Library 2.0 reflective exercise & suggestions for next round

Having a weekly timed incentive to explore these tools and technologies really helped me get over any intertia about exploring online things I do not have an immediate use for.

I had a gmail account already but was not using it to its fullest, and had never considered blogging. I also thought I knew what RSS was but had never subscribed to one, but bloglines has turned out to be my favorite part of Library 2.0

Adding Unshelved and Postman on Politics to my Bloglines account has been the highlight of the Learning 2.0 experience for me!

While I don't imagine I will do much in the way of MySpace or mash-ups, as a public services librarian and a parent I now have a much clearer idea of their appeal to others.

I think of all the technologies we explored in Library 2.0, podcasting is the most intriguing and the one I will most likely explore further on my own.

As far as wishes for future similar trainings, I would suggest the following:

• keep the format of a set period of time, with flexible deadlines
• keep the format of having an overall "expert" like David
• keep the weekly "testimonials" of local staff discussing their use of the applications

Regarding scheduling, this worked out okay but most staff I talked to, like myself, were not able to start "on time" and felt a little rushed in the first few exercises. To match the rythm of branch life, January and the first 2 weeks of February, and September, should be avoided for anything that requires undivided attention.

For future training opportunities, one thing I would like to see is an annual hands on "latest technology" show and tell. For example, a patron came to my library last fall and needed help uploading pictures of his car from his phone to his ebay account. I would have loved to have been more helpful! New wireless devices show up periodically, it isn't always easy to figure out their compatibility with our systems, but our patrons do look to us to be adepts.

WLA tries to do a program on personal technologies but KCLS participation in WLA has dwindled to mostly presenters and officers, so the bulk of our employees were not exposed to:

Thursday, April 19, 2007
2:00-3:15 pm
Carrying Your Life in Your Pocket
Room F / TRCC
Michael Porter
Take a closer look @ the newest (and often smallest) consumer electronic gadgets, including PDAs, smart phones, MP3 players, digital cameras, wearable technology and ultra personal computers. What are the trends in consumer electronics and how will these trends continue to affect libraries? Be sure to bring your favorite gadget to show off!
Sponsor: OCLC Western/WebJunction

Overall, I very much appreciated the training, the format, the weekly nature of the exercises and the nudge to try new things. Thank you for the learning experience!

podcasting and overdrive eaudio

I enjoyed the explanations of podcasts. I had used a podcast in a school assignment (Ron Sims on the rising cost of health care), but did not realize how much is being created daily.

I have explored the Overdrive collection and am alooking ofward to adding a poetry title to my collection:

81 Famous Poems

An Audio Companion to The Norton Anthology of Poetry
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Alexander Scourby
The Audio Partners Publishing Corporation
Listen to the sound of English as it was meant to be heard. This collection of timeless British and American poems is an experience to be treasured. The readings, by brilliant classic actors...

exploring YouTube

I think I will use YouTube recreationally, not sure about a library application that I could produce, but I can definitely see the training possibilities.
I viewed this oft-shared clip of ukulele sensation Jake Shimabukoro's rendition of the George Harrison tune While My Guitar Gently Weeps:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puSkP3uym5k

22 Webware

I explored Webware and found, under Education and Reference, a list of sites that allow easy document sharing. This would be helpful to students or workgroups that are sharing and co-editing documents that may be using different versions of wordprocessing or spreadsheet programs.
Scribd http://www.scribd.com/ seemed the most straightforward and easy to use.

In their own words:
Put your docs online.
Scribd docs have been viewed 6,655,371 times!
PDF player to publish and view documents right in your web browser. Try it out!-->Scribd's mission is to create the world's largest open library of documents. Explore the thousands of docs already uploaded or contribute your own!

Google labs

I was impressed by the voice activation options Google is experimenting with, that type of experimentation could lead to less password typo failures.

On a related "27 things" note, I had my first opportunity to share Bloglines with a patron, it went really well.

ukulele stuff search engine

google made it very easy to create acustomized search engine.

Generator site practice

I created these handy acronyms using the Acronym Liar generator:
WELL
Whole Earth Librarian

TLA
Three Librarian Acronym


http://thesurrealist.co.uk/acro.cgi?word=librarians

I wanted to try out the Tabloid Headline generator but alas it would not open...

Wiki practice take one

I can see how using a Wiki for a conference like ALA or WLA is very easy to set up and useful for planning and making quick changes to.

Library Thing practice

Now that was truly a pleasure to learn and use! Of all of the Libarary 2.0 tools we have learned so far, I think Library Thing is the one I will use the most and tell others about.
Thanks for showing me that!

delicious practice

Delicious certainly is easy to use, not sure I see an immmediate void in my life it would fill but now that I know about it something will come to mind.

MySpace makes me a little uncomfortable

Not sure why, but seeing that much info about myself every time I log on is unsettling. If it were not for these exercises I owuld probably not have a MySpace page, not sure how long I will keep it...+

flickr redeux

I went back and played with flickr some more. Somehow I missed the fine print that stated I had to add 5 photos before my photos could be reviewed, after which they would be eligible for public sharing. So I added several, hopefully will be able to upload to my blog within 10 business days.

RSS practice

This weeks sessions of the 27 Things has been the most straightforward to me. I have been seeing RSS buttons on most of the websites I frequent but have not taken advantage of them before. Thanks for walking me through it!

flickr is not for me

I really struggled with flickr, not sure why. I had no trouble searching for photos by tag, but could not successfully import a tagged photo into my blog or upload my own photos using picasa. I think I will move on the the next lesson and come back to flickr later.

how much is too much when blogging on behalf of an organization?

Having been back to visit my blogs over the past couple weeks, their permanance is striking. What seemed like immediate thoughts of the moment are still there. I'm wondering if any companies or organizations have developed guidelines for blogging, to help indivduals avoid posting something they might later wish they had not?

fun with flickr

I found this very cool Alaska lighthouse photo on flickr. Using the "post url"option is not working for me right now. I was hoping to avoid creating another Yahoo account, but I might have to to get the image.

Lesson 3

I thought I had to set this up for lesson 1? Anyway, that was easy.

Day 1

so far so good