Th-th-that's all for now...

Hard to believe we have reached the end of Library 2.0...at least this part of the challenge. I wasn't exactly a "shrinking violet" with technology, but this program gave me lots of confidence to investigate some new tech "stuff." I hope to maintain this momentum. I love the fact that my family thinks I am a "tech goddess", too.

While some of the topics and lessons were more interesting to me than others, there were several lessons that I really enjoyed. I enjoy the blogging and reading the blogs of my colleagues in this course. The RSS feeds have made it much easier to keep track of those blogs, too. There are some very creative and innovative folks out there in Blogland. Flickr has been particularly useful to me in both my personal and professional life. Most recently I was able to share pictures from our Dr. Seuss Birthday Party with all 130 of the guests. Can you imagine sending all those photos out to everyone? One of my favorite tools is Library Thing...I have already compiled quite a few books on my shelf. For now I am just using it for personal reading but am still trying to figure out a way to use it for reader's advisory.

One of the best parts of this experience was to see how everyone was so willing to try new things and share their results. We definitely had some fun! It did take me more time than I thought but I would do this course again. I am planning to revisit some of the lessons and sharpen some of these newly acquired tech skills! Kudos to the instructors for their efforts...thanks to everyone!

Those Darn Cats!

Wikis Here, There, and Everywhere

I have really enjoyed this lesson about wikis and have learned a lot. For one thing I didn't realize that the term, wiki, originated in Hawaii. When I lived overseas, we used to take the wiki bus around the compound where we lived. It went fairly fast and beat walking most of the time. It was kind of interesting to make this small connection...but I digress.

I loved the BookLovers wiki from Princeton. It is a very dynamic way to share what's hot in reading and I got some ideas for my personal reading list. I was wondering what the purpose was for providing raffle prizes to the reviewers. If that was the only way to keep the wiki going and dynamic, maybe it is not such a useful tool. I can see participating in a wiki like BookLovers and encouraging our customers and staff to do so...it would help build a sense of community. I also like the idea that Meredith Farkas was proposing about annotating the catalog using a wiki.

Being part of our Children's Services team, I can get very excited about starting a wiki for the team to share ideas and tips, especially on storytimes! We are spread out and it is difficult to get everyone together as often as we'd like. This could be the answer to that challenge and is definitely worth examining further.

After looking quite a lot of wikis, I can see the free form nature of this tool. As I see some ways to use a wiki, I would be more comfortable with some more structure, i.e. using templates to set up the entries. I think it would be easier to sort through what could become a large amount of information. I did look at the Montana Librarians wiki and noticed that quite few did not have any recent entries or posts. I would be interested in knowing why...

Getting Bookmarks Organized and Tagging

After looking at Del.icio.us and different tags,I see both advantages and challenges in using it. The first tutorial discussed how different these tags are from folders...yes, I agree that there is a sense of randomness to it. I really like the video because everything was explained very clearly. Next I explored the mtlib20 account and found that a bit overwhelming until I dug a little into it. Though I wasn't able to see the comments, I did see all of the tags.

If I were to use this in a library environment, I would want to "personalize" the tags as much as possible to be able to get to the info quickly. I would like to think that the tags I chose would be ones that others would search and then be able to use the sharing aspect. However, as I was looking at the way some of the sites were tagged, I think I would add some that are a little more detailed. I ran into this a little bit with Library Thing. If tags are too broad, they really are not as useful.

I do like the idea of being able to access bookmarks from any computer by using the Del.icio.us site. I see the potential value of using Del.icio.us for research assistance but I have such a variety of questions. I wonder if others would be able to use what I might find...

YouTube and Me

There was so much on YouTube that I could have spent hours looking around. I found one of my favorite commercials there...not too useful for our library but it made me laugh out loud.

Another YouTube video that I enjoyed was one of the most viewed in 2007. It's appropriately called "Otters Holding Hands."

I can see using YouTube in the library to promote programs. Barring time and creativity restraints, we could make our own "commercials" and post them on our homepage. We could make a video "scrapbook" of other programs but would have to be sensitive to privacy issues expressed by both staff and customers alike. As I was looking around, I found some educational videos that teach something, which could be another way our customers could get the content or information they want or need.

