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.....