My favorite thing was delicious. I really liked the idea of being able to orchestrate stings of knowledge using bookmarks.
I feel that I was pretty tech savvy prior to enrolling in this program, however there were some things that I had not heard of, so I thought it was beneficial. I know that here are a lot of librarians who have a lot less technical experience than I do and I know that this introduction had to be beneficial for them as well.
I will seriously consider the catalog application that I found after it has probably 2-3 months of low bug rates. I know that there are a lot of Linux applications out there that are specific to libraries but I have not really researched them. In this area I am unsure of the patron response if I were to try and set up my work stations using Linux and Linux applications.
I do think that this program took a lot longer than the fifteen hours of CE's that we can get for this program. Perhaps that could be adjusted? Twenty three CE's would be better! If another discovery program like this is made available in the future I would probably participate again.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Thing 22: Podcasts
I like podcasts. There are a lot of interviews that I can look up and listen to while I do otherthings on the internet.
Here is a fun one:
http://americanfolklore.net/mp3/blackcatsmessage.mp3
And several others are available here:
http://www.americanfolklore.net/spooky-podcasts.html
Here is a fun one:
http://americanfolklore.net/mp3/blackcatsmessage.mp3
And several others are available here:
http://www.americanfolklore.net/spooky-podcasts.html
Thing 21: youtube
Yep I am familiar with this too. Looking to see if I can find an old slideshow. When my husband was deployed he would email me pictures and I woudl post them mainly on veoh, but sometimes on youtube. They have all expired though. So I guess I will find a different video to post.
Who can resist cookie monster in the library?
Thing 20: Library 2.0 Tools
Looking at the list of 2.0 tools, the one that most interested me (that we had not already covered) was VuFind at vufind.org.
What a great premise and online catalog application that my patrons can use to see what books I have on hand. Best of all it is open source, which makes it within my budget and the user can modify the origianl application based on thier own needs. So I take a look at it and am really disappointed. I searched by author for Brooks, Terry. He is a fantasy author who has tons of books most of which center around Shannara.
In this list I see verything but Mr. Brooks which makes me question the applicability of the information found in searches. I don't really think that I would have fun with something that was this out of whack for any search. Further searching by "terry brooks" or "brooks, terry" found no books.
But perhaps they just don't have many books listed on the online demo application. There were links to the libraries that are using this application for their cataloging. I checked out king, stephen on the Colorado State University website and got a list of his books right away:
http://discovery.library.colostate.edu/Search/Home?lookfor=king%2C+stephen&type=author&submit=Search
It is a nice looking application. I begin to look at time consumption. Many open source programs are prone to bugs and I simply do not have programming skills to overcome other programmer's bugs.
I was really impressed to see that they offer support at sourceforge.net. Many applications do not offer support especially for open source apps. This is a programmer who will help end users work out bugs for the programs that they have written and are giving away freely. most people don't have the time for this as they have other things to do, like work. But since this application was developed at a college I can only assume thatt here is a steady stream of programming majors who tweak this application and correct any issues as they come up.
It does look like they have a lot of bugs currently. Until they get most of these corrected I will probably steer clear. But soon enough this looks like a very promising application.
VuFind: Social Features from Falvey Memorial Library on Vimeo.
Thing 19: Applications
Well this is a rather easy one for me as I really like Google docs and am familiar with it simply because I use gmail for my personal email. If someone sends me a document that I cannot open or read I am usually able to open it in Google docs, without having to download any converters, whoich I get really annoyed by. The downside to Google docs is that it can take a long time to open (take a nap, walk the dog, do some dishes and ta-da it's there)!
Since I already have some knowledge of Google docs I elected to use the other online application listed, Zoho writer.
I signed up for an account (I wonder if I will be able to remember all these passwords?) and then I get to choose from a lot of applications, I choose writer and get a document with all kinds of instructions. Hoping that this is intuitive enough for me to use without them I click new and am on my way!
I had no problems exporting it to word to save it on my desktop and everything transferred over , which is impressive in itself.
Madison Public Library is on the map!
Come take a look at our collection of over 20,000 books!
For a small town library come see what we have to offer!
The color and the picture did not import to blogspot. And since it is not in a picture format or a video format I can't import it that way (scratching head).
Best I can figure out is how to post it on zoho. Take a look:
http://viewer.zoho.com/docs/bbbudv
Nothing much just checking out what I could do with the various buttons, and how it worked, as far as changing my fonts, adding pictures, inserting emocons etc.
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Thing 18: PBwiki
Woohoo a play area? Now this I can handle! I am not allowed to leave a comment until I sign up for PBwiki, which is a breeze. I sign up and leave a post, after reading many of the other posts from other people. It is really interesting to read some of the places that different people have gone and where they want to go.
http://nebraskalearns.pbwiki.com/Favorite%20Vacation%20Spots#comment1232734158I also left a comment on music http://nebraskalearns.pbwiki.com/Favorite%20Music#comment1232734443
This was an onteresting way to read the thoughts of the other people who are also completing 23 things, and since we are all in the same field yet have so many differences, it is very interesting and a great way to feel like I have a better understanding of other librarians.
Thing 17: Wikis
Well here is an application that I have not heard of or used ever before. I have heard of and used Wikipedia though so perhaps that will be of assistance to me?
So first I checked out the first hyperlink:
Honestly, I don't like the format. BORING. Too much like Wikipedia. Everything here is a hyperlink, with no real content.
I clicked on the top hyperlink of biography and memoir. The page is again very reminiscent of Wikipedia however now we at least have some content, and we see some library offerings. Looking back at the home-page I see that they also listed local offerings and local information. Some of this I can see as a positive. Still I find the overall too boring.
Where I think this application could be of use to my library: offering wikis on our webpage to list local offerings, and entice people by informing them of what their community has to offer them.
Next I clicked on the second hyperlink for the Princeton book club
Now this one is a little better. There is some color and some content, and more than just hyperlinks, however here I think we see to little in the way of offerings, simply a listing of book categories to check out books. Clicking on a link allows users to see what reviews members of the club have read and reviewed, also includes a pic of the front cover of the book being reviewed. I do feel that this site is better than the first in most regards but it still lacks a lot.
Last I checked out http://bullrunlibrary.pbwiki.com/, and overall I prefer this wiki by far. It lists misc. content on the sidebar, that local patrons would be most interested in, it offers content, pictures and hyperlinks to entice readers to learn more about the items that interest them and offers an immediate hyperlink to local area contents.
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