#23 The End

At least I think that I have finished everything. I guess it is up to Ellen to decide that. I certainly would do another discovery program like this. Just don't run itover the summer. July was really hard. The branch was busy and I would get started and then have to run out to the I Desk or pick up a call. Didn't make much progress until fall.

I didn't care much for the podcasts that were part of the learning exercise. They repeated the written information. Maybe they were there for the auditory learners, thats not me.

The only thing I didn't find successful was the tutorials that depended on screen shots of web pages. I find them blurry and hard to read. This maybe that I need new glasses.

I feel uneasy about the blog. One of my entries had a comment from an outside person. It sounded like a person who would bear special watching if they were in the building. I really didn't like that. I am going to skip blogging.

I love Bloglines. It's a great way to keep up with some favorite sites without having to remember to log into them. Without this program I would never have discovered it. I check it almost daily for book reviews, articles from interesting magazines the branch doesn't get and of course cartoons.

I also like The Library Thing, you could spend hours entering your titles and then checking their popularity, title suggestions etc.

I liked the fact that the program encouraged you to explore more deeply into programs that interested you. There were required activities but then you could take it further.

#22 Audiobooks

I had already tried out Netlibrary and had set up an account. I never actually downloaded a title. So I checked one out with the best of intentions of downloading it and putting it on a CD yesterday. Of course that didn't happen maybe tomorrow. It is disappointing that they can't be put on an Ipod. My kids gave me one without realizing that limitation. I am more into audiobooks than music. Of course I can buy audiobooks from the Ipod site but it is annoying.

The free book sites have some really obscure stuff. I wonder who is spending their time digging it up, not to mention who is listening to it. Even for free I can't see myself listening to it.

One more to go and I will have actually finished.

#21 Podcasts

I didn't find these tools very useful to locate podcasts on subjects. Searching for book reviews brought up a long list of mostly unrelated links. I tried gardening and got a similiar result.I suspect that if you were aware of a particular podcast and wanted to locate the link these might be the way to go. Podcastalley at least had a summary of what to expect in each podcast.

While playing around with the links to new podcasts I found one that was from the American Chemical Society where they had short segments on science topics. It was aimed at the middle school audience. It was easy to link that to my bloglines account. Interesting that somebody in that group is thinking about reaching an audience where they are playing. I might check to see if ACS is also using YouTube to catch kids with science video. The library could Podcast segments promoting teen programming.

#20 part two YouTube

Had a great time with this. There was lot of stuff that didn't appeal to me but I keep trying the different options and found some interesting things. The Most Discussed List and the Top Favorites certainly let you see what most of the audience is looking at. The search box was very effective in getting to specific topics.

My favorite was http://youtube.com/watch?v=1qiGyxPplAw. I just found it while was trying out the various options. I could never figure out how to place the video in this blog. None of the computer savvy CAs were here. I did share this with family members who are also fellow cat lovers.

We are already using this to promote the Zine collection and I can see how we can use this for other stuff that has a target audience such as Teen Read Week or specific upcoming programming.

# 20 YouTube

#19 Web 2.0

I certainly could spend the rest of the day playing Guess the Google. Got the first one right but it is work time and I need to look at something more pertinent to the workplace.

I checked out the nominees in the health category. Two of them were health related search engines. I preferred the features in Healia that allowed the search to be very specific. Your results could be very targeted. I was shocked to find that the site was using a definition for a medical condition from Wikipedia. This site was created and maintained by a branch of the NIH.

The other Health site Medstory has less means of targeting the search. It has some confusing colored lines that looked like bar graphs.

I would bookmark Healia at the I Desk and use it for customers looking for information about specific medical conditions.

#18 cont

It worked even though I somehow cut off the last couple of words. Is it possible to edit a previous blog ?

# 18

# 18  Online Productivity Tools

Here goes I am going to write my blog about this topic here and then publish it to my blog.  Well I managed to close the whole thing and then find my doc again.  There is a lot of capacity here to do more things than I will ever need.  You can also transfer your stuff between websites, your phone and who knows what else.  This pretty easy to use, if you have a question go to the FAQ page and print out the answer.  That is how I am going to put this on my blog.

 

This site does seem to replace the microsoft word processing program, don't know what more sophisticated o

# 17 Sandbox Wiki

This was not as intuitive as some of the previous tasks. I had to ask for help and embarrassed one person who had already forgotten how to add a comment to a wiki. A wiki is certainly easier to use to collect opinions about a topic that an email question. We could use this for feedback and discussion on major policy changes. There would be no need to wait for one of the monthly meetings.

#16 Wikis

Just had an interesting conversation with a mother about Wikipedia. She was amazed that anybody could edit/add to an article. Her middle school showed her easy it was to change something. After that she understood why her daughter's school would not accept Wikipedia as a source.

I am still surprised that people will believe that stuff on the web must be correct.
I just read the ten facts about Wikipedia on their website. Now I even more skeptical about it.

The Princeton Public used a wiki to allow customers to create their own summer reading recommendations. I could see us doing that for the middle school SRC. It would take somebody from the system overseeing what was being said.

I am curious about how you go about setting up a wiki, didn't find that info in any of the articles. Time for a google search.

#15 Perspectives on Web 2.0

The future is hard to predict; you can discuss all the wonderful things that libraries can do with all the technology. Customers can add their own tags to our catalogs, interact with us by IMing, everyone uses open source software, no more dependence on those vendors. What is out there and will be the hot thing next year.

