Done!

I really enjoyed playing with things I had heard about but never had a good reason to try. The structure of the program made it really easy to enter foreign territory. I can see myself using some "Things" more than others. I think my favorite was the online applications and tools. Who knew? Wikis are definitely useful, and I had no idea Flickr had so many images. Though I couldn't see myself using LibraryThing personally, I at least have a bit of appreciation for what it does. After so many blog posts, I think I've reached a comfort level there (at least with the technology - having something to blog about is another matter). I'm glad to have had a chance to look at technorati and del.icio.us and maybe having stuck a toe in the water can think of how they could be applied to my world.


I think the program would benefit from being more spread out. In order to do a decent job you need to spend more time than indicated becoming familiar with the technology and what it can do. I think I gave most things short shrift because of time constraints.


Thanks to the team for putting so much effort into the project. What a dedicated bunch!


If offered another program like this in the future, I'd gladly participate.

Overdrive Exploration Task

As a long-time user of NetLibrary audiobooks, I was disappointed when this service was replaced by Overdrive. The downloads were marginally easier for new users, though I had mastered the NetLibrary downloads so this was not a selling point for me. Looking around the Overdrive Digital Media Collection for this project, I see that the collection has grown but there are still very few titles immediately available. Most that I would have downloaded have 1 or 2 other patrons waiting for them. One thing that wasn't mentioned is that there are now links to many of these titles right in the catalog.

Following the instructions, I listened to the excerpt from Fahrenheit 451. The excerpts are a really nice feature since the reader can make or break the recording.

Found an early Harry Bosch mystery which I had not read and would like to listen to. The description is pasted below:

For LAPD homicide cop Harry Bosch -- hero, maverick, nighthawk -- the body in the drainpipe at Mulholland Dam is more than another anonymous statistic. This one is personal.The dead man, Billy Meadows, was a fellow Vietnam "tunnel rat" who fought side by side with him in a nightmare underground war that brought them to the depths of hell. Now, Bosch is about to relive the horror of Nam. From a dangerous maze of blind alleys to a daring criminal heist beneath the city to the torturous link that must be uncovered, his survival instincts will once again be tested to their limit.Joining with an enigmatic and seductive female FBI agent, pitted against enemies inside his own department, Bosch must make the agonizing choice between justice and vengeance, as he tracks down a killer whose true face will shock him.

Maybe if I win the MP3 player I will give it another shot.

Podcasts and RSS feeds

I explored the NPR Podcast Directory and found the very enjoyable NPR: Books Podcast, which includes reviews and news about books and author interviews. The selections are quirky and NPR-like. Since I have switched from listening to NPR to listening to books on CD during my daily commute, this would be a good opportunity to catch up on what I had been missing - only time stands in the way.

I think I successfully subscribed to it, though the RSS option didn't appear. Something is on my bloglines feeds page, so lets hope it continues.

YouTube exploration

I did take some time looking around YouTube, especially videos that have a library theme. I found several promotional videos that would be useful to have on our Website, such a introductions to special collections, tours of newly-renovated facilities. Some were quite professionally done and some were painfully amateurish. However, you have to give them credit for putting themselves out there.

My favorite was in the humor category - the Dark Librarian. It's a hoot! The Dark Librarian metes out just punishment to library transgressors with specialized "weapons".

Web 2.0 awards

Maybe I made poor choices, but after looking at several I wouldn't put my faith in them. Under Travel I couldn't find anything special about the Farecast site. I had previously used Kayak and maybe it was just timing but found better fares just going to a few web sites of airlines. Under Guides and Reviews Yelp's listing of restaurants in West Palm Beach was very spotty. Other categories offered more mainstream sites like Flickr or Craigslist. I suspect the sample of selectors was too small and biased to make the awards meaningful.

Zoho writer document

New Zoho document.  This is wonderful - won't clutter up my computer and if the site stays alive accessible from anywhere .  Looks like all the formatting tools are there and more readily available than in Word.  Why are we putting Word on all the public PCs?

Editing a wiki

Editing the wiki was easy, though the results are not pretty.

Wikis in the library and elsewhere

Wikis were less foreign to me than some of the other technologies. The Sirsi Users' Group has a successful wiki on the pages available to clients. It's still fairly new, but contains instructions for doing things that somehow the documentation doesn't cover, at least in plain English. The Listservs are useful for getting answers to questions, but the wiki gathers the solutions all in one place and makes them more accessible. Sirsi customers are friendly and helpful and some very smart people take the time to contribute to this valuable resource.





