Week 10, #23

I'm done, wow! Overall, this was a good experience. I did learn about a few things I had not heard about, like Zoho. It made me spend more time on a few things that I had started before but never got back to, like flickr. I think the one thing that I may continue to use from all of this, is rss feeds, whether through Bloglines or my Google account (which gets checked more often). As I noted in the post about rss feeds, I already had a Bloglines account because I thought it would be a great way to keep up with information; however, I found that I stopped logging into it and then kind of forgot about it. Luckily, this training got me back into it and, hopefully, now I'll keep up with it. I would like to because I subscribed to one feed that I really like that lets me know about a lot freeware and stuff that I may find very useful for home, fun, etc.

Some of the picture editing sites were pretty cool, too. I think these and the the online document programs will be used a lot in the libraries once we make more patrons aware of them. They can do things now on the computer that used to require additional software not available to them or save without needing some external disc to save to.

As I said, overall this was a good experience. I was aware of much of these technologies; however, was not using them much. I think a lot of staff, including myself, learned about things that may be helpful to patrons who are just getting into these technologies. At least we will have an idea of what they're talking about.

Week 9, #22

I like our Overdrive site. I have checked out an e-book before and would check out more if I had more time to read from my computer. I would prefer to do the audio and video downloads from home, but I have an iMac. I like the overdrive collection better than the two asked to look at, but I realize this will have more because libraries pay to have this access. The others aren't bad though. They're easy to use and download stuff from.

Week 9, #21

I don't normally listen to podcasts. I have iTunes on my home computer and could listen to them, but I hardly listen to other things with my computer. Mostly I use it to download my cd's to my iPod. I could put podcasts on my iPod, but don't really have time to look for something I would want to hear. For instance, I searched for an hour on the three directories listed for this exercise and only came across a podcast from The Onion, that really interested me. So I put that on my Bloglines. Nothing else really jumped out at me, except perhaps trying some of the musical ones. It may be a way to hear new stuff that won't get regular airplay. I probably won't get into these too much, though.

Week 9, #20

You Tube - I discovered this site a few years ago from one of my sisters. She used to go here to watch Anime episodes that people would upload. Back then you could watch entire shows. Not sure about now, but I've occasionally gone on to look for something I heard about on TV or somewhere and can usually find it. For the video posted below I did a search for "library" and eventually came across this sketch from Sesame Street. I actually vaguely remember this skit. Before coming across this, though, I found an "ad" from a library for research assistance. They made it look like the opening credits to the "A-Team," but called it the "L-Team." It was funny. Something like this could be fun to post to the library's website and might be a more interesting way to inform people of our available services.

No Cookies in the Library

If you can't see this video click here.

Blog post, Week 8, #19

The online applications are really cool. I like that you don't have to have the software and can use this to work on documents. I suppose the documents will be safe as long as you don't make them public. I don't know that I would put anything really personal on these, but it's good to know that these exist, especially for people who may be working on something in the library and their time runs out. They can save this to the site if they didn't bring a disc or jump drive and not have to worry about losing it when the computer logs them off. We just have to let them know about it. Really cool. I knew Google had a documents program but haven't played with it at all. Perhaps I'll look into it now. Now to see if I can get this to post to my blog. If you're reading this, it worked!

Week 8, #18

I already have accounts with a couple of networking sites, myspace and facebook. I hardly ever get on either of them. Truthfully, the only reason I created the accounts was to be able to see someone else's page or because I was getting something for free out of it. The myspace page I have is so I can get into my two sisters pages, but a few of my other relatives have discovered that I have the page and have friended me, but the person who actually uses my space the most is my fiancee. He's the reason I created it. My sister kept having to unlock her page so he could see whatever knew thing she wanted him to see on her page. I created the account to make it easier for me to see her page and he uses my login to get in. So I guess we have a joint page.

The facebook was created because I wanted to see something that I read on Unshelved, can't remember what it was. But never logged back in after the intial creation. Then I forgot I had it until I tried to create another one and was using same the login. My second reason for logging in was to join the Ticketmaster group for free iTunes songs.

So, I find that I don't have time for the networking sites either. I did look through the ones on the list and found none that really appealed except for the Rate My Space site. But the only reason I am interested in this site is that I am now in the process of buying a new home and this site is giving me ideas for decorating.