Thing 6

First, let me say that I love the idea of RSS feeds and news aggregators and have for years. The down side is that I do better keeping up with "push" news sources like alerts or even listservs that come to my phone or e-mail. That being said, I often subscribe to blogs because Bloglines is a convenient way to keep the ones I am interested in together, and only showing the posts I haven't seen. When I do have time to look them over, I almost always find something fascinating!

I have used Bloglines for years to organize this info. For purposes of this lesson, I followed the directions (very well-written!) to import my feeds into Google Reader. I haven't really had a chance to explore all its features...maybe it is better than Bloglines in some respect. We'll see. The import process did not seem to pick up all of my feeds, in particular, the new ones I set up with others doing this 23 Things project did not seem to come in. However, since I had already looked at the posts, maybe they will show up when a new item is posted.

I think that RSS feeds hold promise for libraries, and I'm sure have been exploited by libraries that have more technical expertise on staff than we do. I think it would be great, for instance, to be able to incorporate a blog in our website as a container to hold book reviews. I'm not sure how it would work, exactly, but it would be cool if others on the staff or even in the community could be given permissions to contribute using a web-based tool like Blogger, and then have the content display on our site without them having to publish it through Dreamweaver.

Another idea I have had for RSS feeds is to set up a news page on our website with links to a variety of news sources. The neat thing is that it is like a clockwork universe...you can just do the work one time and the headline news would just keep coming in. It would be a nice way of combining news from a number of different sources that folks in the community might not think to search out on their own. Someday!

Thing 5

I have used Windows Messenger because my daughter uses it to check in with me when she gets home from school. Actually, more accurately, when she wants something . However, I had never added any other contacts, so I did learn something new from this exercise. I also learned to manage groups, setting up a group for my family contacts and one called librarians.

Thing 4

So, the blog is ready to go, and so am I!

Thing 3

So the challenge for Thing 3 is to look at the 71/2 Habits, and determine which one will be easiest and which hardest for me. Probably the easiest will be to teach/mentor others, since I am asking others on my staff to work through this exercise with me. It will be natural for them to ask questions and discuss the project.

The hardest for me is always to begin with the end in mind. I always have a vague vision of where I want to end up, but it seems like the process frequently surfaces complexities that I hadn't really foreseen, or the landscape changes and I have to revisit my plans. This has happened so often in so many parts of my life that I have started to expect that course corrections will be necessary, and so it is hard to commit to a firm goal.

This time, though, committing to a goal is fairly easy. I just want to be more facile with being interactive with the web in the same ways that my children are. It is fun for them to teach me things, so we will all learn together.

Thing 2

I watched the presentation on Lifelong Learning and realized I had seen it before. However, it makes some good points worth revisiting.

Thing 1

I have always been pretty much a lurker, so this is an excellent opportunity to practice visibility. Thanks for motivating us to try all these new skills.