23rd Thing!

Yay! I've reached my 23rd Thing!

All in all, this has been a fun project. Even though I knew about most of the things on the list, I had never really gotten much of a chance to go in and explore them.

I think my favorite thing that I've learned about is the Zoho Writer. This was something completely new to me and I think it will be very useful in the future. No more worrying about whether or not something has attached in an email because it's too big or something was corrupted, or worrying that my disk or flashdrive is scratched or broken. Using this website, all of my documents will be saved online and easily accessible.

I think that this program has further reinforced how important it is to keep on learning. That there's always something new out there and if you're not careful, you will learn about it.

I guess one unexpected outcome from the 23 Things is that there is always something new and useful out there you have to keep an eye out for them. They are not all necessary in my everyday life, but it is good to know about them.

I don't really know what I would do to improve on the program's format or concept. I enjoyed doing the 23 Things.

In the future, I would definetly participate in another program like 23 Things. It was fun to get paid to learn about new things.

Overdrive

The last assignment was to go into Overdrive and look around and listen to an excerpt from one of the books. I hunted through the fiction titles and listened to an excerpt from Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. That was pretty easy but when I tried to download the whole book, my computer said that I didn't have enough authority. Oh well, maybe I'll try it from home sometime.

When the library first got Overdrive, I had gone in and downloaded some books and thought that the program was a pretty neat concept. It's so convenient to be able to go online and download books from home. It was kind of frustrating trying to find something that I wanted though. The way that the program works, is only one person is allowed to check out a title at a time. It seemed like every title that I tried to check out was already taken and I would have to wait. On top of that, there were only 352 titles in the fiction collection, a pretty small selection.

I do like how easy Overdrive is to use though (when your computer lets you download the software). I am sure I will be using this in the future at my home.

Podcast

I went through the list of podcasts on Podcast Alley. There were tons of library related podcasts there. The one that I found to be of interest was one called LibVib. It is a podcast about current library news. It reminded me a lot of the publication Hotline.

The Amazing Stop Motion Bookshelf

For my YouTube post this week, I decided to limit the videos I searched to just library videos. Otherwise, I think I would still be on the computer looking through everything available. As it was, there were tons of library videos. I saw a library workout tape, a library rap, library dominoes, even Mr. Bean at the library (hilarious here is the link if you want to watch it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyDY0hiMZy8)

The following video was my favorite. I'm pretty sure that this is what the books do at night. It explains why nothing ever seems to be where it should be!


I think that YouTube is a great tool for the library. I've already seen the YouTube video on the PBCLS website showing the Tequesta Branch opening. I think that this tool could be used to show other library openings and other library events. YouTube would also be useful to promote features on our website. Wouldn't it be great to have a YouTube video showing patrons how to properly search our catalog? Or library databases?

Cool Website

For this thing I decided to explore the website: www.hotpads.com. This is a real estate tool that allows you to find homes for sale or rent. All you have to do is put in some basic search terms such as location, price, #bedrooms, #bathrooms, etc. and it will generate either a list or a map of all of the homes that match that criteria. I liked this tool because of the draggable map feature it had. You can get an idea of where the properties are located so you can just look at the ones you're interested in. There is also a combination search where you can search for the homes for sale and rent. It's an easy way to compare pricing if you don't know what you want to do.

One thing I didn't like about this site was it took me a little while to figure out how to change the search terms on the website. It also took a lot of clicking to get it to do what I wanted.

Overall, I think this could be a useful and easy-to-use tool for library patrons who want to find out what's available to buy or rent.

Zoho Writer

I think Zoho Writer is a really neat sharing tool. It makes it easier to share documents with people because you don't have to worry about everyone's software being compatible. As long as there is an internet connection, the recipient can open the document and then do what they want with it. If someone really wanted to, they could even copy and paste into a word document. I think the simplest way to keep the document, however, is to save it online. Zoho Writer is also great if you don't want to have to keep emailing changes around if you don't have a home computer or you are traveling quite a bit. I also like that you can easily upload what you type in here into a blog. It just saves time when it's all connected.

I guess that the features of Zoho Writer aren't as fancy as the latest edition of Word (for example, there is no automatic correction of typing or spelling errors) but for the most part, it has everything the average person would need to produce a useful document.

These are just a couple of the benefits that I have found. I'm sure that there are many more.

PBCLS Wiki

I added my blog to the PBCLS wiki today. I found it to be pretty easy if you just follow the directions on the 23things page. It's fun to go through and see everyone's favorites. This site would be a great way to collaborate with others.