second opening paragraph of this Thing:

"Here are some of the other things we hope you have learned: It really doesn't take that much time."

This statement is misleading.  Blatantly so.  There.  I have said it.  The participants in 23 Things were deliberately misled.  Our participation was solicited on the repeated assertion that it would not be a time-consuming endeavor.

Helene Blowers spoke at the Annual NEFLIN Conference of taking 15 minutes a day to acquaint oneself with new tools online.  The NEFLIN blogpost on Thing #22 echoes that sentiment: "Make a resolution to maintain your blog, use the tools you now know. . . .  Give yourself the gift of time--15 minutes a day. . . ."

THE GIFT OF TIME

Management strongly encouraged staff to participate.  In many instances, staff were granted two hours of work time per week to participate.  It wasn't enough.

I have heard many, many colleagues expressing great anxiety over the amount of time they were finding they needed to put into 23 Things.  It was far, far more than they had been led to expect.

A huge percentage of participants fell behind.  Some were afraid to admit it or ask for more time.  Many staff worked on 23 Things covertly over an above their two-hours-per week limit.  Others of us worked on 23 Things almost exclusively on our own time, at home.

I heard some of the most conscientious employees I know admit to "cheating."  When I asked for a definition, a couple said they were blogging that they had completed Things they'd really only glanced at.

Most said they were "doing the bare minimum," which they felt was far less than what they wanted to be doing as well as less than was expected.  They wanted to do better.  They just didn't have time.

And they weren't necessarily owning up to any of this in their blogs.  They felt that if they did not maintain a front, they would be penalized.

I FEEL A GREAT DISTURBANCE IN THE FORCE

Why do people tell me this stuff?  I'm practically management.  You'd think they'd be more careful what they said around me.  I found all these confessions profoundly disturbing.

I helped everybody I could, troubleshooting technical problems, for example.  I tried to reassure people who were freaking out that we're all in the same boat.  A lot of this is new to most of us.  We're not being required to master the material, just shake hands with it and say hi.  We'll all just do the best we can.  And so on.

I also pointed out that NEFLIN was building in extra catch-up weeks and ACLD had decided to extend our in-house deadline for completion.  (NEFLIN and ACLD management are to be commended for these decisions.  They helped.)

WHAT WE COULD HAVE DONE BETTER

One of the reasons I'm so deeply introverted is because I'm reasonably observant about and fairly responsive to the moods of others.

I have to tell you these last couple of months it's been pretty hard being in such close proximity to so many people who were feeling this pressured, unhappy, and frantic.

While I think anxiety levels have dropped somewhat over the last few weeks as more people have become comfortable owning up to how hard they have been struggling, we could have headed a lot of this off at the start by being honest about the time commitment participating in 23 Things would entail.

23 Things is the equivalent of an intensive college level survey course, but it was presented to us as though it were going to be a fun little community ed outing.

We agreed to participate, but we didn't know what we were getting into.  There is such a thing as informed consent.

I don't think anybody enjoys being misled.

Reading "We hope you have learned[ i]t really doesn't take that much time" in the 23 Things @ NEFLIN blog just makes me want to gore somebody through the vitals and then trample them with all four cloven hooves.

AND ANOTHER THING

Here's something else we could have done better: craft each Thing to take about the same amount of time to complete.

I've said this before.  It's difficult to plan when ostensibly like units (the Things) require wildly varying time-chunks to finish.

There's no excuse for such unpredictability.

Here's how I would have divided the first eight Things:

Thing #1:  Set up Blog and Register.  Leave it as is.  There's no way to pare it down, really.  It's all of a piece.  However, I'd allow participants two weeks to complete it.

Thing #2:  What Is Web 2.0.  Cut down the many articles to, say, two.  They contain a lot of useful information and compelling opinions, but reading them and then blogging about them took a long time.

If it's really that important that we read them all, divide this Thing into three or four.  Give participants one week to complete each.

Thing #3: Blog Search Engines.  Choose one.  List others as possibilities to explore on one's own, but don't require exploration of a second blog search engine.  Keep the focus tight.  Give participants one week to complete.

Thing #4: RSS and Newsreaders.  Choose one aggregator and present it only.  Tighten the scope of this Thing.  Ask participants to sign up for two feeds and give them a choice of about 8 library-related feeds.  End of story.

