Thing #28: Customized Home Pages

I've been using Yahoo as my personal home page for years, because Yahoo is my primary personal e-mail provider, so it seemed easiest. I didn't realize the world of options out there till doing this Thing.

After reading the linked articles comparing the various home page providers, I tried Netvibes, since it seemed to get the most accolades. It is attractive and has lots of handy and fun widgets. I eliminated the default widgets that didn't interest me much, but that left me with a lot of blank column space. All my faves seemed to be over in the left column. I'm sure there's a way to rearrange that, but I wasn't finding it and didn't have the time to go into it too deeply.

Then I tried iGoogle. I already have a Google account, and its features are familiar to me, so I thought I'd compare. That page I was able to set up easily and quickly. I like the various theme choices -- fun, fun. (There's a really beautiful Japanese cherry blossom one that I may use in April. For now I'm on the default spring green hopping frogs theme. Thinking hopefully for Minnesota...) On iGoogle I was able to set up some good widgets easily -- ToDo List, maps, etc. Not sure if there's a Yahoo mail widget available, as that may be a competitor, but it would sure be handy for me.

Not sure that I'll use this for work use in the immediate future, as we already have a good library home page. But I'll tuck it away in my mind for future ideas or for my personal page.

Thing #27: Twitter

I signed us up with the username DCTCLibrary, added a profile pic and am now "following" mnmorethings. It was satisfying to get that all set up. I'm intrigued, although I'm not yet completely a-twitter about Twitter for our purposes... yet. Need to think more about possible uses.

I looked at the public library Twitter links that were posted, like the Hibbing PL. That looked really good. But our library doesn't have events or frequent changes of hours, so I'm not sure it would be effective for us at this time. We've recently added a blog to our library home page, and that's where we post New Books, highlighted Web sites, etc.

Really, I'm of two minds about Twitter. I can really see the fun and usefulness of it. On the other hand, it feels like there's so much information coming in to us via blogs, RSS, IMs, etc. that I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. I'm finding that the trick is to be very selective in what I subscribe to, so that it's information I really want and not just "static."

I'd be open to trying Twitter in the near future to publish short updates about new books, etc. Seems like a good way to get info out in an even quicker and more informal manner than blogging.

Twitter Badge

Thing #26: Join the 23 Things Ning

I joined the 23 Things Ning during Round 1 last spring. To be honest, I haven't really used it... yet. I like knowing it's there, I like seeing all the friendly faces from the Minnesota library world, all of us learning the same new things. For now, I'm trying out all of these tools and figure, as time goes on, that I'll learn which ones are most useful and effective for me.

I just saw a new group for MnSCU libraries and joined that. I could see using the Ning to trade ideas and to share videos, etc., thereby avoiding reinventing the wheel, and also to look at photos of other people's libraries and events, for ideas and just for fun.

The two new things I did with Ning: I added the large Ning badge to my blog and added a comment to the Ning group blog.