Done and dusted....

I have come to the end of 23 Things and have been reflecting on my experience with Web 2.0 technologies. First and foremost I have gained confidence in my IT skills and would now feel a little more secure in actually promoting some of the Web 2.0 initiatives myself, as well as hopefully being able to take a more active role at work where this is concerned. Novelty is another noun I would like to bring to the table....I have been encouraged to look at already familiar technologies with new eyes (i.e. Facebook in the academic context) and have become aware of the mysterious workings of others such as Twitter, with which I had no previous experience whatsoever.

I think this has really been a springboard for me; I am still working out how the different programmes/technologies are connected and some of them I am less drawn to than others (I think I am still a little Twitter-phobic....) but now I have a reference point and I think I will definitely be using GoogleDocs, YouTube and ITunesU in an academic context (I hope in my undergraduate teaching as well as in my admin/library role).

Practice (will I hope) make perfect....
Thank you 23 Things Masterminds for the opportunity to delve into the dark wood of Web 2.0 technology; I may not have reached the summit but I am on my way up that 'monte'!!

And now, the end is near....

This week was a doddle (compared to some of the other weeks anyway! - thank you 23 Things masterminds!). I added a blogger gadget for my Flickr account and it has certainly brightened up my page - see right! I also connected my Delicious bookmarks with my IGoogle page - was initially a little tricky to see how to personalise it in this instance (i.e. connect it with my Bookmarks) but luckily my colleague Judy and I could work it out together :) Nothing like a bit of Web 2.0 technology to bring two colleagues together! I think this week helped me to see how easily the various Things that we have been working on could be connected too.

Writing in the 'cloud'

This week I explored using Office 2.0 online productivity applications to create documents which can be viewed and edited by others. I created my Google Doc without too many problems (I picked a quotation from a book I had been reading by Borges), experimented with formatting and shared it with my colleague Judy who had also sent me hers.
The ThinkFree element was a little more tricky due to the Java software it needed to run....though the features were much more advanced and it more closely resembled a word document so was easier to navigate around!

I think this kind of document sharing is great for collaborative research projects or policy documents which need to be approved (and potentially edited) by a team of people. Our lovely boss Jane sent us a Google Doc just this week (excellent timing!) with a draft rota on for Saturday shifts in the library. I would be a little wary of putting anything too confidential on one of these docs though for sure....

All in all, I enjoyed experimenting in the 'cloud' :)

Wiki @ Work!

It's 9th week and time to look at some wikis. I explored the OULS Web 2.0 wiki and looked for refs to OULS that might need changing to 'Bodleian' - now some of them seemed obvious, but what about those posts which refer to a time-sensitive issue which is now no longer relevant - should we update the post to reflect the current terminology even though at the time of writing the reference was to OULS? Could there not also be an issue with documentation of changes? This idea of time-sensitivity and the immediacy of posting on a blog or wiki is of course complicated by the 'edit' function - you can change your content to remove evidence of the former entry (or at least with our blogs the post that appears is the most recent edit).

I looked at Wikipedia and a specific entry on the poet of my D.Phil. thesis (a chap about whom I hope I know rather a lot after 3 yrs!). I was about to edit the page as I strongly disagreed with the use of certain broad categorisations, but then, when I clicked on the discussion tab, someone else had already had this little scrap with the author and the author of the article had decided to slightly modify his post, and yet still keep some of the contentious terms. It is excellent that this discussion panel is visible though as it shows that the original article is not to be taken at face value!!

Tweet tweet!

This week I joined Twitter (http://twitter.com/efpoxon) and signed up to follow a number of libraries and institutes- our homegrown RAIOxford (like my colleague Johanna had trouble searching for the VHL with the initial search tool), the BL, Lib of Congress, NY Public Library, the Bod and the Penguin Book Group. I replied to one of the other ox23 participants tweets and tweeted myself for the very first time!

