Week 7 pbclswiki

I just posted my favorites to pbclswiki. It was nice seeing the favorites of other staff members and being able to chime in. It made me feel as though we are all contected. This is a fun tool to have.

Week 7 Wikis

After learning more about wikis and how easy they are to edit and seeing the different ways that libraries are using wikis I think that they are helpful for libraries. I think it would be nice to have a library staff wiki that we can use to create a community in which to share information we think may help others. With the setup of wiki other staff members can build upon that to make new suggestions. The beauty of it is that it cuts out the middleman, saving time. Instead of having to wait for someone to edit and add the information it is something that people can do on their own.

I also think it would be helpful to have a wiki for the public which compiles helpful sites. I really like the idea of having a one stop place in which to store information. I think another good benefit is that a wiki has tools to show recently made changes so that you don't miss a thing. And I think that wikis would be great communication tools when planning events, like Annual Training Day (*sobs*...RIP). It helps everyone organizing the event to see the same information, but the setup is more convenient that that of a message board because on a message board you'd have to dig through posts for a link and on a wiki you have them right there for you.

I think it would be nice to have a wiki for the public that shows frequently used patron sites, or things that may be of interest. It's more of a selfhelp tool for them so that they can find what they need in one spot.

Week 6 Web 2.0 thoughts

To complete Week 6 of Web 2.0 I read a few different perspectives on Library 2.0. The main one that stuck with me is 'Away from the Icebergs', by Rich Anderson http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/2.htm

I think that the reason that this perspective stuck out to me is that living in Palm Beach County we live in an area where a large part of the population is elderly and is set in their way of doing things. We also have staff members who have been in the system for decades and are set in their ways. I know of several staff members who have been in the system for a while and have no interest in taking Web 2.0. I think that while we may be used to our way of doing things and it has always worked for us, we shouldn't let it hinder us from learning about new things and new technologies. Sticking to our way of doing things instead of learning new methods to do things and new technologies will hinder us in our growth. While we may have many elderly patrons who have been visiting our libraries for a long time and are set in their ways as well, the younger generation is more internet savy and may be more easily reached through technology.

I think it is important to focus on books and the tangible assets that we offer within our libraries, but it is equally important to be familiar with Web 2.0 so that we can use different tools to promote our libraries and events, know new technologies that we can teach computer classes on and be able to help patrons who have questions on web 2.0 related subjects.

Week 6 Technorati

I visited Technorati as part of my week 6 tasks for 23 things. I think that technorati is a great tool and does for blogs what google does for the web. Technorati searches different blogs for the information you are looking for, and presents it to you much in the same way that a search engine would retrieve different web links. I think it is handy for sorting rather than having to go to different blog sites and do individual searches for their information.

While at Technorati I did a search for Web 2.0 tags. The search brought up many up to date blog posts on the subject of Web 2.0. One of the things that I discovered while looking at the information that was brought up is that Firefox 3.0 debuts today. One blogger described it as the first Web 2.0 friendly browser out there. Seeing as I'm Web 2.0 friendly these days myself I will have to check it out and see if this new browser is for me. I wouldn't have heard about this new browser had it not been for my technorati search and the current information that it has available.

Week 6 Del.icio.us

I discovered Del.icio.us through doing this exercise for Web 2.0 and plan to get an account for myself. I like Del.icio.us in that no matter where I am I have access to the websites that I like. In the past there have been times that I have been on vacation and I may not remember the exact name or address to a site and am unable to visit it because the information is bookmarked on my computer and I am not around my computer at that time. But with Del.icio.us I have access to my bookmarked links no matter where I am. And I see the benefit to using Del.icio.us as a research tool as well because you can carry the information with you if you go on business and have access to another computer, or are in school and go to the computer lab and decide you want to save something or pull up something. It's all there. Another benefit of Del.icio.us and its social aspect is that if you are doing research you can browse under the tag of the subject you are looking for and find other websites that you may not have known existed. So I find that Del.icio.us is a helpful tool that I will be using.

SHELFARI!!!!!!!!!!! Too cool!

I just wanted to take a moment to let everyone out there know about Shelfari! I had never heard about Shelfari before and discovered them though 'Ask a Librarian's' Myspace. Who says that myspace can't be used for good? lol.

