Time to chat! Wie geht es Dir?

Overall

2009-01-09T13:31:00.001-05:00

Overall, I enjoyed this whole experience of getting to know some of the tools available that I just haven't had time to investigate on my own. Eventually, I hope to do the whole 43, when I have the time. This has been a valuable experience to me personally and I want to thank 23Things for giving me the opportunity.

Overdrive

2009-01-09T13:20:00.003-05:00

Overdrive is a great way to access and to listen to audio books and to view videos through ones PC or other comparable medium. And it is a wonderful service we offer out patrons. Kudos to CCL!

At the moment, however, I am having difficulty downloading any books to my PC. IT is working on the problem.

Podcasts

2009-01-08T16:02:00.001-05:00

Podcasts offer a nice way to listen to news, conversations, updates, etc. instead of having to read them. I added the podcast Libvibe, which is "A check of headline news from the library world." Interesting!

YouTube

2008-12-19T15:58:00.002-05:00

I've listen to and used YouTube many times and really enjoy being able to access and listen to almost any song I wish to, clips from TV show or commercials, funny videos, etc. But back in July, someone sent the YouTube video of Randy Pausch's last lecture to me. It was incredible and the one I've enjoyed more than any other.

It's so nice to be able to access this kind of information so easily. While the book is available to read, listening to him give this lecture was a much more powerful experience.

The CCLS YouTube page has some interesting clips on it. It seems like YouTube would potentially be a great way to draw people, especially younger people, to the library, offering fun and entertaining and informative videos to show them all the wonderful resources that libraries offer.

Social Networking Tools

2008-12-12T11:57:00.000-05:00

What a fun way to socialize and to see what's new at the library. I looked at several library pages, including West Chester's. I preferred the layout of some, and particulary liked the Fairfax Library's MySpace page. I was very clearly arranged with an attractive interface. Many of them had similar types of information, including pictures and info about interesting or new books for teens or children, pictures of friends, a blog, links to other sites, access to the library's catalog, links to other MySpace areas, such as music and movies.

This is a great way to attract young people to the library and its resources. Since I am fairly new to this arena, I'm not clear on how one finds one of these MySpace pages without intentionally looking for it. No doubt the younger generations know better.

Maybe when I get some time, I'll create such a page. It would be really fun!

Web 2.0 Awards

2008-12-12T10:47:00.000-05:00

These were fun and one could easily get lost all day exploring these sites. Of course, for a librarian, increasing knowledge is always useful. Many of the sites would offer new opportunites of learning, but they would not be particularly useful in the library, per se.

Bloglines has become useful to me for various reasons. One example is that I also work at a community college, and twice every week I send out notices to the college staff at my branch listing the new books that we have added to our collection (it's a smaller, more manageable collection). And in each e-mail I include a quote, sometimes thoughtful and philosophical, sometimes relating to education, or sometimes just silly and funny. Most of the staff really appreciate the quotes, and comment when one especially appeals to them. Through bloglines, I receive a list of quotes everyday and I have already used a couple of them.

I'm sure as I explore more of these sites, I can see how some might be useful to different library staff. Colleges are already using wikis in order for students and their professors to work on projects together, each contributing without having to be together while doing it.

Certainly, many of these could be added to our Ready Reference section of our libraries reference page. Other uses will be more clear as I explore them more deeply and have time to think about them and their usefullness to libraries.

CCLS 23 Things Wiki

2008-12-10T16:15:00.000-05:00

I added a favorite movie and favorite television show to the CCLS 23 Things wiki. That was fun!

Web-Based Apps

2008-12-10T16:07:00.001-05:00

These are pretty cool. I passed them on to others who have not been introduced to them yet. What a great way to work together on projects, too! I had hoped to try converting an excel file or powerpoint, to see how well that worked, but I don't have either of these types saved on my PC or drive. Creating a word document was easy, of course.

A very useful tool, especially for people at home who do not have Office on their PCs.

Wikis

2008-12-05T17:24:00.000-05:00

Hmmmm....While I can see some advantages of sharing the input of information into the wikis, I'm still trying to see how they really are, or have the potential to be, better than sites where only one or a limited number of persons add info.

I use Wikipedia so much in all my work, as a starting point in reference, and in verifying dates, locations, etc for cataloging, but it is not useful because many are adding information. It is because it offers fairly reliable information in an easily accessible format. One might ask, for example, if the information is more reliable because many are adding to it, giving it broader scope. I can see that if someone posted information about a subject with a particular bias, another might add info that gives it more objectivity.

