Things 20 and 21

Thing 20 - GoogleDocs, Zoho Writer, Remember the Milk
I use GoogleDocs all the time.  It’s convenient to have your documents available regardless of your physical location.    Sometimes the formatting is a little “squirrelly,” though, if you’re copying and pasting from a standard Word doc.  That’s why I’m looking forward to trying out Zoho, which seems to have more functionality.  I signed up for Zoho yesterday, but haven’t had a chance to use it.  I did, however, receive a personal welcoming email from a Zoho employee offering to assist me in any way possible and promising me that she would not be trying to sell me anything. :)

Thing 21 - Online Gaming
I’ve checked out plenty of kids’ gaming sites at work.  My workgroup is tasked with placing appropriate links for kids’ games on our library website. ALSC’s Great Websites for Kids is a great help in finding fun, educational sites. I didn’t sign up for any kids’ role-playing games, but I’ve seen many kids playing at the library.  Club Penguin is especially popular at my branch, as is Webkins.

And so, I’m done!  It’s September. Make a Splash @ Your Library is over.  My ALSC course, Out of This World Youth Programming is completed.  And now, my ALSC 21 Things for KidLibs Challenge is over.

It was a pleasure, everyone, and Kelley, thanks for your unfailing optimism!

... and they lived happily ever after. 

THE END

Things 18 and 19

I’ll tie “thing 18, ” You Tube, and “thing 19,” book trailers, together.

First, here’s a laugh for the day - the YouTube trailer for Jon Scieszka’s upcoming collection of short stories, Guys Read: Funny Business.

Here’s a great use of YouTube and sharing. Ever forget the hand motions to a favorite song or fingerplay?  Hennepin County Library can help you out! 

And finally, here are two book trailers that I created for last year’s Newbery winner, When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. It was such a great book, but so difficult to booktalk without giving too much away - so I created two book trailers for it. (I couldn’t decide which I liked better)

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Things 16 and 17

Thing 16 - Podcasts
I like them!  One long-running podcast program is The Leaky Cauldron's Pottercast - a great source for all things having to do with Harry Potter.  I use a program called Zencast to automatically update my favorite podcasting channels to my mp3 player whenever it's connected to the internet.

 I also use podcasts to make booktalks. Here are two booktalking podcasts that I created:


You'll notice that this podcast was adapted by a school teacher for a class assignment. I don't know the teacher or the location of the school; so I was intrigued by their use of my podcast and enjoyed all of the childrens' comments!




Thing 17 - Webinars
Webinars are a great way to learn without having to take time off to travel. Booklist offers some great webinars. 

A great thing about webinars is that they're often archived, so you can watch them at a convenient time.  (I prefer to attend in "real time," so that I can take advantage of the opportunity to ask questions.)

Here's a link to a webinar I attended a few months ago. The topic is graphic novels for kids. http://vimeo.com/11435951 

Things 12, 13, 14 and 15

Moving on ...

Thing 12 Twitter and Facebook 
I've been on Twitter and Facebook for quite a while.  I use Facebook for my personal family connections, though  I did have an author "friend" me recently after she posted a link to my blog on her Facebook status.  (I had just reviewed her new book.) I sent her a message to thank her for the link and she friended me, which I thought was very cool.  On Twitter, I was surprised to receive a tweet from author Jennifer Holm of Babymouse fame after I tweeted the link to my new Babymouse booktalk podcast.  Again, very cool. (Babymouse and Jennifer Holm!) I was a late convert to FB and I still have privacy issues with them, but I definitely use it.  I also like Twitter - great place to find out up-to-the minute info on new books, movies, author info, etc.

Thing 13 ALA Connect
I'm glad you suggested this one.  I am a member of an ALSC committee, and didn't realize that our committee had an online community.  I didn't have a photo of myself, but I at least changed my profile photo to an avatar! :)

Thing 14 GoodReads or LibraryThing
I've been using LibraryThing for years and I love it!  I've reviewed over 300 books on LT and use it for Reader's Advisory to keep track of what I've read.  I've placed a link to my LT profile in the sidebar. If you sign up for LT's Early Reviewer group, you may receive ARCs of some pretty good new titles.  I've received 4 or 5, but it's hit or miss whether or not you'll be chosen.

