Completion!

This has been a great series of exercises. They've been very useful in my work with customers here at Sno-Isle and in my career development. I got a late start because I was scheduled for a medical leave right at the launch of the project. When I got back to work, I was already behind. Because of that, I can't say I looked forward to every moment of the project, but it has been worthwhile.

One of the hardest parts of the project for me was just getting to publish my blog initially. When I finally got past the Google filters, it worked OK. I'm glad to know that it really isn't difficult to launch a blog, and I think I might use one for some of the volunteer work I do. Other favorite discoveries: Pandora and streaming music, streaming video, and Google Earth. I told several friends about these. I thought that using Flickr was great fun, but I don't think I'm likely to post to it myself. Of course I had heard of delicious before but wasn't really convinced of its value. I do plan to use it outside of these exercises, and I think it will be helpful both personally and professionally. I had some difficulty with the OverDrive downloads, so now I can feel our customers' pain, and, I hope, help them troubleshoot to make it work for them.

Yes, I would choose to participate in Sno-Isle's next technology initiative--I want to be ready for Web 3.0, if it's not already here! Thanks for this opportunity to learn and grow.

Podcasting

I listened to podcasts recommended through Learn Out Loud, including career advice from Seth Godin and Liz Cornish. I thought these were very professionally presented and useful. I also listened to an OPAL (Online Programming for Libraries) podcast featuring Meredith Farkas. The OPAL podcasts were recommended by a fellow Sno-Isle staff member. I listened to several of Nancy Keane's "Booktalks Quick and Simple" and found that her model of very brief talks inspired me to offer more talks of my own. Finally, I listened to some of the Killer Innovation podcasts by Phil McKinney. I believe that listening to podcasts is one way to promote my own lifelong learning goals, and I would recommend podcast subscriptions to some of our more tech-savvy customers as well.

Sno-Isle is already offering podcasts to our customers. An example is the children's stories recorded by staff and available through the kids' website. I'm sure there would be an audience for podcasting some of our adult programming too--book discussion groups, author appearances, practical seminars on gardening, children's nutrition, home organization, and similar topics. Brief booktalks similar to the ones presented by Nancy Keane would also fill a great niche in our readers' advisory services. I'm glad I could explore this area and will look for additional ways to apply podcasts to my work life.

Fake magazine covers and more!

I looked over the online image generators unit, and I can see lots of potential for fun. Some of our customers, I'm sure, would enjoy using the scrapbook page generators, and the fake magazine covers could also bring hours of amusement. I plan to create a special issue of "Woof" for a pet lover I know, and I think I might use "Drama Queen" for some acquaintances as well. These are great resources to know about. Thanks!

OverDrive downloading for beginners

Well, I've been working on this assignment off and on for several days. It's been quite frustrating, and I feel that it's taken way too long. I hope that our customers have an easier time when they're trying to download to their home computers or portable devices.

When I began browsing the list of available titles, I was interested to see that the title"Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" was available in this format. I had seen the book at Costco and thought it might be fun to read, but at Sno-Isle there were over 150 holds for the book itself. No one, however, was waiting for the downloadable version, and I thought I could listen to it right away. I read through copious instructions and managed to download the player and check out the item, but then it vanished. It showed that it was checked out, but I couldn't find it anywhere on my computer, and of course I can't "return" it early and try again. Meanwhile, someone else has placed a hold on it, but when I tried to put a hold, it wouldn't allow me to because it's already checked out! I tried checking out two Beverly Cleary books but they disappeared too.

Finally, with the help of a co-worker, I was able to download a couple of titles, and I listened to selections before writing this post. I don't have an MP3 or other portable audio device, so if I want to listen, it means sitting at the computer. I think it's great that we have more than 500 MP3 books available, and I'm considering getting my own player. And just today I spoke with a customer who wanted to download "The Last Lecture." After completing this assignment, I was much better able to show her how to find the item in the digital media section of our catalog and help her place a hold. This is a valuable service, but some of our less tech-savvy customers may have difficulty with it...

Delicious Internet sites

Well, I explored del.icio.us a bit and created an account. At first I looked at popular tags and felt a bit overwhelmed because a lot of them seemed to be for programmers and web designers, and I was in over my head. (One was Top 10 YouTube Hacks.) I was gratified when I found "Cliff Notes on delicious--making it useful," which says that the interface is geeky and has even baffled many experienced computer users. Oh yes, now that you mention it, I was finding it difficult to navigate. But I added about 10 bookmarks, mostly related to the 2.0 project. Of those I chose, it was interesting to see which ones were bookmarked by the most other people--for example, Pandora Radio. Library Journal's Movers and Shakers article and People StyleWatch both had 17 other users at the time I created my bookmarks to them. It might be interesting to explore the bookmarks of those people and see if there are common intersections.

