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)