Cool learnings....

23!!!!

2009-01-18T14:46:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-01-18T14:28:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-17T23:20:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-17T12:29:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-16T22:05:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-01-16T11:31:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-15T23:55:00.000-08:00

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!

Wiki is Hawaiian for fast

2009-01-15T13:20:00.000-08:00

Thing 16

I really liked the Library Success wiki. Someday I will have clever things to add to it. In the meantime, it is full of cool links from other librarians. I used a wiki once in a class for a group project. We were writing a group paper, and we were each to add a "page" and post our part for others to see and edit. It was less than successful, though, because the paper was too long - everyone's part was several screens in length, and the editing was awkward. We resorted to sharing document files in the end. So wikis are not for everything. (Photo from IDblog)

Library 2.0 - Instant messaging

2009-01-10T12:46:00.000-08:00

Thing 15

Meebo seems like it would be a really easy way to connect with patrons. The patron does not have to install any software - just type a question in the box. The only problem with it, for a small library, is lack of personnel to be online all the time. At our little library there is a lot of multi-tasking going on with just a few staff members, and it seems a bit daunting at this point to allow this much access to our already limited reserves. Perhaps when we grow a bit... Also, it doesn't seem like you could limit access just to your patrons, at least not the way our website is set up. Normally, I would not want to limit resources to patrons only, but again, I worry about our over-stretched personnel.

Tech Tech Tech

2009-01-07T10:15:00.000-08:00

Thing 14

Technorati was an interesting tool to explore. I searched for "librarian," as I often do, and found a couple new blogs to add to my feeds. I liked that I could search on posts or blogs, so if I was searching for something very specific, I might find a mention of it in someone's blog post. These searches I found to be quite slow, however, and not necessarily any better than a Google search. When searching posts, you can specify entire post or tags, language, and degree of authority. The results are posted by most recent post, and unfortunately you cannot sort them any other way (like by authority). So prolific bloggers will get their blogs at the top of the result list. I prefer Google's attempts at relevancy ranking. Technorati duplicates utilities found elsewhere (like adding blogs to Technorati favorites instead of adding them to your feeds), and personally I find it a site for people who have a lot more free time than I do.

Delicious! Yum!

2009-01-04T16:08:00.000-08:00

Thing 13

I LOVE Delicious! Here is my page: http://delicious.com/mtwtf I use it to collect all sorts of websites I can use for work. I can access it from any computer anywhere, and sometimes I give out the web address to patrons so they can access it from home to get to wildflower links, for example (local students do a wildflower project each spring). Whenever I am asked a reference question and I find the answer online, I tag it so I can find it again. Periodically, I go in and bundle up my latest tags so they are easier to find.

Word Game Fiend

2009-01-03T15:54:00.000-08:00

Thing 12

My vice! I have spent hours on Bookworm and TextTwist. And now there's Free Rice! I hit a level 60 once, but was unable to maintain it. I like that it gives you pronunciations as well. Have you noticed that with TexTwist, the smaller words are in reverse order of the spelling of the first 6-letter word? So if you are having trouble getting the 6-letter word, try getting all the 3-letter words, look at the order they are in (bottom to top), and it will help you spell the 6-letter word, which you need to keep going in the game.

Social Networking

2009-01-03T15:30:00.000-08:00

Thing 11

While I can understand the attraction of these sites for people, I personally find that life is too busy to invite all this extra connection in. Between emails and feeds and going to school and keeping up with the news - all online - I feel OVER connected, and thus I will never join an online social network. Besides, I like my anonymity. I did peruse MySpace, looking at (and listening to) the website for "Flight of the Conchords," a funny New Zealand music group. I also found pages for family members (mostly set to private). In addition to MySpace, I also regularly check in on two art-making nieces who have pages on deviantART.

