Sites 4 Students

I was quite intrigued by all of the free online resources available to students and everyone. I looked at Zoho and Notecentric. What I liked a lot about both of these sites was that you could access these documents and/or presentations from anywhere. This is similar to delicious and has many applications for work groups, students and others. I just think that its great that these kinds of things are available so that people who maybe didn't buy a computer with these types of applications installed can have access to them. The implications for students is obviously huge. I wish there would have been something like notecentric when I was in college. I know it is something I would have utilized. I am going to spend some more time looking at these tools including Zoho meeting. I have a brainstorming team for my church that I meet with once a week and we have instant messaged and set up conference calls when we couldn't physically meet so it would be interesting to see what Zoho meeting had to offer. It is exciting to see how technology is advancing in ways to help us get more done, more efficiently and how there are no geographic boundaries.

Twittering...

Now I have officially twittered! I must say that I am a bit unsure about how this really applies to us here at KRL. Maybe for committees or people working on special projects this may be a useful way to stay in close contact with eachother. I am not that technilogically advanced to get excited about adding Twitter to my cell phone and using this as a major way to stay in touch with people. I can see teens who have nothing better to do with their time becoming quite obsessed with Twitter. Maybe I am just getting older. Ah... c'est la vie.

Facing Facebook

Well, I now feel that I have arrived. I have a Facebook account! It was fun searching for old classmates and browsing the KRL page. I was a little unclear as to how this could be useful for libraries but after reading the article by Meredith Farkas I can see its merits. In a way the wiki is a way of communicating internal information and Facebook is a way to stay in touch within our system and with the public. I think that it really will help personalize the library to our community to see and hear from actual individuals within the library. I thought the idea that Meredith Farkas had about libraries offering classes on My Space and Facebook for parents is an excellent idea!! I think there are a lot of parents out there that want to be informed about how these websites work in order to be able to moniter their kids activity but don't know where to start. I also like how some libraries where using their Facebook account as a way for patrons to place requests for materials. The less paper we have to handle the better! I do agree with Farkas that we need to be intentional about our Facebook page and make it a useful tool for us and our patrons. It seems like our page is working great already!

Posting to the KRL Wiki

I enjoyed exploring the KRL wiki and posting something to the Technical Services Page. I added the mending guidelines to our page. It has been interesting to receive e-mails as others add to the wiki as well. In some ways it would be nice to be able to select which areas of the wiki you would be notified of if they were updated so that you wouldn't be plagued by e-mails constantly. I found the wiki to be very user friendly which was encouraging. I am wondering if this will eventually take the place of our staff webpage? It seems somewhat repetitive to have to maintain and reference both places. I am looking forward to watching the wiki grow and develop. I hope that it will encourage better communication throughout our system and keep us all in better touch.

Exploring the world of the Wiki

I must say that I found the wiki information very interesting. I didn't realize that it could be used for all sorts of things besides a wikkipedia type of resource. I appreciated the screencast on the KRL wikki. It was very informative and well done. I browsed Nancy Pearl's, Book Lust Wiki and found lots of fun things on there. However, when I used France as a search term a lot of my results were people's names. I found the Stevens County Wiki very intriguing. I looked at a book list of books pertaining to the northwest for kids and I loved being able to see the book summary and then click on the title and see if it was available at the library. Brilliant! I am intrigued by the implications that the KRL wiki could have for technical services. We have forms, templates and instructions that we are always editing and referencing. Some of these are strictly for inter department use while others need to be shared files that branches can access but not edit. We will have to explore the possibilities. I am most excited about doing a wiki like Stevens County. I think this would be an excellent way for our patrons to feel more invested in the library by becoming part of an online community. We could also offer information that would simply provide good customer service to our patrons like genre or age specific reading lists. We could even eventually have an RSS feed available for patrons to subscribe to that talks about news connected with the library like fine policies or library events. The possibilities are really endless! I am excited to see how we decide to utilize Wikis at KRL. Back to my corner...