I printed out a bunch of articles from the S-I 2.0 syllabus and hope to read them soon. Yes, I can see how using delicious would provide research assistance, though I don't think it will ever take the place of databases. It is a fairly easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere. I think I will use this in my work/personal life, though I also thought that about RSS feeds and haven't accessed them again since I completed my blog post for that unit... Still, I remain optimistic.

Wiki Wiki Fun

The subject guides in the St. Joseph County PL system are interesting and innovative. I explored the travel, craft, and tax guides for this assignment. I liked how they provide links to their online catalog and local stores. And I found a book I wanted to check out from their list, so their guides must serve their local customers well too. The tax guide had some useful info; even more helpful would have been lists of places where people can get (free) tax help, if they offer such services in their area. (Now of course I realize that it's not tax season now, so perhaps that's why there aren't any of these listings.)

I also looked at the ALA annual meeting wiki and read some of the entries listed there. The ground rules for the ALA wiki seem reasonable: No content unrelated to Annual Conference and Washington DC, no defamatory remarks, no ads or spam, no politics, etc. Some kind of moderator must be necessary to enforce these rules, and it makes sense to establish some similar rules, especially for a wiki with a large membership such as ALA.

I could see using wikis to create subject guides, or for book discussion groups. It might also be useful to try the next time I'm a participant in a meeting with more than two or three people. This was a good learning opportunity, and I hope to apply it soon.

Streaming Video

What a lot of cool stuff to explore! I was of course already familiar with YouTube, but I had not used hulu or fancast before. On YouTube, I looked at some of the ways libraries are promoting themselves, and there's a lot of innovation there. I'm sure that some of these videos will help libraries reach a wider audience than they might otherwise have been able to reach. I looked briefly at a couple of videos on sewing from the authors of a website called threadbangers.com. It was certainly not your mother's sewing lesson. They might entice some young people to try sewing for the first time. And, because I had a customer request on the topic this week, I looked for videos on parallel parking and found many relevant clips.

I looked at some brief clips on hulu and later watched an episode of "Monk" on Fancast. I was very impressed with the video quality. Everything seemed to go smoothly, with very few interruptions or glitches. And with the episode of Monk that I watched, there were a few brief commercials, but nothing terribly intrusive. I notice that at the time of this posting, we have 72 people waiting for Monk Season Six. I could see recommending to customers that they try using fancast if they need a fix of Monk (or other available programs) before they can get the DVDs from the library.

I plan to use all three of these sites at home--there's a lot that interests me. And I can recommend the sites to library customers, especially those who have home computers. For long movies, it wouldn't work well to watch them at the library because of our time limits, but for material that's less than an hour in length, it should still work OK. And now we have headphones to lend to customers. So I think these are really useful sites to know about. This was my favorite assignment yet!

Friend Networks

For this assignment, I explored Facebook and LinkedIn. Following Jim's suggestions, I decided to see if a classmate of mine was on Facebook, and he was! We went to school together for grades 1-8. He later went on to earn a Ph.D. at Harvard and is teaching at the University of Chicago. I decided not to request to be his friend. We haven't been in touch since 8th grade. But I did show his profile to another classmate of mine with whom I've stayed in touch. Her college-age daughter was also there, and of course the daughter has a profile on Facebook. She looked at our classmate's picture and said, "He only has five friends! I have more than 130!" Of course, he probably doesn't devote as much time and effort into developing his Facebook profile as she does--he may have more professorial things to do. But it gave me an interesting insight. Facebook and other similar sites provide quantifiable measures of popularity and fame. When I checked this afternoon on Facebook, Barack Obama had more than 1, 314,000 supporters, and John McCain had more than 199,250. It reminded me of "Extras" by Scott Westerfeld. By the way, I sent my friend's daughter a message asking to be her Facebook friend. That may be all the Facebook friends I have.

One of the Facebook features I like is that when I put in the names of schools I attended, it gave me a list of other people on Facebook who attended those schools and offered me the chance to be their friends. I tried it for UNC Chapel Hill, where I went to library school. If I have some extra time, I'll try it for the college I attended too.

I also looked at LinkedIn and initially planned to complete a profile there for this project. I had heard good things about it from people at the Special Libraries Association conference here in Seattle in June. But I decided that doing their profile requires more time and effort than I should spend here at work, so I'll save that for later. I looked at Library Thing and told some of my favorite bibliophiles about it. And soon after all my 20 for 2.0 assignments are done, I'll remove my profile from Facebook. But I'm glad to have had this chance to explore this very popular part of the Internet.

