Thing 17

I subscribed to Remember the Milk two weeks ago and downloaded the free app to my smartphone. It refused to sync and I supect that this feature only works with the premium/paid version of the program. The failure to sync prompted me to make use of my Calendar entry feature on the home screen of my phone. This application functions much like Remember the Milk in that I can can create a to do list and check off my progress as I complete my tasks. RTM probably filled a niche that smartphones have usurped.

Sinced my RTM experiment proved less than ideal, I thought I would write a review of librarything which our library has used for over two years. When I started at DCHS, I uploaded all our print holdings to librarything and decided to use it as our primary online interface for students. Adding books to a collection is very simple and copy catalogiing is a one touch operation. Once you have selected a catalog record source ( we use the University of Michigan Collection and Amazon), you can use the ISBN to find a record for a particular title. You can edit the record to your satisfaction (we have opted to leave the records unaltered). For students searching our collection,a keyword search sifts through all fields: so the term "mice" would be enough to retrieve the popular Steinbeck title. Students would immediately know whether we owned the title. I have added barcode as a tag for each title. Still the question that arises is how students are meant to find the physical book rather than the record that refers to it. Our library is currently arranged according to Dewey. My hope is to convert our collection to LC call numbers ( a very ambitious hope). At present, students find me once they know for sure that we own the title and I use a Google Doc to let them know if the item is available (or checked out). I am waiting for an ILS that wuill provide circulation and acquisition modules using librarything as a backbone and then we will be able to pursue Kroger-style self-checkout for our students. Librarything also offers review copies of books and we have added a half dozen titles to our collection this way (I'm still working on the reviews of these free titles to fulfill our end of the bargain).