The Orchid Station

So it’s all over now! I took the survey and now I’m done.

Thanks to Jennifer and NEFLIN for putting this on for us, and thanks to everyone at ACLD for letting the staff participate.

Well, this is it, isn’t? Let’s look back to my first post here:

“Well, I can’t say this was my first blog ever, so it was pretty easy. I do hope the other 22 Things are this simple and fun! I know blogging is huge right now and I think it’s a tool that libraries can and should use to communicate with their users, especially teens.”

I think we all learned one thing– I like to use “well” to begin a lot of my sentences.

But we have come a long way, and most of the tools were as simple and fun as beginning the blog. Some were challenging and some weren’t as fun as others, but I did learn a lot. I came into this thinking I was a young hot-shot who knew everything about the Internet, but even I found stuff that I had never heard of. It ended up being more of a learning tool than I really expected it to be.

I really enjoyed having these tools available to me every week, so I’m kind of worried about how I’m going to find some of the more obscure tools on the web on my own. I was unaware of a great deal of these tools so I hope I’ll have time on my own now to find tools that are helpful in my work and personal lives. I’m going to try and keep this blog up into perpetuity and update as I find new things, or Things. It might be hard to remember– but I’m going to try!

Thanks to everyone from NEFLIN for giving us this opportunity. It was fun!

I’m still a student, though I’m in graduate school for Library Science, so I can appreciate the logic behind these calculators. They’re really a pretty good idea. Part of me thinks by college a student should pretty much know how to organize his or her time and make an appropriate timeline, BUT the other part of me knows some people would probably benefit from having a structured timeline created for them.

I tried out the Assignment Calculator first and I liked how simple and clean it is to use. I also really like that they give you email reminders if you want. That could be really useful. I couldn’t believe that actually had “Library Science” as a subject area, too. Wow! Except of course the subject is so vague the timeline is also vague. Oh well. Not bad.

The Research Project Calculator didn’t impress me as much. Mostly just because it didn’t look as nice as the Assignment Calculator, but it was so-so. If we had to choose one for our library to include on its web site for teens and young adults, I’d choose the Assignment Calculator.

The tips in the Teacher Guide were pretty standard but not bad. I thought the tips for working with your school’s media specialist were pretty funny. I guess they struck me as a little quaint.

I don’t know if either of these would be helpful for library projects because they’re really structured for academic projects. But maybe someone could use the basic structure of these sites and break down their library work into 12 steps to be better organized.

Almost to 23!! Ahhh!!!

So what’s the future of books? Sometimes I fear that we’ll stop using them altogether, but usually I have hope that books are here for good. It’s convenient to be able to read something on a device like an iPhone or Kindle, but really, I enjoy the feeling of holding and reading a real book, and imagine there must be others out there who feel the same way. Like Future of the Book stated, there are millions of dollars spent on preserving old books, so we must care. I just don’t want books to become scanned documents kept for preservation, I want them to be read!

I have noticed over the years of working in a public library that more people are coming for the computers and less for the books. People now just come in straight for the Internet or maybe magazines, which does make me a little sad. On a weird note though, we have books on mp3 players now, but they don’t seem that popular, either. So I guess people are foregoing books in any form and just really focused on the free Internet.

On a more positive note, I think some of these Book 2.0 tools are really helpful and fun, and I don’t think they hinder people’s reading. I’ve already subscribed myself to TwitterLit and the one for children’s books, both of which are fun tools and could be a good idea for library’s to promote their new purchases. Teasers for books, go figure.

I like the sites for Readers’ Advisory a lot, too. I’m always reading at least two books at once, and I have a running list of what to read next. I also really like the podcasts of what to read and new book reviews to keep myself up on what’s new and worthy of my attention. As soon as school is out at the end of April I’m going to have to go back and check out these tools more in depth.

I love all the books!

I can’t say I was really aware of “other” social networks until I read this Thing. I’ve seen Yelp here and there, but I didn’t quite know what it was.

Anyway, so I looked around the sites suggested. WebJunction seems like a great idea, but it wasn’t really appealing to me. I also didn’t want to sign up to yet another site I’m never going to visit. It is a good idea, I think, but right now it’s not too helpful to me.

It was kind of similar with Ning. I checked out the Library 2.0 site, but it was just too much for me right now. I have my own discussion boards and chats with people in my department. Eventually I could see this being something I could use in my professional life, but it’s not for me right now.

So by the time I got to Gather, you can imagine I was a little skeptical of how much I’d like it. Well hey, I kinda did! I mean, I don’t really have time in my own life to sit and blog and comment on all kinds of happenings, but if I theoretically did have a free moment, I might enjoy reading people’s thoughts on basically anything imaginable. I kinda like it!

I like the idea of these sites a lot, even though I don’t belong to any “other” social networks myself. I like the ones for books, cooking, and I like Yelp and Gather. I think these are all pretty cool and I could see myself using them more at some mythical point in my life when I have more free time!