Chit Chat

2008-12-30T15:29:00.001-08:00

Thing 10

I haven't had much luck yet with Google chat, but I will give it another try. I have had a nice chat with Kam via Meebo, and last weekend I joined a chat I found online where some nice fellow was giving a play-by-play report of the 4A state football final (our local team won, and I knew patrons would probably ask about it at work). Interspersed with the report were comments and questions about the game, the players, and the statistics. It was a fabulous way to get up-to-the-minute news.

I have also used chat for my schoolwork at TWU. I worked on a group project with 4 other women, and we discussed all manner of things in our chats. I found it very helpful to come prepared with comments pre-typed in Notepad, because if you have a lot to say, typing can slow things down and the conversation can get out-of-sync.

Delicious blogs

2008-12-07T13:58:00.000-08:00

Thing 9

One of my favorite ways to find library-related blogs and sites is on delicious.com. If you search for librarian, a lot of blogs that people have tagged "librarian" are retrieved. Not only can you look at the blogs and add them to your feeds (or to your own delicious page), you can also click on the number to the right of each of the blogs to see who has tagged that blog. For example, if I search for librarian on delicious, one site that comes up is librarian.net. Next to it (today) is the number 1364, indicating that 1364 people have bookmarked that site on their delicious page. If I click on that number, I can see all the people who have bookmarked this site. There is a good possibility that all those people are librarians, and I can now access the delicious page of any one of those librarians to see what websites they think are cool. I have added a number of feeds to my reader this way. I have also added sites to my delicious page this way.

Feed me!

2008-12-05T12:45:00.000-08:00

Thing 8

I usually track my RSS feeds within Internet Explorer, which confines my looking to own computer. Google Reader allows you to check your feeds from any computer, but I do not like the way it works, mixing all the feeds together, instead of allowing you to view one at a time. Also, it is a pain in the neck to delete feeds. I like the search feature, though, and I added a few feeds to my reader. Among them are:

librarian. net I love Jessamyn West. She is passionate and sensible all at once.

Swiss Army Librarian Brian Herzog does a great reference question of the week.

Merriam-Webster Word of the Day Just to keep the mind nimble!

I have added a feed for the word of the day at right....

Makin' pics

2008-11-25T16:39:00.001-08:00

Thing 7

Pollock

Candy hearts

I had a play on so many generators - birthday cakes, cups of coffee, chalkboards, and brainabetizers. I especially enjoyed creating my own Jackson Pollock drip painting (left click changes colors, resting the mouse creates big splotches), and my wee little candy heart.

Flickr Flickr Flickr

2008-11-25T11:14:00.000-08:00

Makin' a
rainbow...
with
Colr Pickr

More Flickr

2008-11-21T11:47:00.000-08:00

Thing 6

How cool! Spell with Flickr

I love books, and Flickr is pretty cool too

2008-11-21T10:48:00.000-08:00

Thing 5

I searched for "books" on flickr and found this gem.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nycnikonian007/2280658379/

Google apps for my googly eyes

2008-11-18T14:09:00.000-08:00

Thing 2 and 3

Wow! So much more to Google than I ever knew. Google Book Search allows you to search on a passage instead of just the title. You can also store your "finds" in your own Google library. Google Scholar finds articles for school research. Google Transit finds how to get places via mass transit. Google Labs lists all sorts of new tools that Google is still testing, plus the latest ones to market. And a really handy one that you don't even need a computer to use...Goog-411. From any phone (think cell phone, because you are out having fun), you can dial 1-800-GOOG-411, tell them where you are at and what type of business you are looking for (Austin, museum) and they will list the nearby museums (1,2,3...). Say "1" for Bob Bullock, and the next thing you know, Bob's on the line. FREE SERVICE!!!

7-1/2 habits

2008-11-18T13:42:00.000-08:00

Thing 1

The easiest habit for me is accepting responsibility for my own learning. I love to learn. I love to discover. The hardest thing for me is to play. I tend to take it all a little too seriously. So on this project, I am going to try to play....(Thanks, Flaming Text)