Woo Hoo!!! #23

Wow, what a journey this has been. Today I looked back through my blog to refresh my memory of all the technology discovery exercises. Here were a few of my favorites:

• Flickr - What a great place to discover new photos and keep your own organized. I think I will use this site alot. I love taking photos and sharing them with friends.
• RSS Feeds - I will definitely keep up with my bloglines account. One stop shopping for updates on all your news and friend's blogs.
• YouTube: A great resource for finding videos.
• Podcasts: My new favorite. It's so interesting to find podcasts from all the people in cyberspace.

I think this has been said before but I think an improvement to the program could be to stretch it out over a longer period of time. I tried to complete the tasks as they were assigned but work obligations kept getting in the way. Maybe if there were fewer tasks each week, it would be easier to stay on schedule.

I would definitely do a program like this again. It was interesting to learn about all the new technology. It was also great to see everyone working together towards a goal...a free MP3 player! :) And it was a lot of fun. Thank you Helene and everyone else who helped design this great program. And thanks to Admin for the opportunity.

#22 Downloadable Audiobooks

I've helped many a patron sign up for a Netlibrary account. I've even taken the Downloadable audiobooks class at PLCMC. I've never tried to download a title....until today. I really like Netlibrary. And I can definitely see myself using this service once I get my new MP3 player! :) I found several books I would like to listen to. One I had even checked out from the library but had not been able to get around to reading. I was disappointed that not all eAudiobooks had summaries. There was one Jude Deveraux book I wasn't sure I had read and I had to go to Amazon to see the summary. I did try to download some titles to my laptop. I'm not sure if I was doing something wrong, but I successfully "checked out" three titles. I just couldn't get them to download. After I clicked on "download radio quality", it told me that the link was no longer valid. Then I clicked the manual download button and got the same page. I did click the allow popups button, but that didn't help. Kind of frustrating.

Anyone have any clues as to what I did wrong?

#21 Podcasts

I had alot of fun with podcasts today! Who knew? I checked out several podcast directories.

I had the most luck with Yahoo Podcasts. I had several searches that I tried in each directory. Yahoo Podcasts seemed to give me the best results. I listened to some comedy from Dane Cook and found a podcast from two guys in Raleigh about the television show Lost! I mostly used the series and episode search box when searching. Seems it used keywords. The category search was too broad and gave me entirely too much.

Next was Podcast.net. I really liked the category search with this directory. The main category reveiled sub-categories. I didn't have any luck with any of my searches. No dane cook, no nora roberts. :( When I started browsing the categories I found some interesting podcasts but they were taking too long to load so I abandoned them. I did eventually find a podcast called the TV addict. Two kids from Canada talk about there fave shows of the week. Right up my alley!

Last on the list was Podcast Alley. I did some searches for public library podcasts. I found some from Lansing Public Library in Illinios and Sunnyvale Public Library in California.

Podcasts are a great tool for libraries. We can advertise programs, post author interviews, or podcast great programs that we have at the library! I think IMG is already doing this with author interviews. When searching in Yahoo podcasts I found some podcasts of music R.R @IMG made. Pretty cool!

Oh, here is the link for my bloglines account. I subscribed to the Lost podcast and the TV addict. They can be found under the Entertainment folder.

Admendum to #19

I take back all the bad things said about HipCal. GMAIL thought HipCal was spam so the account confirmation email went there. Happened across it today. :)

#20 YouTube

I started getting forwards awhile back of videos from this site called YouTube. They were really cool videos. I didn't really start looking around the site until recently. I don't think YouTube is something that I would browse. I will probably use it for searching specific things. I've searched the site for videos from my favorite musician. Last week I missed Dancing with the Stars. I really wanted to see Sara Evans performance and there it was on YouTube. I wish it did have better searching features. I guess that's the librarian in me. I was looking for a video I had seen some time ago and had a really hard time searching. I didn't really know what to use for my terms. I did find it. Here it is...

#19 Award winning Web 2.0 tools

At first glance, I thought this would be the most simple exercise. I was wrong. I tried to choose something that I felt could be used in a work setting. I looked at two of the personal organization sites, HipCal and Planzo. I had problems with each. On the surface they both looked like great products. About to "carry" around your organizer and access it from wherever you are. You are able to share your events with friends. Planzo would send you email alerts of your events each day. When I signed up for HipCal they had to verify my email before I could start using the calendar. I never received my email. So much for HipCal. Planzo looks really cool. Click and drag events, really easy. I signed up for Planzo and the calendar wasn't loading like the demo. So, I switched to the older version. It just wasn't working. Kind of disappointing.

For personal use I thought Kayak was cool. I'm always trying to find the cheapest flight.

#18 Web apps

Web-based applications are fun! Authoring a document using Zoho Writer was so easy. I did have trouble when I was trying to publish it and post it to my blog. I also played around with Writely. It's a Google application and I think I liked it a little better. Not sure why, I just liked the interface a bit more. But, I still couldn't figure out how to post it to my blog. Any suggestions...