I skimmed the long article by Crawford, it is interesting to see all the various perspectives on L 2.0. Without the blogs there is no way that all this is feedback would ever happen.

#14 Technorati

I explored this site the day after Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. Lots of blogs, all kinds of opinions from around the world, a great spot to see how people are thinking about something. While there are many links to mainstream world news on the web this links you to individuals. In my explorations I found a lot of techy stuff I am sure that a lot of people who like to play with electronic things have a great time sharing knowledge and ideas. When I checked out top searches, however, I got a lot of suggestions for porn sites.

I will try to remember the check this site the next time I want to see how people are reacting to a world event.

#13 Del.icio.us

I didn't find this site as interesting as some of the others. I can see how if you were involved in a collaborative research project this site would be useful to share information in a kind of have you seen this yet manner. I am not really anxious to have other people looking at my choices of websites. Too many years of working in public service have made me conscious of the number of kooks that are out there.

It would be valuable if you used a number of computers and wanted to have access to your bookmarked websites on each machine. If you always used a public machine this site would let you keep your bookmarked sites available. So far this has not become an issue for me.

#12 Rollyo

Very useful tool. As I was creating my new Rollyo, I could think of several more that would be real useful. Any subject that you tend to check regularly it would be very time saving to have it all together.

Select...Latest NewsSearch The Web

Now that branches are not getting the used car price guides a Rollyo of the major sites would be useful at the I Desk. Searchroles could be created for branch specific topics depending on branch needs.

Now I am going to see if I can add my searchroll to this blog in the next ten minutes before I am due back on the desk.

Here goes

# 11 Library Thing

I could spend a lot of time with this site. Fascinating, a booklover's dream. It is a wonderful resource when you have read all of your favorite author and need to find a new one. Unlike Novelist which uses a search which always seemed to lack a human touch this has recommendations from real people. If my quirky author that I like appeals to somebody else it really is possible that I might like some of their favorites.

Unrecommendations is intriguing . What is it about a particular title that generates a list of stuff you probably will hate ?

I looked at two of the libraries who use Book Thing and didn't get the point of what they were doing. It didn't seem like a reader's advisory tool.

Now I have to figure out to put a link to my catalog. I expect that I will have to get help because it doesn't seem real obvous. I hope that this address below is what you have in mind.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/chilcoat15

I am going to forge ahead for the November deadline.

# 10 Image Generators

I guess I am not going to be particularly creative with this exercise. I am going with a cute cat picture. Avators aren't my thing, very cartoonish. Staff at the branch had a great time with them; creating, changing them and showing each other what they had chosen.

Lots of great stuff - your own calendar, cards, posters ! And a lot of really weird things

I am amazed at the number of people who check out and vote on the kitten of the day. Must be lots of offices where lots of time is spent playing around on the net.

Number 9 explore Merlin etc.

I certainly found the search easiest on Blogline. I searched the same 4 things with each of the tools. I had the most success with Blogline. It could be that what I was looking for was really mainstream stuff. My impression is that Technorati would take hours to find any a feed that is really specific. The tutorial was weird especially since I got it started in Dutch. I haven't got the patience to wade through all the blogs. Syndic8 was very cluttered looking and confusing , I prefer using something with a fairly clear page. My second choice would be Feedster it is handy to be able to limit your search to a category.

There was a specific blog I was looking for and Blogline found it. I had read about it in the paper last month while I was at my daughter's in Oregon but had forgotten the name and how to spell the creator's name. A bit of playing around with the search and there it was.

These are useful to tools that help you customize how you interact with the Internet. You can pick out the bits that you want to keep in touch with and ignore the rest.

Number 8 RSS

Wow ! This is great. I having a great time finding, adding, reading and removing feeds. I am not sure that it is a time saver though. Some of them are fun to come across while I am searching and now with RSS I can check them everyday. Unshelved is fun but I never looked at it regularly. Lot of pictures of cats I can waste a lot of time. I don't find a lot of peoples' personal blogs very interesting so I am not going to be keeping those in my newsfeeds. I prefer more factual sites, must be the librarian in me.

Another thing is that I really don't care to share my Blogline account with anybody. I looked at the instructions and decided to skip that part.

Just finished trying out 2 sites that work with pictures. Palatte maker takes a picture of your choice from Flickr, the web or your files and creates a square of each of 12 colors in the picture. Useful for those who are challenged by interior decorating. Of course it depends on how good your color printer is.

There is another site that lets you search immediately for pictures on the net and add them to your document.

Knowing that I will never remember where I found these I have made myself a document called cool sites with the link and a bit of a note about what it is.

At this rate I will never finish by the deadline.

Finally

Its been a hectic summer. I am finally getting back to working on this. The RSS feeds are fun, I could really squander a lot of time reading them and following the links. I was pulled into an item about a cat toy and nearly sent in an order for it.

Got to go, try again tomorrow

Flickr

Haven't done much with the 23 Things as I was on vacation.

Had a great time adding vacation photos to Flickr. Set it so my daughter in Oregon could see them. With the help of Maria in the branch I was able to add one to my blog. Bob and I spend a hot Sunday afternoon looking at canoeing pictures posted by everybody else.

On to RSS.

Getting started

I am on my way with the 23 Things. I called my blog Let's Play because it seems more like fun than "work".

My biggest challenge will be the figuring out each program. Sometimes I think that a process is harder than it really is. I am counting on help from others.