Thing 16 wikis

My only acquaintance with wikis had been Wikipedia. It can be interesting and seems to cover every subject imaginable, but I would not trust it for research. Looking at library wikis was a new experience. I like the subject guide on the St. Joseph Library wiki. It organizes all types of material on a subject in one place. For example the subject gardening includes, new books (with the covers), magazines, local Farmers' Markets.

The Library Success wiki included a Library Programs database. This could be very useful when looking for basic ideas for programs. I did check for some programs that interest me such as the American Girls. The ideas given were very sketchy. The value all depends on what is added by the participants. I did get a good booklist on libraries on the library tour program site.

Things 13 and 14 Tags and Technorati

I read about and looked at the information on tagging, but feel that I personally don't need to use it. I prefer to simply bookmark sites and then put them into folders in favorites.

Technorati boasts that it tracks about 51 million blogs now and that number will soon go up to 100 million. I am not interested in blogs; I'd rather read something with more authority behind it. When I looked at the "Favorited" etc. categories, I found that they principally had to do with pop culture, politics, and the world of computers and the internet. I don't expect to use it but have heard the term in use and now know what it is.

Thing 12 Rollyo

I had a hard time thinking how and why I would use this tool. Then I thought, what searches do I regularly make for myself for which I could combine websites in one place? I realized that genealogy would be a good candidate for my personal use of this. I set up a Rollo account and made a searchroll called Genealogy. It includes some of the common sites I use.
http://www.rollyo.com/minnmary/ I did not make it public.

This tool would be useful for someone writing a research paper or someone who wants to keep up on what's happening in a certain field such as brain research. The sites could all be academic or medical to restrict it to credible information.

Thing 10 Image generator

I don't have time or inclination (I'd rather be reading or as K. F. puts it so well-- I'd rather be knitting) to play around on the computer. I may use something like this birthday cake if I need to help someone celebrate. This one will be useful for my grandson's birthday. Now that I've found out about image generators, I may then be able to apply this to my work also.

Thing 11 Librarything

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/MinnMary

I may want to catalog the books I have been writing down in a blank book for about 15 years. Then I'd be able to categorize them by tags and also see the book cover. I would prefer to talk about books and make and take recommendations in person rather than using this online community. I can see that a small library could use this very simple way of cataloging books.

Thing 9 RSS feeds

Today I looked at Merlin and added it to my RSS feeds. Also looked at a few library sites and news sites. I like topix.net because I can choose cities from which I want news, and it is all media based with no blogs. I'v added a few cities of personal interest to my RSS feeds.

Thing 8 RSS

Last night I set up a Bloglines account. I added a few library sites to it and also some news sources. I don't expect to use it much but now I know what it means.