Having read over several of the sites we were asked to look at and digging deeply into them (disappointingly, quite a few links did not work), I have not read anything that convinces me of much, although I enoyed reading them. Perhaps in time, we will all have a better sense of it...or not! I have an open mind and love learning new things, especially about new technologies. I have enjoyed all of the exercise, learning about new things I haven't had time to do until now. Thanks for the opportunity!

Library 2.0

2008-11-28T14:10:00.000-05:00

I'm really trying to get a sense of the bigger picture of how Library 2.0 will be put into practice in libraries. While I highly appreciate new technologies that become available and I also like the idea of user-driven services, I am wary of blindly following down trendy paths that will diminish the distinctiveness of libraries.

Libraries hold a special place in our society, a place of respect and esteem, one of the cornerstones of our democracy. In keeping up with the changing times and new technologies, we should evaluate these new resources and new structures and seriously consider incorporating them into our own resources, but first look at them from different points of view before we make any major changes that wil diminish our position. As with the trend to become more like bookstores (which we are not), we need to be wary of jumping blindly into any new areas that, in the long run, will not truly be advantageous to libraires or their users but will decrease our worth to society.

Technorati

2008-11-21T17:07:00.000-05:00

I searched for Library 2.0 in blog posts, in tags and in the blog directory and found different results, especially when I searched the on the tag "Library 2.0". I came across an interesting video on tagging, that compares the tagging in LibraryThing to Library of Congress subject headings used in most librarys and the usefulness or non-usefulness of both.

The week has come to an end, but I will continue to explore Technorati to see how truly useful blogs and the like will be to me. I'm still undecided on their usefulness to me. That's all for now!

Delicious

2008-11-21T16:23:00.000-05:00

Checked out delicious this week. I'm not quite sure what to think of it yet or how it could be useful to me or others in the future. I'm trying to get a sense of the bigger picture when I learn about these fairly new resources and it takes me a while to see that. And as the tutorial states, you only really understand it once you use it, so I will need to do that first. I did create a delicious account and will play with it later.

While it is interesting to see how many have viewed some of the bookmarks and to read some of their comments, I am always more interested in what appeals to me and my own interests rather than what others are looking at and bookmarking. But, again, in time I may understand more of the advantage to it.

I am having fun exploring!

LibraryThing

2008-11-14T13:39:00.000-05:00

What a great site! I had been told about it before, but it has always been difficult to find the time to check everything out that I hear about. I added some books and, in time, will add more books and other kinds of information. To check out my book collection so far:

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

Image Generators

2008-11-13T11:57:00.001-05:00

I had fun playing around with a couple of pictures I took recently. The generators I liked the best were FD Toys http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/ and The Generator Blog http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/. Letter James wasn't as user friendly.

I added a picture above taken at a family outing, which I doctored in FD Toys. Silly stuff!! I used Generator blog to create a funny postcard, which I ended up sending to the friend who was in the picture I used. Pretty cool tools to use when I have more time to experiment seriously.

Search tools

2008-11-07T11:20:00.000-05:00

I really like the search tool Topix.net, because I could adjust it to bring me news from my home town. Technorati had a nice layout and was easy to navigate, but I didn't care much for the primitive look of Sindic8 - and it was awkward to navigate.

Overall, I have found some fun and useful feeds to help me keep up without wasting a lot of my time searching. Ahhhh, efficiency!

Bloglines Top 1000 had a lot of great choices. I've only had time to see the first 100, and check out just a few from those, but I look forward to investigating more as I have time.

What fun!

2008-11-06T16:13:00.000-05:00

RSS makes gathering articles and information of interest quick and efficient, so I don't have to use time to search through sites or among sites to find the "news." The rss directories were helpful in finding some sites, but I also did several types of searches to locate the sites I wanted to include in my favorites and feeds. Initially, obviously, it takes some time to get organized, but will eventually save time.

Mashups

2008-10-30T16:17:00.001-04:00

I found this site listing earthquakes around the world while learning more about mashups. Mashups are made using a fairly new technique that combines data from different sources in order to create a more comprehensive data tool. Check it this cool example of a mashup!

http://earthquake.googlemashups.com/

2008-10-29T13:50:00.000-04:00

I learned about Flickr today and may post some pictures soon. It's fun to take advantage of the online opportunities for creating places where I can share my experiences, pictures, information or whatever with friends, co-workers and family.

2008-10-22T15:50:00.000-04:00

I am new to this , and everyday I try to learn something new about blogging.

How are you today?

2008-10-21T12:34:00.000-04:00

Sag mal, wie geht es Dir? Tell me, how are you?