Pandora and streaming music

This was an interesting assignment. I set up several stations for myself, including Norah Jones, Eagles, classic pop, and "The Long and Winding Road." One part that I find especially useful is the "Why is this song playing?" feature, which gives detailed descriptions of aspects/features of the songs played. I wish, though, that there was a way to tell the length of the song as it's being played (well, perhaps there is, but I didn't find it easily). If I'm already familiar with the song, I don't need to listen to it in its entirety, but pandora has limits on the number of songs you can skip per hour. I also wish there was a rating scale rather than simply a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down."

I hope to explore more streaming music sites on my own time. I really didn't explore the social aspects of music sites for this assignment, and that would be interesting too. I'm glad I had the chance to do this, and I think some of our patrons would enjoy it too.

Photos! Photos! Photos!

I explored flickr by searching for "Catch the Reading Bug," the 2008 nationwide cooperative summer reading program for kids. I found many photos of children's activities at libraries, and I was inspired that the library staff had time for the activities and also to promote them on flickr. The photo on the right shows children at the Glenwood Branch of the Greensboro Public Library in Greensboro, North Carolina. I went to library school in North Carolina, and so I feel a special kinship with these people on the opposite end of the continent. They made sparkly cockroaches after listening to the story "Martina, the Beautiful Cockroach."

I had some trouble adding the photos to this post, though. I finally figured out that I was trying to copy the url from the site instead of saving the photo on my hard drive and browsing from there. I tried creating several drafts over the last week, but this is the first time I've been able to get it to work.

I also found an interesting set of photos posted about a puppet show called "Swazzle's Space Bugs Alpha." They are posted by Steve of Barstow, CA. The red puppet shown on the left above is called "Starfly." Of course adding this photo didn't work the way I intended either. I thought it would show up in another paragraph below the first photo. No time to mess with it now though.

Exploring flickr was fun. I can see uses for this in library work and in my personal life. It was frustrating to try to figure out what I did wrong in uploading the photos when it should probably have been so easy. But there's a learning curve, and I'm on my way now to figuring it out.

Online applications & tools

To complete this assignment, I've tried using Google docs in both my business and my personal life. It seems to have applications in both. I created a draft of storytime descriptions for the fall calendar and sent copies to two of my co-workers. For some reason, my document was labeled in a spam blacklist, but they were able to read it anyway. I think that using Google docs is especially useful for those times (hopefully few and far between) that I'm working on a work document from home. I could add new thoughts and also be assured that others would be able to read it even if I have a different software version than they do. It was fascinating to read about the ways that people use Google docs in their online tutorial.

I also tried creating an abbreviated spreadsheet using Google docs. I had some of my usual troubles with creating spreadsheets, which are probably related more to my skill level than to the application. For example, once I clicked out of a cell, I couldn't find a way to get the cursor back to add more text; I had to take everything out and rewrite it. But I think this would be a great way to try out creating a catalog for our church library, so of course that's something I'll work on at home.

I went to zoho.com and was very interested to see the array of applications they offered. I looked at a few of them briefly but found it difficult to navigate around in the files. I will spend more time looking at the options of my own time, because it looked very useful and cool. All in all, I enjoyed working on this lesson, and I think there are some ways to apply what I've learned to my work life and also to my personal life.

Fun and games

For this assignment, I started out playing daily jigsaw because the daily crosswords and sudoku wouldn't load after several tries. I'm not fond of jigsaw puzzles, but I did a couple and found that they make a satisfying sound when the pieces fit correctly. If only RL could offer the same! When a puzzle is complete, the game makes more triumphant sounds, and there are stars, flashing lights, etc.

I also played Wordsense with some success but was terribly slow at Word Roundup--slower than usual when I'm looking for scrambled words on paper. I completed the Hollywood Jumble on George Clooney, with quite a bit of help from imdb.com. I can see why some people enjoy games. It's nice to have the tools needed to meet challenges and to get rewards fairly quickly after meeting your goals. It would be nice if we could have something similar in the workplace--like the triumphants sounds of the daily jigsaw or virtual (or actual) doughnuts or stickers or other small prizes. In addition, I've heard that many people who are regular gamers aren't as afraid of failure as some others because there's usually an option to try again.

It was good to have a chance to explore some of these simple games. I'm better prepared to make suggestions to customers who are looking for games, especially parents who are looking for games for their children to play. I noticed that on funbrain.com there's an online version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which some kids might enjoy looking at while they wait for the book (about 100+ holds as of 5 pm today). So I'll suggest it the next time I get a request.

Google maps

This assignment was a lot of fun for me--I've always loved maps, perhaps because I'm directionally challenged. Up until now, I haven't worked a lot with the navigation features on electronic maps, but I have to say that I think Google Earth is very cool! It took me a while to figure it out, so I did some of the tutorials. I zoomed in on my house (yes, I had some privacy concerns, but at least the features are somewhat flattened and not too distinct). It was really interesting to look at my neighborhood too, and to note how much it's already changed since December 31, 2006, when the satellite pictures were taken. I also looked at the inn in Cannon Beach, Oregon, where my husband and I went for our honeymoon. It was a bit harder to recognize some of the places there than it was in my own neighborhood, but it too was helpful. I can see myself living vicariously at the Grand Canyon and lots of other spots until I can save up for an actual trip.

