Week 9, Thing 23

Well, I was surprised, because I thought I was pretty technologically savvy, but it seems that I have fallen behind the times. I'm glad I did the 23 Things. I especially liked the internet based document tools, and of course, I don't need any more reasons to go to YouTube! I do think lots of these tools have uses for libraries, which I outlined in my posts. I would definitely do a program like this again. Hopefully, I will be able to be entered into the Staff Day drawing even though this is last minute!! I think you guys said that we didn't actually have to turn in our Tracking Logs, which I hope is true, because mine is on my other computer!!
Enter me in Staff Day drawing! Let me win the Wii!
Thanks,
Elizabeth

Week 9, Thing 22

I downloaded The Count of Monte Cristo from Overdrive, which turned out to be a little ambitious. Not only did I not have time to listen to the whole thing, but I had to keep rewinding to catch the meaning of things! However, that's not the tool's fault. I also didn't like that the player wouldn't rewind just a little bit, like a tape, but only skip to chapters, like a CD, but once again, that's not the eBook provider's fault. It did take a long time to download, but I just left my computer on overnight and when I checked it the next morning, it was all done. It didn't take nearly as long to go from the computer to my MP3 player. I think it will be exciting when all cars have MP3 jacks so we could play these eBooks through the car stereo. I've heard that some libraries out there are downloading the eBooks and renting out the MP3 player with the book on it to customers. That's certainly going above and beyond for service!!

Week 9, Thing 21

Well, these podcast sites could be addictive.
I added The Library Channel to my Bloglines account. It looks pretty interesting, and it had several podcasts on topics pertinent to my work. I didn't have a chance to go through all of them, but when I get time, I will. Unfortunately, I feel like podcasts are more entertainment than work related, because I think that sometimes they take a long time to load, and they take longer to listen to than reading the information takes. So, I don't see that much use for them at the desk, but maybe on the website as more of a marketing tool?

Week 9, Thing 20

I actually did this a while ago!! When I was on YouTube one day, I realized that I could add a video to my blog, and I did it then. At the bottom, there is a row of four images, and when you click on one, the YouTube video linked to in that image plays at the top of my blog. I chose that video because I was having a Jamie Kennedy moment, and I think he's pretty funny.
I actually think that library sites could be much more interesting and dynamic if we added videos like this. Instructional videos for how to do things at the library, funny videos explaining changes to customers, LVN ads for their videos, ads for other things we sell, like SRC t-shirts. Unfortunately, the whole bandwidth thing puts a damper on this for now. Hopefully, this will change in the near future, because most other sites have some sort of video-ish intro, at least.

Week 8, Thing 19

First of all, the awards list could be used at the information desk for many things! It would be a great home page or page to link to from FastFacts, since it covers so many things and has such a wide variety of resources in one spot. Excellent!
Anyway, libraries are already using YouTube, and I don't think they will stop. I think this could be a way to make a cheap instructional video, or perhaps LVN could put all their videos on YouTube in some sort of preview mode to encourage people to buy them. I like YouTube for the fact that it provides links to similar videos next to the one you already selected. The only bad thing is that the quality of videos is pretty bad. Hopefully there will be some way to resolve that, although I'm not sure if that's the fault of YouTube or of the user.

Week 8, Thing 18

Wow!! How did I not know about these products? I guess because I have the MS Office suite. But I do kind of love them. All the versatility of Word, none of the hassle!! Wonderful! I found some blank calendars in the Zoho Sheets tool that I am definitely going to use for my future projects! This is great - the whole 23 Things is worth it for this! Of course, can BCPL save money by not buying MS Office and using these tools instead? It may be too early for that yet, but perhaps some day!

Week 7, Thing 17

I added my blog to the list. It was a little different than using FrontPage or something like that to post something to the web. It is pretty easy, but I do like using FrontPage because it allows you to do a little more with it than some other, more limited tools like this one.
However, I do think this is nice and easy for techno newbies.

Week 7, Thing 16

Wikis. Well, I love Wikipedia. I think the self-regulating part of it is brilliant, and it works pretty well. However, once again, I have to say that wikis again seem like something similar to blogs, as anyone can post to them and they can be updated and etc. I think it would be difficult for a non-techie (or even the average librarian) to figure out which of these tools would best suit their needs for a project at the outset. It's always easier to figure out what you need after the fact. So, I guess as we have more experience with these tools, the differences will come to mean more to me.

Week 6, Thing 15

I love what Michael Stephens has to say about Library 2.0 controlling technolust and making good, yet fast decisions! I think this is so important for libraries, yet often this goes against the librarian way of doing things. Which made sense in the past, when resources cost an arm and a leg and had to last for years and years. Deciding which biography series to buy really tied you to a certain title for years on end, since you had to keep the original set and then commit to buying a new edition every other year or so in order to keep current and serve the customer. Now, the stakes are a little lower with all the free information out there on the internet. I think that many librarians are unwilling to give up their comfortable tools, even if it means that their customers don't have access to the most up to date tools. For instance, databases: do we really need them? If no one is using them, why don't we just get rid of them? We have so many different databases, and the stats show they are rarely used. Why bother when you can find so much authoritative information on the web? Medline is free, why do we subscribe to so many medical databases? Does the average public library user need professional medical journal information? No, they can find all they need on Medline Plus. Why are we going to all this effort and spending more money to market our databases? Why don't we make a good, fast decision to do away with about half of our databases?
Or what about the uproar caused by the public library who did away with the Dewey system in favor of a bookstore model? They are just responding to their customer's desires. I drove past the Barnes & Noble at Towson Circle the other night at about 7:30PM, and the place was hopping! The cafe tables were full. I wonder how full the library was at the same time?