Podcasting

This discovery exercise was a bit more challenging than the others to date. There was lots of exploring and I found quite a few podcast sites of interest. The bad news on some of these is that they had not done a podcast in several months. Others seemed very "grass roots," almost like a blog. Podcast Alley was the best directory for me as it had good genre lists and summaries. It was great to be able to go in and see exactly what a podcast was about, including one I found under "Kids and Family" that had an explicit warning (why was it under that genre rather than another?)...hmmm.

I was amazed at all of the language learning podcasts. I think tech savvy, traveling patrons could really find this useful. I also found one that had old time radio broadcasts so I guess a 21st century family could sit around the computer and listen to one of these rather than the radio. More likely this family would download to an MP3 player and listen to it on a car trip...who knows?

I was able to set up the RSS feed to my Bloglines account. For the exercise I chose National Geographic World Talk podcast which was like reading an article in the magazine. Educational as well entertaining...there were a few others that I was interested in and will probably add them later.

There seems to be a podcast out there for everyone and every interest!

"Royalty" Among Us

After reading the blog of my good friend, Lady Jane, I thought I would find my peculiar aristocratic title. Who would have guessed there is more royalty in the house? I will now be known in certain circles as

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Lady Lynn the Wholesome of Herring-le-hole Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

No bows are necessary but money is always welcome!

Lost

Lost, originally uploaded by lmkbigsky.

It was hard to choose a generator but I finally settled on the cartoon caption. If you're interested, check out: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/captioner.php.

This is actually my third try because the original photo was too large. Good news is that I stumbled upon Picnik to crop and center. I did some difficulty getting the photo centered properly; if you click on this photo, you can see the whole thing.

I had a lot of fun with this exercise. I also created my name in Chinese calligraphy...deciding to which one to post was difficult!

Using Library Thing

Library Thing is something that could be useful in both my personal and professional lives. I have been looking for a way to keep track of what I have read personally. I think once you get into it, it probably won't take too much time to update and use for recommendations. Professionally, I am still trying to determine how this could be used for a reader's advisory tool ...here is the link to my catalog: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/lmkbigsky

My Trading Card

My Trading Card, originally uploaded by lmkbigsky.

Not the conventional trading card but a lot of fun to put together!

Mashups on Flickr

So, I've been playing around using Flickr and find it quite fun. There is still a bit of a learning curve for me. I seem to have been all over the place in trying to figure out how things work and do the exercises.Mission accomplished...I was able to load some photos and map where they were taken. It took quite a while but I think that if I keep working at it, it will definitely become easier. I am looking forward to making a trading card when I can get to the photos on my home computer. It should be amusing to see the trading cards of my colleagues, too!

Children's Section Entrance

Children's Section Entrance, originally uploaded by crazyscientist_11.

I had a chance to visit this library in Cerritos, CA about a month ago and it was awesome. Talk about a library of the 21st Century!! The entrance to the Children's Section gives you a clue to the magic that awaits on the inside. It is very interactive with lots of things to see, climb on, and, oh yeah, it has some amazing resources, too.

Building RSS feeds

After a few hiccups getting started, I think I have figured out this RSS stuff. I think it will be a bit of a challenge to keep up with reading everything. I have about 12 feeds and blogs on my list but might narrow it down a bit.

I am really enjoying other people's blogs, especially those of my compadres. I am learning fascinating things about people that I never knew before!

Lifelong Learning

Lifelong learning is a concept that has been around my life for a long time. I was blessed with parents who believed that you take advantage of every opportunity to learn something. so it is second nature to me to accept responsibility for my own learning. I was always taught that that learning can occur in many ways, not always between the covers of a book. Look for these chances and you will be surprised at what you can discover before you realize it!

I have to admit that using technology to my advantage has been the hardest thing these days because there is SO much out there now. It helps to have friends, family, and colleagues who are ready, willing, and able to teach me when I ask for help. Patience helps, too, when I ask the same question for the fifth or the tenth time. There are times when I feel like I have been dragged into this new world, kicking and screaming. However, the more I do, the more I realize the potential. That's a good feeling!