screencasting

The library can use screencasting in many ways. It would be a great resource for creating tutorials for people of all ages on how to use the library, its website and the multiple online databases. Many university libraries already use screencasting to show students how to search online databases and the catalog, and from what I have read, these videos seem to be very helpful for the students that access them. The benefits are vast for public libraries because we never get the opportunity to show all of the patrons how to use these tools or to even show them that they exist. Perhaps creating a whole page of tutorials that are accessible from the library's homepage can give patrons easy access to the videos. It can go further with a step by step video that shows patrons new to computers how to start an email or simply an explanation of how to search the Internet through google or yahoo.
The internal uses of screencasting have been amply displayed in the blog for the "25th Thing." Perhaps in addition to the weeekly reader posts that inform staff of new resources, we could add screencast tutorials in order to see the resource in action. I work at the service center so it is a little bit more difficult to find screencasting uses here. I can see usefulness in the training of new employees on MilAcq. With a good audio script it might be a great way to teach new people about item, order, and bib records. We could also create a screencast on the proper ways to attach an item on the fly.

twitter

This is my twitter homepage. I think that my personal use of twitter will be to receive updates from the organizations that I follow. I do not see much use for me tweeting to others, I believe facebook takes care of this for me. But as I see the value of twitter in that it easily allows me to recieve reminders about events and such, I see it as very useful for the library. I would have liked to search for other organizations to follow but it seems that the twitter site is overloaded right now.

Google Maps and Mashups: Awesome!

I really liked this activity. You can see my map at:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=117060103826515834400.00047fe5d8aa973979c18&t=h&z=13


Wow! That took along time to embed that map correctly. Still some of the descriptions of the stops are messed up, with random lettering inserted in the words, but I have worked on this long enough and don't know how to fix it. Nevermind the embedding actually failed in the end so you have to use the link at the bottom of the post. This is a map of a very unrealistic biking tour around a small island in the South Pacific. There wasn't much on this island so I didn't really take advantage of the mashup things, like find a restaurant close by. But creating the destinations was a lot of fun.



I think that the library could make great use of google.maps. One thing that comes to mind is creating walking tours that highlight different aspects of Tulsa. We could create a map that directs people through downtown to see all of the art deco architecture that it holds and small descriptions of the buildings' histories. Or maybe a driving map of "have to see" parks in the area, giving small pieces of info on the best features each park offers. Or a map that highlights Route 66 venues in Tulsa, with histories attached. Or a map of famous places in Tulsa, like Admiral Twin -how it was in the Outsiders, and throw in a link or a note reminding people that they can get the book and the movie at their local library (I'm not sure how many more famous places we have, but it seems like a cool idea.)



It seems like the best uses for the library would be featuring the multiple sides of Tulsa's architecture and history. Although these things are not the major focus of the library, community building definitely is a major focus. And by creating ways for people to become more familiar with the history of their city it should increase pride in it, and hopefully a desire to preserve and work to improve upon the community.

Streaming Media

I had to skip the Screencasting section for now becuase my computer cannot play any of the tutorials. Anyway, I really liked the streaming media sections. I have not used Pandora or Last.fm, but I was just told today that I needed to check Last.fm out, and 'crazy' I am learning about it at work. One major problem is that I cannot listen to the tracks on Last.fm, but I entered in my favorite bands and it provided a lot of recommendations for me. One band they recommended was O Pioneers, which was provided becuase I typed in Fake Problems, so hopefully I can check them out at home. I could tell you if I liked them if I could listen to them. Pandora does not seem as useful for me. I entered numerous names of favorite bands and they could not be found. In addition, the music they selected for my streaming radio station were not that similar to the band that I chose to listen to.
Hulu is something that I have been using for a couple of years. I really like that it collects all the t.v. shows together and makes it easy to search. WIth Hulu and the network sites I won't ever need a dvr recorder.

Facebook

This one was really a nonactivity for me because I already have a facebook page. But I still went through and read everything. I started a facebook page solely to play scrabble with friends, and never really bothered to use it for the social networking aspects. I still do not, but at least this tutorial informed me to change my privacy settings so that the whole world does not see my posts. I guess this would matter more if I ever did make status updates or posted on others' walls. Oh well. Informative nonetheless.

Class 5990

So one of the things that I found interesting in this week's readings was found in the article, "Accessing the Internet: Connection Technologies." The author talked about the downside of cable broadband is that the nodes in an area share the available bandwidth causing a slower connection speed. This is something I never realized, I have noticed slower connection speeds at some points but I never really knew it could be due to the fact that my neighbors with the same Internet service were using a lot of bandwidth. I guess if I had thought logically about the system it should have occurred to me. The other article, Internet Technologies TCP/IP, had an interesting discussion on IP addresses and the solutions to running out of the 4.3 billion possible when conceived in the 1980's . I appreciated the explanation, as confusing as it was to me, of IP addresses because I have never really understood how they are developed.

Audiobooks

I like the whole audiobook thing, I think it is a way for the library to keep up with the advancements in technology. With that said I think that improvements could be made to our digital collection page. When a customer searches the catalog, he is unable to see the Overdrive titles that are available, and this would not be so bad if the search tool with in the digital collection page was not as useless as it is. Another problem, a lot of the audiobooks are in WMA format, this means very little to me despite the fact that I know it will not work on my device. And I can download it to my computer and listen to it, but the only time I spend alot of time in front of the computer is at work or while doing homework. And I am not interested in burning the book to a cd, that just seems wasteful. So I think the ability to do an advanced search that enables you to search for titles that are compatible with your chosen device is essential, then I could find all the titles that are MP3 format, and that have some use to me. I'm sure we will get to that point someday though.