Well, I actually feel pretty proud of myself for finishing, even though I have gone way past my four months. I went through a pretty busy period, and I think I was not only too busy to get back to Discover 2/0, I was also digesting and absorbing what I had learned so far. It really is a lot to cover, and there were moments when I felt completely bogged down, but I always knew I would come back to it and finish.

Of the 23 "things", I found many of them fascinating and useful. For example, I am now using Facebook, Flickr, and Del.icio.us regularly. I enjoyed others, such as blogging and podcasting, but I need to live with these for awhile to see how I might incorporate them into my life. There were others I just found weird, like Meebo and Twitter. I can't see how they would ever be useful or fun. But I will stay openminded, and anyway, at least now I know what they are.

I think this 23-thing exercise is very important for library workers. We really must stay abreast of developments in the information world if we are to be able to offer good customer service. Things are changing rapidly, and there is a tendency to get so caught up in the routines of life and work that we sometimes postpone exploring new things. This was a (almost) painless, fun way to push past our comfort level, expand our horizons, and develop our professional skills! Now if I just had that day off coming too...

Twitter & Tumblr

I signed up for both Twitter and Tumblr and created posts. I will probably add Twitter as an application on my Facebook account, just for fun. As far as using it in the library world, I don't know. I saw that one library uses it to promote their programs, by creating short "tweets" for all their activities. Maybe that's a good idea. It depends on whether anybody would look at it.

I was more intrigued with Tumblr, and plan to use it a fair amount. I see how this could be very handy for gathering things you find on the internet and putting them together in one place where you can share them with others, something like Del.icio.us. I feel like I've come full circle in Discover 2.0, because Del.icio.us, where I started, and Tumblr, where I am now finishing, are similar in how I would plan to use them. If I were going to have a library blog that I shared with the public, I would use Tumblr.

Fun with Video

I spent way more time than was wise on this one. For one thing, it's very fun and somewhat addictive. Also though, I was finding some of it quite difficult. For example, I wanted to post one of the videos I found on my blog, but never figured it out, and finally realized this is taking up all of my day off. Time to just write the blog and get on with my life.

I spent most of my time looking for videos about people in Iran. There are lots of great ones, and I emailed several to various people. I noticed that YouTube has a feature where you can respond to a video with another video, besides responding with text. I was going to post an example of that on this blog, but as I say, never could make it work.

One of the suggested links for this Item #21 is still in development, but otherwise, I looked at all the links, read the articles, posted some of them to Del.icio.us, and ran my little search for Iran videos in all the suggested video sites. Very fun stuff!