#4 - The Thing I missed

I enjoyed exploring others blogs and making comments here and there. As far as the Top 10 library blogs go - none of them were especially appealing to me. The Annoyed Librarian is just too much to read regularly. I did get a chuckle out of Judge a Book by Its Cover.

Thing #23 - The End

I really enjoyed going through the 23 Things. Some of the things took a lot longer for me to complete than I initially thought they would. I am not much of a photo person, but I enjoyed learning about Flickr and the online photo editors available.

Reading the blogs of other staff members was also a lot of fun. It was entertaining to try and figure out who was who. Reading all of the different perspectives was helpful and beneficial to me.

If another program like this was offered in the future, I would definitely take advantage of it. Going through the program gave me the opportunity to try things that were new to me and to be reminded of websites and applications about which I had forgotten. There are always new applications out there, so I hope that this program will continue.

Thing #22 - Downloadable Media

For the purposes of this exercise, I explored Overdrive. I am a Mac user and own an iPod, so Overdrive is currently my better choice for downloadable audio books. I found the website easy to navigate. I had no trouble checking out and downloading a book at home. My main issue with Overdrive is that I was unable to figure out how to limit my search to titles available for the iPod. Instead, I would just have to browse through all the titles in a category, until I found one that would work with my player. Now that I have had a chance to test out the downloadable media that SAPL provides, I think I will really be encouraging our patrons to try it out.

Thing #10 - Online Image Generators

I skipped #10, but I finally completed it. I used the Captioner generator from Big Huge Labs. The hardest part was deciding what picture to use, using the program itself was very easy. I thought working with the online image generators was fun, but I am not sure how often I would use them in my regular work day. Possibly for promoting various programs?

Thing #21 - Podcasting

I have been enjoying podcasts for several years now. I regularly listen to several NPR podcasts (This American Life and Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me are two of my favorites). I am used to searching iTunes for interesting podcasts and I found I did not like the search results I received when using Podcast Alley. So, I tried the NPR podcast search tool and added several interesting podcasts to my Google Reader account. I would probably not use Reader to listen to my podcasts, I prefer loading them onto my iPod and listening to them on my commute.

Thing #20 - YouTube

I found it fairly easy to embed my YouTube video. I chose Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas because it is one of my favorite holiday shows. I think libraries could utilize the technology by posting videos on their websites. Instructional videos, informational videos, promotional videos... Plus there are new, less expensive camcorders on the market that are ideal for posting videos to YouTube - the Flip Mino for example.

Thing #20 - Emmet Otter Video