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.

Podcasts

I like podcasts. I use them a lot for some of my favorite radio shows, like Car Talk. On Pod Cast Alley I found a podcast called Free Beer, I am currently listening to it, and it seems somewhat entertaining. I think the show's hosts sample different types of beer, but it kind of sounds like they just drink a lot of beer and become somewhat incoherent by the end of the hour long show. I also searched Pod Cast Alley for 'library' and the results list was rather long. It seems like there are a lot of public library podcasts, which would be a good idea for any library. I think that library's could do book reviews and events discussions, and provide an easy way for people to be informed about a multitude of different things going on at the library.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Pw_eX97TUw
Well I could not embed this video by request of I guess the poster. I really like The Office so this is the video that I chose, its really long. Um I think that some aspects of youtube could be useful for library websites. If the library posts how-to videos for using online databases or something similar, then people can comment on the videos and creators can assess through the comments the usefulness of the instruction.

list dump

I found a website called List Dump (maybe its just one word?) at www.listdump.com
It was pretty neat, I make a lot of lists myself, and constantly have those "top 5" discussions with my friends. I think it could be useful for a library. People could create themed lists, say All Time Greatest Books on the Circus. THen people could add to the lists the books they believe should be on there. And then everyone who wanted to had access to these lists, and they could find out about all sorts of favorite books on the circus. I can also see this being useful for coordinators. They may keep up with the lists and if they find that the library does not carry a popular item then they may choose to order it, and they could post into the list that this item is now on order upon finding out about it via this list.

Google Docs

WOW! Online documents is the most exciting thing ever! I have opened email attachments in gmail using google docs before and, wow, google stored them without my knowledge. Not really sure how I feel about that. Oh well. Oh and just now it gave me a random message saying that it cannot save my document and that they are sorry for the inconvenience. And the spell check doesn't work so I cannot be help accountable for my misspellings. Not sure how much I really like this Google Docs things, the error message keeps showing up every time it tries to automatically save. Oh it just saved finally. Well this short experience has not convinced me to write a paper or complete a group project on this application.

TCCL Wiki

Interesting. I can see why wikis can be of a lot of use. I think the next time I take a trip I might search for a wiki on that city. I never really trust the formal travel websites on "Things to do" in a new city, and many wiki posts give enough detail about the topic to actually get a feel for it.

Wikis

I enjoyed the 16th thing. I am pretty familiar with the creation and use of wikis but I never really thought about how useful they can be in the library environment. I really like the idea about using a wiki in the catalog, I think people would love to be able to review books like that, and I know that I always find the Amazon.com reviews of some use.
I can see a wiki being successful in my department as well. Often times we find ourselves doing new and unfamiliar tasks and trying to figure out the most efficient way of completing the tasks. With a wiki then people could post ways they discovered to quickly complete the task.

library 2.0

Yeah, I have talked a lot about library 2.0 in my classes at school. I completely agree that libraries all over the country need to take advantage of the tools that web 2.0 has to offer. These tools help us to connect with the younger generations who spend most of their internet time at social networking sites, and by fostering and encouraging their use of libraries we create a customer for many years to come. But it should also be noted that people of all ages use all of these social networking sites, so really we have an opportunity to meet all sorts of users. I really like the ideas about making a library website kind of amazon-like. When a user sign-in recommendations pop-up based on his or her general interests. Tagging and customer commentary also seems that it would help users in selecting materials. I constantly cite the reviews on amazon and other online book sellers to get an idea of the book. Without having the book in hand, I strongly rely on commentary because the content description never really satisfies me. I think customer commentary would be really nice with the audio book catalog.

One thing that libraries need to remember is the digital divide runs deep in this country. People who do not own computers or do not have access to the internet are still a large part of the clientele. Librarians cannot allow their drive to keep up with all the technological advancements consume them to the point that they forget about the other populations they serve.

Technorati

Well, I guess the site is okay. I did see some interesting things... I guess some people maintain a blog about raising Free Range Kids, where you actually let them out of your sight to discover things on their own. I am a big fan of the idea, although I have no kids, and don't really ever plan to have any, but that's how I grew up and I turned out okay. I still don't know if I like reading blogs. I guess I can't really care about anonymous people's lives, never got into the reality tv either. And for the blogs concerning interesting news, they are useful in as much as they inform me about something, and I then go to credible resources to figure out the real story.

#13

I think that this exercise was kind of useful. So I created an account, and renamed all of my bookmarks with new tags, so now they all fit into pretty little categories. And then I went up to favorites and select blogger.com to get here. Yup, kind of absurd, no? I guess my point is that it will take quite a while before I get out of the habit of using favorites, and while it is nice to have all my bookmarks on the web so that I can access them from any computer, I do not think that I will find myself signing onto Delicious.com in order to go to my Favorites. So I will probably never get out of the habit of using Favorites, but I now know that when my computer dies I will still have my Favorites.

Rollyo

This exercise was okay. Perhaps I am not being creative enough today because I really could not think of a theme that would make this exercise fun. I chose local news, pretty boring. I guess I can see the usefulness of this for a job if a lot of the information you need is stored on the web. I thought it might be useful to me with school work, but I am not sure. All the sites that I need to look through for school require a log-in so I doubt I can add them to a Rollyo.

Wow! The whole getting the Library Thing on to the blog was an adventure. Thanks to the people in the staff forum for helping me figure out the whole thing with having to add a gadget.

Image Generator

This is the image that I made. I love cheesy horror movies; they are hilarious. I played around with a lot of different image generators, some were cool, a lot of them were not. But I like this one okay so I am sticking with it.

More RSS Feeds

Well I did not like this exercise as much as the previous one. I am not a fan of the three websites that were suggested. They look cluttered, and I could find many feeds that worked with Bloglines. I ended up searching Google for BBC news, and found a feed for Bloglines on that website. I have a lot of feeds on Bloglines already, and I completely understand the process of how to obtain new feeds, so I only chose to pick up two more feeds, NPR and BBC Americas. One problem I am having with all of this news is that I am not able to get through it all. Oh well, it is still fun.