The end.

The final post on the 19Things whirlwind tour of interesting things! I think I've blogged about all of the Things....I think a final list of what was covered would be helpful in the last email about completing. I know they are all there on the blog but just for ease of use?

Anyhoo, over all I found that I knew about some of the Things (RSS feeds, QR codes, My Library, browsers, blogs)  but others were new to me (Wordle, Protopage, CiteULike, MeetOMatic, Library Thing). I particularly like the creative commons one as this has been helpful both work and personally. Wordle/Tagxedo etc. was brilliant and I intend to incorporate this into some of our library displays/leaflets/posters. I may use the meeting arranging websites as they could come in useful. Protopage was interesting as we currently use Netvibes to pull links together and, personally, even though they do pretty much the same things I prefer the overall look and feel of Netvibes to Protopage. I don't like the adverts that appear at the top of the screen on Protopage (there maybe a way to stop this but I think it involves payment?). The reference management Thing was interesting as it was something I'd heard about but never actually used. I thought Library Thing may have been a good way to showcase our new books (I currently produce a monthly list of them) but I couldn't work out a way to add notes/comments that display with the book ) i.e. class mark or library (we have 3 library sites). 

If it's run again then maybe include Wiki's as they are a good way of sharing information with groups of people. I'm a member of one using PBWorks which was a learning curve for me when I was sent a joining invitation and had no idea what it was!

Sometimes I feel I suffer from information overload....so many places to look for things, so many different networking/sharing/storing/current awareness/RSS/blogs etc. etc.....that my brain goes into a mini meltdown and I need to eat cake. I eat a lot of cake.

The end is near.....

.....reflection week. 

On reflection I've just realised I haven't blogged about CiteULike or the other reference management sites! So here goes: I haven't used any reference management software/websites before. I did my studying some years ago and these handy tools weren't around (well they may have been when I did my library course about 6 years ago but I only completed the Post Grad Diploma bit and didn't have the joy of doing a dissertation). I know some libraries have access to and use such things as RefWorks but it's not something we have in my library so they have kind of been on my radar but very distant! Having tried out CiteULike I think it could come in useful to keep track of personal resources for work.  I can see the appeal for students or people doing research/writing books/articles as it can save lots of time typing up reference lists. Sharing articles especially by linking it to Facebook is a nice feature for those who have professional FB pages. 
I've also had a quick look at Mendeley and Zotero which look pretty good although it's a download with additional social networking/sharing capacity which limits it's usage a bit (I use at least 3 different computers at work). Although some of the features are good like annotating articles and highlighting sections of articles.

It's now 4pm. Here's a picture of some cakes to cheer you (me) up! Enjoy!

NB. It is a free to use image :o)

Meetings and Library Things....

Meet-o-matic......sounds like washing powder but does something completely different. Luckily. Otherwise it wouldn't be Thing 15. Having spent my library life (so far) in the NHS this sort of thing hadn't really occurred to me as we use Outlook for scheduling meetings, one of the handy things with Outlook is that once you've accepted a meeting request it puts it straight into your calendar so requires little thinking and doing. I see the importance of these other meeting schedulers for those who use different calendar/email systems. I like the way Meet-O-Matic was quick and easy to use, I also looked at Doodle and found this just as good.....I'm tempted to use this with friends to bypass the endless texts/phone calls to co-ordinate everybody!

Library Things is something again that wasn't on my radar (think I must live in some deep dark hole). It looks good for sharing collections. I haven't looked at the social networking side of things yet but setting up collections is easy peesy. I am wondering if we could use it to publicise our new books? However, I can't see a way to add in the shelf mark or any comments. There are boxes for this if you edit the book but they don't appear to display when I click on book cover in my collection. May need further investigation......

Reflection.....

.....so far the 19Things has covered some stuff that I already use and some stuff that I don't so all in all it's been informative so far. I think it's also handy to be able to take a step back from what you already use and the way you use it and look at it again with fresh eyes.....as in; is this really working? Am I using it to it's full functionality? Are there other things I could use instead that have more/better features?

Enjoying it so far....when I get the time to squeeze it into my working day!!!

Pubmed RSS and other feeds.....

