week 9, thing 23 ~ summary!

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
My absolute favorite discovery was the animated poetry by Billy Collins on YouTube. So amazing. In general I just enjoyed learning about new programs and services that I was not previously aware of.

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
I want to continue to remain as savvy as possible in terms of my awareness and familiarity with the Internet and Web 2.0. This program definitely helped me out with that goal. It would be nice to do this sort of thing perhaps as often as once a year in order to keep up with that ever-changing world.

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
When I first heard that we would be participating in this program, I thought that it would be really easy. However, several of the 23 Things were totally unfamiliar to me and I ended up having difficulties with several of them. I quickly realized that it really takes effort to stay informed about new programs and services on the Internet.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
The only thing I would suggest is to consolidate the instructions so that there aren't so many links and places to look for information. When I began the program I was a bit disoriented because it seemed like the instructions were very spread out.

And last but not least… If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?
yes!

week 9, thing 22 ~ Overdrive, Project Gutenburg, and downloadable audiobooks

I've explained how to download audio books to customers but I had never downloaded one on my own. I went into Overdrive and found it easy to navigate and understand. You can search for a specific title or browse fiction or nonfiction by subject. I downloaded an ebook but I'm going to return it because I don't actually like reading ebooks, I just wanted to go the whole way through the process. I was surprised to note OverDrive will allow you to burn most of its audio books to to CDs. The ability to listen to an excerpt is also a nice feature.

One thing I've always wondered about these audio books though is why there aren't unlimited virtual copies of them. In other words, why is it necessary to place holds on some titles? Since they're not physical copies, shouldn't there be an unlimited supply?

week 9, thing 21 ~ podcasts

I wanted to explore the "podcast services" winners of the Web 2.0 Awards. Odeo was the 1st place winner but I just didn't enjoy the site. I just couldn't navigate it easily and didn't quite get it to be quite honest. I must be missing something because it did win the award and all, but I want to finish my blog before the 30th so I decided to move on to another podcasting service.

Unfortunately, the 2nd place winner PodShow requires a Quicktime download so I couldn't access anything on that site.

podOmatic was easy to navigate and use and didn't require a download as far as I could tell - I think it uses RealPlayer. One thing I didn't like was that you couldn't narrow down the subject categories very much. For example, after clicking on "Games and Hobbies" the only narrower options were "Automotive", "Aviation", "Hobbies", "Other Games", and "Video Games". Also, it would be nice be able to see links to podcasts similar to the one you are listening to.

Since that was completely unproductive, I moved on to the three services listed in the 23 Things website.

Unfortunately, Yahoo! Podcasts is closing their site on September 30 so I didn't bother exploring there.

I liked Podcast Alley because it seemed easy enough to navigate, and if you click on the title of a podcast it gives you a brief description to help you decide if you want to listen to it. I picked the Childrensbookradio podcast at random and added it to my Bloglines feeds. Unfortunately, it's still buffering after about 5 minutes so I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet...

Out of all of the podcast directories I looked at I thought that Podcast.net was the easiest to navigate. It was easy to use and gave very useful breakdowns of its subject categories (i.e. Home > Arts > Books & Poetry). However, I may be wrong, but it appears that the podcasts are really old, with the newest in the Books & Poetry section being from December 2006. Also, I attempted to listen to a podcast from the Charlotte, NC library system but the whole thing crashed and Internet Explorer shut down.

All in all, I didn't have the greatest podcast experience. I think Thing #21 would have gone more smoothly on a faster computer with iTunes or at least the latest version of QuickTime. No offense to our good old library computers, of course.

week 9, thing 20 ~ YouTube

...beautifully animated poetry by Billy Collins. I thought the one above especially appropriate since it begins:

"The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones."

Something like this might be a neat feature on a library website during National Poetry Month.

I've visited YouTube in the past, usually just to view an amusing video that a friend told me about. I always get distracted by the junk that is one the first page and forget that there are actually worthwhile videos hiding in the site. I loved the animated Billy Collins poetry, to the point where I signed up for a free YouTube account and added it to my favorites so I wouldn't lose it. I explored the poetry offerings a little bit more and linked to this and that before I realized that I was getting COMPLETELY sucked into the black hole of time that is YouTube. I finally had to tear myself away from someone's compilation of their favorite "Scrubs" moments.

The YouTube negatives are all of the self-involved, terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad videos. And the comments. I never read them because 9 times out of 10 they are completely ridiculous and/or offensive.

week 8, thing 19 ~ Web 2.0 Awards

I could spend hours exploring all of the winners of the Web 2.0 Awards.

