#23 - Final Thoughts About 23 Things

The most rewarding aspects of 23 Things was creating and maintaining a blog using Blogger, setting up a Bloglines newsreader account to receive RSS feeds (I'm a major news junkie), learning about the many wonders of YouTube (terribly addictive and fun), podcasting (ditto), and test driving the Maryland Overdrive audio book and video program.


RSS feeds and podcasting signals a change in how news, information, and entertainment is produced, distributed, and accessed. In light of what we've learned, all of our library's programs and events should be preserved as podcasts for members of the public who are unable to attend them live. Downloads of our podcasts should be included in a library's usage statistics.

The 23 Things format encourages you to learn at your own pace and develop your blogging skills. Based on the amount of time spent on each activity, I would have expected more CEUs being awarded. If that's not possible, then every participant who completes the program wins an iPod!

I would be interested in participating in future Web 2.0 or 3.0 classes.



One important web communications tool that could be part of a future Web 2.0 class is the EZBoard and Jelsoft vBulletin community forums. Both EZBoard (http://ezboard.com/) and vBulletin enable you to participate in or create your own community discussion board.


EZBoard describes themselves as the "largest online community network site." EZBoard's platform is easy to use and you can get set up in only a few minutes. Ezboard's members are described as "young and economically strong. Forty percent of ezboard household heads are between 18 and 35, and half between 35 and 54. More than 50% of our members are women and over 90% of our users are on ezboard sites for more than an hour a week."


Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd is a UK based new media company and their flagship product is vBulletin. Detailed information about vBulletin is available at http://www.internetworld.co.uk/jelsoft-enterprises-limited.html

As someone who owns and plays several Martin guitars, I make it a habit of visiting the Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum (http://www.umgf.com/) on a daily basis. The UMGF is one of the largest guitar owners forums on the web with over 10,000 members and is a prime example of an active and dynamic EZboard hosted forum. The next largest guitar owners forum in membership and number of threads is the vBulletin hosted Acoustic Guitar Forum (http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/) .


At their best, these forums are incomparable sources of insider's knowledge, especially when several forum members have insider's knowledge about Martin, a 175-year old company that's been run by four generations of Martins, a rarity in American business. At their worst, long-time members can be terribly rude to new members asking a question or posing a topic that's been discussed in earlier threads but cannot be found using the forum's crude and ineffective search engine.


Like a library blog that invites reader participation, a community forum must appoint an administrator to monitor the site. Examples of an administrator's responsibilities include alerting members to periods of downtime due to technical upgrades, banning members from the forum for bad etiquette, and closing down or moving inappropriate threads.