Thing 10 : LibraryThing

Hard to see an immediate work use for LibraryThing, but it was fun to look at and easy to use. I 'catalogued' 5 books I'd read recently...and to my delight recommendations for 'related books' that I hadn't even heard of came up...so I can see a great use for LibraryThing in finding new books to read. In fact the more I look at it the more it looks like a wonderful resource for people like me who love to read.

I joined the Librarians who LibraryThing group, and also subscribed to newsfeeds from this group...just for practice...but will probably switch to another group after awhile.

Here is the link to my LibraryThing catalogue.

Thing 9 : Library-related blogs/newsfeeds

I found some interesting blogs on library topics to subscribe to : a couple of literary archive blogs from the British Library, a manuscripts blog from Houghton Library, and an Australian Literary Diary. I tried to find blogs about EAD (Encoded Archival Description) but there was little to be found.
As an overall comment on this part of the program, it is good to now be aware of RSS and newsreaders, and I will be looking out for relevant uses I can make of them in the future. For the present though I've spent enough time on this!

Thing 8 : RSS Feeds and Newsreaders

I seemed to waste alot of time with these tasks. For starters the listed resources aren't linked. Then the first of them, the CNET Video, didn't work, and the third of them, Using Bloglines Tutorial, doesn't seem to exist any more. 'Feed me' was useful though. It was good to have RSS feeds and newsreaders demystified. I created a Bloglines account, and subscribed to a number of newsfeeds,including one of the 23 Things blogs. I also subscribed to a newsfeed to come to my email...just to test how this works. I suspect it would be quicker and easier to get my feeds in my email rather than having to login to the Bloglines account...however I think I need to play round with all of this a bit more.

Picasa

I created an album on Picasa and sent an invitation to a friend to view my album. I also located the images on the map, though this was tricky, as I didn't remember their exact locations, only the country, Italy. Here's another one. (I'm using these images as I happen to have them here at work!)

Task 5 : Flickr

I was specially interested in looking at Flickr after attending the Picture Australia meeting last week, and learning that Picture Australia has many Flickr images (over 53000 when I checked). I also heard at the meeting about the libraries using Flickr, such as State Library of Queensland, State Library of NSW and Powerhouse Museum.

Uploading an image to Flickr was easy. Geotagging was discussed alot at the Picture Australia meeting...so I duly geotagged my image....and had a wonderful time looking at other images from the same place.

Tasks 1-4

I'm very pleased to be able to do this 23 Things program. Its an opportunity to learn to actually use a number of things that I'm curious about...creating a blog for a start!

Although I'm very positive about the program I wasn't specially impressed with the 7 1/2 Habits online tutorial. I quickly became impatient with the very slow speed of delivery of the presenter. I also thought the idea of a formal learning contract was rather silly. However some good points were made. Probably for me the hardest habit to acquire is to view problems as a challenge....not being one of life's optimists I prefer to view problems as what they are- PROBLEMS!! However I'm prepared to concede there might be a more useful viewpoint to take on this! Habit #6, the ability to use technology to your advantage, is what this program is all about and what I'm looking forward to gaining from it.

And now for something completely different....My first blog post!