Monday, May 28, 2007

YouTube #20

I like the way YouTube is organized in useful categories. I naturaly spent most of my time in the comedy section. The following educational video ties in nicely with everything we've been learning. What is podcasting?
Ask A Ninja

Friday, May 25, 2007

Thing 19

I spent way too much time playing with all the web 2.0 tools. ColorBlender was particularly fun, especially since I've got a room that needs painting.
Check it out: http://colorblender.com/

Thing 17

Played with the PB wiki: so many ideas, so much to do, so much to see!
left my footprint on the favorite blogs page:
http://plcmclearning.pbwiki.com/Favorite%20Blogs

zoho experiment - #18

A Zoho doc experiment.OOOhhh! background color wink and it stops when you ask it to...

Lovely colored letters. Axxx! Exει kaι Eλληνικà!!!

What else? Fonts Bold, italicized and underlined with strike through!

  1. centered with bullets
  2. justify left
  3. justify right
  4. justify full and all this without losing the bullets...yay Zoho tongue_out

This was lovely, and it published to my blog, I'm feeling very competent at the moment, I'll resist the urge to add another smiley face to this post...there can be too much of a good thing.

Play with zoho: http://zoho.com/

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Thing #16

Wow! the world of wikis!
I loved St. Joseph County's wiki: what a wonderful way to incorporate the library's resources: both their materials and staff knowledge. What a great way to interact with the community, by connecting to local business and organizations. How neat that they find ways to keep their wiki informal (check out their cooking section, with the highlighted recipes!) ... I'm inspired!
http://www.libraryforlife.org/subjectguides/index.php/Main_Page

Princeton's Book lover wiki with its sharper focus feels like a more reachable goal. I loved that it was in color!
http://booklovers.pbwiki.com/Princeton%20Public%20Library

Thing #15

"Away from the Icebergs" by Rick Anderson highlights 3 points of caution for libraries heading into the 2.0 world. Anderson admonishes librarians to reconsider their print collections, and to start including electronic formats to enhance patron access. Anderson also believes the ideas of "user education" and the library as a physical location should be reexamined. http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/2.htm
LCPL is already taking steps to address Anderson's first point: the electronic books and databases we offer expand our patrons' ability to access information.
The idea of simplifying accessibility is enchanting, and probably a goal we should constantly keep in mind as we reevaluate our collection, and how we offer access to it. Can we look forward to a day when there is a single search point for all library resources? Something like an Amazon search, that allows you to search the entire site or select specifics: just books, or dvds. For us, it could be a search that incorporated all our databases, our catalog, and selected websites, perhaps even blogs. But: how would we present this information so as not to confuse out patrons? How much extra staff time would be required to maintain it?
Anderson's third idea cautions us not to assume that patrons will always come to us for their information needs. I find it interesting that he includes the library's virtual presence in this caution. Why would anyone visit a library webpage when they could get information elsewhere? Are we going to reach a point where inputting a library card number to access online information is considered too much of a bother? Will libraries start investing in market research to help them promote their virtual presences?
When I started in this profession, a mere 10 years ago, I was helping to update a card catalog...how far have we come!

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Technocrati #14

I'm following orders on this one: I searched for Learning 2.0 and then for "Learning 2.0", in blog posts, tags and the blog directory. The thousands of hits I got in the blog posts were reduced considerably in the tags, and even more so in the blog directory. The relevance of the content improved as well. Using quotations further refined the quality of the search.
I explored popular blogs, searches and tags and was impressed by the fact that this is still a world for those technologically inclined, with most of the popular blogs focusing on some aspect of technology and how to use it.
I was also amused to run into the notice that the Technocrati demon had escaped, on several occasions...but that happened just on one out of the several days that I visited the site.