Thing 19

I used Google Docs last October to set up a mock presidential election for my 3rd - 5th graders. The format allowed it to be totally anonymous, with the help of my student "precinct judges." It was interesting to see the election through children's eyes, especially given the diversity of our school's population.

My district also uses Google Docs to keep up with database usage, library statistics, and formal book complaints, so I'm used to the format, but I did not know that it could be used for spreadsheets and presentations. The presentation mode seemed to be a little simpler than the newest version of PowerPoint, which is a good thing for me.

Thing 18

I'm familiar with wikis through Wikipedia and wix.com, on which I made my library web page. I had not previously thought about Wikipedia's organization, however. I looked up P.G. Wodehouse, one of my favorite authors. I discovered that the his entry was supported by the A&E network, and then edited by Vanity Fair. The grammar as well as the content was edited; several discrepancies were noted and changed. The links to his many works were exhaustive and very helpful. I know Wikipedia isn't authoritative in the usual sense, but it is far preferable to Googling a topic and getting 3,987,351 results, most of which are ads.

Thing 17

Another great resource (I feel as though I'm blogging that every time). I was interested in banned books, so I found info on and tango makes three under exact phrase and read about the difficulties it has produced. I had never heard of it; at my school we do have several same-sex sets of parents, and this book would be helpful to the children of those couples, who are often confused about the situation. Am I brave enough to add it to my collection in a small-town, conservative school? Food for thought.

If I am ever job hunting, this is a fine place to start. Under subject, I tried "school library media specialist" and learned of many open jobs around the country and, in fact, around the world. It's good to know that we are in demand in this economy.

Under tags, I found a hysterical podcast of The Hound of the Baskervilles, read by John Crace and slimmed down to eight sarcastic minutes. Under the tag children, I learned that kids for the most part don't tweet - maybe they don't like the limitations? Anyway, it was an interesting and productive half hour. Thanks.

Thing 16

I was on LibraryThing for about two hours. What an amazing resource; where was it when I was taking cataloging? I tagged books from my "books about books" unit, and found others listed under similar tags. ThingLang seems like a good shortcut to me, but I imagine similar resources exist within the ISBN system. ISBNcheck is also useful. I looked up C.S. Lewis in the "I See Dead People's Books" group, but it seemed to be more of a cataloging co-op than a list of his books - maybe I misunderstood? The same thing happened with Astrid Lindgren. "Look at Librarians Who LibraryThing" was fun. I got caught up in many different threads, including one on the newest Harry Potter movie. I found a group on children's fiction, and I was interested to read other people's favorite childhood books. Other writers were attempting to remember titles of books, and of course many readers responded instantly. We do this on a small scale in my district, but of course this is a much larger forum and the answers come very quickly. One more group to mention: "Books Everyone Loves and You Hate." Lots of good threads to follow there.

Thing 15

One of my favorite things about NT 23 has been finding out that organization truly exists on the Internet. Digg was lots of fun. I read about Pete Rose, a woman in Killeen who has a warrant out because of a lost library book, a recent discovery of a carbon copy of the original Schindler's list in an Australian library, and a book titled Mama Voted for Obama. The tags make things easy to find, and the comments are fascinating, especially if you follow threads. I plan to investigate Digg further for professional uses; I did find some interesting "elementary school library" entries. I didn't opt to join, as I was able to enjoy the experience without adding my own Diggs.

Thing 14

I enjoyed Delicious, and it confirms my opinion that tags are essential to the 2.o library world. I was able to easily find sites that deal with library skills lessons and thematic story time ideas (I'm thinking of these things at this point in the summer). I decided for now to use bookmarks just for library-related sites, but I'm sure I will add to it as needed.

These are some of my bookmarks:

Mrs. V's lessons
ACL Association of Children's Librarians of Northern California
Information Skills Lesson Plans
Webquest
Education World Library Scavenger Hunt
Renzulli

This is my address:

http://delicious.com/RWickham47

Delicious is an incredible resource, and a great time-saver. I am curious to see if it passes through my district's filter, but even so, I'll use it again.

Thing 13

I looked up "TLA Conference 2009" on Flickr, and learned to my surprise that there was a tornado evacuation! It must have happened the day before I arrived, but I never heard anything about it.

After studying this Thing, I've decided I'm a fan of tagging. I work in an elementary school, and sometimes it's difficult for children to find books without the correct subject headings - and I can occasionally say the same for myself. I can understand that subject headings are far more organized, and we should keep them for cataloging. However, it occurred to me that strict headings made far more sense back in the days of paper and fiche cataloging, when tagging would have been completely unmanageable. Like most everything else in the library world, this has changed and this may be one more area in which we need to let the old ways relax a little. Patrons are so accustomed to Google and other search engines that they become frustrated when the subject headings in their minds don't match those in the OPAC. I'm going to look up other blogs for this Thing and see what my fellow librarians are saying. Thanks for a thought-provoking assignment.