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.