Oh yes, Thing 2

I did Thing 2 a few weeks ago - adding gadgets to my iGoogle page. I added Google News, To do list, BBC Good Food recipes, Simply recipes, Joke of the Day, Word of the Day, Weather etc.

I've also added my Google Reader to my iGoogle to make it easier to read feeds (tho I still prefer to stick to Bloglines).

Library of the future

Nicked from Phil Bradley's blog

Thing 11: Podcasts

Podcasts. I like the idea in principle, and can see how podcasting would be useful for our library users in the community or in the West Wing at the JR who think that the Cairns Library is too far away to visit. I haven't listened to many recently. I've listed to the Radio 6 Adam and Joe show podcast in the past, and added a link to a podcast to the kidney diseases and male urogenital disorders specialist collection recently on green haemodialysis (Let's talk renal rubbish, by Mary Thomson).

I've added the Radio 4 friday night comedy podcast RSS feed to my Bloglines, as well as Excess Baggage, in case I want to listen to travellers' stories and feel really jealous whilst looking out of my window at... snow.

I will also investigate the Oxford Uni podcasts, esp ones from my old department (Social policy & Social work), Archaeology (my BA), and the Oxford Internet Institute. The medical sciences division podcasts should be on the list as well............ but then again, can you have too much health information?

YouTube

I like YouTube for the music videos, clips of live music filmed ?illegally by spectators, and for the odd useful (for work purposes, I mean) clip about haemodialysis or whatever. One of our bosses showed us a YouTube clip a few months ago about how NOT to serve customers (or readers) in a library. That was an educational use of the site.

I've had a look at Cambridge Uni's 'channel', by browsing through the Education channels. It's a shame it's not easier to search, and it's a shame that not more lectures are filmed, as that would be a great tool for distance learning! For one of our library and information management MSc modules, we were sent the powerpoint slides from a lecture to help with an assignment on cat&class. The slides didn't make much sense to me... and confused me so much that I freaked out about writing the report and had to be talked down by various colleagues. I'll see if Northumbria Uni have a YouTube channel yet... Nope, just the usual rubbishy clips from students! Quel dommage!

re: Delicious

I found a use for my Delicious page yesterday at a training session in York. I was able to add 10 URLs for trials registers to the page, and two links to sites to help manage searches, during the session. It was quick, easy, pain-free, and now I can send my colleagues the best of the links for them to use when searching for current trials and reports of closed trials. Good stuff.

Thing 10: Beyond Delicious - library use of the tool

1. The Health Care Libraries currently don't have a delicious page of their very own that I can link to/ bookmark from my delicious page. And what would we link to anyway? PubMed, NHS Evidence/ specialist collections, NHS Athens registration page? All these pages would be useful for our users, but then again so will the newly improved HCL website, due to launch in March.

2. I've tried out the Network thing by linking to Angela Carritt's delicious links. Hee hee.

3. I'll have a play and see how I get on with this tool, see if it could be useful for one-to-one training sessions etc. A list of useful Kidney websites would help me in my job, for instance. We shall see...

Thing 9: Delicious

I've always wondered about delicious. What is it for? Is it at all useful? Well, yes, and yes especially if you are on the move and not always at the same PC with all your favourite links bookmarked in Firefox etc.

My delicious account is here: http://delicious.com/gekh2

It's in the early stages of development.

Let's see what Thing 10 is now...

Last Thing 8

Hmmmmmmmm.............. and this is me.................... Must get back to work now!

Thing 8 again

This is Fred's boat. The colours have been messed around with using Picnik. Saturation etc.

Thing 8: Picnik

Picnik is rather good fun. If you don't want to use Windows Picture and Fax Viewer to edit images, as I've done in the past, this is just as good.

As you can probably see above, I've edited Fredthecat, colouring in the sheet she sleeps on and 'sharpening' her. Aww.