Along with a number of fellow ox23-ers, I am not so convinced this week as to how Twitter can be used so effectively in the academic context. Yes, it offers the opportunity to promote events/new acquisitions etc. or for colleagues to engage in dialogues visible to others, but the small number of characters can lead to a number of abbreviations and 'Twitterspeak', elements which I found more impenetrable than, for example, the Facebook status update which seems to fulfill a largely similar task. So, all in all, making the most of the Tweeting experience can be trickier for the less technologically experienced librarian, even though the act of composing a tweet in itself is quick and continues to promote the idea of immediacy.

The Book of Face and other ways to 'network'...

This week I have been exploring the ways in which Facebook can be used to connect with users/can be used in academic contexts. I am a Facebook-aholic so this week's task was a lot more familiar than some...The good old-fashioned 'group' affiliation on FB has given way to the might of the 'Fan' status. By pledging allegiance to, for example, the VHL or the RAI (; ) by becoming a Fan, the icon will appear not merely as a text link (as was the case with the groups), but as a shining beacon of your preferred study spot on your Info page so all your chums can see where you hang out. I remember first becoming aware of the VHL a while back through a friend's 'Fan' status, on which he commented that our library was 'a gem for Finalists, quiet, light and with the friendliest staff''! Not only that, but with the new 'Like' button one can draw attention to status updates from the Rothermere on its latest seminars and lectures, or from the VHL on its latest acquisitions/demonstrations of resources thereby encouraging friends and colleagues to visit the RAI and VHL pages and become a Fan. I think that the infiltration of the academic into the previously 'personal' sphere of FB can be very fruitful, as long as D.Phil. students and 'real' lecturers alike are vigilant about befriending their students.

LinkedIn was, however, brand new to me, and seems to focus much more clearly on professional networks and connections. I signed up as a University of Oxford employee and set about finding my 'connections'. I joined a group for University of Oxford alumni, but after creating my profile, didn't have much time left to find fellow Oxford librarians, will try and do this next time around.

Podcasting and You-Tube

Following a rather startling moment when I realised that headphones did not work on my desk computer (!), I began investigating the wonderful world of podcasting. The BBC site was very user-friendly and I listened to some of the Radio 3 CD Review programme (audio only) and subscribed to it as a feed via Google Reader (achieved by the mere press of a button from the BBC website).

I then looked at some of the University of Oxford podcasts including part of a video from our very own Robin Kelley's Harmsworth Lecture at the RAI. I was amazed at the breadth of topics covered in the OxUni podcasts and think that the lectures in particular, as they are available in this form on the web, open up a whole new audience for the expertise and talent of our lovely academics :) I wonder, in fact, whether a study has been conducted on what effect the advent of academic podcasting has had on admissions and issues of access - mmmm, something to ponder....

Thing 12 saw me explore YouTube - I was already very familiar with this site, but mainly for the purpose of listening to music. I searched for 'libraries' and found the following video (am also fairly sure a friend of mine who was working on a Librarianship Masters had used this on his blog too!):




I think it is a very stimulating short piece which has already provoked some heated debate on the site - it brings up a number of issues such as digitalization, the digital divide and legal issues of intellectual property. I also went on to YouTubeU and Oxford University's channel within that and noticed that quite a lot of 'admissions-related' videos are up on there. There seems to be a great attempt to debunk myths left, right and centre and this honesty and openness echoed in the increased use of Web 2.0 technologies for this purpose is a definite development. It would have certainly opened my eyes way back in 1999 when the Oxford myth was still very much a mystery!!

Flickr and photostreams: what a Picnik :)

Here is my slightly belated post re: the photo uploading and editing we were set to do in Week 4 - the delay was due to my work computer not liking my camera phone so this one had to wait until some free time at home!

I created my Flickr account and uploaded a small selection of photos of the RAI and the VHL from the inside and outside after a hailstorm a few weeks ago (they should appear on the Ox 23 Things group soon when the admins approve me :). The colours were quite dark so I edited the contrast on one of them using Picnik. I did notice as I was uploading the pics that there was a link to Picnik for editing at the upload stage on Flickr which I would use next time for easiness.

