#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 ?