Summary

Dear SLA

Thank you very much for the 23 Things. What an experience!!! I have learned so much. At the beginning I thought I knew alot about Web 2.0 tools, but after completing the programme I must say that Whow, have I learned alot more than I thought was possible in such a short time. I will defintely use these tools and definitely share my knowledge gained with my co-workers. I feel that 23 Things have provided a platform and one must keep on building on this platform. I have this vision already of where and how we can use most of these tools in our library. What was the most useful of this programme for me is that I could compare tools from the same category and discovered tools that I did now existed. I could see that although we are continents apart we are dealing with the same challenges and we are learnign together.
My favourite tools were Flickr, Playweek, Blogging & Diagramming and mind mapping & with Mindomo and discovering SEOmoz .

Thank you once again for allowing me to be part of this programme.

Thing 22 Netlibrary

Netlibrary I found very useful and an essential tool in our organization. I think this is a very useful tool as our collection is a closed collection and can only be accessed from our organizational premises. What I think might be somewhat negative from our organizational perspective is that our books are very subject specific and very very seldomly used by more that about 2 researchers at a time. Very importantly also is cost associated with Netlibrary. If we have to pay an additional subscription we will first have to evaluate how many people will make use of Netlibrary and accordingly compare price per head to see if this would be a viable acquisition. I will definitely introduce other Info specialists to this tool at our next meeting so that we can put our heads together and evaluate this tool, as researchers and info needs differ across subject fields.

Thing 21 Podcasts

I couldn’t fully evaluate the differences in the 3 services, I couldn’t connect to Odeo, (kept getting a forbidden access message), Podshow was very slow but I could access and create an account on PodOmatic. I find Podshow very overloaded and a bit unorganised with so much information and I didn’t quite like the navigation, spend to much time trying to find my way around the site. PodOmatic on the otherhand is more user friendly and has simple navigation. I created an account and strated searching for podcasts but once again had trouble playing these. I could see that PodOmatic does rank podcasts in a category that was rather useful. I don’t think podcasts will be that useful as this point in our organization but know that I have an idea of what they are and how to access and use them further investigation is a must.

Thing 20 - Upload and Share Videos

This challenge did not go well. I think our network is not very supportive of these sites. It takes about 4 hours for 1 video to download and when I want to view the video nothing happens. I have been struggling from week 1 to view videos and convinced now that it can only be the network. I am wondering if other people from South Africa might have the same frustration? I cannot complete this challenge because of the problems that I am experiencing but already have a YouTube account (created at my previous employer and I am familiar with YouTube.) I do not think that this Thing is useful in our organization and I do not think that we will use this. I believe that I might upload and share videos in my personal life as our organization has a very strict web and security policy.

Thing 19

I discovered Twitter a tool that tells everyone what you are doing, you can add friends and chat, and this also available on your mobile. I also inserted it into my Blog so everyone can see what I am up to. I also discovered the top ranked Widget sites called Yourminis which all the latest available widgets to add to websites & blogs. I also discovered Wufoo, to create online surveys invitations & forms, which is a very very helpful tool to have.

Thing 18 & 19

I used Gliffy to create a mindmap of how to find an electronic journal article through our library website (see previous post, just an example). Gliffy is easy but not free (only trial version free for 5 maps). I think I’ll use Mindomo which has a basic free account. I already have PDF creator on my computer and did not bother with them. I already have a Google account and created a few documents (imported and created) documents that I have shared with others. I find this very convenient especially when one is working from home you no not have to carry your flashdisk around. If email goes down I can share document with other and allow them to edit the douments without emailing back and forth. I discovered that I can load PDF documents into Google Docs as well, and link these to my Google sites websites.I do not make use of a lot of these tools on a daily basis, but from January we will be hosting our Web 2.0 workshops again on a monthly basis and will definitely use Web 2.0 tools to get us started.

Thing 18 - Gliffy

Looking for an electronic article via the Library, I have created a diagram using Gliffy to indicate the path to follow on the Library website, click on the link below to view:

http://www.gliffy.com/pubdoc/1558266/S.jpg

Thing 16 & 17 WIKIS

Wikis are more complicated for my organization at this stage. It can be a useful tool but I am a new employee (4 months at this company) and I am not to sure what can be added to the public domain. I like Confluence, a pity that it is not free, this would have worked well for us. I will take Thing 16 & 17 as a challenge for myself to investigate the possible use in our organization.

Thing 15 - ROLLYO

WOW, what an excellent tool. I find ROLLYO easy and simple to use to create a federated search of free (open source) tools that we use to search for information but have to search each individual website. I am just concerned about the search functionality (limit functions) that is lost. I did not have enough time but would like to see whether one can also create a Rollyo for subscription databases, will test this at a later stage.