Mention the other aggregator and other possible feeds as extracurricular, on-your-own-time possibilities.

The idea here is to allow participants to complete the assignment swiftly and efficiently, then tempt them back to add more feeds to their aggregator on their own time.

Thing #5: Flickr.  This assignment had the right idea, giving participants options.  We only had to complete one option, not both.  Still the assignment took quite a while to complete.  Participants should be allowed at least a week.

Thing #6: Flickr Mashups.  Too many choices.  I found this one of the most enjoyable Things, but the 23 Things organizers need to choose a handful of mashups and instruct participants to explore those, choose one, and create a mashup.

The wealth of other mashup types should be presented as possibilities for playing with off the clock.

Key points: clearly defined assignment, tight scope, quick completion, opportunities for further exploration.

Thing #7: Online Image Generators.  Choose one websites.  (I suggest Big Huge Labs.)  Select half a dozen from which participants can choose.  The many others should be put forward as fun stuff to do if and when time permits--after the assignment is completed.

Better yet, divide this Thing up into lots of different Things.  I saw so many possibilities for generating Library-related publicity and P.R.

One could do an entire survey course on online image generators alone.  Because these are so quick and fun, participants could probably complete two or even three per week.

Thing #8: Communication--Web 2.0 Style.  This was three Things plain and simple.  Disguised as one, but still three separate things.  Come clean.  Break it into three.  One week to complete each.

I trust one catches my drift.

BACK ON TASK

Okay, where was I?  Now that I have returned from my tangent--and I'm not sorry I went off--I see that Thing #22 asks us to look back on our first Thing and reflect on how far we've come.

Yes, I can see I have come a long way.  I have discovered tools that I will continue to use.  Bubblr and some of the other Flickr mashup and online image generators were a blast.  I really like my cute little customized iGoogle page.  Rollyo was just too cool.

Slideshare, Zoho Show, Flicks, podcasting and YouTube hold immediate possibilities for library work.  I'll keep using PBwiki, of course.  Del.icio.us and Lazybase look interesting, too.

Bloglines, Technorati, and Google Blog Search may be something I can use.  Ditto with Digg.  I'm sure Webjunction and web conferencing will be in my future.  I might even join Bengal Cats Place on Ning.

Google Calendar and the Ta Da List could be useful.  I think I'll probably be checking in with LibraryThing, GoodReads, BookTrails, Overbooked, Librivox and BookBrowse from time to time.

I'll probably bail out of Facebook as soon as I decently can.  Days after joining, I log on and all I see is a chaotic mess of commentary.

Is it directed at me personally (like a note left on my desk) or a more general announcement to the world at large (like a graffito on a wall)?  Am I supposed to respond to it?  It's cacophanous and confusing.  Are people just talking to themselves?  I don't get it!

And I can only say I find both text messaging and IM about as exciting as eating a piece of chalk.

ADDING A FEW MORE FEEDS

On NEFLIN's recommendation, I added Librarian In Black and Dangerously Irrelevant to my Bloglines account.  They both look pretty dense and intensive.  I'll try them for a while and see if I can keep up.

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

I plan to keep up with Web 2.0 by trying to hang on to what I've learned and use it every chance I can.  Work it into my personal life.  Find ways to incorporate it into projects at work.

I'd also like to make time to go back and explore further some of the tools I discovered along my techgnostic journey through 23 Things.

I also plan to be bolder about trying out new things.  Web 2.0 is trying very hard to be easy and intuititve.  (You know, the old Apple model that was pooh-poohed by Microsoft for years until they finally got it and started imitating Apple.)

Because they are more efficient, ergonomically designed things get used more.  This goes for web tools as well as hand tools.

I'll try to put some time in each week trying out new tools--although it will almost certainly have to be in chunks longer than the prescribed 15 minutes.

I do feel motivated.  Having come this far, I want to keep going--although not at the breakneck, artificially accelerated pace of 23 Things.  Once I complete the final Thing, I look forward to setting my own pace and proceeding with all deliberate speed.

Thing #21: Student 2.0 Tools

ASSIGNMENT CALCULATOR

To use the Assignment Calculator, I pretended that I had a Library Science project due in 3 weeks.  I found the 12 steps generated to be logical and the timetable realistic.  The support materials (such as "Suggestions for Understanding Assignment Sheets" and "Sample Thesis Statements") was thorough and informative.

