23 Things

I'm Finished! I learned a lot with this program and also had some fun. I really liked all the tutorials and helpful websites that were provided. Learning something new is a lot less stressful when detailed structions and assistance are provided. I would certainly do something like this again.

Audio Books

I've had a netlibrary account for awhile and have browsed the catalog but never downloaded anything because I don't own an MP3 player compatible with it. Project Gutenberg is a great service, particularly because it's free.

Podcasts

I personally don't find podcasts that interesting although I do think they would be a great library tool. Imagine having storytimes and booktalks available to patrons 24/7. We could also podcast seaching instructions and "commercials" for programs and services. I added the Dog Whisperer podcast to my bloglines account.

Puppy vs. Cat

This is one of my favorite videos on youtube. I'm a big sucker for cute animal videos.

Upcoming

This exercise was a lot of fun and I found a lot of great new sites. I was really impressed with the event site, Upcoming. One can search any kind of event in one's city by date or type. People can also submit new events. Libraries can advertise programs on this site and reach people who might never visit the library site or building. Library's can also feature this site on the library website to altert patrons to fun events in the area.

Google Docs

This was my very first experience with online productivity applications and so was entirely new to me. I think that this will completely alter the way people view and use software productivity applications. For one thing, people wouldn't have to worry about saving to a CD or flash drive when using different computers to work on a document.

Hello! This is my trial on googledocs.

Wiki Sandbox

I added my blog to the favorite blogs section of the wiki sandbox and I also added some of my favorite books to the favorite books section. This exercise was very easy to do after already doing exercise 16.

Wikis

I've worked with wikis before for classes and projects and they were certainly very useful. I learned very early that while wikis are great for posting documents, they don't work very well for communication. My groups always fell back to email for communication purposes. I loved the book lovers wiki and I added it to my del.icio.us account. I can really see how such a tool would be popular with library patrons and attract those who don't usually visit the physical library or even the website. I was fascinated by the fact that the Bull Run Library wiki is maintained by a library patron! I guess that's the true spirit of wikis. I'm curious about any official library involvement.

web 2.0

The articles were interesting and some good points were made. I thought Rick Anderson's comments about getting rid of the "in case collection" in favor of providing patrons with "everything" does touch upon patron expectations. People do expect access to everything and they expect it to be quick and easy. It certainly makes financial sense to offer patrons what they need and expect and not stock a library with materials that might not be used, however this will greatly depend on the type of library in question. This makes more sense for an academic library.
I also liked the discussion of the library being a place vs. information. It appears that most librarians are in favor of the library being more than just a building filled with books, but there are many people who view the library this way and many patrons who use it just as a building. I think no matter how much we offer the public we'll need a strong marketing campaign to bring it to their attention.

Technorati

This was an interesting exercise and I found a lot of fun blogs. I liked the popular features because it was interesting to see the blogs that other people consider their favorites. Technorati is definitely a good tool for finding blogs on various subjects. I've always been surprised by the personal information people have been willing to post on blogs about themselves. Maybe they think that most people won't find or bother to read their blogs? I'm not talking about age, gender etc. but about deep secrets and personal feelings. I think some people use social networking sites and blogging as therapy.

Del.icio.us is Awesome

I never really played around with del.icio.us until this exercise and now I love it! I created my own account and I'm so excited that I don't have to lose interesting articles that I find. I would usually just store them in my email and lose track of them. I also like the fact that the site is so user friendly and that there are so many tutorials on it available.

Rollyo

Rollyo was interesting and I can see how it would be very useful to some people. I'm still not sure how I feel about it because we often enjoy going to our favorite websites and I don't really see a need to avoid them. Here is my booklists rollyo: http://rollyo.com/sadielady/booklists/.

Library Thing

I heard about Library Thing awhile ago but I never created an account or bothered to explore it for more than a minute. I've added 6 books to my catalog which is, http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Sadielady and I added my avatar to my profile, http://www.librarything.com/profile/Sadielady . After playing around with this I think I'll add more books and I may even join a group or two. I keep a journal of all the books I read and I thought this would be a good replacement but then I was disappointed to see that the site costs money if one wants to add more than 200 titles. I've read a lot more than 200 books!

Avatar

I had a yahoo avatar before learning 2.0 but I never did much with it. For this assignment I played around with my avatar and made a few changes. Here it is.

I also looked at the other avatars but I still like yahoo the best so I stayed with that one.

MERLIN

The merlin site was interesting and I did subscribe to it on my bloglines account. Of the four feed search tools that were recommended to us, I liked technorati the best because I liked the idea of searching blogs. I also liked that technorati offered a tutorial. I think that subscribing to too many feeds or blogs could cause a person to become overwhelmed with information. I only plan to subscribe to those blogs and feeds that I want to read often and I think I might even delete some subscriptions I already have.

RSS Feeds

I've had a bloglines account for some time now but I added a few subscriptions for the sake of the assignment. I added unselved, library journal news and PLA blog and now have 23 subscriptions. I've been enjoying bloglines and "Quotes of the Day" is my favorite but I have others that aren't as interesting as I originally thought they would be, like "National Geographic News: Animals & Nature." I don't check my bloglines account as nearly as much as my email but it is still very convenient.