Thing Five Revisited!

Thing Eight - Washington DC PictureTrail

Books Read During the Summer of 2008, Thing Fourteen

Thing Twenty-One, 23 Things on A Stick Ning

Visit 23 Things on a Stick
21. Beyond MySpace: Other Social Networks.

Before beginning Thing 21, I was invited by a colleague to join the 23 Things Ning. I was familiar with Ning, but had just briefly looked, and not been a member. Now I have posted photos and sent comments to other members. Photos are easy to add, and the variety on the site with videos and other media is good. The 23 Things site is a great networking tool. I added the 23 Things Ning to my Facebook page. Last year I joined WebJunction. It is a good site that I should check more frequently.

Thing Twenty-Two!

22. Staying Current. Ways to keep learning.

WOW! I am almost through with the 23 Things, and am finding out how much more there is to learn about 2.0. During the political conventions, I kept hearing about Twitter which is not even one of the sites that I used here . . . I just added links to Opal and Library Stuff which I learned about in Thing Twenty-Two. Having the links on my blog will help as I am already using the Newsvine and Mark Halperin Page sites more since adding them.

I have really enjoyed looking at the blogs from around the state, and was happy to locate a few people that I know. I plan to keep checking the blogs as well as updating mine when I attend conferences or have something new to add.

The 23 Things Ning is a great resource for networking with others in Minnesota. Yesterday when opening someone else's blog, I was amazed when my photos that I had recently posted were displayed on the 23 Things Ning link that she had added to her page. It is great to be able to share ideas as well as photos. Being the other librarians from our college have already completed 23 Things, I hope that we can keep sharing and using what we have recently learned. I linked their blogs from mine.

Thing Twenty!

20. Social Networking. Facebook and MySpace.

During Thing Eighteen I took a "detour" to start on Facebook, and found that it could be the most time-consuming of all if one lets it. I do not plan to spend as much time there as our students, but discovered why it is such an important means of communication for them. Many have hundreds of "friends" while I have 23 (a convenient number!)

The networking of friends is similar to Shelfari except that at Shelfari I am communicating with people I have never met while at Facebook with only people I know. When starting the Facebook account, I first put in Mischke and Gertner to locate some relatives. My sister had started a Mischke group prior to this summer's reunion. The first Mischke relative I found was a college student where I work. Being the Mischkes and Gertners are from Germany, I was not surprised to find many there, but also found that some live in Australia. One Mischke cousin I found is retired and recently wrote a family history, so not all of my friends are college students.

Now that my niece and nephews are Facebook friends, I realize that I can be reading information that their parents do not know. A cousin in Wisconsin recently gave birth, so it was fun to put in Ashley's name, and find that she already had posted photos of her new daughter on Facebook - (much easier than emailing photos to all of the relatives!).

Right after starting with Facebook, I read two articles in the August 22nd online editon of Chronicle of Higher Education talking about how colleges are using Facebook and MySpace. One use is to notify students with emergency alerts for crimes and floods. Some college officials are concerned that could lead to misleading rumors. In a post on The Wired Campus in the same edition, "Mike" commented that "no one under 30 takes Facebook all that seriously, and they certainly don't expect privacy & security. The entire site is a high tech freshman mixer - nothing more."

Besides the Mischkes of Minnesota, the other groups I joined are Libraries Using Facebook Pages and 23 Things on a Stick. After reading about the ELM and Research Project Calculator pages on Facebook in MINITEX Reference Notes, I became a fan for both. I put a link to a New York Times book review of Thomas Friedman's latest book on my Facebook page.

I like what Hennepin County Library does with a MySpace page, and will be interested to see if many academic libraries will have pages. Being all three librarians at our college participated in 23 Things, we can probably decide if we want to use any Facebook applications during this new school year. On Facebook I enjoyed finding several school librarians from the area. It will be fun to continue networking even when I finish 23 Things.

Thing Nineteen!

19. Explore Podcasts.

I often saw links for podcasts on sites such as the New York Times, but had not listened to them till today. Even though I do not own an iPod, it is fun to be able to listen to missed broadcasts at my convenience. I am an MPR/NPR "junkie" who listens often at home and on the road. After being at the Minnesota State Fair on Monday, I enjoyed listening to the goats in the background on the Friday podcast from the Minnesota Public Radio Morning Show today. The Morning Show was broadcast live from Jackson a few years ago in the local theater during a community celebration, so it was fun to see how the sound effects are done. Mike Pengra, the producer, is a Jackson native, and I knew Dale Connelly years ago when he worked at MPR station KRSW located in Worthington.

I enjoyed browsing the On the Road With MINITEX podcasts, and finding their Southwestern Minnesota road trip with familiar folks such as Amanda Raetzman at Willmar and Mary Rae Oxborrow and Chris Lang at Worthington. I hope to return to the MINITEX site later to spend more time.

On my Google Reader page, I have links to podcasts, so will try to go there more often to listen to current news ones.