Thing 6 - Online Image Generators

Consider how you can use these tools in your library.
I think librarian trading cards would go over well with the students here. The librarians are popular and well-liked, and I'm sure students would appreciate having cards with librarians' image and contact information to take with them, anywhere.

How about a license plate with the name of your program?
Sure, why not?

Thing 5 - More Flickr Fun

Wow, it's a dog puzzle.

How can you use any of these tools in your library? Reading programs, posters promoting library events, librarian trading cards all come to mind as possibilities.
Our library does a fair amount of event promotion. We actually had a puzzle theme for last year's National Library Week events, and a puzzle generator might have been a handy tool to embellish our theme. Some of the other mashups, including the slideshow, could be added to our website as a way to share library photos. A moving slideshow might generate more interest in library events than clip art alone.

What do you think of sharing photos online?
I think it's nice if people want to share their photos with others. One thing I enjoy is looking at people's Flickr photos of places (mostly in Europe) that I'd like to visit. It's like taking a mini-vacation. My graduate school (in Canada) has a Flickr account where people upload photos from around campus. I occasionally enjoy looking at the UWO photostream to see what's happening at my alma mater. Our library could start a similar Flickr account for people to upload their photos of library events, or just everyday life in the library.

Thing 4 - Photosharing with Flickr

This dog picture was found on Flickr. It is by a photographer called Sputnik.

How might you use Flickr in your library?

Our library could use Flickr to show pictures of our remodeling projects. We could take pictures around the library and add captions that would serve as a visual library orientation.

How do you feel about having your photos public (note that you can mark your Flickr photos private, too)--any concerns?

I am concerned about having pictures of myself on the Internet. I like that the 23 Things on a Stick blog cautions photographers to ask permission before uploading photos of people. Whether or not this is recognised photography etiquette, I don't know.

Thing 3 - Set Up an RSS Account & Add Feeds

What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?
I enjoy logging into one place and having the importing education news of the day come to me. My strategy is to open my Bloglines, scan the headlines (the titles of the blog posts), and then skim the posts with interesting or pertinent headlines. The news blogs contain links to online newspapers, so if the story is very interesting I'll click the link to read the actual news story. Then, I can either bookmark the story for later or forward it to someone else who might enjoy reading it.

Basically, the people writing the blogs I subscribe to are doing all the work of visiting each news website and gathering the Higher Education or library related news stories and linking them to their blogs. By subscribing to these blogs in my Bloglines, I save a lot of time by not having to visit all of those news websites myself.

How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your school or personal life?
If the professors in my liaison departments wrote blogs, I could keep up with departmental happenings through subscribing to those blogs in my RSS feed reader. Also, I could subscribe to blogs pertaining to the news in my various liaison subjects, so that I could keep abreast of the news in those fields. I could even forward interesting articles to professors as I find them.

In my personal life, I could subscribe to my long-distance friends' blogs, though most of my long-distance friends have migrated their online presence to Facebook, which contains its own "news feed", similar to RSS. I could also subscribe to the blogs of organizations or issues that I am interested in, to keep up-to-date with the happenings in those organizations.

Find any great sources we should all add to our feed reader?
All academic librarians should subscribe to the Kept-Up Academic Librarian blog.
I also subscribe to The Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog, The Chronicle of Higher Education Wired Campus Blog, the CNN Education blog, Paul Pival's blog The Distant Librarian, and the Librarian's Internet Index New This Week blog.

Thing 2 - What is Library 2.0?

Where will I find the time to do 23 things?
I will consider the 23 things part of the time I invest in professional development and reading the professional literature.

Why am I participating in 23 Things On a Stick?
I am participating because I want to go through the process with my colleagues and participate in the discussion of Web 2.0/Library 2.0 and how it could apply to our library.

What do I hope to learn?
I hope this will be a review of some of the things I learned in library school at the University of Western Ontario, particularly in the class LIS 525 Managing Internet Information Resources. I hope to learn about how other libraries are using Web 2.0 tools, and in particular how their patrons are responding to and using these tools.

How has the Internet and the vast resource it can be affected your use of time at work and/or at home?
So much of what I do involves the Internet, and I could be doing so much more with it. More shopping, more banking, more social networking, more research, etc.

Where are you in your knowledge and use of Web 2.0 tools?
I've kept various blogs for various purposes over the past few years, such as a blog to keep in touch with family and friends while I was at library school and another blog to keep in touch with library school friends now that we're all away from library school. I use Bloglines to keep up on the news related to libraries and higher education. I have Facebook accounts to keep in touch with friends and connect with students. I do not have a Flickr account because I do not own a digital camera or camera phone. I created a wiki for the reference staff here at the library, and I hope it will become an effective knowledge management tool for us. I started a Library Thing account and catalogued some of my books with it. I currently listen to podcasts and watch YouTube videos, but I have not created original podcast or YouTube video content.

What are you looking forward to in 23 Things On a Stick?
I am looking forward to learning about the the kinds of results these "Library 2.0" libraries are experiencing since incorporating Web 2.0 tools into their environment. (I find it interesting that the term "Library 2.0" was coined by Michael Casey in September of 2005, just as I was starting library school. Incidentally, he was referring to a group that started at my library school, Librarians Without Borders.) I want to know how things have changed for these libraries in the few years since they started implementing these tools.

Thing 1 - Getting Started

What I’ve discovered and learned
I learned how to create an avatar. It does not look like me, but it was fun to create. It was a little like playing with paper dolls as a kid. Perhaps avatars are the paper dolls of the 'Net Generation.

What worked for me, and what didn't
The simple layout and color scheme will work for the purpose of this blog.

What I've shared with my colleagues
I shared how to use one of the WYSIWYG editing features with Dora - the button to add a hyperlink.

Any surprises, frustrations, and eureka moments
Blogger has made it easier to change or add to the layout of the blog template. I used to have to go in and edit the HTML code to add links and pictures to the template.