Congratulations! You’ve made it to the end of North Texas 23: A roundup of Web 2.0 technology! You’ve worked hard to complete each of the 23 Things. For this final Thing, take a moment to think about what you’ve done. What was your favorite or least favorite Thing? What was challenging for you? What did you learn? What new technologies will you use in your library? Write a paragraph or more, reflecting upon your experiences.
I think my most favorite thing was probably the Flickr Mashups and Image Generator(s), since that is one thing I had wanted to learn more about. I really like the parodies of the ubiquitous "motivational" posters, usually called "demotivational" posters because unlike the corporate, mass produced product, they are frequently sarcastic and critical. You can also do your own virtual "Read" posters that way, too, which is pretty cool.
Many of the other "Things", however, I was already familiar with, so it wasn't much of a learning experience, just a nod and a shrug. "Yep, been there, done that.", etc.
Obviously, I'm also a big fan of Xtranormal.com, which, though it was not a part of the NT23, probably should be.
I was least impressed with Ning, and didn't see the point of it at first. Only later did I find out that a social network that I was interested, and later joined, called Atheist Nexus, was in fact part of Ning. When I went to sign up for Atheist Nexus, it already recognized my e-mail address and asked for my Ning password, which I supplied, and thus my Ning info pre-loaded itself into my presence on Atheist Nexus, including my somewhat goofy nickname Aggiememenon. Ning is still "meh" to me, but I'm slowly getting the hang of Atheist Nexus and beginning to enjoy it somewhat.
I'm also glad that I already had this library-related blog in existence and didn't have to create a brand new blog just to participate in NT23. I don't update very often, but still, this blog sometimes comes in handy to explore my latest musings on the profession and Higher Ed in general, from time to time.
GoogleDocs is pretty cool, but it turns out that SharePoint, a new information management intranet system that TWU is adopting, will have most of the same capabilities of GoogleDocs. For all I know, SharePoint's functionality was partially inspired by GoogleDocs (or vice versa, maybe). In any event, the GoogleDocs demo fired my imagination, and I plan to exploit SharePoint's own GoogleDocs-like functionality to revise how we keep and update cataloging statistics. Rather than manually crunching the stats by hand from paper report forms supplied to me by my cataloging staff (always a pain!), I will move this Excel file online to SharePoint and have my staff directly update their own stats themselves each week, and I will just check the online document to make sure everyone has kept up and submitted stats in a timely manner. I may keep the paper forms alive for a time, as a backup, but I do foresee the potential to go "paperless" in this area. If people still want something to physically write on, maybe we could develop a laminated sheet and update with erasable china markers or something for the weekly tallies. Or perhaps a whiteboard and erasable markers? I can definitely see the need for a physical tally, if only to keep things straight in one's head, rather than relying on an online-only interface. But saving paper could help save money for the library, so we need to think of ways to compromise to make this work out best for everyone.
NT23 Things has been a worthwhile workshop, even if I was already familiar with over 50% of the material. I still learned things of value by participating.
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