Delicious-ly fun

After a bit of a break due to camera malfunction (and therefore a bit of a halt on the whole Flickr Things), I returned to my 23 Things Task this week by exploring the Delicious social bookmarking and tagging facility. I installed the bookmarklet (hope that's alright on the issue desk computer Jane :) which made saving my top 5 websites to Delicious very easy indeed. As usual, I went for an eclectic mix of the work-related (our very own RAI website), research-related (an Italian bookstore online, the Taylorian and the Society for Italian Studies) and one just for me (an early music group called Stile Antico who quite frankly *rock*!).

I saved my blog and added the tag ox23 to be part of the network of participants :) Finally, I had a look at which libraries were on the web 2.0 directory (many more than I expected actually - interesting how it is predominantly the smaller libraries such as ourselves (VHL) and the OIL in Oxford who lead the way where these initiatives are concerned. There are, at least to my mind, a couple of the larger faculty libraries who are notably absent (Taylorian and the Sackler spring to mind as two such libraries with a very large readership); they ought to follow the EFL and HFL's good example.)

I added the VHL lib to my Delicious network and found a clearly worded and interesting article about Social bookmarking at www.threadwatch.org.

Hope to catch up with the Flickr fun very soon!

RSS Feed-ing Fun

So I signed up to GoogleReader and am now following the Ox 23 Things blog via RSS feed. As I logged back in to my blog this week, I enjoyed seeing what the Bunnies had got up to :) I have to say I think I will need reminding of how all of these different log-ins and Google-related bits and bobs connect with one another, but I am hopeful it will all start to slowly make sense.

Now, who to follw via feed....???

Well, after a wee bit of browsing (including on GoogleBlogSearch), I went for two 'homegrown' feeds (RAI and the Vere Harmsworth) one other Oxford-based feed (Oriental Institute Library), an international academic feed (Casa Italiana, NYU, USA) and one just because I have an 'appetite' for its content (Stile Antico vocal group).

Things 3 and 4

So I am now officially registered! I have been checking out some other blogs and I am already a big fan of the Bodley Bunnies (http://bodleybunnies.blogspot.com). There are some brilliant 'bunnies in the snow' and 'bunnies with barcodes' shots not to be missed.

Another blog which caught my eye for its originality and sparkiness was Gigi's Thang (http://gigis-thang.blogspot.com). I particularly approve of the linguistic choice in using 'Thang' (i am surrounded by wonderful Americans/Canadians here on a daily basis :)

I am now following these two blogs and feel positively dull as a result. Must try harder.

Tis a tricky thing trying to be coherent in cyberspace when those irritating people we like to call 'readers' come and ask questions - I mean at the Enquiries desk of all places!

Things 1 and 2

So last week, on a late shift at the issue desk, I set up my Google ID account.

I am a Facebook addict, so adding gadgets and customising my page was a concept I was familiar with, though I liked the way you could do more with colours and layout on your personal IGoogle page.

Check out the screenshot of my page posted above.

I added a number of gadgets to reflect my interests and my personality: music, film, images of Italy, a lovely Italian word/phrase of the day feature (one of my fellow D.Phil. Italianists has something similar on her Facebook page!). I also added some of the more 'usual' gadgets such as time and weather.

And suddenly I found myself in the 'dark wood' of blogging.....

Welcome to my very first 23 Things blogpost (in fact, my first blogging experience full stop!)

I am excited to be developing my IT skills and hope to help conquer my fears of all things 'IT-related'!

I hope that by April, I will be a better 'beginner blogger' and that I will know more about how to use Web 2.0 technologies in the workplace, particularly to help promote events and initiatives, following the leading light of the RAI/Vere Harmsworth's example :) (Ok, I am somewhat biased, I work there!).