I think this will have applications for my work at the reference desk, and I'll be sure to recommend it to some of our patrons, especially those who would be able to download the program at home. And even though I expected it to be cool, I was surprised by the way it works and the things you can do. I'm very glad to have had the opportunity to explore this program in an in-depth and uninterrupted way!

Avatars and blue hair

So, here's my avatar. I finally have a chance to have blue hair without all those expensive salon treatments! It was fun to create--sort of like an electronic paper doll. I was a bit disappointed that, as far as I could tell, the footwear choices didn't include Manolos (the only way I can afford them), but I'll get over it. I'm not all that keen on second life. I began it only for this assignment. I guess it's a nice chance to escape the humdrum of everyday RL, but as for me, I have enough trouble just keeping up with my personal email. So no, I'll not continue this. But it will be fun to show my family and friends an alternate view... And it's an interesting way to identify with our customers who enjoy it.

Search engines

Our task was to perform a similar search in rollyo, mamma.com, and dogpile.com. I tried looking for audience participation stories for children, since Sarah and I recently finished our school visits. For my search, I found the results from mamma.com the most useful. It produced a very focused set of about 45 results, and I found several items that weren't included in other searches. One was an interview with Hap Palmer, a popular children's performer.

Doing this assignment will improve the way I search in the future, both for work and in my personal life. It makes sense to me to use some of the other search engines discussed to broaden (or perhaps I should say enrich) my searches. Yes, I have used google.com too much. At least I'm not the only one...I was surprised by the richness of the results for my topic in other search engines.

Since my last blog post I have found some interesting blogs on sewing, which is one of my hobbies. I found pattern reviews, stories about people who bargained for fabric on business trips to Asia, and much more. One blog that I enjoyed reading is missceliespants.blogspot.com. I think it's great to find out more about this community of people who like to sew, and I wish my mom could have been involved too--I think it's something she would have enjoyed.

RSS

This was my first experience with RSS, and I find it useful. I thought I might be overwhelmed with info, but it's nice to go out to Bloglines.com when I have a few extra minutes. It's not another email that I need to read. I signed up for slate.com, salon.com, and some book-related sites that I haven't taken the time before this assignment to explore. I can see using this technology in my personal life and also recommending it to some of our library customers to keep updated on topics that they're interested in. It's nice to get posts right when they're published, but for me, going out to a lot of different sites every day wasn't an issue. Still, this is a way to keep things more manageable, and I'm glad I got a chance to try it.

Today I also learned about saving drafts of my blog posts. I was just going to change a word or two and post, but then I thought I lost everything. I started to re-write and then found my original post. So, some good news on that front. And now, on to the next assignment. . .

Instant messaging

This lesson was interesting since I'm an IM noob. Yes, that's right! Until this assignment I had managed to avoid IM in both my personal and professional lives. I was nervous to try it, because even though I can usually type pretty fast, I like to think about what I write and, as a former copy editor, I'm embarrassed if I make typos. Fortunately, though, my IM partner was patient. We exchanged pleasantries about previous IM use for reference work, and he has also used it when he's on vacation in exotic places. We tried adding another person to our IM session for a group chat but found that we had to log in again after the invitation so that we were all included. I was pleasantly surprised that at least this IM experience wasn't so bad. I appreciate the way the Google program explains that a person is typing so you can see evidence of an attempted quick reply. I signed up for Meebo too, but I haven't used it yet. I think it would be challenging to do IM with teens who use it all the time, but it's great that we have another way to offer service to our customers. I don't think I'll use IM much IRL, but it's nice to know that I've had a chance to work with an interesting tool. TTFN.

Beginning at last!

For a few days I was unable to post to my blog. I read about the trials and travails of other Sno-Isle staff in completing their assignment, but none of the fixes worked for me. Finally I asked for help from our cool teen librarian and blog queen Jackie. She helped me figure out how to appeal to get my blog reinstated, so now I'm on my way. At least I had no problems setting up a gmail account...

It's fascinating to see the blogs of other staffers; there's so much knowledge and creativity in the Sno-Isle staff. Also, there's an air of mystery and anonymity involved in figuring out who's who. I am looking forward to learning new things and to getting caught up with these assignments.

I am belatedly starting this project. I hope to learn more about technology and how to use it. Maybe I'll even be able to understand what some of our teen patrons are talking about! I will also occasionally discuss, in case anyone is interested, fashions worn by Jacqueline Kennedy and vintage Vogue patterns.