In my life away from the library, I am taking over our orchestra web page (again). Matt is no longer able to play with us due to a concert day change so I get the web page back. Matt created his version of the webpages on his Mac using iWeb software.
Mac offers this very cool version of chat or instant messaging and since Matt and I are both using Macs we can take advantage of it. We had to transfer the files from his mobileme space to mine. To transfer a file is incredibly easy--you just drop the file into the conversation box and voila! its now on my computer. This is a really cool way to transfer files that are too large to email. Since I do desktop publishing, I get alot of those. Through it he can also take over my computer should I really screw something up.
Mac uses the aol AIM software but in addition can connect with Jabber and Google talk. You can do audio conversations and video chats.
Could be useful. I think I will get my grandson to chat with me!!
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
Thing 21: Podcasts
I have found that Podcast vary wildly in quality. When I checked the listing of libraries who have Podcast, I found very few Public Libraries listed. The first public library selected produced a 404, Page not found. I checked my Alma Mater, WSU, and found that the libraries there had used PodCasts as tutorials for students to learn how to use their catalog. Not a bad idea, but the narrator talked too slowly.
Denver Public users their podcast for reading childrens' stories. DeKalb county publicizes programs with podcasts. Boulder Public produces Teen PodCasts. PodCasting seems to be difficult to sustain. Many libraries only produce two or three a year. And it seems to be most successful at the college and university level.
Many of the podcasts listed on the wiki proved to be available. I would imagine that to make podcasts available takes an unbelievable amount of time. If we could find someone with both the talent and time, I could see these being used to teach patrons how to use the online reference databases. The biggest problem is that these databases are constantly changing and it might be hard to keep the podcast current.
For myself, I have found several technology podcasts that I find useful and entertaining. I like a lot of the NPR podcasts, especially the Car Talk Guys and Wait, Wait don't tell me!
Denver Public users their podcast for reading childrens' stories. DeKalb county publicizes programs with podcasts. Boulder Public produces Teen PodCasts. PodCasting seems to be difficult to sustain. Many libraries only produce two or three a year. And it seems to be most successful at the college and university level.
Many of the podcasts listed on the wiki proved to be available. I would imagine that to make podcasts available takes an unbelievable amount of time. If we could find someone with both the talent and time, I could see these being used to teach patrons how to use the online reference databases. The biggest problem is that these databases are constantly changing and it might be hard to keep the podcast current.
For myself, I have found several technology podcasts that I find useful and entertaining. I like a lot of the NPR podcasts, especially the Car Talk Guys and Wait, Wait don't tell me!
Thing 20: YouTube
YouTube is a lot of fun!
There are videos on anything you can imagine. Lots of technical help and answers! There is even a recording of a PDQ Bach concert that was performed for the musicians retirement fund when I lived in Boston with Itzhak Perlman as one of the soloists.
There is a wonderful series of spoofs on the Mac/PC ads with the Allen County Library:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWY8OBMlroI
There are videos from ALA conferences. The Burbank(Ca) library did a simple but elegant video for their One Book, One Community Reads program. I like the Burbank video because it was simple to produce and could involve a lot of patrons in the mix (although one reviewer called it "boring.") Burbank has a pretty active blog, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AcrhvLGPDU
I think that simple is more effective and doesn't cloud the message. I can see using you tube for library produced "help" files, links to our calendar of events.
There are videos on anything you can imagine. Lots of technical help and answers! There is even a recording of a PDQ Bach concert that was performed for the musicians retirement fund when I lived in Boston with Itzhak Perlman as one of the soloists.
There is a wonderful series of spoofs on the Mac/PC ads with the Allen County Library:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWY8OBMlroI
There are videos from ALA conferences. The Burbank(Ca) library did a simple but elegant video for their One Book, One Community Reads program. I like the Burbank video because it was simple to produce and could involve a lot of patrons in the mix (although one reviewer called it "boring.") Burbank has a pretty active blog, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AcrhvLGPDU
I think that simple is more effective and doesn't cloud the message. I can see using you tube for library produced "help" files, links to our calendar of events.
Thing 19: Google Docs
Google Docs is an extremely convenient way to share doc and collaborate on them. I also like that they can easily be converted in Adobe. I often send docs in Adobe formate because I do not want them to be modified in any way. I had the ability to convert to Adobe Reader for quite some time because I own Adobe Pagemaker for Desktop publishing. Now everyone else has this ability, too.
