Week 10 or is it Week 15? # 23 The end.

Now that I am at the end here are some comments;
1. Favorite discoveries- Library Elf- even though I only have one library account and receive emails from HCPL, I like the reminders and the calendar from Library Elf.
2. How has it affected my lifelong learning goals?- It has pushed me a little further into exploring the social Internet.
3. Surprises? I was surprised how hard it all is and how long it takes to do something when there are no instructions. What I thought would be an hour a week turned into several hours for a number of days each week. I usually gave myself a 2 hour window and after that I stopped.
4. Ideas to use technologies in libraries? It needs to be more user friendly and more people turned on at home. The last thing I want to do when I come home is log on to the Internet but I guess I am in the minority. It still feels like a clique or club and not something available to all the public.
5. What else to learn? I would like to explore blog making and figure out how to add all the neat things I see others adding.

Week 9 #22 Downloadable Media

1. I browsed the HCPL Overdrive site and listened to the overview. It has been a few months since I looked at this. I did check out one e-book, "The Alamo" which I will download once I get home. I have downloaded music before on my home computer. I don't have a MP3 player so am somewhat limited. Maybe Santa will bring me one this Christmas. I am always curious as to what is most popular and sorted many of the areas by most popular. I was amazed so much of the titles (fiction romance) could be burned to a CD. I did not remember seeing the little fire before to indicate what can be burned. That makes it easy to spot.

2. LibriVox- This site was primitive compared to Overdrive, but all I did was scan some of the recently cataloged titles and read through the FAQ. Since these are only titles in the public domain they are older and not as popular. I did recognize some, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin , and may come back to it on my home computer.

3. WOWIO- This company says it started in August 2006 and they are located in HOUSTON! They have an attractive website including cover art which is very important. Titles are provided straight from the publisher so they are fairly recent. The subject pull down menu makes negotiating the site easy. I saw many titles of interest but these are still not what library folk would call "best sellers" or high demand titles. Some may have interest but I don't think you will see them on the NY Times BS list.

Week 9 # 21- Podcasts -smodcasts

1. I looked at the podcast directories- Podcast Alley, Podcast Net and Yahoo.
Podcast Alley- I did a search for Book reviews. One I listened to was "Rachel's Reviews" Rachel sounded like a young adult. Her podcasts gave short reviews and she ended the book description by rating it one to ten bookmarks. Since I had just watched the movie "Holes" and really enjoyed it, I listened to her review. She liked the book and gave it 10 bookmarks. Then she had a friend come on to tell their favorite book. It was the Hobbit.

Podcast Net- I narrowed the search to animals and found two video-podcasts. One was from the Dog Whisperer and the other was from Wildlife Chronicles. They seemed kind of long so I just watched the beginning and cut it off.

Yahoo- I was able to get some searches for book reviews. Most of the searches led me to music for purchasing. The book reviews came up with three - An online news hour with Terrance Smith.

2. I subscribed to "Rachel's Reviews" on my Bloglines account.
3. Did I find anything useful? Not sure but it was fun.

Week 9 #20 YouTube and Video sharing sites

YouTube has always been easy to navigate and fun to look at all the funny personal videos. I have several favorites.. the cat flushing the toilet, the montage of cats jumping, running and sliding into trouble. I took a little closer notice when my nephew starred in a home made film and posted it on YouTube called "The Mill". It was directed by a friend who is in film school during their summer vacation in the Adirondacks. The following summer they made a sequel.
Here it is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zmph93kLF8

YouTube could be used by libraries to show special services available. The library website could have a short video explaining how to get a library card or how to use a self check out machine. They could have advertisements for upcoming programs. Pictures are great learning tools and the library could use these for staff training. People surfing the net or YouTube may be drawn to library websites to find out more and be inspired to visit in person.

Week 8 # Parade of Avatars

I did create an avatar. I added it to the S drive and it appears in the Parade of Avatars.

Week 8 #19 Zoho writer

zoho
I signed up for Zoho writer. I exported an excel file which listed the Large Type circulation stats for 2006 for all branches. This is a file I had exported from Web Reporter. I will try to add it to this blog? No can do. Nothing happened. Second try- no longer able to use excel so I tried to import a word document. This worked and I save the doc in Zoho. Then tried to publish on blog- no can do. Can's seem to get to my blog. Oh well- At least I exported and saved a doc. Maybe next week...

Week 8 #18 Social Networking

MySpace
I found two links to HCPL that were interesting in MySpace. One was from "fleaSha" who wrote that she just found downloadable audio books free off the Harris County library website. Her myspace site listed lots of books she read and liked along with a cute bookshelf of cover art from a site called Shelfari. I clicked on it and was taken to fleaSha's Shelfari site which listed more of her book favorites.
Then I found Dale MacNeil's personal website. He included his a entire resume of jobs including Octavia Fields Branch Librarian from 1988 to 1994. He had a flicker global map of places he has lived and would like to visit.
xanga- I looked up Bob Dylan and found some ramblings about Masters of War and Ballad of a Thin Man being as relevant today as when he wrote it. I could have told them that. Sometimes you read something and you know it will be timeless.
Facebook- I found my niece's website or at least her picture. I think her website was blocked to just friends.
I scanned myopera, cats and dogsster..I noticed Grace has used these on her blog.
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