A long goodbye

Good Friday evening and I prepare to write my final post for 23Things.

I check that I have done everything and tagged each task and feel I must apologise to the 23things Team for using “thing one”, “thing two” and, “week one” and “week two”, nor was I able to move it conveniently to the left hand side of my blog due to the limitations of the template.

I read my first post about my expectations of 23Things. Next, I read my blog to pull my final thoughts together. It serves as a logical structure for my final post and a review of what I I have learnt. Looking back to my first posts, I find …

I wanted to discover what resources were available and explore their potential for enhancing library services. I have been: introduced to personalized home pages in the form of iGoogle, created a blog, learnt about RSS Feeds and Google Reader, organized my photographs and manipulated them using Flickr and Picnic, archived my bookmarks with Delicious, explored podcasting and YouTube, socialized using Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, was educated in my use of Wikipedia, taught about cloud computing by using Google Docs and ThinkFree Office, and worked with widgets.

I will group the Web 2.0 resources in the following groups, none of which are exclusive, for the purpose of reflection on their potential both as information resources and as a means of enhancing library sources.

There are those that are valuable as information resources. These are blogs, Delicious, Podcasting; including YouTube, Wikis and Wikipedia. The highlight of this group of Web 2.0 resources has been the creation of this blog. I have come to appreciate its value as an information resource. This has been an excellent tool in helping me to become a “reflective practitioner”. It has kept me organized and on track with each task. My blog has changed character as it has gone along too. It commenced as rather formal, circumspect in what it said about me, cautious in its opinions, and keeping to the remit of professional reflection on the tasks. Now it has become more informal, more me, more opinionated. This is in keeping with what a blog is about! I may keep it going for a bit so that can I try out new things, do the things I didn't have time to do, re-reflect, and remind myself how I did something. I am rather proud of my blog. I was surprised by the value of Podcasting and YouTube as information resources. I was delighted to have the opportunity to evaluate Wikipedia effectively as it is a tool of which I am particularly fond.

The next group of Web 2.0 resources are those that enhance services through communication. These include principally: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter; but also Flickr and Picnik, Delicious and the blog. Of these, Facebook proved to be an unexpected highlight. Here my prejudices were challenged fundamentally to good effect. Examining the various ways in which libraries use Facebook I now feel this is an appropriate medium for communication and engagement with my library constituency. I shall be creating a Facebook page for my library over the summer. The lowlights of this group were Twitter and LinkedIn.

The final group of Web 2.0 resources are those that aid organization. These include iGoogle, RSS feeds and Google Reader, Flickr, Delicious, Google Docs and ThinkFree and Widgets. These were invaluable in organizing the various Web 2.0 media. My iGoogle is constantly evolving and being refined as my information needs change and I desire to organize those changes. Delicious will feature in the web presence of my library, making visible and organized subject-based web resources. Setting up RSS feeds and using Google Reader has substantially re-organized and de-cluttered my email inbox. These Web 2.0 tools have given me the opportunity to work more efficiently and effectively. I have been attracted by the potential of cloud computing to facilitate ease of access to my own documents and by the possibilities for working collaboratively.

23Things has also provided the opportunity to reflect not just on the utility of individual resources but also on the wider issues of our web 2.0 environment. The issues of trust, of intellectual property, copyright and digital rights management (Flickr, Picnik YouTube), questions about the archiving and preservation of ephemeral media (podcasting, YouTube, and blogs), the integrity of information, the type, functionality and relevance of information in popular and academic cultures, (blogs, YouTube, Podcasting), the relationship of information and technology, (Wikis, Wikipedia, Google Docs, ThinkFree, RSS feeds), Internet safety, security and privacy, (Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

I have also been introduced to ideas of reflective writing. I was given the opportunity to explore, investigate and comment, and archive my progress and thoughts in a systematic manner. I have been encouraged to consider consciously the functionality of Web 2.0 resources. I have gained confidence to use them effectively and reflectively.

The structure of the course was just right, building gradually on the skills gained. I found myself comparing and contrasting Web 2.0 resources and how they might be used in conjunction with each other. The tasks were an eclectic mixture of the serious and the fun. It did seem particularly heavily task laden in the middle of the programme and lighter near the end. I wonder if the tasks could be rearranged to give the participant in 23Things a better balanced workload?

23Things can be summed up as community, co-operation and collaboration. Web 2.0 tools embed these values in their functionally. However, the 23Things programme has been all about community, co-operation and collaboration. Through our blogs, and Twitter, we have shared our likes and dislikes, our frustrations and delights, and our successes and failures. We have shared our favourite websites, photographs, videos and documents. Individual comments have kept us on track when we were frustrated, confused or flagging, and reminded us we really were enjoying the tasks and the challenges they brought. Reading the blogs of others has highlighted things I had not thought of but wished I had … !

However, sometimes it was hard for a solo librarian. Although there was always the ever accessible, practical and helpful 23 Things team and our blog followers, sometimes things did seem insuperable and quick answers were harder to come by as we couldn't lean across a desk and ask a more experienced colleague or experiment with an equally bemused workmate. It was hard to find followers for some of the exercises. Gaining a follower for my blog was one of the highlights of the programme. I hope they enjoyed my blog and that sometimes it was helpful, creative, interesting, even amusing. Perhaps sometimes it was a little dull? I enjoyed theirs, which was far more concise than mine! I thank Inky Fluff and LibTourist for their tweets.

23Things was more demanding of my time than I anticipated. I don’t begrudge this, though, as I have achieved a huge amount given I had so little exposure and engagement with the resources. Sometimes I felt that the tasks deserved more time than I was able to give, sometimes they coincided with busy times at work, sometimes I was sick or just plain weary. I would have liked to complete the tasks more comprehensively. Looking back through my blog I find constant references to remind myself to go back and; add videos to favourites in YouTube or subscribe to YouTube Channel, even experiment with my own podcast, explore other photo-editing tools such as Fotoflexer, and compare and contrast Picassa and Photobucket and Kodak Gallery, follow up on copyright licensing under Creative Commons, read up on the effective use of tagging and the creation of folksonomies … . In the pressure to get things done, sometimes it was difficult to be truly reflective of the experience, to evaluate fully the resources and what I had learnt. Sometimes I struggled to write the blog in good English as I am dyslexic, editing was cumbersome, and I am still noticing what to others are probably careless typos.

I would like to post a big thank you to the 23 Things team using all the resources we have tried out but I don’t have time. So just thank you again, not simply for setting the up the scheme but for your enormous amount of help and support, for your clear instructions and the interest you have taken in all our efforts. It has been invaluable.

Am I going to miss 23 Things, yes, the agony and ecstasy of it all. Now, though, my thesis might get finished! Or, perhaps I’ll make one last tweet!

(Finished Easter Monday as our darling cat got sick but has against expectations lived to see this blog’s completion!)