Lesson 8: #16 Thoughts on Library 2.0 Perspectives

I don’t know about anyone else but after reading several of these articles, my head is swimming.  I understand that getting information to people is a priority. And I like the idea of consolidating resources, but I really don’t agree with the author, Rick Anderson, in the article, “Away from icebergs”, that “it’s harder and harder to justify the continued buildup of a large ‘just in case’ print collection.” Our circulation has not dropped 55% as his has. Ours has continually increased every year.  Also, I hope that what’s not forgetten is the social aspect of libraries.  Libraries are places where the community meets and socializes. This morning two mothers and their children came into the library. It was not a planned meeting.  They hadn’t seen each other in awhile. They chatted for over a half an hour while their children socialized also.  Human contact is very important and will always fill a need.  With all of this new technology, it has its uses but let’s not go completely the other way and throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Lesson 8: Exercise 14 / Social Bookmarking

I like the idea of bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere. I often get frustrated when moving between my office computer and the front desk computer because the “favorites” are sometimes different. I can also see the potential for research assistance. By using feeds, you can automatically get up-to-date information sent to you on the subject you’re interested in. Also, you can get tap into the ideas of others who are interested in the same thing. When I looked at the website of one of the libraries that use social bookmarking, I really liked the idea of using feeds for new library materials. A patron could get a list of new materials sent to his/her computer (or any other computer) monthly. That’s a great service to provide. However, I would think that a designated staff member would have to spend a good deal of time on this just to keep everything current on the feed.

I learn by seeing and doing. Having examples of libraries that I can click on and who use the technology is a big help to me.

Lesson 14: Exercise 2

I searched on Delicious for the topic quilting. There were 10,937 hits. Then I searched google which had 14,800,00 and yahoo which had 38,200,00. Google and Yahoo had the more traditional tags but Delicious had such non-traditional tags as procrastination, shopping, discount, etc. The procrastination tag was a surprise to me.  Sometimes, all of these choices are very confusing to me.

Week 7: #13 LibraryThing

I use librarything to catalog our church’s small library.  I decided to use shelfari.com.  It was very easy, and I really like the way the books are shown on a virtual book shelf. One thing that is different between librarything and shelfari is that in librarything, you can write a review at the “add manually” screen as you are typing in the the book.  You can’t do this in shelfari. But in shelfari, at the add manually screen, you can type in the “# of media”  and the number of pages which you can’t do in librarything. 

I have not figured out how to add my shelfari site to this blog.  I will keep trying.

Week 7: Lesson 12- Image Generators

I looked at three of the resources on the 23 thing’s website. The resource I liked best was letterjames.com.  Under navigation, I went to E-Card Service and made an email card which I sent to my husband.  I had never done that before.  It was pretty easy and I impressed myself by doing it. I chose this picture for the front of the card. The message I wrote was “Wishing you smooth sailing in the days ahead.”  Adding the picture  to this blog was simple.  I just downloaded it to my desktop, and then uploaded it to the blog.

Lesson 5: #11 Thoughts about social networks & use

I chose to read 3 articles on social networks.  I understand more about what they are and how they work.  What I became interested in was the privacy paradox of social networks, especially since law enforcement, school officials, and private corporations use these networks to collect information on people.   4th amendment and privacy issues are beginning to crop up  in the courts.  Kids especially need to be educated on the dangers of joining a social network.

I can see how libraries use them to go to where teens are.  But it’s not just teens.  Adults are there also.  Having a blog on a social network is a fun way to advertise who we are, what we have, and what’s going on at the library.  Social networks can be good creative, interactive tools.

Lesson 5: #10 Exploring Social Networking

One observation about MySpace is that you can customize it anyway you want to. I like that. It does look like alot of time has to be spent on designing and maintaining the website which might be an issue if you have small staff.  Every MySpace that I had clicked on was so very different.  I like the idea. A creative staff member could really have fun with creating it.

Lesson 4 Thing 9: Locate news feeds / related blogs

What I like about RSS and newsreaders is that updated information on what I am interested in will come to me every day.  I chose Sage as my RSS feed reader.  Downloading was easy.  I was frustrated for awhile trying to figure out how to add the feeds.  I am a visual person.  Just reading instructions doesn’t help me.  I managed to watch a tutorial that showed in steps how to add feeds. Then I started to search for feeds and add the ones I am interested in.  One feed that I added was from the Readers’ Club at the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County. This feed will forward book reviews.  In the future, I can see adding a feed to our website for “new monthly library purchases”.  Patrons are always looking for the newest books, audios, etc.  This exercise took me several hours to accomplish.  But I really feel good that I could do it.

Lesson 3 Thing 7: Technology related interest

Our library is subscribing to downloadable books on tape.  Two days ago, I participated in an online training session using the computer and phone.  The rest of my staff will also be trained this way.  It was so easy and convenient. All of us are very excited about providing this service to our patrons.

#6 Flickr Fun

I created a puzzle picture at the flickr movie site. I took a picture of our bookmobile from my desktop and created a neat puzzle.  That was fun. I did it several times and each time gave a different looking bookmobile puzzle.