Thing 23: Summary

It's curious how all those Library 2.0 sessions at Computers in Libraries didn't have nearly the impact that this self-paced learning experience did to help me understand the importance of social networking tools in my life and the lives of our customers. It was a very good for me to be an novice user for a change and to muddle my way around unfamiliar web sites; this brought new awareness to me of what our customers face when they try to use the Library's web site. One thing that's very evident is that users need to be able to create their own portal where they can add all the sites they visit, with a single login to access all of them. It's a real challenge to track the usernames and passwords for all the sites I wanted to use. Security is essential to protect our privacy, but can't it be handled in a better way?

Even so, we really just scratched the surface of what's available (300-500 sites and growing all the time). What I plan to take away from this experience is a greater willingness to explore and learn on my own, clicking through when I see a link in a blog or a reference in an article. I was pleased to see that I have already done some of Stephen Abram's "43 Things I Might Want To Do This Year". What I hope we can do as a library system is integrate some of these great tools into the services we provide.

I love RSS, de.lici.ous, Flickr, and LibraryThing and will continue to use them both at work and in my personal life. Widgets and image generators are great fun; I could have gone really crazy adding them to my blog. Blogging was very hard for me because I'm not used to vocalizing my impressions and ideas. At first I felt like I was being watched, then got more comfortable with it and was lulled into thinking that probably no one was reading it anyhow. Do people blog because they feel anonymous and can say anything they want, or because they have thoughts they want to share, with the hope that others will comment back, or simply as a way of journaling online? No doubt some of each.

I would certainly participate in a similar learning experience in the future. The only suggestion I have is that the information provided be more up-to-date. Some of the blogs and articles we were given to read were several years old and, although still applicable, did not contain the most current information. There were even a few dead links. Overall it was a wonderful experience. Kudos again to the developers of this great program.

Orchid trading card

My creation,
originally uploaded by netzahual.

I created this trading cards using Trading Card Maker, one of fd's Flickr Toys. Easy as anything to do, although once you've saved you can't go back and edit. A key to the icons would have been helpful for the uninitiated among us; I was loathe to use any of them for fear I would send the wrong message.

During the process I learned how to add to my blog from Flickr. There's so much interconnectivity, not only between me and the site I'm in, and between me and other users of that site, but also between web sites.

I'm not quite sure what I would use trading cards for, but it's one of those things that, now I know it exists, I might think of an occasion where it would be fun to make them. I also created a librarian trading card.

Thing 6: Flickr mashups

It was fun playing with some of mashups and web apps, although I couldn't get to Mappr at all and Montager took a very long time to load images. I tried Color Pickr in hopes that I could find a new picture for my blog that would combine the right shades of green and lilac and, although interesting, many of the photos that came up were chunks of sky or indistinguishable objects. With Retrievr it's just not possible to create a detailed picture with thick lines and a small drawing space. When I drew a cat's head I got photos of eyes and all sorts of things that sometimes weren't even close to the shape or color I used.

On the other hand, Flickr Slide Show Generator seems like a cool tool. I was unsuccessful at putting a slide show in my blog, but I plan to try again another day. FlickrFly is great and has good documentation. I placed my photos on a Google map of Mt. Rainier within Flickr. Now I'd like to experiment with being able to "fly" to a map from the photo on my blog.

Thing 5: Flickr

I am really impressed with Flickr and understand why so many people use it. I've tried Kodak EasyShare Gallery, Shutterfly, and Picasa Web Albums and been frustrated with the slow upload speed. Flickr was much faster when just using the browser, and it was quicker to select and add the photos to upload. The mini menus for the various functions make it easy to navigate, and organizing into sets is a cinch. It's robust, with tons of features, and the little balloon help messages are truly helpful. I can only upload 100 MB every month, but I guess that's reasonable. It only costs $24.95 a year to add more! I did have some trouble finding out how many MB I had already uploaded.

This is a photo I took of Mt. Rainier on a recent trip to Washington state, and uploaded to Flickr.