Thing 23. Final Thoughts

Ah, the end is here...well, I am so glad I made it to the conclusion...I had no idea when I began just how much information I had to examine to understand these 23 Things, and I was starting to doubt if I would ever finish...many of the web sites were so involved and deeply featured that I could have spent an entire week going through just one site and still not feel very competent.

So one of my main feedback issues is what everyone is saying, I'm sure...that there wasn't enough time to do justice to these 23 Things; the time limit could have been doubled...okay, blah, blah about all that...but after saying the obvious, let me also say another issue that I had, as I look again at my comments on the blog, was just how negative I felt at times dealing with all this new Web 2.0 information overload.

This is something I want to explain further...I might have felt overwhelmed at times, and disappointed at how much was promised but not delivered at different web sites, but overall, I am really forced to admit, here at the end, that maybe I might have been a little too much stuck in my old-fashioned ways approaching this material...change is hard for me, and as I look back on it, I think I can admit that some of this stuff out there was truly amazing...and if used judiciously and with careful forethought, might actually be extremely useful to library customers, and other type citizens.

Some preliminary conclusions I can make about these web sites: I liked sites better that were purposely simple and specialized...the sites that tried to do everything for everybody just made me feel alienated from the whole deal, so, for example, places like LibraryThing seemed more interesting than Gather or Ning.

My favorite sites, and something I hadn't realized existed at this high level, until of course I went through 23 Things, are those sites that specialize only in gathering library people together to exchange ideas, and teach, and suggest...places like WebJunction, Librarything, and even the odd-ball library blogs on the net, were gold mines of information that can be used in real life circumstances...I know I kind of trashed these sites at the time I examined them, but after reflection, I was thinking that they are still a pretty good way to seek out aid and comfort in library matters...For me, I think I would try to form my oun group or network on these sites, or on my own, to filter out all the things that don't interest me and try to hang out with ideas and people who do...

So overall, 23 Thing on a Stick was a great learning experience which I'm glad I went through...and I feel I worked hard enough at it to deserve the completion prize, as promised, of a small, useful portable flash drive....now if only I knew how those things worked??