I first clicked on Lulu, which I had never heard of before. It seems like a fantastic site where you can self-publish your work and put it up for sale. There is a lot more to the service than that, like a whole Lulu community who keep in touch via Lulu's blog, newsletter and through various Lulu groups. The site helps self-publishers acquire an ISBN for their work "so you can make your masterpiece available in retail stores, libraries and schools around the world - online and off." In addition, Lulu offers "live help" that includes assistance with press release writing, creating web banners, self-promo kits and optimization services. There is also an entire section dedicated to helping users "Catch the eye of librarians all over the U.S." (i.e. a how-to on acquiring a Pre-Assigned Control number). I wonder if BCPL has any self-published masterpieces made possible by this service?

Lulu is definitely a website I will revisit, and I might even take advantage of their wedding photo books. (My first anniversary is almost here and I haven't done anything with my wedding pictures yet.)

I explored a few other sites but there weren't any that I was interested in as much as Lulu....except in the retail category where I found that my favorite t-shirt website, Threadless, won 1st place and another website I love, Etsy, won 2nd place. Yay!

week 8, thing 18 ~ online productivity tools

The following was posted directly from Zoho Writer: 

These web-based productivity applications are great to know about, not only so I can use them myself, but so I can recommend them to customers who may not have MS Office or other pay-for programs.

 

I love Google but I am becoming a little wary of it as I believe it is becoming the Starbucks of the Internet. But I keep falling in deep like with every product Google puts out, much like I used to fall in love with new Starbucks drinks. So I'm very happy to report that I enjoyed Zoho Writer more than Google Docs! I felt like Zoho Writer was even more fun to use than Microsoft Word with lots of nifty word processing features.

week 7, thing 17 ~ sandbox wiki

I found the MD Libraries Sandbox to be a bit unwieldy. Like many of the other wikis I've visited I was immediately thrown by the amount of information that seems to be a bit haphazardly placed on the pages. Once I looked around a bit I felt more at ease and I managed to add my blog (although it appeared all by its lonesome at the very end of the blog list with a space between it and the other blogs). I also posted a list of some of my favorite novels.

As I wrote in my earlier post about wikis, since they are so accessible to anyone and everyone (and I realize that's the whole point of them), they really need to be kept as neat and organized as possible so that they don't scare users away.

week 7, thing 16 ~ wikis

I am thoroughly enjoying the SJCPL Subject Guides . This is a fantastic way for a library to reach out to its community using a current, popular technology. So many of our users come in for reader's advisory and it would be wonderful to be able to give them a link to the library wiki that includes staff recommendations, items on the new shelf, best sellers, award winners, and classics organized by subject. The SJCPL wiki also includes lots of additional goodies like library events, tips on locating and using library resources, and tons of links to relevant online information. Of course, some users wouldn't like receiving information in this sort of format, but I think there is a growing user base that would enjoy it.

On the down side, I think that wikis can be overwhelming, the awesome St. Joseph County wiki included, simply because of the enormous amount of information that they can contain. It is important to keep library wikis organized so that they can be easily navigated by the public who may not be familiar with this type of technology.

The Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki is a great resource for librarians. It contains information, thoughts and ideas on just about every aspect of the profession and I would imagine it is a very useful tool - an online library community even.

Princeton Public Library's Book Lovers Wiki was also a fun wiki to explore.

I'd like to spend more time looking around these library wikis...

week 6, thing 15 ~ Web 2.0, Library 2.0

In nearly every class in library school the professor would want to discuss the future of libraries. Many of the accounts we studied were very grim, and I admit that its possible I stayed away from employment in a public library for years partly because I began to believe some of the doomsday accounts of physical library spaces becoming things of the past as users increasingly turn to sources of virtual information. Now that I am happily employed in a thriving public library I feel much more hopeful that libraries will continue to have a strong presence in the future. We do need to progress, using technological advances to our benefit and adapting our services to fit the new generations of tech savvy users. This MD 23 Things project is a perfect example of how librarians are familiarizing ourselves with popular technologies and considering ways that libraries can use them to make things more accessible for our users.

In reading some of the perspectives on Library 2.0, I copied the ideas that really stood out to me:

"The active and empowered library user is a significant component of Library 2.0." ~Wikipedia

"The key principles of Library 2.0 are not just about access to books and information. It is about innovation, about people, and about community building, enabled through the participation that social computing brings. It achieves this through trust and encouraging users to share ideas through writing, rating, and commenting against everything in the library's collection. It even makes the collection open to developers to use, re-use and improve!" ~Wikipedia

"As a Web 2.0 reality continues to emerge and develop, our patrons will expect access to everything – digital collections of journals, books, blogs, podcasts, etc. You think they can’t have everything? Think again. This may be our great opportunity." ~Rick Anderson, "Away from the "'icebergs'"

"Adopt Web features The features of Amazon and Google of interest to students and scholars ought to be incorporated into the services libraries make available. Libraries should welcome the submission of reviews, assignment of keywords (“tagging”), addition of scholarly commentary, and other forms of user participation." ~John Reimer, "To better bibliographic services"