Thursday, May 22, 2008

Thing #23 One More Thing from Sunny Florida

I almost forgot the family and friends part. In the lunch room I talked about how much I liked LibraryThng with someone who is reluctant to move from paper records. Family - I don't really have that kind of family.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Thing #23

I love LibraryThing! I will definately be able to use this for work. I often go to the shelves and randomly select a children's book to read but I frequently forget the title/author. Since I am very visually oriented, seeing the cover will help trigger my memory. Plus I can add my own tags to organize the list in the way that is meaningful to me. The most frustrating thing for me was when Google locked up my blog for 3 weeks and I had to start over. (They have never cleared my first blog. I can't even get into it to delete it.) I can see where many of these tools would be very useful for OCL work. Wikis and blogs can help manage information and input for departments and committees. Cutting down on email is wonderful. Bloglines will enable me to keep up on current research in child development for work and other areas I'm interested in personally. I can really see podcasting and videocasting as a way of providing children's programs on our webpage. I can see how ListenNJ could become a way to provide those old books that the Orthodox are always asking for if we did it from the library as they don't have Internet. I want to thank all of you for your hard work. You did a fabulous job! I am off on vacation but will return on the 30th in case I need to redo anything before the challenge is over. Just let me know. Thank you.

Thing #18

Okay thanks to Chris and Jill I was finally able to get into Google docs and my name is added. I kept getting the message that the url was not available. The Going Green committee, which I am on, is currently working on our mission statement. I can see how this could help expedite this process. Currently we are all working on it separately and will come together at the next meeting to hash it out. Having one document for everyone to work on in advance of the meeting would decrease the amount of time spent on it at the meeting. Plus people like myself who won't be at the meeting would have had an opportunity to work on it. I also believe people work better at something like this when it comes out of a brainstorming session. This could be online. I could add or change something which might trigger an idea from someone else and so on. The result is a better mission statement because people have had time to work on it when they are best able to do so.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Thing #22

I was familiar with ListenNJ but didn't use it much because it takes so long to download onto my computer. I did download Amulet of Samarkand Part 1 of the Bartimaeus Triolgy. I do love audio books and plan to make more use of ListenNJ. Another reason to switch to cable Internet.

Thing #21

Podcasting is a lot more sophisticated than I thought. However, since our society is so visually orientated I think videocasting will probably go further. I didn't realize that organizations like NASA would have podcasts. The following about supernovas was very interesting: http://podcast.com/show/777/ Since I tend to multitask I can visualize myself listening to a podcast while working on something else on the computer. I have been interested in the idea ebooks for an ipod but poscasting sounds just as intriguing. Podcasts/videocasts of storytime on our webpage would be great. We could set them up with a rss feed so customers could subscribe to the latest storytime. Maybe start with something like bedtime stories.

Thing #20

I was familiar with YouTube but never took much time to explore it. I discovered that Bill Clinton had been to my undergraduate college in Laurinburg, NC. I found someone that has a very dim view of Laurinburg, NC which doesn't surprise me because of the poverty. I found a lot of old clips from artists performing even from the 1960s. I also discovered that Amnesty International has some films on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEwkrnw9g84 I thought this one was particularly powerful. I was also shocked at some of the comments.

Thing #19

I think the Web 2.0 Award winner I would most like to use is healia.com. It has communities and information on health related topics. I was able to find information on celiac disease and I am hoping for some communities to get tips from individuals in a group situation.

Thing #17

Again this was not easy because of my home computer, but I did manage to get my blog on the list and the link worked. After playing in the sandbox, when I clicked save, none of the editing I did was saved.
So some of the items that I had added were:
Favorite place to be - Port Orange, Florida
Favorite foods - coffee, of course
Some Favorite books - Maddigan's Fantasia, Miss Rumphius, The Invention of Hugo Cabaret, Elijah of Buxton (I even had the cover images.)
Favorite joke - Old Farside Joke - Caveman Spelling Bee - A caveman is on the stage spelling the word cave. One of the cavemen waiting their turn says with a frown, "I'll probably get Australopithecus!"
A wiki is definately the way to go. Kristen and Nicki are already putting one together for youth services.

Thing #7 Resent


I followed the instructions saving the photo to the desk top and resent it as an attachment. Hopefully you were able to see my very handsome grandson, Noah.

Thing #16

Wikis are a very exciting tool for us to use in the library. It will definately help cut down on the problem of managing email. I had come across Nancy Pearl's wiki when searching Technorati. When I viewed Albany's wiki, I wondered why OCL doesn't think about using a wiki while we are developing our strategic plan. It was also interesting looking at the children's portion where they list the children's department SWOT. (We are covering this in CPM.) The library success wiki had some interesting information that may be useful for staff training. We are currently looking at training needs for YS librarians. One area is weeding. The very simple 15 minute weeding steps could certainly be a starting point especially since some of OCL's collections haven't been weeded in a long time. I looked at OCL's page on Wikipedia and probably an easier way to find out about OCL than our own webpage. Maybe because staff can make additions. There's a photo of the TRYS space. Except someone should add information about our ILMS award under the awards section. I'm not sure but I think the staff edits are the ones that are listed by a numerical IP address.