I especially liked that the calculator did not attempt to oversimplify the complex (but orderly) process of fulfilling a college assignment.  In attempting to quell students' anxiety, I have frequently heard concerned advisors assure students that their assignments are easy and won't take long.

Such well-meant but inaccurate advice does students a grave disservice.  Writing a college paper is an involved undertaking that will be closely scrutinized, measured and judged by one's professor.  One's grade depends on how well one fulfills professorial expectations.  It's a good idea to pay close attention, do the research, and devote sufficient time to do a decent job.

I heartily approve of the obvious care and thought that University of Minnesota Libraries personnel put into designing the Assignment Calculator.  Nicely done.

RESEARCH PROJECT CALCULATOR

For the Research Project Calculator, I stated that I had a slide show presentation due in three weeks.  Again, I admit to being delighted at the serious and practical advice dispensed.

The process and philosophy of creating a slide show presentation were covered in a succinct, linear progression that does not skimp on the often-slighted portions of such an assignment.

By this, I mean students were urged to storyboard their presentations, choose images and assemble their slides with care, rehearse their presentations and evaluate their performances after the fact.

This is all to the good.  So many oral presentations I have witnessed had clearly been conscientiously researched, but the actual performance part of the project had received little attention and therefore fell flat.

The Research Project Calculator urges students to consider themselves the star of their oral presentation and choose slides that will grab their audience's attention.  What excellent advice.

TEACHER GUIDE TO THE RESEARCH PROJECT CALCULATOR

The handouts found here looked useful.  Under Step 1: Question, I particularly liked the "Student Research Planning Guide," "Narrowing a Topic. . . ," and "What's My Angle?"

Step 2: Gather had a similar array of eminently utilitarian guides, such as "Interview Tip Sheet," "Boolean Basics," and "10 Questions for Evaluating Websites."

The "Sample Idea Sketch" and "Outline Organizer" found under Step 3: Conclude looked equally practical, as did the advice for essays, videos, and slide presentations under the last step, Step 4: Conclude.

The discussion sections "About the Research Calculator" and the "No Time?  Suggestions for Condensing" for each of the 5 steps in the process were equally well crafted and useful.

WHAT WE COULD MAKE OF ALL THIS

I can certainly see making use of the Assignment and Research Project Calculators as well as the Teacher Guide in the public library.  Three ways spring immediately to mind.

First, we should include links to these sites on ACLD's brand new website, launched yesterday.  The Homework Help portion of the Kids pages would be the logical spot.

Secondly, staff should make and keep at the ready paper copies to hand out to students who seem to be in need of them.  The sheets should list the URLs where the Calculators and other handouts (part of the Teacher Guide site) can be found.

Finally, staff should mention these tools to both students and teachers, demonstrating the sites to them whenever possible.  Explanations should be kept very short to minimize panicked resistance.

For example, "Oh, let me show you this cool website.  It's got just what you need.  See right here?  It tells you exactly how to narrow your topic down."

Or, "Take a look at this.  It's so simple.  Just type in when your assignment's due, and it shows you step by step exactly what to do.  It even tells you how much time to spend on each step!  Is that neat or what?"

PERSONAL USE

These Student 2.0 tools impressed me.  I hadn't realized tools like this available on the Web.  Clearly 23 Things has come along at just the right time.

I actually have a library-related slideshow presentation due about six weeks from now.  I haven't started formally working on it yet--it's still in the mulling stages--but when the time comes, I'll take another peak at the two Calculators.

I have no doubts about how to put the project together, although I've never had any formal training on how to construct a PowerPoint presentation.  Just one of those things I've had to pick up along the way.

Still, it's nice to finally have a guide.  The Librarians of the University of Minnesota Libraries should be commended for having so thoughtfully written out the entire process from start to finish.

Thanks, colleagues!  Virtual Unicorn very much appreciates your efforts.

A REMARK ON THE SCOPE OF THING #21

Compared to some of the other sections in 23 Things, Thing #21 took almost no time at all.  Its scope was just right.  I think I spent a little over an hour on it.

