My summary.

I have enjoyed the opportunity to experience this technology and have used some of it already within the work environment. Example: Alice Keller asked us to contribute to the Implementation Plan Blog commenting on progress with our SMART objectives. It was a joy to easily follow her instructions and to understand what I was doing and why. I will be keeping up with this for sure over the next few years. The whole experience linked in beautifully with the theme of this year's Staff Conference which also updated me to the needs/desires of our users - a move away from traditional study and use of books in favour of using information on Web 2.0 and databases.

I'd like to say a huge thanks to the Bodleian Libraries Staff Development team for this programme, with particular thanks to Laura, Jane and co for help at the drop-in sessions and for their infectious enthusiasm. Clearly it was this that led to such a huge number of participants completing the course. Well done everyone.

For me, having a completion date was a good incentive as it was difficult for me to find the time to work on the programme and, if not pushed, I would have taken longer over the tasks. However, this had the disadvantage of lacking the time to explore more. That will be next and in my own time. I'll be looking for the serendipity element which I think will be fun. If I could change anything I would ask for more drop-in sessions - 'at own pace study' is good but the drop-in sessions moved me on by forcing me to set aside time to attend. They also gave me the opportunity to meet others face to face as well as communicate via the blog and this is important.

Things I found most useful/enjoyable are RSS feeds which I used already and You Tube, items that were completely unexpected widened my experience and expections here. I continue to enjoy Podcasts but have reservations about use I'll make of Delicious and flickr at work. I enjoyed using Facebook so that I now feel I've joined the 'younger set' but LinkedIn appears more professional for the workplace. I had used wikipedia before but it was great to rediscover it- and some of my old interests. I think I could lose a lot of time over this - serendipity again! Wikis are great allowing both freedom of expression in the vast opportunities for posting and a clear way of ording information.

Disappointments - Twitter. The lack of character space was annoying but I'm not inclined to use this site so this is not much of a loss for me. So, many pluses and only one disappointment. All in all a good use of time. As a member I staff I finish the 'Things' clearly developed!

Put your del.icio.us bookmarks on your igoogle page

Gadgets and widgets.

Delicious is there along with a new date and clock gadget - nice. Adding and deleting is fun but on to more serious matters -Thoughts on using delicious - I'm still wedded to Favourites. Clearly I've a way to go yet.

I'm not sure how much use I will make in a library setting of flickr and delicious though I'm keen to explore the possible use of adding other libraries catalogues. currently they are in a list of favourites - oh dear! Does this mean I might be considering a divorce after all?

Use a blogger gadget

All worked beautifully except that I forgot my flickr username. (I have all the others - isn't it always the way?) So, now I have the flickr gadget on my blog but accommpanied by the message 'flickr error user not found'.

I think I need to play with this one for a bit longer...

Thinkfree Office

My first failure.

This was a negative experience. Freethink took 30 minutes to load onto the web and another 30 minutes to open due the extra step for first time opening. I typed text into the new document, went to make changes and the whole thing froze.

I think I'll go back to Google docs for the time being. However, ever onwards and upwards. Remembering all the other 'things' so far have worked beautifully...

Thing 19 Google docs

I've used Google docs in work before when creating a joint document with the other Legal Deposit Libraries and the Agency. This document was posted and added to in different coloured fonts by each of the libraries and actions addressed by the Agency.

I learnt while completing thing 19 that you can't copy and paste text into it. Try it. It closes the page down.

Ludditeonline agreed that this had happened to him too.

wikipedia

I loved this Thing. It gave me the chance to look up Mary Shelley - an interest of mine. The article was professed to be - by Wikipedia - one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. It was also a featured article on October 30th 2008.

There was an controversy going on re a 'confusing sentence' and a debate about whether whether her relationship with Shelley should be described as 'an affair' or 'falling in love' and all the connotations the different wording would imply. I'll have to see how the discussions pan out... Great stuff!

Wikis

This thing was perhaps the easiest for me as I am a regular contirutor and user of the C&RD wiki. We use this for updates and various departmental projects, items of news, a depository for our newsletters, annual reports and documents. It is also a tool for booking rooms. It has become a valuable addition to the dept. that I'm not sure we would want to live without.

It was interesting to see the format for Web 2.0 is the same. It was like meeting an old friend - threads and all.

NB. The wiki is the C&RD wiki but the label refused to accept the &!