A good wiki project for IT might be solutions to common problems. Reference staff might be interested in Frequently Asked Reference Questions.



At a recent SEFLIN Technology Ad Hoc Committee meeting, I learned that FAU is developing two wikis: a subject guide and a guide to electronic resources using Mediawiki.

Library 2.0 and the future of libraries

Of the perspectives offered, I particularly liked "Into a new world of librarianship" by Michael Stephens. He makes several points describing Librarian 2.0 who is, of course, a facilitator of the best of Library 2.0 for the benefit of his patrons. This paragon is a trend spotter and avoids techno-worship. These people do exist, and I am happy to take what filters down to my technical comfort level in order to improve the experience of our patrons.

The heresy of Rick Anderson in questioning the value of just in case library collections - should libraries have collections at all? - is a little startling and seems to echo the comments that we've heard and discounted for years "Why have libraries at all - everything's on the Internet?" Scary thought when the things we've been exploring in the 23 things exercises seem to demand a tolerance for chaos. It may be o.k. for a generation that grew up multitasking but frightening to older generations that need information presented in a more linear fashion.

Technorati

Searching for Web 2.0 found 49,624 posts, while searching for blogs with Web 2.0 tag found 13,707 blogs -obviously they're counted differently. Related tags include Web -20 and web2.0, which may mean that people are tagging their posts or blogs or whatever with several alternative spellings and punctuations in order to be found easily. A search for http://www.pbclibrary.org/ featured many links to the mousing around tutorial, and several incomprehensible references to Groundhog Day 2008. When searching for the meaning of the "Authority" numbers, I got to the FAQ and loved the FAQ Tag cloud feature - now that is a really useful way to index help topics.

del.icio.us or just fattening?

The YouTube and us.ef.ul tutorials seemed to make it clear what to expect. Maybe because it's near the end of the day, but the site wasn't quite as user friendly as advertised. In fact, it was pretty aggravating. First I checked out the limited offerings by logging in with the account provided but found them repetitious (is that the point?) and a whole bunch of tags all referring to the same"useful web links" on the library's web site. Then I branched out to "all" and "popular". It would take a while to reach any sort of comfort level with this spaghetti. It also looks as though people can pump up hits on their web sites (a la Google advertisers) by adding every tag imaginable to the site. A few sites came up with suspicious frequency. The Tag Cloud was interesting and if used correctly should lead to some self-policing in adding tags.



One good thing - the mango chicken recipe led me to an RSS feed for recipes. All is not lost.

RSS Feeds

The RSS accumulator is a good way to gather in one spot new stories that you might not otherwise be able to keep up with. It would be even better if it arrived on my desktop instead of having to take the initiative to go to the bloglines site. However, going to one site is much better than many sites so it definitely has value. I started out adding a bunch of feeds, but - Holy Cow! - didn't have time to read them all. I've since winnowed them to a few of interest - AL Online, LITA Blog, New Urban Legends (one of my favorites) and the Palm Beach Post for a local flavor. If I let it go too long, I can start with a clean slate by marking all as read.

Libraries are offering RSS feeds as one more tool to reach the public about events, new items, new services. RSS feeds could also be included in something like "useful web links" non-subscription resources that are selected and categorized by librarians.

WebFeat exercise - Where is home?

One part of the Week 5 assignment was to look for something interesting about our hometown using WebFeat. The first problem was defining a hometown. My closest approximation is two towns in the same general part of Massachusetts: Walpole, where I was born, and Plainville, where I spent my teen years. Walpole is probably best known for the notorious Walpole State Prison, and I found references to Willie Horton, whose crimes after escaping from prison provided the campaign fodder for George Bush to defeat Michael Dukakis, as well as Albert DeSalvo, the self-confessed Boston Strangler, who died at the hands of a fellow inmate. Plainville was and is much quieter. It lies between the jewelry manufacturing centered around Attleboro and the high-tech Route 128 corridor near Boston. A current resident was recently granted a patent for a Network Fault Correction Apparatus, while Price-It featured some antique jewelry pieces manufactured by the Plainville Stock Co., in business since 1896 and still a viable company. I used to pass by its two-story brick building on the way home from school. The image is of a victorian gargoyle pin from the Plainville Stock Co. Having been somewhat involved in the implementation of WebFeat, I thought I knew how to use it but ran into several frustrations when Gale kept telling me I had been successfully logged out.