Every single exercise in 23 Things needs to take just about as long.  As an extremely busy unicorn, I need to be able to predict the investment of time that will be needed to complete a Thing before I dive blindly into it.

The organizers of 23 Things have it in their power to so arrange the workload in this training.  Just divide the exercises up in to uniformly sized bites.

It will come out to more Things--quite a lot more, in fact.  But participants' time commitments will be respected, their stress levels lowered, and their participation made that much more productive.

Only two more Things to go.  I'm beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel!

Thing #20: Books 2.0

MY SENTIMENTS EXACTLY

Thing #20 begins "With all the emphasis for online tools for learning and socializing in the library, what has happened to the book?"  After the shock and trauma of Thing #19, that's exactly what I was thinking.

Before coming to work for the Library District, I worked in a bookstore for seven years.  Prior to that, I was an English major with a concentration in creative writing.  I'm a novelist.

Books are the whole reason I work at the Library.  They are the sun around which my world revolves.

I recognize on a professional level the tremendous importance of the public library as a citizens' forum and community center, where people meet to socialize, discuss, and learn.

However, neither individual nor group interaction are appetites that libraries satisfy for me on a personal level.  For me, libraries are all about books.

FUTURE OF THE BOOK

I found the FotB blog extremely interesting.  It hadn't occurred to me that anyone was seriously advocating doing away with print media--for all the many reasons mentioned in FotB's blogposts.

I added the RSS feed for FotB to my Bloglines account and feel inordinately proud of myself.  See?  Library 2.0 is already sinking in.  I am learning.

LITERACY DEBATE: ONLINE R U REALLY READING?

Interesting article.  As a kid, I can remember reading cereal boxes, toothpaste tubes, magazines, comic books, and numerous instruction manuals for appliances my parents couldn't seem to wrap their minds around.  I also watched quite a bit of television.

Adults sagely informed me that all these activities would rot my brain, lower my self-esteem, and result in physical ailments of every kind.  Hairy knuckles and spinal degeneration were favorite predictions.

Unicorns do not have knuckles.  My brain, spine, and self-esteem all appeared in good enough shape to me.

So I just ignored my elders, who didn't seem to be doing nearly enough reading themselves.  Unicorns hunger for knowledge.  Any kind of reading is fun to us.

I'm therefore not sure I can get all that alarmed over self-motivated kids reading six hours a day on the Internet.

I found the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus webpage hysterically funny, and the one on sasquatch even funnier.  I wonder how many adults would have been similarly taken in had they encountered the same spurious information in print?

Perhaps a similar percentage of the population to that which read Midnight, The National Enquirer, and The Star--or checks out from the public library nonfiction works on UFOs, Bigfoot, and . . . um . . . unicorns.

I hadn't previously considered the keyword searchability of the Internet to be a research aid for the dyslexic, but I see now how that could be.  Most keyword searches bold the word searched as it appears in the found text, which doubtless also helps.

FICTION READING INCREASES FOR ADULTS

I guess I'm supposed to feel encouraged that more adults reported reading something--anything--in the last 12 months, but I find the statistics depressing.

The slight upturn isn't much, and only about half the adults surveyed admit to having read any sort of traditional work of literature (novel, short story, poem, or play) over the last year.

It saddens me to think how many people don't seem to share my love of reading.  Reading's so enjoyable to me, I can't imagine going a whole year--much less even a day--between reads.

NEA REPORT READING ON THE RISE

This article was basically a reiteration of the information contained in the New York Times article above.  I was quite interested in the statistics on the more dramatic increase in teen reading than that among adults.

To hear NEA tell it, their Big Read, Poetry Out Loud, and other initiatives were key factors in the turnaround.  Supportive as I am of the National Endowment for the Arts, I'm a bit skeptical.

The Harry Potter and Twilight phenomena were much more widespread, touching many more teens.  I tend to think that it was these and other popular fiction works that made a more significant contribution to the upturn.

HOW LIBRARIES CAN SURVIVE IN THE NEW MEDIA ECOSYSTEM

Overall, I like the points this PowerPoint presentation made.  For example, that in the Information Age, information has become abundant, cheap, personally oriented, and designed for participation.

Also, the 10 fundamental ways in which the information ecosystem has changed:

1)  The volume of information has grown.

2)  The variety of information has changed.