Thing 15 Instant Messaging
I'm not big on IMing on a personal basis, but I think it's a great reference tool for libraries.  Our library uses IMing as part of the cooperative, QandANJ.  Just to check it out, I signed up for a Meebo account and will put a Meebo chat box in the sidebar.  If you see me online, say hi! so that I can fulfill "thing 15!"

Things 9, 10, and 11

Here are things 9, 10, and 11 all wrapped up into one!  I'm sure I'll be posting more.  This is too much fun!

Things 7 and 8

Thing 7 - Wikis
I'm already pretty familiar with wikis.  I used to keep one for my extended family, but we've all since moved to Facebook.  I also maintain a private wiki for my Girl Scout troop.  It works fine, but the girls prefer Facebook as well. I once took a course in grad school that required me to submit all of my assignments via wiki. In my library system, the YS department has a Google site that we use in the same way that one would use a wiki.

I've always used PBWorks, and I like it.  It's easy to set up and gives you a lot of control options.  This week I tried Wikia for something new.  I found it difficult and frustrating. When I decided to pack it in and head for Wikidot or WetPaint (which is "wiki-ish", but not technically a wiki), I was dismayed to find that you can never deactivate a Wikia account. 

Lesson learned.  Don't jump right into the Sandbox. Read the fine print first, play later.  In any case, my wiki is not set up yet - I'll post a link later.

Thing 8 - Firefox
I use IE8 at home and I'm pretty happy with it.  I'm not that particular about my browser.  Because we're not supposed to use Firefox at work, I'm so used to IE that, although according to most people Firefox is superior, I'll likely stick with IE.  I do, however, think that the Firefox capability of enlarging all items on a page (not just the text) is a great feature for the elderly and people with vision impairments.

That's it for me for the week.

Things 4, 5 and 6

Continuing on ...

Thing 4 - Sign up for Google Reader and learn about RSS feeds  This wasn't new to me, but making folders for my many feeds was something I had never done.

Thing 5 - Sign up for a Delicious account  I signed up for a Delicious account (haven't looked at Delicious since it was del.icio.us), but was disappointed to see that I had to create a Yahoo email account in order to use Delicious.  The last thing I need is another email address! I probably won't use Delicious as an individual, but I can see its appeal for library system, branch, or department use.  Our library system gave it a test run during a system-wide "23 things" challenge, but I don't think it's being used currently.

Thing 6 - Tracking Your Library using Google Alerts, Social Mention and Addictomatic.  I think these applications have great potential, but the results are a mixed bag.  Tracking my library system brings up more misses than hits.  In fact, a search in Social Mention for my large library system  does not bring up any relevant items at all!  http://socialmention.com/search?t=all&q=ocean+county+library%2C+nj Addictomatic is only slightly better.  http://addictomatic.com/topic/ocean+county+library%2C+nj  Perhaps no news is better than bad news, though, and I imagine that the lack of mention is due to my system's general absence from the social media scene. On the plus side, when I need to cover the adult reference desk, I can definitely use these sites when one of our regular customers calls seeking celebrity gossip!

Things 1, 2 and 3

So, here we go with ALSC's "21 Things for 21st Century KidLibs!"

1. Make a blog.  Here it is.  Hope you like it.
2. Become more knowledgeable about Library 2.0.  I'm on it! (Love the manifesto on the ALSC 21 Things blog
3. Post something technology related.  Again, here it is -

I've taken web challenges before, and although I know quite a bit about blogging and other facets of web 2.0, there is always something else to learn, something that's become passé , something new that has taken its place.  In the past few months, I've become aware of at least three new things with possibilities:

Glogster - My son brought this one to my attention.  His teacher uses the .edu version for her class. Imagine doing a book report like this:


Scratch - This one I learned about from a colleague.  Scratch, created by the great minds at MIT,  teaches kids to write computer programming code.  Check this out.  My son “drew” this picture using MS Paint and then used Scratch to animate the drawing. (click the green flag to animate)  He used about 40 lines of code to animate the drawing.

Learn more about this project



Topsy - need up-to-the second information?  Topsy is a tweet-powered search engine.  Think of it as Google for  tweets.  The word in the blogosphere is that Topsy outperforms Twitter’s own search engine.

Sometimes it's not immediately apparent how (or if)  a new application will be applicable to libraries, but staying ahead of the curve is part of the challenge!  On we go -