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.

Wikis

I went online and explored some wikis today. Once again, they were something I had heard of, but hadn't really put to any use. I think the best use of these tools are for a small to medium sized group of people who are not located near each other to collaborate on a project. Students working in distance learning programs could easily keep a group project organized by using a wiki. I also thought that using wikis for sharing pathfinders or other types of collaborative information would be helpful. I'm planning on going on a camping trip this fall, I just might use a wiki to get it organized!

Web 2.0

This week, I read several articles about different librarians' perspectives on Web 2.0. In the article "Away from the Iceburgs" by Rick Anderson, he makes several points that I thought were very true and useful to remember in this ever changing library world.

1. The necessity of changing the collection to mostly online resources, 2. changing the way materials are offered and searched to make them easier to find and use, and 3. making it easier to access information from a variety of locations, not just in the brick and mortar buildings that we've all become accustomed to.

I agreed with Anderson about how the library has changed drastically from what it was just 10 years ago. Web 2.0 has made the library evolve into something newer and better and, in most cases, much easier to use without doing away with what we do best - getting information to our patrons.

Technorati

I went and took a look around technorati using the search terms www.pbclibrary.org and web 2.0. I found many many sites that mentioned these search terms in them. Related tags for web 2.0 were things like tech, technology, web, internet, etc. Most of the mentions of www.pbclibrary.org were regarding our mousing tutorial. Apparently, a lot of other libraries think this is a useful tool.

Del.icio.us

I found out about Del.icio.us a while ago and thought it would be a neat tool to use. I had even created a account to use. I think that with any type of new technology, this is a great and useful thing to have but the problem is you have to get yourself in the habit of referring to it. Since I created my account a while back, I have not added anything to it. So, today I went in and started adding links.

I really liked the tagging feature. I had never thought of doing that before. You do have to be careful when tagging. For example, if there are 2 words in the tag, you still want to put them together into one. I added some reader's advisory links to my account. I originally tagged them reader's advisory. When I looked at my list of tags later, I had one for readers and another for advisory. I had to go back and edit the tag so that it was readersadvisory. I also have to be careful that there is uniformity with the tags, otherwise, when I'm searching for something I may never find anything because I haven't tagged similar links with the same tags. If I've tagged one books, I have to tag all similar ones books not book or reading, etc. because when I click on the tag, it will not sort it together.

I do like having a place I can go for all of my favorite links, so I think I'm going to get into the habit of using it more often.

Webfeat

I first heard about Webfeat (when you say it, doesn't it sound like you're saying webbed feet?) a couple of months ago at a Reference meeting. At the time, I thought it was such a cool thing because you could go on there and do a search of all of our databases at the same time. I still think this is a cool tool, but I have to admit that I don't use it very often.

I took the time to do a search in Webfeat for something interesting about my hometown of Jupiter (yup, I'm a Florida native). In a roundabout way, the name Jupiter comes from the Native Americans who lived here. When the Spanish arrived in the 1500's, there was a tribe of Indians called the Hobe, so that is what the Spanish called the settlement. When the British got here in the 1800's, they thought that Hobe was Spanish for Jove, the Greek God Zeus. They preferred the Latin version of the name, and called it Jupiter.

"HISTORY DIDN'T SWAY TEQUESTA DEVELOPER." Palm Beach Post, The (FL) July 26, 2006, FINAL, NEIGHBORHOOD POST: 10. NewsBank Access World News. [Palm Beach County Library System, West Palm Beach, FL]. June 4, 2008. .

Library Thing

So, this is a blog about my experience with Library Thing. I've heard of this website before, but I had never really used it. It does seem like it's pretty useful to have a record of all of my books in one place. I don't like buying books (why buy when I can get them for free at the library?) so I wouldn't get the the paid service. But it's nice to keep track of the books that I do own. Now, if only they would have a service that would automatically email reminders to people I loan my books out to :-)

Here is a link to the books I've added to my online catalog. http://www.librarything.com/catalog/libraryred1

Generators

So this week we're supposed to go online and play with image generators. I had fun playing with all of the suggested generators there are out there.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Jigsaw Puzzle Generator:

http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/jigsaw.php
On this site, you can turn your photos into a jigsaw puzzle. I thought it looked kinda cool. Here is a picture that I transformed:


It's of a waterfall along the Appalachian Trail in VA (one of my favorite places).

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Lost Theory Generator:

http://www.lost-theory-generator.com/

This was also a fun generator. I'm a big fan of Lost so, it was cool to read the different ideas of what is the reason behind the island. One gripe though: the makers of this site need to update the page b/c the theories are based on things that were revealed a couple of years ago.

Amazing Fact Generator:

http://www.mentalfloss.com/amazingfactgenerator/?p=210

Ok, this is by far my favorite generator of all. I could sit here all day and read these little bits of trivia...but unfortunately I have other things I need to do!

RSS

RSS feeds definitely make searching for information you use all the time much easier. It is neat that I can put everything onto one place so that I don't have to go all over the place looking for info.

Already at work, I have a huge list of favorites sites that I use for Reference, so this would be just one step further, showing me new updates on those sites. For example, I could easily look up the NYTimes bestseller list without having to locate it in a drawer. RSS feeds could also be great in my personal life to get the newest news and changes from all of my favorite sites.

Interesting Technology

Once you get the hang of using Flickr, it is really fun and easy to use. I had never used the site before, but I think I will start in the future. It's really simple to upload photos onto a blog too - you don't have to jump back and forth between websites. Once you've set everything up in Flikr, you can just upload the photo, add text and a heading, and you're all set!

Flikr Photo

On May 3rd, we had a Bluegrass Celebration here at JB. We had a bluegrass band, crafts for the kids, food and drinks. It was such a fun day for everyone.

DSCN1319
Originally uploaded by hickmana23things

This is a picture of all of the yummy snacks we had. The popcorn (in the brown bags), took many staff members several hours to pop, trading off every so often. It all turned out well, there was nothing left at the end of the day!

Blogging in Libraries

I think that blogging in libraries can be really useful. It's a really easy and cheap way to get information out to the public about upcoming events, successful events, useful information, reader's advisory book lists, etc. If the link to the blog is prominently displayed on the library homepage, as well as other related pages (programming page, RA page, databases page, etc.) it will be well used.

7 1/2 habits of highly successful lifelong learners

I'm looking forward to using the 7 1/2 habits. I think that the most difficult habit for me to follow is habit 1: begin with the end in mind. I think it might be a little difficult to envision the end product before I've even begun.