Final task

A farewell feast?

The 23Things programme has been excellent. Providing a course that takes place at one's own pace, that can be fitted around everything else, is a fabulous way of delivering effective and time-efficient training. It has provided a really good introduction to a whole range of tools, some of which I shall certainly continue to use, and I like the way that some of the tasks have built on previous ones. The instructions for most of the tasks have been very detailed and clear.

Off the top of my head, my least favourite thing is Linkedin. I just felt very uneasy about how hard it is to see how the information entered is available, and to whom. The commercial nature of the site seemed much more suited to a business world than to a public sector one. I shall not be using it.

My favourite new things were blogs (my own and other people's), igoogle, google reader, and picnik. I love the simplicity of the latter, and the fact that you don't even have to log in.

I shall also continue to use Flickr and Delicious (the jury is still out on the latter), and things I was already using, such as Google docs.

I'm not sure that I will use Facebook and Twitter for work (possibly...), but will certainly use them privately.

Overall, I feel that I have learnt a great deal, but I also feel guilty that many of these might not have immediate application to my work. But I'm sure that I shall come back to a lot of these tools, and that I shall use more of them in the future.

Well done, 23Things team!

Misc.

Task 21 was to add Flickr photostream to my blog. Nice and easy, but I'm not sure whether the photos remain static, or change as I add things to Flickr. I would really like to be able to select which photos to display. But happily, for now, those on show are ones I took during the snow earlier this year, and complement each other (and my blog colour). I've even been approached by some company, via Flickr, to ask if they can shortlist one of the photos from the same batch for a guide to Oxford.

Task 22 is one that I did some while ago - adding Delicious to my igoogle page. In fact, most of this second task involved revisiting things that we did near the start of 23Things, such as browsing the Editor's choice of gadgets on igoogle. They are mostly not impressive. I tried the Literary quote of the day for two days, and it is unbearably naff as well as being dull. I have stuck with the BBC Good Food daily recipe, and I've just added a few more things (dictionary, earth at night, clouds, search youtube), so will see how I get on with those. Things with adds are much too fussy to display, so any that I wanted to have there (including hotmail) have been given the push, or, if they have to stay, are minimized. Am pleased with Clouds, powered by Google maps. As with Google earth, I love how you can roll the image around.

Office 2.0

Google docs.

I already use Google docs for spreadsheets, and find them fairly intuitive and immensely helpful. I know others report sluggishness, which is a definite downside. I was also unable to access Google docs for several hours whilst in the middle of important work with a very tight deadline, and found that deeply frustrating. And it's overly complicated to save docs to hard drive or to email them (compulsory conversion to PDF for the latter was very annoying), but I saw some suggestion in the "new features" list that this has now been revised. I've yet to test it. Overall, the positives outweigh the negatives, and it is definitely something I shall continue to use.

I'd not used the text documents, nor the form. I didn't even know what a form was. Text docs seem fine - I don't mind having minimal features, as those that I would use most often are all there. The form doc is great! I'm not sure how I would use it at work, but for personal use it is very easy to set up, and looks good. The retrieval of answers is also straightforward.

Here is my form:

I also tried the presentation doc, and again, very easy to use.

ThinkFree

I'd never heard of this. I had a go via Internet Explorer, as couldn't access Google chrome on the shared computer I was using. It was quite slow, and I gather this is simply a problem with accessing it through an old browser. The text doc. features seemed fine (certainly more than in Google), and the note doc. offers a series of very easy-to-use layouts, including one for a newsletter, which could be useful.

Again, I found it hard to tell where (and indeed whether) documents were being saved.

Wikis

Had a look at the Oxford web 2.0 wiki at http://socialouls.wetpaint.com, and only found one instance of OULS to change to "Bodleian Libraries". Doing so was straightforward. I'd not really heard of wikis as such, though I confess to using Wikipedia quite frequently for a quick overview of a subject and for further references (when a source such as DNB cannot help).

