23!!!!

Thing 23

This has been a great program. Even though I had average skills and reasonable confidence to begin with, the program stretched me to learn about technologies that I am resistant to and exposed me to ones I had never heard of. It gave me an opportunity to look for possible uses in the library for these tools. I have all sorts of ideas germinating in the far corners of my brain now! I have explored things that I can share with patrons, and it does not matter that I am not an expert at all of them - at least I am aware of their existence and what they can do.
Two new websites I am particularly excited about are Lulu and Zoho. I have used Google Book Search several times now, and I found a new use for LibraryThing (to track books I have ordered for the library so I don't order anything twice). I have added a number of new websites to my RSS Feeds list, and am looking forward to exploring IM reference with Meebo (eventually) and starting a memoir writing group that could include blogging. So thank you, CTLS, for sponsoring this program and doing all the research to guide us through these exercises. It is so much easier when someone supplies links and exercises to get you started. Now I must get back to my playing....
(Image from Betchablog)

Listen up!

Thing 22

NetLibrary. What a helpful tutorial. I have created an account and have been searching through the database. The search interface is not great - if you limit to young adult fiction, for example, you cannot search within that set or quickly jump to another part of the alphabet. You have to page slowly through the list of 206 titles. And when you want to return to looking at books by genre, that option may or may not be on your screen. I am looking forward to attempting a download, because I want to be able to show patrons how to do this. It would be nice to feature titles each week, because many patrons will not have the patience for searching through for a title they might like. Maybe I can find a way to dump a list onto paper...
The links for free eAudioBooks are now safely tagged on my delicious page so I can refer patrons to those as well. I have two books in my favorites on NetLibrary to try out...Gathering by Anne Enright and How Perfect Is That by Sarah Bird.

Pod People

Thing 21

I am afraid I am not a big fan of the podcast. I am a visual learner, and I will always prefer the written to the read. If I am in a rare multi-tasking mood, perhaps I might listen to something while I do something else. Every time I listened to one of the podcasts on my computer today, though, I kept thinking how much better they would be with video as well. Listening to someone read a picture book, when you cannot see the pictures, does not seem very entertaining. I listened to a few of Nancy Pearl's book reviews, and while I would have enjoyed hearing them in my car, I was frustrated listening to them on my computer. It would be so much faster to just read her comments. For people who like to multi-task and live with headphones stuck in their ears, I can see it might be nice to download things you want to listen to in order to entertain you throughout the day. Maybe if I was listening to an interesting story on NPR in the car, I might like to push a button so that my radio would save the rest of the program for me to hear on my next trip (like I can do with my television), but I am not an iPod person. I do not want to invest any more time in learning that technology. As for podcast search engines, I did best by Googling "librarian podcast" (where I found Nancy Pearl).
As for vidcasts - I do catch up with a lot of news that way, as well as episodes of programs I may have missed.

YouTubing

Thing 20

We've all seen that video where they fold a T-shirt in 2 seconds, complete with Japanese instructions. Well I found it in English, demonstrated slowly enough that I could try it. This is from VideoJug. I also found a video of my son racing that I did not realize was on YouTube. Finally, I searched for book art and found a great video by Mark Bernahl on Altered Books. It would be cool to make some videos to imbed in our website explaining how to access Consumer Reports, for example, from the TexShare databases.

LUV U LULU

Thing 19

Lulu is a website where you can publish your own books and have them printed individually. Lulu will even sell them for you - you set the price and take 80% of the profit. Books are not printed until they are sold. In addition, Lulu offers ISBNs, editing services, and marketing services. You could even create and print a photo album - one copy for each of your kids or employees for example. How about making a book for children introducing them to your library? Everyone has a book or two floating around in their brains...

Zoho...OHO!

Thing 18

This is so cool! Not only can you share documents, but there is no more upgrading to new software all the time. It's just THERE! I had a play with ZOHO Show. I have to do a power point presentation for one of my my classes at school, and I don't have MS PowerPoint on my computer (my Office package did not come with it). So I made a simple slide show, and I exported it in ppt format. It saved to my computer and opened fine with my PowerPoint viewer. Another neat thing was that I did not have to create a new account - I signed in with my Google account. No additional passwords to record in the trusty rolodex! Yea!

Digging for treasure

Thing 17

The sandbox was great fun. I cannot think of a use for wikis in my library at the moment, primarily because I would be the only one prepared to use the technology, and because we are small and it is easy to share in person. At some point, I would like to see us do something in the way of collecting community history, and perhaps a wiki might be useful for that. It would take some training, though, to set it up so that it is user-proof. The sandbox method can be quite messy!