Remember the Bones!

If my dog had her way, I would create a Remember the Milk list for all essential items. Oh wait, I have no excuse not to create one because this fab tool, like all of the other ones we've learned about in Project Play, is free & easy! Check out my list to see what Sequoia thinks I need to remember. The best feature, I think, is the ability to add in URLs for each item on your list. If you were doing online shopping or compiling a list of possible items to buy online, this would be a great way to store the links so you can quickly shop for them when you are ready to make purchases. I can definately see using a tool like Remember the Milk for this.

I admit it - I am a list maker extraordinaire. I make them at work: nonfiction, YA fiction, YA nonfiction, graphic novels, deadlines, projects, even Project Play assignments. I make them at home: travel ideas, grocery lists, recipes to try, weekend to-dos, house projects, birthdays - I could go on and on. I revise them, color code them, add post-its, and even sometimes make a sublists for my initial list. I can't stop myself from picking up small notebooks and notepads with fun designs on the covers that are destined to contain many a list. But would I really use this to-do list making tool? Can I give up the satisfaction of physically drawing a line through items on my list and slowly creating a page full of finished items? I feel like I'd be missing some of the pleasure of writing out a new list, carrying over a few items from a mostly completed list and adding in all sorts of new things. For now, I think I'll stick to my little notebooks - at least most of the time.

Docs in Socks

Now I can quite easily access in-progress projects from home, even in my socks and jammies! No more "forgetting" the disk or usb drive at the library...it is all right there with the touch of a button. Is this a good thing? Will I find myself drawn to working on library projects over evenings and weekends that already speed by? I best be careful or I'll soon live up to the title of "overachiever" that was recently bestowed upon me by a colleague. I can always forget my google password for a couple of days, right?

But seriously, will Google never cease! Just when I was over marvelling how Google Calendar has taken the place of my many different paper calendars and thus helped to keep me in the right place at the right time (at least sometimes), along comes this lesson and my intro to Google Docs. I added a comment to the Project Play doc and then a slide to the slideshow. The slideshow was very slow to load but looked spiffy once it came up. Now I'm creating and sharing docs left and right. This is a great tool for multi-person projects and would lend itself well to scheduled working from home telecommuting or e-commuting. Best of all, I will now be recommending this great tool to patrons who wish to access Microsoft programs on public access PCs that do not have these programs already installed.

I <3 IM

Welcome back, fellow Project Players! I'm excited to embark on a new semester of learning about all kinds of fun 2.0 tools and resources. I'm beginning semester 2 with a warm cup of hot cocoa (with mini marshmallows, of course) rather than my usual Diet Coke being that it is late evening and I don't want to be awake ALL night.

I first began IM-ing with my sisters when we all spread out across the world during our college years. IM was a great way to keep in touch - mostly because it is FREE - and the three of us could set dates to "chat" together. I soon added friends near and far to my buddy list and could happily chat away during the long, cold Wisconsin winters while watching a movie or baking cookies. I've never been a good "phone person" and have not had a landline phone in probably 5 years or so. IM (and txt) offers the perfect alternative and even works despite having no bars on your cell phone (no, most people cannot hear me now from inside my house!) I still find it a tad strange to chat with friends that live a mere 5 or 6 blocks away... but then again, in negative degree weather, it sure beats walking down the block!

Internal IMing at my library was a precursor to offering IM reference. Many staff set up IM accounts using yahoo and meebo and *try* to remember to login when they are at a single computer station for a set amount of time. This is yet another way for us to communicate with one another and ask quick questions - especially since our service desks and offices are spread out over multiple floors. If you'd like to be my buddy, my screen name is stojaime (AIM & Yahoo). I am usually good about logging in when I am staffing the Reference Desk. You should see me online about 30 or so hours each week. As you can see on the side column of my blog, I have a meebome widget so you can also IM me even if we're not buddies.

My library began offering IM reference service for patrons during set hours about a year ago. We have accounts set up in all of the major IM services and we aggregate them though Meebo. Our official hours are Mon-Thurs from 6-8 pm and the service is staffed by the one person on duty at the Adult Services/Reference desk. So far, traffic has been fairly low. Then again, we have not done a lot of PR. We have some flyers and table tents in the library on the tables where our wireless is strongest. We also have some business cards advertising the service that I've handed out to teens during programs. We have the meebo widget on our website and we add our screen name to lots of pr so patrons can add us as buddies. If you'd like to be our buddy, our screen name is askstoref. In the future, I'd like to expand this service with more hours and lots more PR, especially to the middle and high schools. The one challenge with expanding the service and more PR is how to staff it and keep up with questions coming from patrons expecting a speedy reply while also being the one person staffing a reference desk and handing all in person, phone, and email questions. I think our first step at having a few set hours is a great way to get our feet wet and see what works for us.

By the way, for SCLS people out there reading this, your MeeboMe widget may or may not work on a LINK computer! So, you may or may not be able to IM me via my widget, nor will you be able to test if yours is working correctly, depending on what version of flash is installed on your PC (or unless you use a non-LINK computer station).