For the second "thing", I had a look at the Wikipedia entry on Walter of Chatillon, and made a couple of changes to the page. We'll see how long they stay there. I suspect not for very long, if online accounts of ruthless Wikipedia editors are true. I would never have thought of changing or adding to an entry before, so was surprised to find myself having a go. I can see how it could, for some, become an obsession, as well as being extremely time-consuming. For this latter reason, I suspect I am unlikely to tinker much in the future.

Twitter

I've been intrigued by Twitter for a while, and felt I was perhaps missing out on something by not using it. Signing up was fairly straightforward, but once in it's baffling. I tried the sites recommended on 23Things for library/librarian tweets, and got a bit carried away, signing up all the librarians listed on the first list. I then panicked, as people started to follow me. It feels intuitively wrong to befriend strangers, so I removed them all from my following section. I didn't know, of course, that each of them would be notified that I was following them, and so now have the embarrassing situation of being followed by some people who thought I was following them, but whom I had since removed from my list. I hadn't realised that there would be such immediate and visible responses to following people.

I can see some fun in following Twitter for personal use, but have yet to be convinced in the work sphere. I think more familiarity and time to browse are needed here.

I'm about to have a go at more advanced Twitter activities for Thing 16, and I expect similarly embarrassing and chaotic events to ensue.

After a pause, not much more to report. I am finding it difficult to find anything very worthwhile.

Baffled by and none too excited about LinkedIn. It seems to be primarily commercial, and I have been having great trouble working out which bits of my information are now public. I am sort of hoping that none of them are visible. I am also not going to share the contents of my various address books with it.

I can see that there might be some point to having a "professional" networking site, though I wonder about the real point of this in the public sphere.

Not sure I shall use this much.

Libraries and Facebook

Several Oxford libraries have a Facebook page, and use it to offer various sorts of information: openings hours, news, new books, photographs. Several also have search boxes on the page for online catalogues (COPAC, jstor, WorldCat). I'm sure these boxes have a technical name. And links are also provided to blogs, twitter, and other services.

My initial thought, again, is that much of the material there is duplicated elsewhere, and I wonder how useful it really is to maintain yet another site.

Podcasts

I've fallen behind again, on account of failing to acquire any headphones for the audio tasks. I've now kindly been sent some by the User-Ed. department. I've just had a quick look at the main podcast sites listed in our instructions. I am impressed with the University of Oxford site in particular. It's wonderful to be able to listen to lectures remotely. I hope it doesn't tempt students not to go to lectures, but as a resource in general, it's fantastic. The BBC list was also quite good, and fairly easy to use.

With the major podcast sites, it is hard to know exactly what one is listening to. I could listen to something on Medieval Monasticism, or on the buying and selling of Rare Books (both of which I tried), but without knowing who is doing them, I find it hard to put any trust in what is being said. Is there a way, on these podcast sites, of seeing more information about the source?

I can see that some podcasts from reputable sources might be nice to link to from a departmental homepage.

It seems easier to see where the information is coming from on Youtube. The description tends to be fuller than those I found for podcasts. There is a staggering amount out there to do with libraries, special collections, and book production techniques, some of which could be useful (after much viewing and filtering). The University "channels" appear to be, unsurprisingly, a safer bet, and there seems to be much worth looking at there.

More delicious

I've added the History Faculty Library into my Delicious network, as it is of most relevance from the list on offer. I don't have much to say about networks yet, as I need more time to explore.

My igoogle page has also been updated, with the addition of Delicious, Flickr, and google reader, in an attempt to keep more of a grip on all the things we have been using so far. I decided it was also time for the blurred fish to go - the water they were in was disturbing rather than restful. This is much better:

Delicious

The confusion continues, and I feel overwhelmed by the ways in which I can store the same information. It seems that I can follow other people's blogs on Google reader, or in my blog account, or on Delicious, or in my bookmarks browser, etc. etc. I feel in danger of losing track of where anything is. I am unclear about RSS feeds and their relationship with blogs. Is a blog just an RSS feed?

I also remain unconvinced about Delicious. I think, as some other 23 Things participants have noted, that I will find it simpler to keep track of things in my browser, without having to log in to yet another place. But I can see that, in terms of keeping track of favourites whilst on the move, it is probably a good thing. I'm not sure how useful being able to tag websites will be, either, as I tend to rename anything I save to my bookmarks with something descriptive. I also use folders to organise my bookmarks.