Shelfari is similar to Library Things in that it catalogs your collection and even categorizes it into sections like 'read', 'wish list', etc. But Shelfari is more like a social network in that it is set up similarly to myspace. There are members, groups you can belong to, you can tag books, see who is online, see new members, etc. It's like a social network joining people with similar interests in books. How cool is that? And the way that Shelfari showcases your collection is very neat. They have your books arranged on a bookshelf and if someone highlights the book they are given the option to add the book to their shelf or go to amazon for more information on the book. And the thing that caught my eye is that Shelfari has an myspace app that you can add to your myspace account to have your book list displayed on your myspace profile! How cool is that?

Here...have fun!

http://www.shelfari.com/

Week 5: WebFeat

I just completed the final activity for Week 5. I played around with WebFeat to see what I could find. I did a search for my hometown of Pahokee and found 16 articles. The first article at the top of the page caught me eye because it was a Florida Trend article from their September 2007 issue talking about my neighbors and their rental property business! I see them every day and they failed to mention being named in the Florida Trend article, so it was a pleasant discovery. There were other articles brought up that seemed interesting and that I wanted to read, but I was having problems with WebFeat. After the initial article, when I tried to click 'view' on another article the site would redirect me to a page stating that i had logged out successfully, which isn't what I had tried to do. That was disappointing because I wanted to play with WebFeat some more. I even closed the page and started a new session, but continued to have the same problem. I will have to play with it again some other time.

I like WebFeat because I like that instead of looking at each database individually you can plug in a search term and it will search all databases and retrieve the information for you. It is a great tool to have on the site.

Week 5: Library Things

I had never heard of Library Things before this exercise. I like how it's set up and being able to find people with similiar reading interests. I have created an account with some of my favorite "cute" books! If you are interested to take a peek at the 5 books I added, here is the link to my catalog http://www.librarything.com/catalog/hiddenme2

Week 5- PLAY WEEK!!! Image Generators

Image Generator

For this week's exercise I am discovering many different image generators that I never knew existed. I just used the image generator at http://oneletterwords.com/ecards/saint/ to create an honorary italian grandmother certificate. The image on the left was made to show an example of what the certificate looks like.

Many other cool image generators can be found at http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/

Letter James is a very cool website for image generators as well. You can play with the pictures found on their site and even order calendars with the personalized images! I will definitely look around that site some more and play more with it later. There is lots of fun to be had there! Check it out at:http://www.letterjames.com/start.php?mod=calendar-generator

As part of the discovery exercise I would like to share a site that I found which has a lot of image generators http://www.imagegenerator.org/ They have a compilation of many different sites that have image and text generators!

Without having pictures of my own saved on this computer I am limited to how much I can play with these image generators, but I can't wait to have a second look at them at home!

Week 4: RSS Feeds

I am always online when I am at home, so I had heard of rss feeds before but didn't really know what they were or had any experience with them. This week's thing was very educational because it taught me about rss feeds-what they are, how I can use them, etc. And I was also introduced to bloglines, which is a website I had never heard of before. Now I know what an rss feed is in case someone were to ask me, and I am also able to recomment bloglines to patrons and friends, whereas before I wouldn't have even known that such a thing existed.

I will answer some questions suggested for week 4 of 23 things:

What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?

The thing that I like about RSS and newsreaders is that they are short and sweet. If you have limited time to go online you can just go to bloglines, log into your account, and read through the feeds that interest you instead of having to go to the individual sites that you want to visit, waiting for the site to load, etc. It reduces a lot of time because you don't have to surf around or wait for pictures to load. Instead you have everything that you want in one concise, quick loading (because of no images) location. It's a real timesaver.

How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your work or personal life?

I can subscribe to feeds that interest me and that way I don't have to go through the trouble of remembering different website addresses, and I can cut down on the time that it would take me to visit each location and read up on what I'm looking for.

How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?

Libraries can benefit by creating accounts, if they choose to do so and subscribe to different things that they think may benefit staff or be of interest to them. That way they can have all of the news in one location and it makes it faster for staff to look up news and information. It would also be smart for a library to have an rss feed because more patrons would be willing to receive snippets of information with their other news than to visit the library's website and spend valuable time reading a lengthier article.

And to end this blog I just thought I'd mention that surprisingly I found myself having fun while browsing through bloglines and signing up for feeds that looked fun. Before this week's exercise I would have never thought to do that. Good job 23 things team in finding fun new things to learn and enjoy!