LibraryThing

LibraryThing was interesting, though it seems to be a very time-intensive leisure activity. Maybe when I have lots of time on my hands, it will be fun to scope out new authors and titles. The books I have chosen for my catalog are ones I enjoy for leisure reading. I look for mysteries with complex plots and characters. I especially enjoy the books by Michael Connelly because there are characters that appear prominently in one book but peripherally in another, developing along the way. It was a chore, but I finally managed to add a LibraryThing widget to this post.

Exercise in image generation

Watch me turn into a
Great White at YouWild.org

This link leads to a photo of my fisherman son, JJ, morphing into a great white shark.

Is anybody there?

I've become concerned that my blog does not appear on the library's list of participants. Thinking it might be because of punctuation in the title, I've changed the title a little. Of course, it was locked for a while, so that could account for it too. If all else fails, I'll ask for help (which habit is that?) The settings definitely say that it is public and all posts are listed as published.

Does anybody read this stuff?

Technology 2.0

Except for the most determined technophobe, technology is an unavoidable part of contemporary life . We take so many things for granted that were not on anyone's (except some geeks in a lab) radar a few years ago. I was reading an older novel from the early 1970s, and one plot twist hinged on the fact that the protagonist could not get to a phone to warn someone else about impending danger. Well, Duh! why didn't she use her cell phone! Only 30 some odd years, but the whole episode loses its impact and just becomes sort of quaint.



The current trend is the interrelatedness of what used to be separate technologies. If you have the funds to purchase the service, you can send e-mail, watch movies, and surf the Web on your cell phone. Our satellite TV receiver is also a digital recorder. Images can be grabbed from anywhere, posted on Flickr in several different ways and from there uploaded to one of a whole list of blogging software. It's deceptively easy but overwhelming at the same time.

Butch and Lucy lounging

butch and lucy lounging
Originally uploaded by ron.turtle

More cat photos. This has been a fun learning experience, and easy once you get the hang of it. Of course, my cats are special and very photogenic.

Another photo posting exercise

A little confusing, but I survived the experience of posting a photo to Flickr and then sending to my blog and could probably do it again (though I'm not sure if I want to). Thought I would follow up by posting some fun personal photos. Favorite subjects seem to be children and pets and since you don't have to worry about getting permission from the cat to post a photo that seems to be the way to go.

Dancers at Main Library

Dancers at Main Library
Originally uploaded by ron.turtle

To fulfill this assignment, I tried to find an interesting photo on the H: drive. This event took place in the Main Library meeting room and is probably one of the many programs in the series for non-English speaking patrons.

Another way to share information

Until being introduced to blogging through this project, the most common form of electronic information-sharing in which I have participated is the various Listservs used by the customers of Sirsi to share information. And they are wonderful! There are so many knowledgeable and helpful people on the ListServs that it is often the first place to seek advice, bypassing Sirsi's own Client Care department. There is also a customer Wiki, to which customers can post solutions to problems, ideas, workarounds, etc.


Since I'm new to blogging, it's hard to know for sure the advantages of this medium over older ones. My guess would be that the primary advantage is that it's easy and widespread. Groups can form themselves without a moderator, and the hosting is free. The ListServ posts I'm familiar with are closed groups that tend to ask questions and provide answers to solve problems. Blogs seem to appeal to those who are dying to share something wonderful with

others.

As a staff tool in libraries, it could be a way to expand to a wider audience the work-related conversations we have in small groups. Favorite books or authors, news from other branches, interesting or difficult reference questions would all lend themselves to this informal medium. Blogs have also taken off as a means to share thoughts and opinions publicly. The audience is theoretically more widespread than press releases and much more dynamic. Many libraries use blogs to promote their programs and services and to appeal to a different demographic.

Blogging - Day1

Thoughts on blogging: does everyone yearn to see himself in print? It's hard to figure who would be interested in random thoughts, but that's the trend so here goes.


After watching the tutorial on 7 1/2 habits of highly successful lifelong learners, the biggest challenge for me would be finding a goal that would motivate me so much that the remaining steps fall into place. For many years, the big goals have been external - things that I've had to learn in order to fulfill the responsibilities of my position. Smaller learning experiences - digital photography, using an MP3 player, using a GPS system, have not been something I've been aware of having a strategy for learning - it's just happened as I read the manuals and played with the results. I suppose I could be better at all of them, but I'm sort of happy at the level I'm on. So, step one: find a goal that would be difficult enough to require all the other steps.