Thing 17: ELM Productivity Tools

I've been using ELM for a very long time. Still,ELM offers many tools to explore of which I had been previously unaware.

Unfortunately, at least for me, much of what I explored felt incredibly time-consuming. An example: the idea of creating a webpage that serves as a pathfinder for a subject search is attractive; the pages I created thru ELM (I tried several) were not, and, to add insult to injury, took much too much time to develop.

For me, the most useful feature of ELM remains the article access, with the ability to save into a folder and share that folder a close second.

Thing 16: Student 2.0 Tools

I liked these Things so well I shared the links with a local private high school principal who is part of my home community. I'm hoping we will add them as useful education links, and I plan to show them (especially the Research Project Calculator)to interested students during my reference interviews.

Great tools!

Thing 15: Libraries and Gaming

I'm no stranger to online gaming, although I've been more interested in Scrabble and other word games than role-playing; creating a character and moving through a fantasy world using skills built while playing the game or solving a puzzle are tasks that appeal to me, but...I simply don't have the time I'd need to do a good job of this.

I did create a character on Puzzle Pirates, looked a bit at the instructions available, and abandoned the effort after that.

Libraries that want to appeal to teens by offering this service, or a virtual presence on something like Second Life, are going to need folks with more time and skill than I have now or am likely to develop in the near future.

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.