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.

Thing Eighteen!

18. YouTube & Other Online Video.

I have enjoyed YouTube for awhile even though I do not spend too much time there. Yesterday I was interested to hear in the news that Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota and his opponent Al Franken were the first Senate candidates to participate in a YouTube challenge, and enjoyed viewing "Got a question for Al Franken and Norm Coleman?". I added the Coleman/Franken video to the Thing 18 post. We enjoyed hearing the first debate of the Senate candidates at Farmfest in August, and saw Al Franken at the Minnnesota State Fair on the weekend that Senator Coleman took his daughter to college.

Some of the first YouTube videos I watched were on libraries and librarians such as the popular Grand March of the Librarians mentioned for Thing 18. I did not recognize any Minnesota librarians. At a conference that I attended we saw examples of libraries successfully incorporating YouTube for contests and promotions. YouTube provides a useful avenue for teens to use libraries. A Vision of K-12 Students Today and the video response on YouTube were thought-provoking to watch.

For our annual "Faculty Duty Day" this year, we were addressed by MnSCU Chancellor James H. McCormick on YouTube in a presentation of 5 minutes and 57 seconds.

I found YouTube useful for sending a link to our book club members to see Jeanette Walls and her mother after reading The Glass Castle last spring.

My sister sent a message after she posted a video on YouTube of a Bill Clinton appearance in Minnesota.

In Thing 18 I learned that a Minnesota native is responsible for YouTube. Cheers to St. Paul Central High!

Thing Seventeen!

17. ELM Productivity Tools.

At our library I make extensive use of Proquest, Ebsco products, and NetLibrary. When we do class presentations, we instruct and encourage students to use them. NetLibrary is a great resource for our students to have access to current books.

Because I am more familiar with the higher academic resources, I concentrated on searches using the Gale Discovering Collection geared for students from grades 8-12 and did searches in MasterFILE Premier tonight. After hearing Nancy Pelosi on NPR this noon, I did a search on her as well as on other names and topics. I must admit that this was the first time that I logged on the ELM Portal on my personal computer at home using my public library barcode number. My barcode number from my college id. card has been in my memory for years, but I never even thought of using my public library number to access ELM databases from home. Searching different databases gave me a new perspective of the many resource available to us in Minnesota.

I had not tried the Page Composer or RSS Feeds in ELM yet, and was surprised by features that I did not even know were available. Besides doing an account and a new folder, I also saved an article to my Del.icio.us account. The search for images is easy to do in the EBSCO databases. Tonight I spent a lot of time on Facebook as I wanted to have a "head start" on Thing Twenty so that I have something to report by the time I reach that THING. I will return to Thing Eighteen soon to do more exploring.

LATER: I returned to ELM on 09/14, and had time to work more with the search alerts feature, a very useful one.

Thing Sixteen!

16. Minnesota Library 2.0.

Assignment Calculator & The Research Project Calculator.

Thing 16 provides great tools to assist students with assigned projects. I was familiar with them, but now looked at the teacher resources and links provided. Last semester I did a "fake" assignment where I was given reminders based on the dates that I submitted. I am not sure if many students or faculty members at our college know about these tools, so think that we could promote them in the coming year when we do class presentations. Many of us are "last minute" people, so need prompts to aid in deadlines.

If I have projects to do in the coming year, I may try using the tools again. The 23 Things project would even be a possibility to do with reminders for each project so all are done by the deadline.

Thing Fifteen!

15. Online Games in Libraries.

The topic for our annual Minnesota (ARLD) Library spring conference at the Arboretum at Chanhassen in 2006 was "Games Librarians Play: Discover Your Inner Geek." Constance Steinkuehler and Kurt Squire gave fascinating presentations. I was not an online gamer, so Thing Fifteen is a new experience.

In the June 2008 issue of MINITEX Reference Notes, Kristen Mastel gave a good account of a session she attended on Digital Gaming in Libraries. (Midwest Library Technology Conference.) I added a link on the sidebar of this blog for Thing Fifteen to a Macalester College Library orientation game.

I was in Puzzle Pirates just long enough to see what it is like. The only other creature in my first room was a rodent. When I left there, I went to a room where I tried on clothing. I could not buy any because I had no booty. My information is saved, so I can return sometime if I decide to become more of a "gamer".

After Puzzle Pirates, I decided to try Second Life. At first my e-mail address was said to not be valid, but I have now received my registration confirmation, so will be interested to see what adventures await . . .

Thing Fourteen!

14. LibraryThing.

A few years ago, I established an account with LibraryThing, and just entered a few sample titles. After learning of the Shelfari site, I started entering books there last October, and currently have 144 titles. While LibraryThing is more geared to library folks, there is a charge after 200 books, while Shelfari is free. My Shelfari bookshelf is on the bottom right of this blog.

I opened a new account with LibraryThing, and added books that I had read this summer. Now I was excited to read that the founder will be at MLA. I plan to attend in November.

LibraryThing would be useful for student use to do lists of book titles. When I checked out the LibraryThing blog, the fist title I noticed was The Making of a Surgeon, a book I read years ago, and have listed on my Shelfari site. The author's daughter was at Girls State with my sister.

Of the five books that I completed reading this summer, 5,276 readers have added The Memory Keeper's Daughter to LibraryThing, but I was the first one with Hidden Heritage. Look for my five favorite books this summer near the top of this blog next to Thing Twenty-Two.