Facebook

I've had a Facebook account for ages and have send friend requests, but I played around with it a little so I didn't feel like I was cheating :-).

One of the things I love about Facebook is that it allows me to get back in touch with friends and schoolmates that I haven't talked to in years. Just now, I accepted a friend request and sent a message to a friend from college that I haven't spoken to in about five years.

I really like Facebook and I should really use it more than I do.

Overdrive

I think the idea of digital books and audiobooks is a good one, but I find that most customers would still rather have the physical book or CD. Customers don't want to be tied to their computers to read or listen and they don't want to spend the money to buy CDs for the burnable titles.

I think the idea of databases like Overdrive and Netlibrary is a good one, and I think maybe in a few more years they might start to take off, but as a person working in a small branch library, I'm not seeing it happen now. I would however, be interested in statistics on how Overdrive and Netlibrary are being used. Since customers only need to come into the library to register and can, from then on, use their home computers without coming into the library, perhaps a lot more use is being made of these resources than those of us in the front line in the libraries are aware of.

That said, the overdrive interface was easy to use, and I liked that I could browse by subject, even though the number of titles in this database is still fairly light. We haven't had Overdrive for very long, so we can't expect to have a huge number of titles. Plus, I can see how our collection development team may not want to spend a lot of money buying titles that may not get very much use compared to their physical counterparts.

I'm glad that Overdrive was one of the "things" covered, since I don't get asked about this database very often, and it was good to spend a little while going over the database so that it will be fresh in my memory the next time someone is interested in e-books or e-audiobooks.

Podcasts

Podcasts are another new technology that I've been aware of for awhile. Unlike YouTube however, I've never been a real fan (I've never been a big fan of listening to programs on the radio either). Audio, for me, is a step down from video.

If it is a choice between listening and reading, I'd rather read, because at least that way I can skim.

Still, search engines for podcasts are a good thing to be aware of, in case anyone asks. After looking through the three linked on the lesson, my favorite is the first, Podcastalley.com.

I added two to my bloglines account and listened to a few minutes of each, but to be honest, this is not my favorite format, so I probably won't continue to follow them.

Lion Hugs on YouTube

I'm actually very familiar with YouTube and have been using it a long time. I learned about YouTube while I was in college, and have continued to learn more about newer video sites from teens that volunteer at my library and from the teens that come to my anime club.

This is the first time that I've attempted to imbed a video in a blog however, so here goes:

Web 2.0 awards

I looked at both the Web 2.0 awards and the Webaware awards, and ended up choosing a site from the Webaware awards.

I had actually heard of the site www.answers.com before but had never really take the time to explore and use it.

To test out the site, I tried a couple of searches, and then browsed the sites features for awhile. The first search I tried was based on an actual reference question--a patron wanted to know more about the guns used on the Louis and Clark expedition. For this search, the search engine performed pretty much the same as Google, but did return different results. The next search I tried was for the book we are doing for next month's book club A Thousand Splendid Suns for this search, I really like the way the information was aggregated and visually displayed from a variety of sources. It grabbed the article from Wikepedia, and displayed an attractive sidebar, showing a few sites where you can buy the book. Most importantly, it told me where the information was coming from so I could refer to the original source.

The real joy of this site however was when I started to browse it. Answer.com presents subject guides on a variety of subjects, one example of which is it's diet guide http://www.answers.com/library/Diet%20Guide in which it lists a variety of diets that you can click on and then view a short summary and then sometimes an attached article from another source.

I believe that I will use this site in the future for reference work. At the very least it provides a quick alternative to the reference databases and Google.

Zoho Writer

Zoho Writer

 

I think that Zoho writer works like a simplified version of Microsoft Word.  I attempted to use some of the features, such as creating and formatted a table, and found it awkward to use, and I couldn't do everything I was used to doing. It's better than Notepad, but if I were doing anything for work or anything for which I need to use tables, I would still prefer to use Word.  However, Zoho writer does offer quite a lot for a free service.

PBWiki

Perhaps PBWiki would be a useful tool to use to create a site where librarians from a large area (For example Florida librarians, or United States librarians) could share subject guides. Of course this would involve a lot of work, not the least of which would be controlling who can edit the pages, and the content that those people add.

Now if only there were someone with enough time to set something like that up!

Wiki's

The use of Wikis that I was most interested in would probably be the Book Lover' Wiki, by the Princeton Library. Tying the wiki to a specific event (their adult summer reading program) allowed them to promote the program online using the wiki.

I would love the idea of having a subject guide wiki, similar to the one for SJCPL, that allowed access to librarians and other information professionals from around the world.