All Thinged Out. Thing 23: So long, farewell, aufwiedersehen, goodbyee!

This is an end of an era. My final Cam23 post. But it's not goodbye, as the title may suggest, it's just au revoir.

May 24th 2010 saw the launch of the Cam 23 programme. On May 24th I was but a mere web 2.0 wannabe. I had dipped my toe into a lot of the 2.0 pools and adopted a few of them, but I hadn't really examined any in real depth, or had the time or the reason to.

13 weeks later, it is August 19th and I find myself with a Blog and 23 blog posts. I doubt this would ever have happened without Cam23 to push me over the blogging edge. I'd thought about blogging before, sure. But I didn't really think I had anything to say. I wouldn't say that Marsh's b(l)og has changed my life, but it has definitely given me an outlet to order my thoughts and get them down on (virtual) paper. After all, thoughts aren't much good to anyone if they stay in your head are they?I've been genuinely surprised and pleased that people have taken the time to read and comment on my posts and if I have managed to help anyone with anything in the process then that is an added bonus.

I think I will continue with Marsh's b(l)og, even if I am the only one who will benefit from it as a cathartic exercise. In the future I will enjoy choosing my own subjects and not being quite so pressed for time. Writing doesn't come naturally to me but blogging has definitely helped me with my prose and I think I should continue with that.

So which 'Things' have I adopted that I wasn't using before?  As I said above, this blog. Also Slideshare and Flickr. I knew about these two Things before but hadn't looked into them in any great depth. I will use the search facility in Slideshare more often  and I have created a Flikr account for myself which I intend to add to imminently.  I will also try to keep Zotero going in the background.

The jury is still out about  linkedin and LibrayThing. These aren't floating my boat, but at least I gave them a go...

I was already using of all the other Things, pre-23 Things,  and I will carry on with those as normal. I couldn't live without my Google calendar and I am rapidly deserting Facebook for twitter which is my current Fave!

All in all though, Cambridge 23 Things has been an exercise in getting to know you! (why is this turning into a Sound of Music Fest??) I feel that I have forged some good friendships and links out there in the virtual Cam Lib community, even if some of you are still hiding behind your pseudonyms! I hope we can continue in a similar vein and I will be attending the communication meeting next week. I'm going to be working for libraries@cambridge again as of September 1st and hopefully will be in a position to help with communication across Cambridge libraries. I'm all ears!

See you in the future!

P.s. Big thanks go to the Cam 23 organising team. It's been a big effort as a participant, I can't imagine what it's been like for you guys!

In the words Roy Walker and Catchphrase, 'Say what you see! ' Zotero, Thing 18

I have never used Zotero, Mendeley or Endnote for that matter. I have never had the need to in my library career, having mostly worked behind the scenes. The last time I wrote anything that needed a reference was back in 2001for my Masters dissertation, at which time I didn't even have access to the Internet at home. If my memory serves me correctly, I just wrote my citations down on an A4 pad. Retro or what?!

I am therefore coming at this from a completely untainted and uninitiated point of view, so in the words of Roy Walker on Catchphrase I'm just going to say what I see. Here goes...

Firstly, I hadn't a clue that Zotero is a Firefox add-on, plugin, extension or whatever name you want to give it. That's fine by me because  Firefox is my browser of choice at the moment. Possibly not forever though as it just messed up my home PC (don't ask me how, that's another post entirely). But nowadays it's so easy to download all the big 5 browsers to your machine, it wouldn't be a problem if you didn't use Firefox as your main choice, you could have it sitting around for Zotero use. I'm waffling about browsers now, back to the game, er I mean point. Where IS Mr Chips now anyway?

Account Fatigue and how to deal with it

Going to 'http://www.zotero.org/ ' I spy a big download button, nice and easy, but have to restart Firefox after the download, back in a jiff... 
Download successful! But, oh no, I have to register? Total account fatigue has set in cap'n, she's gonnae blow! 

After setting up yet another account, I can see the Zotero button in the bottom right hand corner of my screen, so let's give it a go.  It brings up 'My Library' so far so good... (is that a catchphrase?). Let's try searching Newton. I find a really nice book called 'Champion cats of the World' that I want to save for later. Indeed, as the Zotero help says, there is a folder symbol appearing in my browser bar in Newton. I click on the folder symbol and hey presto! (another catchphrase) Champion cats appears in My Library complete with class mark, ISBN etc. I quite like this. Let's try it on Amazon. Yay, that was a success too. I Like.

I admit I'm not going into this is very much detail and am just scratching the surface of all that is possible with Zotero, but first impressions are good. Zotero seems very intuitive, smooth and easy to use. I don't know how I will use it personally yet as I have other preferred means of storage that do me just fine at the moment. I'm glad I tried it though and now have a much better idea of what is going on and will be able to help readers with their questions.  I refer you to Libreaction and Blurtmetry for more focus on the use of Zotero for libraries at postgraduate level and in conjunction with OpenOffice and Word, which I haven't even touched on here.

Bye bye for now Mr Chips!