Flickr, Week 4, photos

I have a flickr account now! I've uploaded some photos of the boat, Fred, a walk we took around Port Meadow a few weekends ago.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/47327133@N05/

Very exciting.

Bloglines

I'm trying to search for evidence about the etiology of a certain skin condition, in preparation for a 1-1 I have booked with a dermatologist next week.

NHS Evidence Health Information Resources failed on me, so I logged onto my blog/iGoogle/Google Reader instead. I've now added some other RSS feeds to my Google Reader. Is it possible to see your Google Reader feeds automatically on your iGoogle page?

Bloglines is here: www.bloglines.com
You simply create an account and start adding RSS feeds to it. I love it, and have used it for over three years, because you can have over 100 feeds (as I do - for NHS Evidence work, fun stuff, librarianship stuff, news etc) and can mark items to keep for perpetuity. I can log on from wherever I happen to be, so I was able to catch up with the news and so on when I was at the Northumbria Uni study school last week. I'm a big fan. Unlike Google Reader, I don't think you can add certain feeds to particular folders, and organise feeds in that way, but I'm really *really* not bothered.

Today's word

Is 'chary': Very cautious; wary.

Recipe of some day in January was Ginger and lime chicken with sweet potato mash:
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/234608/ginger-and-lime-chicken-with-sweet-potato-mash

This is very useful!

Thing 1 again

This is the home page. Word of the day isn't so good today, as I'm well aware of the word 'famish' and how to use it.

Worrying that I'm becoming obsessed with this 23 Things thing. Must actually do some real work that they pay me to do instead....

Oh and I've altered the image for the Urinary Incontinence AEU from a urine sample to a dripping tap, on my husband's advice. see here: http://www.library.nhs.uk/kidney/ViewResource.aspx?resID=333390

Google Reader

This is my Google Reader page. I've subscribed to other 23 Things blogs so far, as well as Phil Bradley's blog and some other RSS feeds that I've followed for years.

I use Bloglines to manage my 100-odd RSS feeds. I have to. It saves items that I may need for personal interest, masters work, as well as for my job. It alerts me to items to add to the specialist collection. It allows me to see what I've added to the specialist collection. A librarian at Northumbria Uni showed us Google Reader at a session on friday, demonstrating how you can put all the feeds on a topic into a folder, to keep stuff separate. I prefer the alphabetical nature of my bloglines feeds. As will be demonstrated in a future post, I'm sure, to prove that I know all about RSS feeds, honest guv.

Thoughts about blogs?

I haven't really taken any interest in blogs so far. OK, that's a lie, there are three blogs that I follow religiously on EBM (evidence-based medicine) and library issues, but apart from those tools for self-publishing, I didn't think much of this aspect of Web 2.0. Time wasting, eh? No! A useful means to share ideas, links, photos, all of that!

There are several really interesting blogs by people with kidney disease, including those who are on dialysis or who have had or are waiting for transplants. They enable someone like myself to learn more about the illness.

Thing 1: iGoogle screenshot

I've had a gmail account for a few years now, which I use for this blog and did use for email. I've now got my iGoogle page as my homepage, which is rather annoying for searching but which does remind me of this 23 Things project.

I added links to Oxford weather, a Style page, word of the day, BBC recipes, joke of the day and some other nonsense. It isn't really all that helpful... although today's word is 'fillip', which I didn't know, which means: (noun) something which adds enjoyment or stimulation, eg "an added fillip", which was precisely what the word of the day tool has been for me today! Coincidental.

2010 AEU on Male Urinary Incontinence

Posting a link to our AEU as well:

http://tinyurl.com/yauyyo3

Dissertation title!!!

I've returned from the study school in Newcastle buzzing slightly... (is it lack of sleep or coffee?) My tutor has suggested that I do a Delphi study on how other outreach teams promote and evaluate their services. I copied lots of useful references from another Delphi study-related dissertation and have now to find the articles in full text. And get the ideas down on paper to discuss with my colleagues here in Oxford. Lots to think about.......