Picnik

The final task for the week was to edit some photos using Picnik. I'd never used it before, and was impressed by some of the functions, in particular, the feature for straightening photos. I also played with colour and cropping, with some examples given below.

I like the way that playing with the colour has brought out the sun striking the building. I hadn't really noticed it in the original.

I've just been struggling with the positioning of images in my post, but seem to have worked it out now. I wish one could drag images around.

Flickr

Right. I've just been playing around with Flickr (which I'd never used before), but have only the most basic sense of how it works. I think I need to spend much more time exploring, but don't feel I can at the moment. I like the drag function, but otherwise things are not quite as intuitive as they might be. But I'm sure that will improve as I become familiar with it. I had to sign up for a Yahoo account (probably did years ago, but have lost the details). I find the page layout confusing, and have not yet sorted out how best to look at my photos, and how best to change settings, etc.

I've been using a (commercial) online photo storage facility for years, which has all the basic editing, sorting and grouping functions, but I've never noticed it having tags. I don't know whether it counts as a Web 2.0 system or not - certainly one can invite people to see photos and albums, but there is no open access. On the question of tags, these do not seem to display with the image, in the way that tags do in Facebook, but perhaps I am just looking in the wrong place.

I tried the map function, but it seemed a bit clunky and not particularly easy to navigate. I'll keep trying when I get more time.

I've joined the 23 Things group, so will attempt to add some photos there. I see that I will be adding to a deluge of snowy Oxford images!

RSS feeds

I've been away from my desk for the past week, and so it was with a feeling of panic that I checked the 23 Things blog to see the tasks I had missed. I've subscribed to Google Reader, and have managed to sign up to several RSS feeds. I found it hard to filter through the mounds of commercial and general sites in search of things that might be genuinely of interest. I was also initially confused about exactly what it was that I was finding (were they webpages, or blogs, commercial, institutional, or private?), but now that I've had a bit of a browse, I think I am starting to get the idea.

I suppose many 23 Things participants will have given up on reading each others' blogs, but if anyone does chance to read this, and has found any useful feeds on either rare books or on medieval studies, I would be grateful for details. So far, I have only the following in those areas:

Rare Book News

Rare Book Review

The Fine Books Blog

Medieval News

Medieval and Renaissance: past, present and future

I've tagged my post accordingly, in the hope that it might be spotted.

I've been using Google blog search, and wonder whether there are better ways of finding things.

I'm impressed that someone manages to keep a list of library blogs, though so far have not found anything relating to my own field.

Other people's blogs

Well, some other 23 Things participants have beautiful blogs, and put mine to shame. I shall attempt to brighten mine up a bit. I've looked at some external ones suggested on the 23 Things blog, and the styles are all so different. Some are factual, informative, and anonymous. Others are startling in their openness, abundant in photos and personal information.

23 Things

I already had a Google ID, as I use gmail and googledocs, so Thing 1 was easy.

Thing 2 was to personalise an igoogle page. I had been meaning to do this before I heard of 23 Things. Who wouldn't want a large clock and constantly updated weather information watching over them! More seriously, I am hoping to find and keep better track of information relevant to work from blogs and other sources that I wouldn't previouslyhave used.

So far I haven't done anything very exciting with igoogle. Some things don't seem to display as nicely as others, for example, hotmail, which comes complete with adverts, and rather spoils the look. I am hoping to improve it over the next few weeks.

Alexandria

Thing 3 is the creation of a blog. I have always wondered how people find the time to blog. The chance to have a go is welcome, and I hope eventually that I might turn this into a regular blog for our departmental homepage.

It's easier than I thought it would be to set up something basic, and posting, editing, etc. seem to be fairly intuitive.

Alexandria seemed like an appropriate name, though I might change it to "Lost in Alexandria".

So far, "23 Things" has been well set out and informative, and I am looking forward to exploring more of the Web 2.0 environment beyond. There is life beyond Facebook!