Week 6, Thing 14

I did a search in the blog directory, tags, and blog posts, and they all came up with different results. The top searches, top favorites and top blogs weren't too surprising - the top favorites and blog contain many of the same blogs. The top searches are kind of funny, which they always are, if you look on Dogpile or something. People can't spell.
I think this would be another good place to find info about things that aren't readily available in traditional resources - new things, technological things, etc. So, I do think this could be helpful.

Week 6, Thing 13

Well, I checked out delicious. It is pretty cool, and it could be useful for many library things. I'm thinking about being on a committee where lots of research is required, rather than sending attachments or having to keep an email that has a link in it, you could create a delicious account for everyone to see, add to and refer to. However, I kind of feel like it's like the WAN for BCPL. Or like a blog, because I could add links to a blog, and then people could add other links in their comments. I guess I just feel like we're starting to get overloaded with things that only do slightly different things from the things they're supposed to improved.

Week 5, Thing 12: Rollyo

This site could be used instead of Bloglines for the casual user, I think, since it searches blogs as well as sites. And I'm not sure why you'd use it instead of your favorites tab. Here's the Searchroll I created. And frankly, I'm not sure how to link to my Searchroll either, and it wasn't completely clear online.
http://rollyo.com/dalidiva/scream/

Week 5, Thing 11: Library Thing

I do like this site. I got a small notebook in my last library class, and I was writing down the title and author of books I read in it. But you know what I really need? A place for me to make a list of books I want to read and haven't yet.
Here's my bookshelf:

Week 5, Thing 10: Generators: Simpsonize Who?

I actually created this image several weeks ago, after watching the Simpsons and seeing the commercial for the Simpsonizer. I love the Simpsons, so I Simpsonized myself, and now, of course, I can't find the image which I thought I saved on my 'puter. I will do some more searching and see what I can come up with.

In the meantime, I used the Sketch Generator (http://www.dumpr.net/sketch.php) to turn this photo into a sketch. Cool. I could have saved so much time in art high school with this.

Week 4, Thing 9: Explore MERLIN

So, I went to Merlin. I think that it will be great when all the systems put all their trainings on the calendar, and people from all over the state get used to looking at it. Every training I go to, people ask the group to always share training opportunities with other libraries around the state. I always thought our HR department did that, but it seems like people aren't getting the information. I'm a big believer in having one central place or method for disseminating information, rather than having the same info in a bunch of places. That leaves too much room for error: the info might not reach all the avenues at the same time, the info might not get updated on all the avenues, people might not check all the places, just one or two.
I used the Bloglines search feature, and while I didn't really like the RSS feed search, I loved the search blogs feature. It's fun to see the random places your terms show up. It's like 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon online.

Thanks!

Weird. I still can't add a title to my posts at this time. If I get some time today, I'll try to figure it out. Maybe one of you (hello, Ellen & Jim!) can help me out here?
Thanks
Well, I got a few comments from helpful people and got my titles back!

Week 4, Thing 8: RSS and Bloglines

I went to Bloglines and created an account. You can check it out at:
http://www.bloglines.com/public/dalidiva

Hopefully that will work. I noticed that some of the instructions linked to on the 23 Things site are outdated or changed on Bloglines.
As for how the library could use this, it seems like we could make a blog for our Hot Titles list and then people could subscribe to get the Hot Titles sent to them. However, it kind of seems like Bloglines is just a really fancy Favorites site. I guess it's good that you don't have to go to each individual site, but your Favorites is a good spot to park sites you go to often.
My Title field isn't accepting entries right now, so maybe I'll be able to go back and edit this post to say that it's for Week 4, Thing 8: RSS and Bloglines

Week 3, Thing 7: Tech-related blog post

Okay, here is what I want to talk about that's tech related. How about these people getting fired for blogging about their work life? The Washingtonian? That woman at the magazine in NYC? I think it's interesting. What constitutes an identifying detail? If the person it's about can recognize themselves? Or if they're alerted to it by someone who thinks it's them? Or was the whole problem that these people were doing it at work? Kind of like we are now? For the most part, I think putting these bloggers on blast is a bad move, PR-wise. Probably no one would be able to confirm that all those negative things on the blog are about you or your company unless you fire the person who is posting them, thereby directing attention and possibly a book deal to the person who you were trying to silence. Sure, they no longer have a job with you, but you've caused them to skyrocket to public popularity when before they were just a disgruntled, probably underpaid employee. They don't need a job with you anymore. They are milking their 15 minutes to become the next hostess of the View, or something. And none of this would be possible without the technology to allow people to post their every thought online, and the technology available to everyone else that allows them to read every thought anyone ever posted online.

Week 3, Thing 6: Flickr Mashups

Okay, I chose flickReplacer, a mashup that allows you to highlight a word on a site and replace it with a flickr photo that has that word as a tag. Unfortunately, it's not working all that well. It says it works in IE, but what it is doing is creating a link to a photo and the image is not appearing. It's giving that little box with a red arrow inside. However, if you click on the box, it will take you to the image in flickr. I think the problem is the page URL is being referenced, as opposed to the actual image URL. Oh well. Maybe I'll make a librarian trading card later.

Week 3, Thing 5: Explore Flickr

This is not my dog.

But, I discovered something that could help others: when you want to add a photo to Blogger using the URL, you can't just take the URL of the page the photo is on. That won't work. However, if you right click on the actual image, and then choose Properties from the menu, you can get the URL for the actual image, not just the page. In the Properties window, go to Address/URL, highlight that, do Ctrl + C to copy, and then paste that URL in the Blogger picture-adder thingy, and voila, the image will appear properly. At least it's appearing properly right now, for me. That could change at any minute, I guess.