Good Night, and Good Luck (Thing #23)

And now, the end is near; and so I face the final curtain.
My friend, I'll say it clear,
I'll state my case, of which I'm certain.

Ah, the end. Here I am, just a few weeks after beginning what was a sometimes frustrating, mostly fun, and always educational challenge, about to make my final post and complete the 23 Things.

It's only in the last few years that I've become computer literate. I'm old enough that I took typing class in high school, and learned on those big clunky industrial electronic models (I was so excited when I finally got my own Brother typewriter, that even had built-in whiteout). Being married to a computer programmer has helped, but most of my knowledge has just come from the down-and-dirty, pull-up-my-sleeves-and-get-into-it type of learning, searching and fiddling around until I figure it out. So for me, the way this challenge was set up was a perfect match. I learned A LOT and will take a good deal of it and use it in my personal life, and hopefully, my professional one as well.

If I had to pick favorites, mine would be LibraryThing (although I don't really count that one since I knew and used it beforehand), Podcasts, Wikis, and YouTube. I'm excited to see how all of this technology will affect libraries going forward, how Library 2.0 will enhance our physical and virtual environments, and develop and strengthen our relationships with our communities.

I would definitely participate in more discovery exercises. It's been fun and inspiring to see people who didn't think they could do it not only finish, but enjoy themselves and have fun in the process. When I first started this challenge, I stated that one of the things I found most difficult about the process of lifelong learning was taking the time to play. This challenge has definitely helped in that area, as I've done a lot of playing these past few weeks. We may not all be 'digital natives' but we can still show those young whippersnappers a thing or two - or even twenty-three!

Audio-Phile? (Thing #22)

I tout myself as a bibliophile, but rarely do I listen to audiobooks. The only time I have access to a CD player is in my car, and I'm usually too distracted or focused on driving to concentrate on a book. My only exception is on extended road trips, usually with my husband, when I can pop in the CDs and listen to my heart's content. But even then, it's usually books that I've already read in print form. Listening to books reminds me a bit of being read to as a child, and having a good narrator makes all the difference. From the limited number of books I've listened to, Jim Dale, who narrates the Harry Potter series here in the US, is one of the best. Especially as more and more characters are added. You even forget that a man is providing the voice of Hermione!

So anyway, when I saw NetLibrary listed as a 'thing', I was both intrigued and excited. It was another online discovery for me, and one that I look forward to utilizing with my new MP3 player. :-)

There seems to be a pretty good selection, and I immediately saved The Night Watch (unread), The Other Boleyn Girl (read), and The Last Days of Dogtown (unread) to my 'Favorites' (a very useful feature, by the way). But the one I chose to download was 'Three Men in a Boat' by Jerome K. Jerome, a very British, very funny account of a Victorian-era trip down the River Thames. I read it years ago, and am quite excited to listen to it and laugh all over again.

Pod People (Thing #21)

I already have ITunes installed on my desktop, since I use that for my IPod, but I'd never looked at the podcasts before. I've really enjoyed listening to the various PLCMCL2 podcasts and have toyed with the idea of adding that feature to my main blog.

I immediately went to check out what book-related podcasts are listed in the ITunes directory, and the first ones to pop up were for Harry Potter - hah! I ended up subscribing to 3 podcasts: Authors in Your Pocket, NPR Books, and The Word Nerds. I also listened to an episode of Garrison Keillor's 'Writers Almanac' - his voice is so soothing to me.

Then I went over to podcast.net - one thing I immediately liked about this site was its ease of navigation. 58 results came back when I did a search for 'library' - most seemed to be university or research libraries.

The podcast RSS feed that I ended up adding to my bloglines account was the NYT Book Update, which I pulled from PodcastAlley.com (reminds me of HP's Diagon Alley).

I really am having fun with Podcasts and they're definitely something I'll continue to use after the challenge is done. I had no idea there were so many out there, spanning such a wide range of subjects. It would be interesting to see this technology used on the PLCMC websites; I think it's something users would enjoy having.

Guilty Pleasure (Thing #20)

I started visiting YouTube to feed my addiction to Project Runway, particularly those clips featuring my favorite PR contestant EVER - Santino.

Thanks to Del, one of my coworkers, I also saw a very funny parody of the Travel Channel TV show 'Most Haunted', from the absolutely funny and fabulous 'French and Saunders' duo.

And now, I've just spent the last hour and a half watching some clips from one of my favorite Canadian TV shows - This Hour Has 22 Minutes. In between guffaws of laughter, it made me a bit homesick really. That led me to watch some Canadian TV and Newfoundland tourism footage. Then I spent an inordinate amount of time looking at old cartoons that I remember watching as a kid, like The Barbapapas, Rocket Robin Hood and The Mighty Hercules.

OK, so here's the one I ultimately decided to insert into my blog, a short news clip from Los Angeles on BookCrossing:



As for where YouTube can inspire libraries, virtual tours and showing clips of special library-hosted events are two things I think would be great for the public to access online. There are 3,151 results that come up from a keyword search for 'library' so it appears that the connection between the two has already been made. There are even a couple video clips from PLCMC!

The Web of the Future (Thing #19)

I immediately went to the book nominations for the Web 2.0 Awards, but was disappointed to see that a winner was not assigned to this category. According to the site, "there were either not enough nominations or there was no clear leader to award winners in this category." I beg to differ! LibraryThing was the obvious winner for me, hands down.

My favorite of the award winners is Craigslist, which is a site I've been using for years. It's a national site, with city-specific listings for most major cities in the US and even global. It's free and is a combination of online community, classifieds, and more. I've sold things prior to having a yard sale, found a newly formed bookclub here in Charlotte, discovered a meeting group for locals and newcomers to the area, searched for jobs, laughed at various 'rants,' given away stuff for free and gotten free stuff in return, and more. It's not that popular in Charlotte yet (in cities like Boston and Atlanta, it's huge), but as more people become aware of it and more transplants come to Charlotte, it's growing more popular everyday. Craigslist could be used by the library as a sort of community outreach, letting the public know about upcoming events at the various branches, such as book clubs, friends of the library sales, author appearances, etc.

Move Over, Microsoft (Thing #18)

Zoho is another site I hadn't heard of before this challenge. It's definitely user-friendly and visually appealing. I like that it's online so you're not tied to one computer. I am continually emailing myself documents so I can access them from any computer, and so using Zoho would eliminate that hassle.

The chat feature is a neat option. Coming from a corporate environment in my prior job, where we used MS Office, AIM messenger/chat, and other online programs and communication tools, I could see Zoho becoming a sort of 'one stop shop' especially for companies and organizations as a means of increasing the flow of communication and collaboration among its employees.

Sweet! (Thing #17)

PB Wiki was a fun diversion, combining the informational aspect of wikis with social networking. I added my blog, along with some favorite books, movies, websites, music and restaurants. It was neat to read the favorites of some of my fellow PLCMC bloggers.

It was especially cool to have hyperlinks to the specific favorites, so I could click on them and see more about whatever it was. Fun!