Thing 35! Books 2.0

Plundered from book sutlers in various ports!
Originally uploaded by lunawhimsy

Thing 35 is a very useful one for me. We just finished our third year of the Minnesota West Book Club. There are about 12 people in the group, but not all are able to attend each time. We meet once a month at noon and have more staff people than faculty attending now. This year I have had our selections posted on the sidebar of this blog. After Thing 35, I am happy for new sources such as Reading Group Choices. Now I am also following Twitterlit and Book Browse on Twitter. I also enjoyed looking at Reading Trails and What Should I Read Next?

In the academic library where I work, books are checked out less often now with students preferring to find most reference sources online. Some students still enjoy reading books. This year I remember how happy a student was to find the new book OUTLIERS by Malcolm Gladwell with our NEW BOOKS display. She said that at her public library she would be on a long waiting list for it.

I think that the sites in Thing 35 enhance rather than detract from reading. Before I did the first 23 Things, I had accounts with Library Thing, Shelfari, and Good Reads. I have Shelfari on the sidebar of this blog, and have a link to Library Thing for Thing 14. A friend invited me to use a books application from Facebook, so I plan to add that option after completing Thing 35.

(Thanks to lunawhimsey for orginally loading the photo, "Plundered from book sutlers in various ports" (Flickr)

Thing 34! Is it Competition? Online Answer Sites

1 How do you get rid of a chest cough?

2. When does fall semester start at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah?

3. Does anyone still use a VCR?

4. What caused Amy Grant and Gary Chapman to divorce?

5. What books can you recommend for a 3 year old?

The above questions were some that I found on sites I explored in Thing 34 today. At a public library, they may not be unusual questions, but at our college library I am more likely to be asked if I can refill paper in the printer or help someone with the copy machine. Finding "instant answers" is motivation for people to use popular Internet sites. Other questions I found like "How do you find true love?" seemed to be something that one might post, but not ask a reference librarian. After browsing many sites, I have a better appreciation of them. Not all were satisfying to me. The ChaCha one was interesting for the many types of questions. At the SnappyFingers site which searches frequently asked questions, I had to ask about six questions before finding one with an answer. The one that I thought of that finally was answered was "What date will Easter be on in 2010?." I did ask a reference question of the Library of Congress, so will be interested to see if I have an answer in my e-mail in a few days. (Update: I had a response in less than 24 hours). While asking several questions, I did not try to answer any, so should try that soon.

For some questions, the collective wisdom of the responders may be more helpful than asking one reference librarian. The accuracy of the answers can be an issue. Slam the Boards is something I enjoyed reading about, and want to explore more.

The readings for Thing 34 on the future of reference were fascinating. I liked the one by Scott Carlson of the University of California - Merced from the Chronicle of Higher Education. I also enjoyed reading the views of Helene Blowers who is credited with the 23 Things, and enjoyed learning more about the origin of the project. It was interesting to me that she mentioned RSS as one of the most important when I have recently been reading of the predicted decline of RSS. At our college, the reference desk changed in the last few years. Although we still have a presence at the circulation desk, I found agreement with the article talking about our "reference questions" now having more to do with computer and printer problems. With the proliferation of Internet answer sites as explored in Thing 34, I will be interested to see the future of reference as libraries continue to evolve.





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Thing 33! Travel 2.0

Thing 33 was a fun one for me! I enjoyed exploring many of the travel sites listed. Lost Girls was an interesting blog. It was fun to check Baden-Baden (where we were years ago) in My Kugelhopf. In Notes from the Road, I enjoyed the great photos. The Texas Hill Country, Harmony and Lanesboro, MN and the SPAM Museum in Austin were places I checked. For review sites, I liked the collective wisdom of http://www.boo.com/ and plan to return to that site. It was fun to see what I could find on the Prague Castle and other places where we had been in Prague. I also checked the opinions of the Holiday Inn Capitol in Washington, DC where we stayed in March and found that I agreed with them. The Newseum http://www.newseum.org/index.aspx in Washington DC, is just a little more than a year old, so with nothing listed for it, I can add something myself! Gusto was fun for 10 Great Places on Earth You Don't Want to Miss. On http://www.vcarious.com/ I enjoyed the photos of Barcelona.

I definitely plan to do more exploring of Travel 2.0 and added some travel entries to Delicious. We booked hotels in Anchorage and Vancouver for this summer earlier. Now I plan to read more about them on sites that I learned about in Thing 33.

Although the sites in Thing 33 may apply more to public libraries, I could probably find some use in the Research QuickStart subject pages that we are adding to our library site at Minnesota West.