Thing #15

I definitely like the thinking behind Library 2.0. A quote from Rick Anderson in "Away from the Icebergs" are very applicable to OCL:
"Services that can't be used without training, then it's the services that need to be fixed - not our patrons."
A few years ago one the best OCL committees I was ever on was disbanded: the Catalog Access Team. A group of library staff from all levels, locations and departments got together to make the catalog user friendly. This was a great thing, even though with the technology at that time, it was difficult. Imagine how much we could do now with Web 2.0! I think one of the reasons it was disbanded was to save money(?). I also remember hearing a previous administrator pooh-poohing the idea. I think perhaps the switch to vendor processing was a bigger part of the decision because it would probably be impossible to get vendors to go along with it. (When you look at all the corrections we have to make to their cataloging now, I can well imagine if we tried to ask for something different.) Since we have to look for something new since Horizon is not being supported any longer, why don't we look for one that embraces Web 2.0? It seems that it would allow us to escape from cataloging decisions being made for us by vendors. But also we have to bring our physical collections in line with what is in our database. TRYS is currently in the process of going through our entire collection and one part it to make it consistent with what is in Horizon.

Thing #14

The Technorati Tour would not load on my home computer. I will try to find some time at work to go back to these activities I am not able to do at home. I also guess I'm going to have to take the plunge and figure out how to afford Internet access through cable. When I searched Learning 2.0 posts I felt like I didn't have enough knowledge to quickly assess whether the posting would be useful. However, when I looked at Learning 2.0 blogs it was easier to evaluate whether the blog would be useful to look at from the description in the listing. There were some interesting looking blogs that deal with Web 2.0 in schools which I thought would be interesting. Some of the local schools have firewalls that block a lot of the Web 2.0 resources (not sure if that is the right descriptive word). I found blogs when searching gluten free that I will definitely go back to and determine which I would like to set up rss feeds to my bloglines account. I'm hoping to find one that talks about restaurants that are "celiac friendly".
Side note - Blogger really needs to make it's spell check Web 2.0 friendly!

Thing #13

I really like the ability to handle information in a nonlinear way which more in tune to way I think. I wasn't able to download the video on my home computer so I had to watch it in a little 2"X3" screen. The podcast part of it was fine I just couldn't see the small print. The first thing that popped into my head about a folksonomy was a way to search a customer's question - "It had a green cover...". I now understand a "cloud" and thought Nashville's teen page was pretty cool. But when I clicked on the link for Stafford Branch's summer reading list it was a pdf file. I'm not sure what I did wrong there. The College of New Jersey would not load on my home computer. I liked the del.icio.us account set for oclwebthings. I hope this will still be available after the web 2.0 challenge as it is an easy way to go back to review topics. I don't think Us.ef.ul(beelserspace) is really that easy to understand. I'm going to have to go back to it when I have more time since I'm leaving on vacation Wednesday and my CPM practicum is due Tuesday. I didn't set up a del.icio.us account because the Us.ef.ul wasn't that easy to follow. I will when I have more time.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Thing #12

I signed up for Netlibrary. I found that it was easy to negotiate the pages and chapters. I haven't looked at getting ebooks from Horizon yet so I'm not sure what the difference is between what we have available and what's available on Netlibrary. Mainly my eyes get tired from being on the computer all day that I really prefer curling up with a book with pages.

Thing #11

Yes, this is exactly what I was looking for to keep track of the books I am reading. I had thought that a blog would be the way to go but this is much better. I added 5 books with tags. I was surprised that one of my new favorite books wasn't that popular: Maddigan's Fantasia by Margaret Mahy. I was also surprised that Christopher Paul Curtis' award winning book Elijah of Buxton wasn't more popular.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Thing #10

One of the biggest parts of the learning curve for me is the vocabulary. There are so many acronyms and terms that I've never heard that it's almost like learning another language. 20 Things to Watch included descriptions and terms I just understand a little bit. But I absolutely love the idea of OpenID. Keeping up with so many user names and passwords is very hard for me. I think the NY Times Personal Tech Page is going to be useful for helping me understand some of the technology. I looked at some of blogs dealing with technology and found techabob interesting. I looked at KKwebthings and enjoyed reading Kristen's postings. She may say she is rambling but she writes very well. I looked a pea's23 because I heard she had an avatar. One of the problems with this challenge is that some staff have enough time to work on it while on the job while others are stretched just trying to keep up with our job. And though I am willing to do work at home my computer doesn't seem to cooperate very often.

Thing #9

I searched through Topix.net, Syndic8.com and Technorati. I found them to be too much information to cull through. I believe I will need to practice in order to be able to limit my searches more. For example, I searched "ocean county library" and ocean county library and got items that I'm not sure why they were retrieved. Syndic8.com was hard for me to deal with the way it appeared on the screen. I did the Technorati tutorial thinking it would help with searching but it was about adding blogs. When I feel more comfortable with the site I will go back to that tutorial. I tried doing this "thing" at home on my computer but I could not get any of the above to load. I guess my computer is too old. However, I'm seeing the advantage to using bloglines for notification from sites rather than email notification. I am always overwhelmed by too much email at work and at home. At home I can have sites like Amnesty International give me feeds instead of email which will cut down on my email.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Thing #7

I sent the email of my scanned image to oclwebthings@gmail.com

Thing #8

Phew!! I never thought I'd get here. I'm overwhelmed with so many different accounts and passwords. I think I write them all down but when I try to go back to my notes I always seem to be missing one piece. Anyway, I have set up my bloglines. I have added ten rss feeds and hopefully I will be able to find it tomorrow. I think the concept is really great, but I can also see how I could easily get swamped with too much.

library3


library3, originally uploaded by oclwebthings.

Thing #5 - It's pretty amazing how this works. It's especially interesting to search the map tags for photos from a specific place.