Well, this is definitely one of the Things I’m VERY familiar with. I’ve been on Facebook and MySpace pretty much since the beginning. You can find me under either one of my names– Kate Neff or Katie Jo Tompkins on Facebook and Jo Tompkins or Kate Neff on MySpace. Multiple personality disorder or something like that.

Anyway, I decided to join the groups Librarians and Facebooks and Don’t Mess with Me, I Worked in a Publc Library. Both very good choices for me. 😉 And trust me, it won’t be a problem to have me check my Facebook throughout the week.

I’ve checked out some of the library MySpaces before and I’m really impressed with ACLD’s (of course!).

It seems to me that over time, Facebook has been winning the battle of the social networks. MySpace started out strong, but I think it was taken over by spamming and questionable people, so to speak. Facebook meanwhile, despite people’s gripes about its layout and interface, has remained fairly true to itself and kept the look of the pages clean and managed to keep a lot of spam out.

Libraries would be smart to use either network to reach out to its patrons, especially teens and tweens. MySpace lets you add all kinds of gadgets and layouts and all, but Facebook seems to be most people’s favored social networking site. I’d say every library should just be on both. I think they’ll both be around for a while.

You can follow what’s going on in HQ’s Youth Services department now at www.twitter.com/youthserviceshq

Stop by for a visit!

Here’s the great thing about podcasts (besides being free): it’s one of those things that if you’re listening to a podcast and think “I could do a better job than this yahoo,” you actually can! But on the flip side, this kind of freedom can be annoying because I have to admit, I had a hard time finding podcasts I wanted to subscribe to. Too many cooks in the kitchen type of deal. With so many people out there podcasting their thoughts, it can be hard to find one you enjoy (or can bear).

I’m really familiar with podcasting. I started listening to podcasts back around 2006 or 2007 when Ricky Gervais came out with his series. It was super addictive! I loved that I could download them and then put them on my iPod and laugh my head off wherever I went.  (if you’re not familiar with Ricky [first off shame on you!] or even if you are, you have to watch him and Elmo havin’ a laugh. Who else could get Elmo to lose it during an interview!!??)

Not only have I listened to podcasts, though, I have made one! Technically! Really for it to be a podcast it has to have RSS capabilities, which mine didn’t, but it was technically a podcast because I deemed it so. (it was for class). If you’re so inclined, you can listen to my “podcast” here.

Of the podcasts I looked at through this Thing, I ended up liking NPR’s Grammar Grater (nerdy, of course) and Grammar Girl (nerdy for girls!) I also found a bunch on iTunes. I’ve been trying to brush up on my French as well as learn Japanese, so I’ve found a lot of good podcasts through iTunes to help me with those pursuits. I created an account at podcast.com and have subscribed to the above podcasts and some others. I’d love to post the widget of my subscriptions, but you know how it goes with WordPress sometimes!

I’m happy I’ve found a lot more podcasts to listen to, but as usual, where will I find the time to enjoy them all?!?!

Ahhhh YouTube. Man. It really is one the greatest time usurpers ever created. I’ll admit, as much as I try NOT to get on YouTube, Mr. Neff and I have spent a lot of time on weekends looking up old cartoons and shows we used to watch, music videos they no longer play, and tons of other crap that you start watching and then leads you to something else and something else… on and on and on. That being said, it’s great!

First off, that video with the blonde at the library was great. The end was kind of a weird moment because… where did all those scriptures come from!?! But it was pretty funny. And I had totally forgotten about Conan the Librarian! And I used to be such a big Weird Al fan! (I think I’m admitting way too much about myself in this blog…)

Anyway, so let me post a video here. I love a lot of things, but I do really love cupcakes and puppies. But CUPCAKE DOG is too amazing for words. Thank the heavens for The Soup or else I might have missed this! I watch It’s Me or the Dog a lot, but I almost missed this gem:

The original:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTuOr2vlC-c

The Soup’s take (and oh, there’s some “language”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUbsc_a-e3g

Mr. Neff says I look just like Cupcake Dog sometimes when there’s a plate of cupcakes in front of me, too.

YouTube or Google Video are both great tools for libraries. Libraries can upload their own videos to spread their publicity, or they could upload videos to their library’s web site to make their sites more visual and fun for people to use while promoting library programming and events. Our library has a YouTube channel, or at least it seems we might here.

I think as crazy as YouTube can be, it’s a great resource.

Rollyo is something new and different to me. I made my own search thingy I think… It was kind of hard to figure out the initial set up, which is always kind of embarrasssing. I mean, it seemed easy enough, but as you can tell from the link up there, I’m not so sure what I made. I was trying to make a search of many different things, but somehow it ended up being travel..? I don’t even think I named my search tool “Travel Search!” Anyway, I’m sure if I keep messing with this I’ll figure it out.

It seems to me Rollyo would be really useful for a reference librarian because you could search among all your most-used resources simultaneously. For me on a personal level, I don’t think it’s quite as useful. However, it could be fun to use it for travel sites (like I tried to do) or recipes or something like that. That will be my next step– I’ll try to make some more refined rolls.