At work, I can definitely see the possibilities with using these web based applications. Having to transport data can be tricky. Especially when you have your documents saved on and in so many places.

Another web application I have had experience with is EditGrid and Google Spreadsheets. I didn't actually create it, but I have entered data to a spreadsheet that my friend created on EditGrid. We are involved in a project together and she is in Florida. Using EditGrid we are able to compile our data. It's been working great! Haven't lost any data. When we started the project we used Google Spreadsheets. There were still some bugs (when my friend entered her information, I couldn't see the changes) so we switched to EditGrid. I hope Google worked out their bugs, but we are happy with Edit Grid.

#17 Playing in the Sandbox of PBwiki

This is really cool. It's actually the first time I have ever added content to a wiki site. I was surprised at how easy it was! Kind of addicting too. After adding my blog to the favorites list, I went and added my favorite music and vacation spot. It was also great to read everyone else's favorites. I found some great suggestions for new restaurants!

Thing #16 Wikis

I really enjoy perusing wikis. I find them very interesting. I can spend hours on wikipedia. Everything is there. From a simple definition to the explanation of your favorite song. I see the pros and the cons of using wikis. The biggest con of course is that anyone can edit the wiki and may include incorrect information. I think if you are really worried about this, adding a login/password feature to your wiki is the way to go.

The various wikis in the discovery exercises were great examples. I can see PLCMC using all these ideas. I especially think our library could use a wiki similar to Library Success. Staff could share display ideas and program ideas. It's so hard sometimes to come up with these on your own. A wiki could also be used for communication between branches. Branches that want to share materials can use wiki's for posting information. It's not completely thought out, but it's a starting point...

Thing #15 Thoughts on Web 2.0 and Library 2.0

I thought the articles from the OCLC Newsletter were very thought provoking. Working in public service we often get burned out and bogged down and lose focus of why we went into the field of librarianship in the first place. Speaking for myself, I choose a career in libraries because I loved connecting people with books and helping them find that information. Libraries today are so different than when I was a student worker in the local public library. People came in for help with their homework projects or asked for recommendations on their next reading choice. The Internet has changed everything. But, in a good way I think.

I really enjoyed Rick Anderson's article "Away from Icebergs". It really resonates with me. I used to be one of those people that thought we needed to have that book on birdhouses even though it hasn't checked out in years because it was the only book we had left on birdhouses (maybe birdhouses is not a great example, but you see where I am going!). This idea is totally outdated. With the internet, anything is obtainable as long as you know how to search. Unfortunately, in today's society, libraries are not the first place that people look to for information...Google is. Even as a librarian, I usually go to Google. It's just easier. It can be done from the comfort of your couch. It also kind of goes back to that "give 'em what they want, or give 'em what they need" debate. Who are we to say what they need? I ceretainly don't want to make those decisions for someone.

The other point that really made me think was Mr. Anderson's views on the "come to us" model of service. As I said before, technology has changed everything and we need to think of ways to become more valued to our customers and give them what they can't get out there. I'm not sure of how to do that, but we have so many great thinkers at PLCMC, I'm sure we will come up with something!

Thing #14 All things Technorati

Technorati...another cool idea. I just don't know how much I will use it. I've read blogs before. But, mostly it's people that I know. I'm not sure how interested I am in finding a random person's blog to follow. I have a personal blog and I just can't understand why anyone that is not my friend would find it interesting. Just my opinion.... Just another why to social network I guess. If you are interested in that sort of thing.

Thought the various searches in Technorati were interesting. I didn't find many surprises. Mostly PLCMC blogs. When I searched "Learning 2.0" as a blog post I did come across a Management Coaching blog from a person from Hawaii. I think that one came up because she was wondering if there was a "learning 3.0". I'm sure there will be one day.

When searching "Learning 2.0" in tags I found a math class blog from Corgilabs. I have no idea why that one came up.

The top searches was a mystery to me. Searches like "jonny", "pinky", and "cicarelli"? I'm a little behind in my news reading but are these names I should know?

Another fun exercise on the Learning 2.0 highway! :)

Thing #13 Del.icio.us

I was briefly introduced to del.icio.us by a friend a little over a month. She was showing me her del.icio.us page and explaining the virtues of it. I thought it was kind of cool, but didn't really think it was something I would really take advantage of. Having del.icio.us as one of our exploratory "things" has been good. It's made me examine del.icio.us a little more in depth. I do see the potential of using del.icio.us as a social networking tool. Doing a search on car reviews led me to several sites that I may not have found otherwise. I still don't think I will use it a lot. Just as easy to search google and get a majority of the same hits. I do think I will use it as an easy way to bookmark the sites I use most and "travel" with them. So, thanks for that tip.