3)  The velocity of information has increased.

4)  Venues and availability of information have expanded.

5)  People's attention spans have both truncated and elongated.

6)  Media environments have become compelling places to hang out and interact.

7)  Better searching and customization have improved the relevance of information.

8)  Information has democratized, enhancing the visibility of its new creators.

9)  Voting and venting about information has proliferated with tagging, rating, etc.

10)  Social networks have changed the structure of friendship.

I especially like Lee Rainie's recommendations for how libraries can leverage these changes to reach their patron base and remain relevant:

1)  Be findable and available.

2)  Become a news node and information hub.

3)  Emulate social networks.

4)  Build social capital using links.

5)  Use Web 2.0 applications.

6)  Solicit feedback.

7)  Demonstrate how well we are paying attention.

8)  Help patrons master the new literacies:

a)  Graphic

b)  Navigation

c)  Context

d)  Focus

e)  Skepticism

f)  Ethics

g)  Personal

KINDLE 2

I have to say that when the original version of Kindle hit the market a year or two ago, I took a look at it, but concluded that it was too bulky, heavy, and that the text resolution was not sharp enough.

The new Kindle looks better.  Sleaker, slimmer, more streamlined, lighter weight.  The text resolution on the grayscale screen looks sharper.  Text size is adjustable.

I wonder if you can turn the screen sideways to enable it to be enlarged a little further?  That would be a nice feature.

The attribute that appeals the most to me is text-to-speech, enabling the reader to switch from visual text to audiobook format.  This is something I've been interested in for years.

The $359 price tag is awfully steep.  Reading matter is limited, especially for those of us on the long tail who are not always interested in the latest bestsellers.

It's also expensive.  I'd have to see the cost of downloads cut in half before I could seriously consider a Kindle for myself.  It's an interesting concept, though.

I wonder if Kindle has any plans to come out with a color screen and the ability to play video for its Kindle 3?  Multimedia capability would definitely up my interest and make me willing to reconsider the steep pricetag.

KINDLE IN LIBRARIES

I think if Amazon will allow libraries to lend Kindles to the public, the practice will give their product a great boost in popularity.

I know that I myself might be much more interested in a Kindle if I had the opportunity to check it out myself before having to make a purchasing decision.  

Being highly tactile, I prefer a test drive if at all possible.  Does the item feel right?  That's an important question for me that cannot be answered except by a hooves-on demonstration.

If the Kindle feels better than expected, that might go a long way toward ameliorating my hesitation to drop $359 on a Kindle.

A MOMENTARY COMPLAINT

I notice that Thing #20 consists of 6 articles to read and 8 categories of book-related online tools to sample.  It has taken me several hours to finish reading and blogging about the 6 articles.  I wonder how long it will take me to do the 8 mandatory categories?  (There are two optional ones as well.)

If I were in charge of designing 23 Things, I would divide Thing #20 into half a dozen or more individual Things, each of which would take about 45 minutes to an hour to complete.

Designing a Thing that takes hours and hours to get through is setting participants up for failure.  Staff in my own Departments have been asked to schedule no more than two hours of work time per week on 23 Things.

I have heard of similar time limits being observed by other Departments.

Making Things too time-consuming invites cheating.  Not everyone is willing to devote their days off to this venture.

Nor is everyone willing to put in the time necessary to form even a nodding acquaintance with the material.

In this unicorn's humble opinion, 23 Things should not be encouraging its participants to give this ostensibly vital training only a quick skim.  Cursory participation is unlikely to produce deep or lasting results.

BOOKS ON YOUR PHONE: TWITTERLIT

TwitterLit looked like fun.  I love reading the first lines of novels.  I added the RSS feed to my Bloglines account.

READERS ADVISORY: BOOKTRAILS

BookTrails looked interesting.  The trails I followed were "Great Readalouds for Kids 5 - 6," "Fantasy Wonderland," "Great Fantasy Series," "Books I Have Read and Would Read Again," and "Fantasy / SciFi."

ONLINE BOOK COMMUNITIES: OVERBOOKED

I took a turn through Overbooked's 2008 and 2009 Speculative Fiction lists.  This website has possibilities.  I'll be back.

