Too Many Things To Do!!!

Like many people I sometimes have a hard time remembering when things are do or what things I am supposed to be doing when.  I have all sorts of ways I try to use to keep track.  I have always used a day planner and a regular calendar to keep track of things.  I write things in both places so in case I don't have access to one the other.  At work I have an Outlook account and I have recently started using the calender there.  I really like having this calender because it i something I look at everyday to check my emails and it sends me alert notices when things are due or when meetings are scheduled.  This is a great feature because sometimes I sign up for webinars or schedule meetings weeks or months in advance and wouldn't remember otherwise.  The only downside to this is that I only have Outlook on my work computer, not my personal computer. 

Thing 19 is about online productivity tools.  They had a list of several different tools but the one I decided to check out was Remember the Milk, a to-do list manager.  With this I am able to go in and set tasks and due dates.  I can even enter how long a task should take.  One feature I like is that you can set a priority to each task and it is color coordinated.  They also have different category tabs such as personal, study, and work.  Keeping the different category tasks separate is a nice feature and keeps things nice and organized.  It also had an option to add it to a calender, and since I wanted to do something about being able to access my schedule on the computer at home I set up a Google calendar and added the Remember the Milk calendar to that.  Now if I wanted I can keep my Outlook calender restricted to only work tasks and appointments and use Remember the Milk for personal and school tasks.  If I need to access work information from home though I now have a way to do that, I just have to add it to the calender.  It's very simple, and even offers keyboard shortcuts. 

Since libraries are all about organization I think this is a great tool to help people stay organized.  Sticky notes and lists posted all over the place can get messy or lost.  This is something that is neat and can keep you on track.  It also has a feature where you can share your to-do list and calender with others.  If a library wanted to make a public events or meetings calender they could do so and share it with everyone in the library.  That way everyone would be able to easily look up what was going on.  There is always so many things going on, events and meetings, so having a public way to share all that is nice.  It could save time too because you could  just look at the calender instead of trying to track down a person who may not be there.  It is a place you could look up when and where an event is for a patron even.  I think even more than a public sharing tool, if that seems like a big step, using it as a personal professional tool to help stay organized it is a good tool to use.  Outlook has a great system, but if you don't have an Outlook account this is a great alternative I think. 

Delicious

    Alright so Thing 5 on my list is tagging and social bookmarking with Delicious.  I had not heard about social bookmarking or Delicious until this LIS 5020 class.  The idea of social bookmarking is that it is a website where you can keep track of your favorite websites and such like if you were to bookmark them or put them in your favorites.  The difference is they are not tied to one single computer.  You can be on any computer and as long as there is Internet access you are able to get to your bookmarks.  I love this idea because this is something that used to drive me bonkers!  I would have some things saved on one computer at work and then I would go home and get on the computer and I wouldn't have it saved in my bookmarks there and I would have to go looking for it.  Now that will no longer be a problem thanks to Delicious, and I am pretty excited about this concept.

    Tagging I knew about thanks to Facebook and tagging people in photos.  I never actually tagged anyone in a photo, but I understood the concept.  On Delicious you can tag a bookmark with different relevant words that describe it or that will help you or someone else find it.  I think it is a pretty cool concept because I can tag something in a way that will help me remember what it is and find it as opposed to something someone else might say which wouldn't cross my mind.  It makes it more personal and unique.

     According to SLA's 23 Things program I should have first gone to the Delicious page and searched some tags.  I of course did this much later in the game.  I find that the best way to learn is to jump right in sometimes (not always because it can be confusing and overwhelming).  The first thing I did was create an account. After that I decided to try and import the my bookmarks I had in my favorites folder into Delicious.  That worked out smoothly, and I was even able to delete the ones I no longer wanted; some good spring cleaning I hadn't yet gotten around to.  I then went through and tagged everything.  I tried to keep it simple but so I could still identify everything.  After I did that I tested my tags and was able to find some of the bookmarks I was looking for without a problem.  I even retried this a few days later after it wasn't so fresh in my mind and still had no problem. 

    I did like that I can choose whether I want a bookmark to be private or public.  For the most part I kept my work related items private and my school and personal items public.  I figured if I keep my school items public it might be easier to find other people who are learning the same things and maybe I will even find sites that help me out.  That is the point of the "social" part of this bookmarking site anyways. 

   When I first set up my Delicious account I was on a computer at work and it has lots of restrictions on it for security purposes.  One of the things I could not do was set up the add on button on my toolbar.  I later tried this at home but ran into a problem.  I have the latest version of FireFox on my laptop and when I tried downloading the add on it said that it was not compatible with that version.  I was able to put it on using the newest version of Internet Explorer.  I used another computer at work that is not as locked down and was able to put the add on to both FireFox and Internet Explorer.  I like using it on FireFox much more because the tag button is also there but is not on Internet Explorer.  The tag button on the toolbar makes bookmarking a page so much easier and automatic which I really like.

    Delicious could be a great tool to use in a library.  For one it is a great way to share and find sites that other people in libraries are looking at and using.  you might find something you like and that could be useful to you or your library.  Also it is a great tool if you work in multiple locations and multiple computers.  For example I would have things saved on my office computer bookmarks that would not be in my bookmarks on the from the  desk computer, where I spend half of my day.  With Delicious all I would have to do is bring up the site and all my bookmarks are there.  If librarians are teaching a class they could pull up their bookmarks in any classroom just as easily as they could their office or the reference desk.  Even if you are away from the library, say out of town for a conference, you could still access your bookmarks and add more from things you may learn about at the conference.  It is a fast way to share information with everyone back home at the library before you get back and can tell them about it.  The options and advantages are incredible, it really depends on how creative you want to be.