Thing 17: ELM Productivity Tools

1. GALE: CREATE A SEARCH ALERT

OK. For the life of me, I cannot get the RSS feed for the results on the subject search on InfoTrac Student Edition (Gale) onto my Google Reader. Every time I tried pasting the URL from Gale (I did get the RSS icon) to my Reader, it gave me an error message. I read the comments under Thing 17 and realized that a lot of other people were having the same problem. I even tried the steps that Julie had laid out but this didn't work either. When I put the URL in my browser address box, I get a page full of code. I checked and my browser is newer than IE7. So, I'm not sure what I am doing wrong. So I decided to move on.

2. EBSCO: PAGE COMPOSER

It was a lot simpler to create my web page in my EBSCO account. I must say that the instructions on the blog were much easier to follow. I was getting a little frustrated with the RSS feed in the first assignment.


3. PROQUEST: CREATE A WEB PAGE

I like that you can refine your search (simple steps) and also like the ability to share the information with another person via email. The emailed results are very easy to navigate. I have had instances where emailed results are very hard to read. Some look more like jargon than anything. I have a friend who is in graduate school and I will definitely recommend the ELM databases to her.

4. NETLIBRARY

I really like the Note feature of NetLibrary. Imagine, actually being able to make notes on a page of a "book" without angering the next user or the library. And that you can go back to these notes with a click of a button the next day, a week etc!

All these tools are very convenient for library patrons as they can use them from the comfort of their home 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It also makes it easier for Reference Librarians to email search results of various questions directly to the patron.

FYI. I couldn't get any of the Quicktime videos to work. As suggested in the blog, I waited 10-15 minutes but nothing happened and I had to reboot my "frozen" computer.

Thing 16: Student 2.0 Tools

I wish the Research Project Calculator (RPC) was around when I was going to college! I spent too many late nights drinking bottles of Mountain Dew trying to finish papers on time, being the procrastinator I used to be (YES, I'm much better now at planning). This is a valuable tool for student (especially those working on their first research project) to help plan and manage their research projects. I especially like the email reminders (a friendly nudge is always helpful).

I found the feature in the University of Minnesota's Assignment Calculator that allowed a user to select a particular subject area intriguing and tried different subjects to see if the timeline would be a unique to each subject but didn't see much of a difference.

I'm not quite sure if I could use RPC for my work. I might be able to use the email reminder portion for some of the projects. I would definitely recommend this to students working on research project.

Thing 14: LibraryThing

I love LibraryThing! I am probably going to upgrade to the paid lifelong member account so I can add unlimited books to my page. I used to write down titles of books that I have read in the past on scraps of paper so I could watch for the next installment. This will be so much easier now with LibraryThing! I am going to invite some of my friends to join so we can review and recommend books we have been reading to each other.

What I really like about LibraryThing is how simple it is to use. Anyone can do it! There are some tools that are more difficult to navigate but LibraryThing is something that can be done by anyone at any level. Even my mother could probably do it since it's so self-explanatory. And she doesn't like computers much!

Thing 13: Online Productivity Tools

Arrgghhh...time sure does fly by...I can't believe it's April and I have less than 2 weeks to finish and I am still on Thing 13! Hopefully, the big Countdown timer that I am going to place on my blog will help me move along! But alas, after 5 unsucessful attempts in adding the URL to my blog, I'm giving up. I guess I'll have to track my progress the old fashioned way.

I used iGoogle as my start page mostly out of convenience. I already have a Google account and do use Google's other features as well. I don't quite think I'll use the online productivity tools as much for the kind of work that I do (Finance). I can see myself using the online calendar to schedule a vacation with Friends but not as much for work. If I had to choose one of the tools, I would probably go with Backpack just for the fact that it allows me to consolidate some of the various features into one central location.

Another tool that I have used in the past is the Meeting Wizard. It's free and it allows me to schedule meetings with relative ease. You basically email a link to the participants with the possible meeting dates and times. Each participant can select their choices and the system is able to confirm the meeting date that a majority of the participants select. The feature I like best is the reminder email that the system sends to the participants a few days before the meeting. You can specify the day you want the email to go out!

Thing 12: Do you Digg?

The Mixx Tour didn't work for me so I moved to Digg. I liked the layout of Digg better and the flexibility in selecting only those categories that I am interested in and hiding the rest. I also liked that I can share what I am reading with my friends on Facebook.

I liked the way NewsVine organized its tour with the comment "You don't have time for a long demo. Here are 4 reasons to make NewsVine your news site." A very clever and direct way to market your site for people who are strapped for time, which is everyone! I found it interesting that the Reddit introduction was last updated 3 months ago which seems like a long time. I much prefer to visit a site that is updated more frequently!

I went to BBC and recommended an article to Digg but it had already been submitted by another user so I put my vote in!

Thing 10: Wikis

I was involved in a project last year which entailed converting the Library's Intranet "StaffNet" into a Wiki. I spent a considerable amount of time in redoing the Staff Manual portion (which was originally in a word document) and minutes. But I believe the time was well spent. Now, when we have changes in procedures, I'm not the only one that can make these changes. It's also easier to search than our previous Intranet.

One feature I really like is the tracking tool that allows us to easily know who has changed what. During the planning stage of the project, I was a little worried that staff would change procedures that had not been approved.

I added an entry to the 23 Things On a Stick Wiki. My attempt at poetry was pretty pathetic but I try.

Thing 11: Tagging and Del.icio.us

I have heard the word Del.icio.us mentioned many times but never really knew what it was all about. Now, I know why there is such a "buzz" around it. I created an account and exported my bookmarks on my PC to Del.icio.us. I really like the fact that you can get to your bookmarks from any computer.

A couple of months back, my personal laptop crashed and I lost all my bookmarks. I did manage to add all of them back but it took quite a lot of time. With Del.icio.us, I don't have to worry about ever redoing the bookmarks again!

I went through all my previous blog postings and tagged them all. It does make it easier to manage and search for specific information in the blogs.