Exploring You Tube

You Tube was not a new phenomenon to me. I had seen OK go, the evolution of dance and some of the other classics such as KRL's "fish story". I am amazed at what a phenomenon it has become. I did a search for French Cats just to see what would pop up and it was amusing and frightening at the same time. I then did a search for the Eiffel Tower and found a couple of clips that I posted below. I especially like the one of the Eiffel sparkling as that's what it was doing when my husband got down on one knee 7 years ago. I would be interested to know if the ratio of people posting videos is equal or lesser than the number of people viewing videos. I read somewhere that Gen X could possibly be the most narcissistic generation yet with YouTube, the Iphone and My Space. The new Wii gaming system also panders to this mentality in that you can create your own little person that can look just like you to run around and play tennis, baseball, golf and bowling. For the most part YouTube seems to me to be a guilty pleasure. However, I am sure that the candidates are grateful for a venue to reach young voters. YouTube has also contributed to the birth of other websites such as GodTube and it seems like you see embedded videos all over the web nowadays. It will be interesting to see what the next big Internet fad will be. Until next time....

Time Lapse of the Eiffel Tower



See the Eiffel Tower Sparkle!

That Thing called Library Thing

Well, I have created a small library of what else, but books on France. I liked the interactive options that allow you to see what other people are reading and what they think of books that you have in common. The options concerning whether or not you would share your information with the rest of the world was also nice. There weren't any conversations presently on any of the books I picked except Peter Mayle's, A Good Year. This book was most likely singled out because Ridley Scott directed a movie adaptation with Russell Crowe. I clicked on the conversations link and read posts about books that had been made into movies. It was called, "When the book is better than the movie or vice versa." It was quite fun to read through different peoples' reviews on different movie adaptations of well known books. Once again I appreciated the tagging as I was able to find several other books that I had never heard of and added to my library so that I would remember to look them up and eventually check them out from our illustrious collection. I am also a huge Jane Austen fan and can only imagine what I might stumble upon if I went poking around for her works. I enjoyed learning about Library Thing and will most likely use it in the future. I can see how book groups would find this especially useful along with people who are into a specific genre such as mystery. Well, that is all for now, back to my corner of cubeland in the outback.

Flitting about Flickr

I was already familiar with Flickr before this assignment. I believe that I even have a Flickr account which I created in order to view a friend's photos but alas I am afraid that once again the password has escaped me. So I just took the tour of the site and searched for what else but pictures of France. I then took a stroll down memory lane and looked at pictures of the Eiffel tower where my husband proposed to me. I just went to the most popular tags page and was able to find what I was looking for very quickly. I posted one of the photos I came across at the beginning of my post. As I was uploading this photo that someone so skillfully took I wondered if there are any copyright laws attached to these photos? Can you use them for power point presentations, screen savers or whatever you so desire? Just wondering.... I was introduced to Flickr some time ago by a friend who is an amateur photographer looking to eventually start her own business. So she loads her photos onto Flickr in order to have somewhere to direct people that are interested in hiring her. She also uses it as a place for family to see up-to-date pictures of her family. I like how you can select certain settings that can limit the amount of access people have to your photos. Overall, I think that Flickr is a great tool, mostly for sharing photos with family or friends or helping to promote a business. I also thought it was quite fun how people can leave comments on the pictures themselves. Well, even though I would much rather be nibbling on a baguette at the La tour Eiffel I must go back to my corner.

Back in the saddle with RSS Feeds

Well, it has been quite some time since I have ventured into KRL2.0 land. So long in fact that I couldn't remember any of my passwords. After I surrendered to the password gods I reset my gmail password and dove in. I found this to be one of the more simple assignments so far. I subscribed to a couple of staff blogs as well as two card making websites to feed my need for papercrafting ideas. I am looking forward to reading new posts from all of these sites as they are created. I am excited to finally be in "the know" about RSS feeds asI have seen the icon on many websites that I frequent. I would have to say that RSS feeds along with creating a delicious account have been some of the more practical tools we have been introduced to so far in KRL 2.0. I can see this being useful for our individual department pages on the staff website. For example, you wouldn't necessarily have to send out an e-mail whenever you updated instructions or templates as long as everyone who needed this information subscribed to the RSS feed they would automatically be notified. I am making a New Year's Resolution to do more KRL 2.0 so that I can get caught up and remember my darn password. Well, its time for me to go back to my corner. Until next time...