BOOK GROUP RESOURCES: LIT LOVERS

I chose to explore LitLovers for my book group resource.  The sections of the site most interesting to me were the LitLoversBlog (I visited LibrarianInBlack.net) and the LitCourse Catalogue.

AUDIOBOOKS: LIBRIVOX

Librivox's ambition to record all public domain books as audiobooks using volunteers strikes me as innovative and admirable.

I wish their site contained an audio sample that didn't involve downloading.  I don't have time at the moment to download one of their books in order to check out the quality.

Whether or not this free service catches on will almost certainly depend on the quality of its volunteer narrators.

Audiobook listeners--myself included--are very picky about narrators.  We want to hear the book read well.  Mediocre is not good enough.  Reading aloud skillfully is an art.

BOOK REVIEWS: BOOKBROWSE

A quick foray through BookBrowse's "SciFi / Fantasy / Alternate History" list (found under "Book Themes" on the "Find a Book" tab) showed me that this is a site I'll be back to visit.

The titles listed on this list were definitely my type of reading.  I think this will be a good place to get suggestions on what to read next.

BOOK RENTAL: BOOKSFREE

I was disappointed that BooksFree wasn't actually a free service.  Only the shipping is free.  Still, that's something.  The selection looked good, especially in the fantasy / scifi audiobooks--but the pricepoint is still too high.

The basic plans (one item at a time) were restrictive, the more liberal plans (multiple items) expensive.  The audiobook rentals were costly even at the basic level.

However, because for most of its plans BooksFree has no time limit for borrowers (in other words, no due date: just return items when finished), it occurs to me that a family, book club, or group of friends with similar reading tastes might be able to pool their resources, all chip in to purchase a high-end plan, then pass the books or disks around among members of the group before returning them.

Such a plan would drop the price far below the basic rate of one-at-a-time audiobooks for $22.95 per month.  Six people could share six audiobooks and, by splitting the six-at-a-time cost (of $62.9 per month) only pay $10.42 per month individually.

That works out to six times the number of audiobooks as the basic service for less than half the cost.  Not bad, provided you and your group could agree on what to order.

FACEBOOK: GOODREADS

Since I'm already a member of GoodReads, I decided to add my GoodReads bookshelf to my Facebook account.  I did so and invited 5 friends to exchange book reviews with me.

FORGING AHEAD

I'm embarrassed how many hours I spent on this Thing.  I reiterate my protest about better Thing design being needed.  These Things are taking much, much too long.

Thing #19: Other Social Networks

WEBJUNCTION

I took a look at WebJunction.  I was familiar with the name, so I'm sure I've seen their course offerings before.  It looks like a broad range of interesting topics, reasonably priced.

NING

Then I went to Ning.  I didn't join, I just searched the list of groups.

I typed in harps and found a few small harp networks that looked promising.  (Nothing in my area, alas!)

The search term perfume revealed that a lot of folks from outside the U.S. are interested in perfumery.  This makes sense, since most of the finest perfumery ingredients originate overseas. 

Then I typed in bengal cats.  Lots of cat groups popped up--and the very first one was Bengal Cats Place.  Their tagline is "Show us your bengals.  We'll show you ours."

It's a group that exchanges photos of their bengal cats!  I'll have to check this out further.  I sat mesmerized by the slideshow for several minutes.  I saw a cat that look just like Fudge Swirl!

Cooooooool.

THE LEMMINGS GATHER

Onward to Gather.  I have to say, my first impression was not impressive.

Gather bills itself as "the leading social networking and media site for adults, with some of the highest quality user-generated content on the internet."  How modest.

Apparently Gather is the place where all the NPR listeners hang out.

So I click on the link and wind up at Gather.  I click on the "People" tab so that I can catch a glimpse of these intellectual giants in whose company I've been subtly nudged to feel awed.

Guess who's the first person I see?

Princess Spanky Pants.  She wants me to "ping" her.

Wow.  Great crowd.  This is a party I really want to be at.

CAUTIONARY TALE

I call my son over to to the computer screen to instruct him on the dangers of attending parties, frequenting bars, and joining social networks.

Princess Spanky Pants and her creepy ilk are legion.  My son's eyes widen as my message of parental toughlove sinks in: go to these places and this is who you are going to meet.

He gallops screaming from the room.

ONCE MORE INTO THE BREACH

Okay.  So now my mood is really crashed.  I can't believe I'm being made to do this for work.

