Thing 14: Library Thing

I really do like LibraryThing, as a reader's advisory resource (the tag mashups are grand), as a tool to keep track of my own book collection, as well as a possible addition to library OPACs, but I'm having an awful time getting the widget described at http://www.librarything.com/ltsw/ to work properly on this blog. Thanks to the help of a colleague, I can now add a widget by using its HTML; you'll see the one for LibraryThing added at the right -- but this widget certainly is not searching MY library! None of the seven books I've entered show.

Suggestions anyone?

Thing 13: Productivity Tools

Okay -- I've got a customized IGoogle page, complete with a passle of weatherinfo widgets (brrrrr it's been cold lately ), a spring theme (just love those cherry blossoms); Color Junction, an addictive game that I hardly ever win and would much rather play than blog; a calendaring tool thru Google, which I can share with online friends and family -- very useful right now since, outside of my workplace, I'm temporarily without online access; a link to Google's top news stories, and assorted other stuff that I'm trying out. There appear to be many widgets that simply don't work; others whose inherent slowness completely outweighs their potential usefulness; and still others filled with ads I don't ever want to see.

Adding "Remember the Milk" and its Google calendaring functionality as well as the Blogger widget to my Igoogle page were probably the most productive things I did in this Thing's activities. I've learned to add lists and locations to Milk. It's all paperless and easily accessible - I'm sold.

On my list to explore further: http://zamzar.com/ -- free online file conversion without the need to download software. Just added it to Milk!

Thing 12: Do You Digg?

I definitely don't Digg! I looked at several of these social media sites, got terribly frustrated with the shallowness of the comments I viewed, and very much put off by the rant. Just an old fuddy-duddy, I guess. I did actually set up an account on Newsvine, "seeded" an article, voted on two others. I can see this type of site might be useful to stay in the know about popular topics, but other than that, I think I'll pass. Too time-consuming for the value added.

Thing 11: Tagging and Social Bookmarking

Uncontrolled vocabulary -- whee! I did a little tagging on Flickr, and a bit more on this blog, and I see where tagging alone offers promise as a finding tool, but the real benefit seems to lie in the group effort. It hasn't taken me very long, but I'm hooked on del.icio.us -- and the tantalizing prospect of collective intelligence.

Note: the del.icio.us bookmark button does required downloading an executable file. If that doesn't work at your location, there are a bunch of widgets available for igoogle. They may not be as slick as the site's button, but there are a variety to choose from, and they don't require the download. Simply go to igoogle, click on Add Stuff and in the Search for Gadgets dialog box type del.icio.us ... Explore results, and choose.

Thing 10: Learn About Wikis

RCL has had an experimental reference wiki up and running on PBWiki since the Fall of 2006. I didn't get involved with it until sometime in 2007, when a team of which I was a member needed to develop a survey of staff technical competencies. What followed as I tried to learn the ins and outs of PBwiki design (without benefit of HTML) was months of frustrated grumbling as I found it repeatedly necessary to pull my MS-Word formatted table out of the wiki, do the corrections and reformatting on Word, and repost to the wiki. What I saw was all too frequently not what I got, and more than one of my colleagues were reluctant to post to the wiki because of the formatting difficulties.

Even though staff at PBWiki tried to be helpful, I feel that the inherent difficulties in this particular mechanism worked against the promise of collaboration.

Given my familiarity with this Thing, I didn't spend a whole lot of time playing with it again. I did,however, look briefly at the Zoho wiki editor. I had a much easier time editing a Zoho page -- and what I saw after I had saved my work really did look like what I thought I had saved. Impressive! I will definitely come back for another look.