Thing 32! Google Maps

View My Saved Places in a larger map


I spent MANY hours with GOOGLE MAPS and did MANY of them. When I tried to load them for THING 32, I had problems. On June 17th after finishing most of the THINGS, when I tried adding a Lanesboro map, it worked on the first try! When I looked at the map, it was not the one that I wanted where I had identified where we stayed and places we ate on a fun "Sisters Weekend" last September. I had added comments and photos. Maybe later, I can add the detailed one that I really wanted, but for now I am just happy that one loaded, and will leave this simple one. GOOGLE MAPS are great, and I really did spend a long time with this THING even though that is not reflected in my simple map.

Thing 31! More Twitter

1. After being on Twitter since February 25th, Thing 31 reminds me of what a novice I am! According to the Five Stages of Twitter article, I might be categorized as a "Presence".

2. I am more of a "Follower" than one who is followed. The ones I follow tend to be more news-related organizations (MPR, MinnPost, New York Times) than individuals. I do enjoy following Esme Murphy of WCCO.

3. Since joining Twitter, I spend less time on Facebook, but still prefer it to Twitter for communicating with people I know. I find it interesting that Facebook changed to have an appearance more like Twitter.

4. I really do not care to know who is tired or hungry.

5. Twitter is great for keeping up with current news - like who won the game. I check Twitter at noon and before going home from work each day.

6. After watching the House and Senate in action, I am enjoying TweetCongress. The members of Congress really depend on their Blackberries when they are on the floor.

7. It has been fun finding other Things on a Stick participants on Twitter, and following their progress.

8. I want to use the Twitter Yellow Pages and explore more of the options in Thing 31 later.

9. The articles for Thing 31 were very interesting. I have saved quite a few Twitter articles in Delicious.

10. After reading about celebrities like Lance Armstrong and Shaquille O'Neal on Twitter (StarTribune, April 3, 2009), I decided to try finding some to follow.

11. One never knows who might show up on Twitter. Today when searching Bemidji State in the Frozen Four, I was surprised to find MnSCU (Minnesota State Colleges & Universities). Now I follow them, and they follow me . . .

12. I notice that I have been reading online newspapers less since being on Twitter. The down side of that may be that I read lots of litle "tweets" about news rather than more in-depth articles.

13. It was fun to be on Twitter when I was on Spring Break in Washington, DC. I commented on what we did each day, and was able to find updates while we were there. Now I follow Ford's Theatre, the National Air and Space Museum and other places where we were that week.

14. I found that my Twitter profile is worth $ 25.00.

15. The Twitter Grader gave me 74 out of 100 possible points.

16. According to a punctuation quiz, I am a comma.

17. I enjoyed some of the sites showing trends with a popular one now being the British singing sensation, Susan Boyle.

18. As it becomes warmer outside, I want to spend more time there rather than with Twitter!

Thing 30! More Ways to Use RSS and Delicious

The only RSS feed that I have on my blog is the Google News one, but I have others on my iGoogle page. Being I have widgets for CNN and Politico on my blog, I do not want to clutter it up too much. Thing 30 introducted me to MANY RSS sites, tricks and tips that I did not previously know about. I looked at all of the sites selected for Thing 30, bookmarked some on Delicious, and now have accounts with Tabbloid and Spreed. After setting up the Spreed account, I thought of my mother who was such a speed reader and said that you don't need to read every a, and and the! I looked at the .govFeeds and rssWeather.com. Now I should spend less time on Facebook and Twitter for awhile and concentrate on RSS feeds for a few days. Too many THINGS to read!

I have had a delicious account before I did the 23 Things. When I set up my original blog, I added a link to it before I did any of the "Things". Now I removed that link and added the linkroll to the sidebar so the most recent entries are visible. I want to organize my tags. Now I have an account with 43marks.com and added my bookmarks to Insuggest.

Thing 29! Google Tools

After a spring break trip to Washington, DC, and trying to "catch up" at work, I am back to the "Things". Google Tools are fun to explore. I added two Google Alerts, so will enjoy keeping up with them. Now I have used a Google Calendar, and hope to expand on that use. I also made some changes to my Google home page and read the articles associated with Thing 29.

The Goog 411 is a good feature, and I plan to add 1-800-GOOG-411 to my cell phone. I also enjoyed using the Google Maps.

In Google News, I enjoyed the latest news from the Newseum in Washington where we spent a whole day during spring break. In archives, it was fun to find an article from 1913 about Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst, a British militant suffragette, who was not allowed to land on the pier at Ellis Island. I explored the Google Health option, and think that would be a useful addition. One could spend lots of time exploring the Google Tools! (Thanks to busiguy6 for the Tools photo on Flickr).