Thing 23-Done!

I never thought I would actually finish Learn and Play, especially during those weeks I was 9-10 things behind. Amazingly, I am finishing early! I enjoyed some of the exercises very much and some not so much. The exercise with Flickr was easy and convinced me to use another service Snapfish to create calendars for my parents and in-laws for Christmas. I probably wouldn't have tried before I learned it was painless and easy. I also had fun making the images with the Read posters. The exercise in general was informative in learning more about what Library 2.0/Web 2.0 means. Before, these terms were basically jargon that had no meaning to me. I will be able to understand a little more when a customer talks about these items, however without consistent practice, I wonder how much of this will stick with me. I will keep up with librarything as a journal of teen literature that I have read, so I will have a RA tool at my fingertips. I'm not so sure that I will keep up with Bloglines; as I have mentioned I'm not big on getting all my info from a screen, although it does help to keep up with the news. Sharing information and making it available and accesssible to all is a great thing, but I will always be concerned about content--thank goodness for library workers and people with common sense who can filter things and take/find the good stuff out there.

MOLDI

MOLDI provides a terrific service for customers wanting to download audio books, ebooks, etc. from the comforts of their own PC. Allowing customers to download software they need increases the convenience of this service. I enjoyed browsing the fiction areas and reading the blurbs. You can even get a recipe or two from the cookbooks without even downloading the book! I do enjoy audio books, but I use them in the car and I don't have any portable devices--I know this is probably unheard of--so I still need/use CD's. I also am some one who prefers to read the paper book and not a screen, so the ebooks are not something I'm terribly interested in, although I understand why people like them.

Podcasts

Podcasts are an interesting way to share information. I talked with a couple of people at the branch while doing this exercise and they shared their opinion that podcasts were outdated; there are better ways to do this. Not being technically savy, I'll take their word for it. I found the directories a bit clunky, because they never quite took me in the direction I wanted to go to find things. It could be I expect too much. While looking for library related items, I came up with zero several times. I finally found something worth adding to bloglines through Amazon, which is a weekly 7 minute presentation of new audio books. This is probably a good way for libraries to use podcasts on their own website--sharing titles to interest customers or maybe using it to share information about Ready to Read skills--demonstrating those skills and sharing title; booktalks for teens could be another way to use podcasting on the website.

YouTube

I played around a little with YouTube. It is a very interesting concept to be able to upload videos. The best use in terms of library and information are the videos that show D-I-Y items, such as tiling floors or the ones describing how the electoral college works. Adding a search function to library websites for customers looking for these type of videos is a good idea-sort of a one stop shopping idea when looking for resources. I do wish YouTube was more concerned with the content it receives; I think that the usefulness, even for recreational purposes (checking out those music videos), is reduced because of the other "stuff" that can be uploaded. As part of initiation, gangs will upload their violent acts and recently an organization has been going to doors with McCain signs, knocking on the doors and then video taping the person and telling people to remember this face.... I don't believe our society's freedoms would be hurt if we monitored content a little better than this; I actually believe we might be better off.

I am trying to attach a video explaining how voting works because of the timeliness and it is also very well done.

Power Tools Page

I went into several of these "tools" and found them to be pretty random. The ones we have looked at through Learn and Play are way more useful. I did find Stumbleupon interesting. I found myself drawn to the things about food--could it be almost dinner time?

Web 2.0 tools

I looked at the ifoods site and enjoyed it. I love reading recipes and watching cooking shows. This is one site I could probably loose myself in for a few hours. The recipes I looked at were ones that I would truly try and not need to look for exotic ingredients like some cooking shows/recipes require. As for use at the library, it could be recommended to a customer you know enjoys browsing cookbooks and watching these types of shows. I don't believe I would access it if a customer asked for a certain recipe.

Google Doc's

I created a presentation, which I had never done before with power point, so I learned how to do 2 things in 1. I also uploaded a file from my "u" drive, which was very easy. A co-worker suggested we show customers google docs when they need to save items and don't have a disc or jump drive, especially since our disc drives are not so reliable any more. I think this is a great idea. It's a free service and puts the doc right in the customer's hands without a ton of explanation. With the easy email function, customers can email docs/resumes very easily. If I am working on a committee that needs to update newsletters or presentations, this would give us an easy way to work on the documents without shuffling them around and perhaps loosing the printed pages we wanted to share. Also I can access this from any computer; I don't have to worry about my "u" drive, so I can work on things away from the branch or pull up something quickly to show someone in a meeting or even at the info desk. Hands on and pretty easy...