I've just completed 'Thing12'.....I don't really use Pubmed much, mostly the citation matcher for checking photocopy requests and the odd quick and dirty search so this was interesting and useful. It's a similar thing to setting up an alert in HDAS I think....assuming HDAS is working at the time :o/ 


When I went into My Library I realised that I'd set up RSS feeds some time ago and just forgotten about them.....probably because I never asked it to email me the results so they just sat there being neglected. I can see the usefulness of this as again it pulls together information from different sources into one place instead of having to check several different websites. I like the Pubmed search RSS, so easy to set up :o)

On the whole RSS feeds are not something I've ever been asked about by library users. Maybe it's something that we should publicise more?

Protopage....

Hi everyone.....I'm running a bit behind in these 19things so have only just got round to doing the Protopage set up. As a library service we already have a Netvibes current awareness page so i thought I'd try using Protopage to see how it compares and I have to say I think Netvibes looks a bit more professional (or maybe that's just because I've not set up the colours and stuff correct, I've used some bright pinks and blues, just because I can!). My thoughts so far on Portopage: it's ok, seems fairly easy to use and add/remove widgets/feeds etc.

Personally, I think that there is still a need for a page such as this which can bring together lots of different resources in one place. I find it much easier....maybe that's just me being lazy but if I can save myself time by using somebody else's page rather than faff around and create my own then that's great! :o)

Creative commons....

I've never really looked too deeply into creative commons before although we do sometimes have questions from library users about where to find images and if they can be used in their posters/reports/presentations etc. I've pointed people to Flickr in the past.....now I know there are loads more to choose from and what the different creative commons licenses there are.
I liked Google images but maybe that's because I use Google chrome quite a lot so know how to search using advanced search etc. My images is below (both free to use and modify for commercial purposes).....nothing to do with libraries but reminds me of my holiday in Scotland last year. I do have a soft spot for a Highland Coo!:

Hairy Coo

I didn't find Wikimedia Commons as easy to use but the following image I liked and it is from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Public Health Image Library:

MRSA

I liked that you can download it in different resolutions or there are quick links to adding it a webpage or emailing it.

Browsers!

Well, I'm running a week or two behind due to work being a bit hectic so have only just got round to doing Thing 6 & 7.....

Browsers: I regularly user Chrome at work and at home and probably on my mobile as it's an Android. I do sometimes use Firefox at home to just for a bit of variety! I find Chrome and Firefox are much faster than IE8 (the standard at work) although there are some work things that don't open properly on Chrome so IE8 is still used from time to time and vice versa. I think they are all much of a muchness if I'm honest. They all have similar features: tabbed browsing, bookmarks/favourites, history etc. although some features are easier to find in some browsers than in others (Chrome has the funny 3 line symbol/button next to to search bar which contains all the bookmarks and history and other settings which can take a while to navigate and find what you want). I've found importing favourites from IE to Chrome and Firefox is nice and straightforward :o)
I might try a couple of the others at home and see what they're like.....

So far....

Week 3 in the 19Things programme (said in the best Big Brother house voice).

So far I've discovered Wordle which I'd never heard of before and, I have to admit, I love it!  I've seen this used in presentations and on posters and liked the look of it, very eye-catching.  I found it very easy to use and the instructions were clear as were the terms and conditions of use although I was a little disappointed at the colour selections.  I'm hoping I can utilise it to revamp some of our library displays/posters.

I knew about QR codes before and have created some for our library leaflets and posters that link to various parts of our website pages. My colleague has also used them to link to reading lists we've set up on our library catalogue so students can scan the list they want and they get taken to a list of all the books we have that are on that reading list. I'm currently creating some to display on the shelves that link to the e-books we've purchased. I also use http://tinyurl.com to shorten some of these long address so that the QR code is less complicated and more easily read by some older or less fancy smartphones. The QR code generator we use is http://goqr.me

Hope you're having fun with these too!

NEW!

Hello fellow library peeps!

Hope you are all good. I'm finding the blog thing a little weird, I was never a diary writer so putting my thoughts etc. down in print feels a little odd. Does anyone else feel the same? Maybe it's just me? :-/

Anyhoo, here's where I'll write about the 19Things and what I think about them....