Thing 13 Reflection

Light dawning.....

One of the exciting things about 23 Things is that the ‘and so what’ question that I rashly asked people to think about has actually produced some very interesting thoughts and conversations. We veer from complete enthusiast, to ‘good for collaboration’ to yes I’ll do this, or that or the next thing but not others. I think this is encouraging!

For me, the journey (to use a rather over-used term these days) has been quite mixed. Some of the Things I have already ‘done’/played with and actively use, others I just got cross with and wondered what the point of them were. I suspect that this reaction does me no credit whatsoever as it is probably the ‘things’ that I am least familiar with that make me react in this way. Mea culpa.

However, one thing that I have become quite excited about is the simple act of blogging and making use of blogs for library pages and for other purposes such as online tutorials. After all the committee will have written 23 mini tutorials for the library community over the course of this programme, which many people have managed to do – so why not use this friendly, free tool for library tutorials? Several conversations with our Computer Officer about our library website have all pointed in this direction as well. Blogs are easily edited by anyone really and with our Library News already based on a blog we are half way there.

So –somewhat to my surprise I have a real goal for shaping what we do next in the Library, and I don’t feel all that bad about ignoring such things as twitter and delicious – for the moment at any rate! So there is good stuff out there.......

Thing 12 Yummy stuff making me grumpy

Well, 'Delicious' looks.....er...um....delicious

I can see the point of being able to access my bookmarks from any computer etc etc but truth to tell I rarely move computers and if I do I don't generally need that particular set of bookmarks. But I fear that this makes me sounds like the proverbial 'grumpy old woman'.


BUT.......in my defense........I clicked the link through to the Casimir Lewy Delicious page and was suitably awed and depressed, and went through one of those 'oh my goodness - we MUST DO THIS/head in hand scenarios' . But then I thought that I would pretend to be a Philosopher going to their website and be entranced by the information available to me via this tool. I was incredibly frustrated at how unobvious it seemed to be on the website and wondered idly how well-used it was. (Apologies I truly am becoming more and more grumpy - could be that I'm just hungry). Even the Green Library delicious page looks lovely -but again going from the front end of the website - absolutely NOTHING tells you where this wretched page is hiding! Either that or else i am just starving and should go and eat. So once again i ask myself - is it useful? is it helpful?

In summary:
Yes I do have a personal account, yes I have created a Library account, no I don't use it actively yet but am trying really hard to decide whether to pursue on behalf of the Library. I need to resolve access, promotion, location, resource searching, quality control, and buy-in from those who would maintain and use it.

Thing 11 Slideshare

Well I've used slideshare quite a lot before but to re-visit using the suggested questions:

* Thoughts about the tool
Helpful, inspirational, reminding, provoking, irritating (I would so like to have BEEN there!)
* What particular benefits to your Library are there from using Slideshare?
No need to keep on re-inventing the wheel - others have been there and done it already
* Did you find any interesting presentations that you would like to share?
Yep - sure - see one below from Chris Powis and Jo Webb

Making it count: teaching information skills

View more presentations from Jo Webb.

I'm highly likely to use Slideshare in the future - especially for ideas. I need to work on my powerpoints (see previous post) before I am likely to want the world to see them on slideshare!