I return to Gather on the off-chance that my experience there so far has been an unfortunate anomaly.  No such luck.

I click on the Groups tab, revealing that Gather has groups on money, pets, food, friends, love, life, republicans [sic], freebies, children, games, and I'm not yet seeing the difference between Gather and any other social network.

It's mass inanity as far as the eye can see.

NOT GETTING THE SPIN

Gather's homepage proclaims "Real people, real lives, and real conversation make Gather special" and "Keep up with the people, conversations, and moments that matter" and "Avoid the noise of other sites."

I confess I do not see this.  The subject matter and participants all look terribly mundane, ho-hum, and unexceptional.  A lot of slick ads for SAM-e and Neutrogena.

What am I missing here?  Could it be that the emperor actually has no clothes?

WHAT OWNING CATS TEACHES US

I'm tempted to dig deeper, thinking Gather can't possibly be what it appears to be: an average, run-of-the-mill social networking site that wants to appeal to average, run-of-the-mill people who would simply prefer to think of themselves as somehow out of the ordinary.

Tempted--but then I think of what always happens when I'm cleaning out the cats' litter box and decide to dig deeper because I have this vague feeling that I haven't found it all.

The horror is, I'm usually right.  There's almost always more to it than I originally thought.

I'M OUT OF HERE

I've had enough of Gather.  Every hair on my hide is standing on end.

I return to the NEFLIN's 23 Things blog determined to proceed with my phaser set to stun.

I feel like I'm trapped in one of those original Star Trek episodes where a gelatinous blob that smells like honey could ooze from behind an alien rock formation at any moment and suck the electrolytes from an unsuspecting crewmember with its hideous tentacles.

The name of this Star Trek episode is "Thing #19."

Social networks are for extroverts with time on their hands.  I swear to the god of unicorns, I have never been that lonely, desperate, and / or bored.

THE HORROR BUILDS

Now I'm supposed to read some articles.  Grumpily, I proceed.

Reading the three-year-old Publisher's Weekly article on Gather depresses me even further.  So gather isn't a spontaneous creation at all, the serendipitous brainchild of lonely extroverts.

It's a cynical construct of National Public Radio and the U.S. publishing industry, in bed together and looking for "traction."  I'm gagging.

I actually listen to NPR fairly regularly, work in a library, read books and have on occasion been known to write them.  Call me naive, but I never until this moment quite realized I was actually part of an evil Borg conspiracy to manipulate the hearts and minds of innocent literati.

Thanks for shattering my illusions, Thing #19.  Now I've got little round sucker-marks all over my body and feel like I could drink about a case of Pedialyte.

GOING TO MY HAPPY PLACE

The article entitled Building a Social Networking Environment at the Library seemed right on target.  I agree.  Providing library patrons with multiple social networking opportunities is the way to reach out to patrons who have drifted away, gather new patrons into the fold, and retain our loyal core.

I checked out Pierce County Library's site and found it fully featured, with lots of great content--if a bit rectangular and compartmentalized.  Perhaps our eBranch manager could tactfully refer them to Big Media, the outfit that just redesigned ACLD's website?  We're curvier.

See?  I drank my Pedialyte and I calmed down.

WHAT NEXT?

Wait--now I have to join a social network?  It's the next assignment???  Augh!  Make it stop!!  Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!

Mind spinning.  World reeling. . . .  Blacking . . . out. . . .

AFTER I DECLINED TRANSPORTATION TO THE HOSPITAL FOR OBSERVATION

I joined GoodReads.  Nobody in my Department or on my Facebook friends list belongs, so I haven't added any friends yet, but will keep trying.

I did add to my bookshelf three books I highly recommend: all three volumes in Ursula K. LeGuin's Annals of the Western Shore series.  Their titles are Gifts, Voices, and Powers.

I joined several groups: Fantasy Book Group, Folklore & Fairytales, SciFi and Fantasy Book Club, I Love Young Adult Books, Children's Books, and Kid / Teen Literature to Film.

I asked for the group discussions to come to me in a weekly digest.  This is similar to the way in which I used to subscribe to a harp discussion group through the now-defunct, text-only Alachua Freenet.

I am calm.  I am breathing into a paper bag.  It will be okay.