One of my pc's is a netBook and I think it makes more sense to use Google Docs than to store a full version of Office on the PC. The formatting at Google Docs was a bit different than of Office 2007. Spacing between the paragraphs was removed. This was a little annoying, but then I sometimes find Office 2007 annoying. Actually to tell the truth, I find any Office product annoying. They always try to think that they know what I really want and often they are so wrong. WordPerfect was the first program I learned and I still can accomplish any fancy formatting so much better and faster in it!
I think it will be so much easier to use Google docs than to have to transfer everything to a Flash Drive.
One of my pc's is a netBook and I think it makes more sense to use Google Docs than to store a full version of Office on the PC. The formatting at Google Docs was a bit different than of Office 2007. Spacing between the paragraphs was removed. This was a little annoying, but then I sometimes find Office 2007 annoying. Actually to tell the truth, I find any Office product annoying. They always try to think that they know what I really want and often they are so wrong. WordPerfect was the first program I learned and I still can accomplish any fancy formatting so much better and faster in it!
I think it will be so much easier to use Google docs than to have to transfer everything to a Flash Drive.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Thing 17: LibWorm
On Saturday I could not access LibWorm either from the library or from home so imagine my surprise when today I was able to get it from my office.
I searched RFID and various permutation of RFID including specific vendors, open source RFID and the majority of articles I received in response were in german or french. The few I received in English were old, 2006. I wanted something newer so for this topic it did not meet my purposes.
I also tried open source as in ILS's, again foreign info and old info.
Decided to try one of the recommended searches, OPAC. This did contain some more current info, references to John Blyberg from July 2009 but the top hit was an article in what I believe to be Dutch (its certainly not German because I can read German).
The search for Hurst Public Library yielded only a bunch of unrelated searches containing the word Hurst.
I must reluctlantly conclude that LibWorm is not going to be helpful to me.
I searched RFID and various permutation of RFID including specific vendors, open source RFID and the majority of articles I received in response were in german or french. The few I received in English were old, 2006. I wanted something newer so for this topic it did not meet my purposes.
I also tried open source as in ILS's, again foreign info and old info.
Decided to try one of the recommended searches, OPAC. This did contain some more current info, references to John Blyberg from July 2009 but the top hit was an article in what I believe to be Dutch (its certainly not German because I can read German).
The search for Hurst Public Library yielded only a bunch of unrelated searches containing the word Hurst.
I must reluctlantly conclude that LibWorm is not going to be helpful to me.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
AARRRGGHH!!!!!
This is mySaturday to work and I had planned to totally catch up on the 23 things....
The first thing that happened was that I couldn't find a computer in the library that would access libworm, so I will have to do it at home. At least, I assume I will be able to access it from home. That has happened before!!
So even though it annoys me to have to do these out of order, I decided to go ahead with wiki's only to find that main page with the instructions is temporarily unavailable.
So now its onto Google Docs. I hope I have better luck here!
The first thing that happened was that I couldn't find a computer in the library that would access libworm, so I will have to do it at home. At least, I assume I will be able to access it from home. That has happened before!!
So even though it annoys me to have to do these out of order, I decided to go ahead with wiki's only to find that main page with the instructions is temporarily unavailable.
So now its onto Google Docs. I hope I have better luck here!
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Thing 16: LibraryThing
Being in Tech. Services, I could really get into LibraryThing. I entered the first two books that happened to cross my path and will add more (a lot more) after I finish this project. I even started thinking, "gee, it's too bad, I weeded my collections last summer, I could have added more to LibraryThing!"
Some of the discussions were interesting and stayed on topic, and some veered way off topic. One Harry Potter discussion was talking about the pregnancy/delivery of apparently one of its members. Wierd librarian stories was funny, but unfortunately all too familiar.
I was never able to find the suggested sections for reading. Can anyone help?
I liked that when you go back after entering a few books, you find reccommendation of other books you might like. So the more books you enter, the more recommends you will get.
I was never able to find the suggested sections for reading. Can anyone help?
I liked that when you go back after entering a few books, you find reccommendation of other books you might like. So the more books you enter, the more recommends you will get.
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