Thing #17 (ELM Productivity Tools)

The ELM databases are great research tools. I remember a young patron who was disappointed at not being able to find a book on his favorite sports figure. Using InfoTrac and Ebsco databases, he was able to find several articles written about his hero. He was also happy to learn that he could access these databases through the library website on his home computer. In my students days, we used the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, and were limited to the periodicals to which the library subscribed.

I was not able to watch the videos for the EBSCO Page Composer or ProQuest. When I clicked on links, I got the message "The requested file was not found". I did, however, do the InfoTrac search, and also added the NPR News Feed to my RSS feeds.

Thing #16 (Student 2.0 Tools)

Where were these tools when I was in school? I have a daughter in college, and will recommend them to her. Research projects can be a little overwhelming for some students. The assignment calculators break things down into manageable steps. Students who have trouble with organizing their work could certainly benefit from using these tools. I can also see using the calculators for projects in the work world.

Thing #15 (Online Games and Libraries)

I watched the Second Life video. It reminded me of the Sims games that my kids played when they were younger, only much more interactive. I ended up downloading Pirate Puzzles. The puzzles were similar to online games that I had played before, but found to be somewhat addicting. The time can go by much quicker than you realize while playing some of these games. I have since given up playing them. It seemed like the other pirates and I were all just trying to learn the game so we didn't interact very much. I did accept a challenge to a sword fight and also issued one.

Thing #14 (Library Thing)

I took the LibraryThing Tour, and created an account. It took several tries before I found a user name that wasn't already in use. Adding titles to my library and making the standard blog widget were both very easy. Here is the link to my catalog: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/mygr8books. This is a great way to keep track of what you have read, as well as, get recommendations and ideas for further reading. I have no reservations about recommending LibraryThing to patrons.

Thing #13 (Online Productivity Tools)

I created home pages in both Yahoo and iGoogle. I liked iGoogle best. It was easy to customize my page, and not as limited as Yahoo. I added a "books" tab in iGoogle, and it brought up several interesting book review lists. I looked at Backpack, but did not actually try it. It appears to be a great organizational tool for business travelers that allows you to upload your files, set reminders, post messages, etc. As for the other productivity tools, I really liked TinyURL. It's fun, cute and helpful.

Thing #12 (Do you Digg?)

I spent some time exploring Digg, Reddit, Newsvine and Mixx. The amount of information out there is mind boggling. I found an article in BBC News and and shared it on Reddit. The article tools at the end of the article made this very easy to do. Of course, I now have another username and password. I probably won't be a frequent visitor to these sites, but I can definitely see the attraction for students and for those who want to keep up on certain topics.

Thing #11 (Tagging and del.icio.us)

I tagged a couple of my posts. It was very easy to do. Del.icio.us is a really useful tool . Storing bookmarks on the web allows you to access them anywhere you have Internet access. I can see where being able to see what others have bookmarked could be very useful in terms of gathering information, but having the choice to mark some bookmarks as private is also a nice feature.