Thing 21: Mashups

I was going to make a trading card, but apparently the website is blocked by our filters. Darn!

I love the idea of mashups because, ostensibly, they combine two (or more) services to fill a niche need.

The only mashups I've really used involve improving Craigslist, with housing maps and such, but I'm loving InfiniteComic, which takes flickr photos and mashes them with tweets to make comic strips. Here are a few I made:

Thing 20: Tagging and Social Bookmarking

I LOVE delicious.

I stopped using traditional bookmarks years ago -- working on multiple computers in grad school necessitated that I have something available via the cloud, and with the plug-ins for Firefox, all of my bookmarks are readily available. Because of tagging and categories, they're also easier to find.

JSRCC has a delicious account which we use to tag websites we find that might be useful to our students. Because delicious allows for easy creation of RSS feeds based on tags, we are able to import a customized, easily updated list of websites into our libguides.

Thing 19: Multimedia

I was going to post a youtube video, but somebody just sent me this spoof commercial which I thought was very funny, so I'll post that instead:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Thing 18: Audiobooks

I thought Beth Farrell's article, The Lowdown on Audio Downloads (Library Journal, 05/15/2010) was a very good overview of Audiobooks in the context of libraries.

I have had trouble with formats in the past; I own an iPod, and for a long time, most audiobook providers did not work with the apple products. I have downloaded audiobooks from the apple store, and I particularly like listening to them on long road trips.

I think I need to remember that I can download them from the library - I always forget, which, I'm guessing, is a majority of the public's problem with audiobooks too.

Thing 17: Social Cataloging

I use GoodReads to keep track of the books I've read, but more importantly, to keep a list of books I'd like to read. (Feel free to add me here: http://www.goodreads.com/friend/i?i=LTM2MDQxNzM3ODA6MzYz)

I like GoodReads because so many of my library friends use it - I can see the books they recommend, and since my friends all have excellent tastes, get ideas for books to read myself.

I also really like LibraryThing, but not for my own personal use. I'm working with trying to migrate our New Books list to LibraryThing (I need Aleph to run a report that gives me ISBNs...). I have a friend who works for LibraryThing, and I've always been impressed with the way some libraries are able to integrate LibraryThing into their catalog to enhance the user's experience.

Thing 16: E-Books

I'm going to be perfectly honest here - I'm not crazy about e-books.

I love the idea of e-books* - being able to have a massive digital library at the click of a button is amazing. With sites like Project Gutenberg and the ability to borrow e-books from libraries, this is brilliant. I also love the ability to perform a full-text search on a book - I find this particularly useful in the Safari books because when I access them it is to solve a particular problem, not sit down and get cozy with my favorite characters.

I am, however, not sold on the application of e-books. Part of the problem is that I do not own a device for reading them, be it kindle, nook or iPad. I have an iPhone, but the screen is too small to be any use for reading. I am not impressed with most of the ownership/copyright issues associated with e-books - I really like the fact that when I purchase a hard copy of a book, it is my book.

I also really love the experience of reading - the tactile experience, the smell. Curled up with a book on a rainy day just wouldn't be the same with a kindle.

I think the technology is close - I would imagine that in five years I will find a reader that suits my needs/wants, and I will convert. I do not think that e-books will ever wholly replace books - I do think that we will see fewer printed textbooks and technical books - anything that would greatly benefit from full-text searching and cheap mass distribution will move to the e-book format.

*I would have really liked the e-book format during my last move.

Thing 15: Creative Commons

I have all of my photos on Flickr licensed under a creative commons attribution license. I like the idea of being able to share with the world.

My favorite use of limiting the search on flickr to just creative commons photos is that it enables me to find good photos to use in my libguides, such as in the career development guide here.

I am not sure it is worthwhile to include in every-day library instruction - we already cover more information than most students are able to process, but it would be interesting to offer a workshop on it!

Thing 14: Forms

We have a library assessment form that is currently in beta - using google docs. I put together this brief form to illustrate how easy it is!

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dE5nenU4a3UwWXgtbWhzN292cDlvY3c6MQ

Thing 13: Document Sharing

I am teaching an ITE-115 class this Fall, and I encouraged all of my students to use Dropbox, Google Docs or SkyDrive in addition to  or in lieu of a flash drive. I personally store my class documents in my dropbox, which has been incredibly useful. I was able to make start files for homework available to my students via a link through dropbox.

I use google docs regularly as well - I keep notes from lectures there as well as budgets. I also always put any presentations I might give in google docs, so that people might follow along (and it gives me a backup in an emergency!)

Thing 12: Cloud Computing

I added an Eddie Izzard quote to our collaborative presentation in Google Docs.  I'm a huge fan of storing documents in the cloud, especially when collaboration is necessary.

I think Google Docs is the best for collaboration work, but I've been very impressed with Microsoft's SkyDrive, which gives users 25 GB of free storage plus the ability to create word, excel and powerpoint documents online, in the cloud. They are not as robust as the actual software, but it is a great option for students who might not be able to afford the software or are working from a computer that is not their own.

Thing 11: URL Shorteners

I am a big fan of bit.ly to shorten URLS.

One of my favorite tricks is to take the bitly url and add a + to the end to show statistics. So, the example bit.ly from Tara's post would become http://bit.ly/cRKibm+

You can now see when the link was clicked the most, where the people were located, and if the link was placed on twitter, etc. 

Thing 10: Twitter

Sooo... I let this little project fall the backburner. Then it fell in the fire. BUT! I've pulled it out and will desperately attempt to finish before Peer Group.

Twitter - I've been on Twitter since November of 2008. In that time, I've used twitter to network at conferences, ask local Richmond residents recommendations for restaurants and butchers, find out about events, weather and traffic in Richmond, kept up with old friends and made new friends. I've attended "tweet-ups" where people who met on twitter meet in real life. It is a great medium to keep track of your favorite celebrities and authors... for example, my favorite tweet is when I asked my favorite author, Neil Gaiman, if seeing Coraline in 3D was worth it. And he replied!


At the time of this posting, with my personal account I have tweeted 3,274 times, am following 372 people and 334 are following me. And most of them are not spam bots!

For the library account I created, we mostly use it as a way to quick publish news and upcoming  events to our website homepage. I have our blog posts automatically fed to be published in twitter as well.

Follow me @bobanda or follow JSRCC Library at @jsrcclibrary