Review of the "things"

Summary of the 12 things course:

I have now reviewed several “things” as nearly all had to be completed at home where I am borrowing my Daughter’s MacBook which I am not too good at using!

1. Blogs: I am really keen to set up a library blog but this requires a serious discussion with Communications and a change in IT policy. On a personal note I can see that I would use blogs and enjoyed reading the comments from other “12thingers”.

I found twitter straight forward and found some great tweets to follow but again blocked at work but hope there will be some discussion on this.

2. Alerts: This I have been promoting and together with RSS these are actually allowed and I hope to use RSS to promote new books. JournalTocs was also straight forward and has potential in the library. On a personal level I am now receiving great Google alerts on archaeology

3. Wiki’s I found several pages of medical wiki’s which I might promote. This thing was straight forward but not sure how useful.

4. Presentations: I set up an account in Slideshare at home as this was blocked, but will do more work on this. Prezi was also blocked but I have used this before and found it really good once you stop zooming too much. I am concerned about things being public. Obviously YouTube is blocked but used to this and the can see the mechanics of embedding. Even flickr is blocked and this I have used before and have used it at home without a problem. I did not progress with picasa.

5. Zotero and Mendeley:  No plug-ins are allowed at work but I can see that this could be useful for researchers and I will share notes with a few of our customers. I have set up a Zotero account at home and may use this if I ever continue my studies.

6. I have a Del.icio.us and a Yahoo account at home which is helpful personally but blocked at work.

Internet Explorer- I did tidy up my favourites into folders

MyLibrary- can use this at works and can remind users of this

At some stage I will set up a personal homepage but like many “things” on the course it will be best to think about content and format before rushing into setting something up.

I was able to look at Netvibes in the library and can see that this could be useful for our users.

I really like Tag Clouds but do not know how I could use one but am very keen to produce something!

Overall it was very disappointing that the majority of “things” on the course were blocked at work and I had to work at home. Despite this and the struggle ahead to request some change to IT policy I found the course very useful, especially personally as I receive so many archaeology alerts I feel up to date.

Professionally I am building up contacts on LinkedIn.

There are several “things” which I can promote in the library but I am putting together a case for a library blog and tweet.  I am working with the Education department on this and we have made some slight progress.

I enjoyed the course tremendously and it filled a lot of gaps in my knowledge. Obviously I will have to work further on some of the things but several are now straight forward and easy to use and these I will promote to customers. Alerts in particular are useful and easy to set up. Perhaps we could have a review from the group in 6 months to see what has been used and useful?