Wrapping Up

My favorite parts of the OCL Web Challenge were using LibraryThing, getting a better understanding of "tagging", and learning about new resources.

My least favorite part of the Web Challenge was Twitter. I do not like to share information about myself, let alone pictures! I am never sure what to write (that would be of interest to someone else). I am glad to have an understanding of Twitter and Facebook, but do not see myself truly using them at this time.

I can see Wikis being used at Lakewood for community dinners, etc. I would like to use Picnik for flyers. I have used the Google dictionary feature with patrons. WorldCat is an excellent resource for patrons and staff.

I would like to share Picnik with my family.

ListenNJ

ListenNJ is great. This is a wonderful service to provide. It was easy to use. I only wish more of the titles were able to be burned to a CD. I usually do audio books in the car. Until books are IPod compatible, I don't know how much I will use it. This could be really great if a student has a book to read, is under a time crunch, and the library is closed.

Podcasts

Podcasting is fun, although I prefer audio to video. The delays in buffering can be quite irritating sometimes. I watched a travel vodcast? about the Grand Canyon, where they were talking about the Mountain Lion. (I do have to say the buffering time was much better than the "Wedding Dance" video on YouTube). The podcast itself was OK; however, it was very fast to load, the sound was good, and was free!

I have listened to a Rick Steves podcast from an IPod on the way to Canada with my nephew. This was great, as we have very different tastes in music. I did try to find one of his podcasts on podcast.com, but got no results.

It is really cool to have so many options at your fingertips without delays.

Delicious

Tagging is very interesting. I searched "Delicious" for Hawaii. I got travel information, as well as a Hawaiian newspaper. I then added travel to my search to refine it. I sometimes find with tagging, I get some unusual hits, some of which are good, that I may not have thought of for a tag. I like the idea of free form tagging.

Delicious could be useful to keep booklists. These could be divided by genre. We would have to agree on tags, so that everyone would be able to find "our" lists. This could also be useful for craft projects. It could be tagged by ages, etc.

I did a search for "series “and found a nice site of juvenile series and sequels. (www.mcpl.lib.mo.us/readers/series/juv/).

Tagging

On LibraryThing I looked up several books. For "The Invention of Hugo Cabret", there was a tag for picture book. I can understand why they added this, but as a librarian, I would not consider this a true picture book. I was surprised that there was no tag for "drawings", however illustrated was included. Freeform can have its drawbacks, but you can also be helpful, as tags can be creative For example, in "The Maze of Bones", one of the tags is puzzles. I would not have thought of that.

Wikis (part 2)

Sandbox would be very useful for Lakewood's Thanksgiving dinner for the community. It would help to avoid duplication of items, and not put the responsibility of compiling the list into one person's hands.

Wikis (part 1)

I found the Library Success wiki to be helpful. I especially liked the ideas of where to donate discarded books.

I use wikipedia somewhat often. I use it when people need a series order, as well as for looking for information about a certain town, etc.

I like how when something is inaccurate, it is usually corrected (as far as I know). I love that wikipedia has links within the article. It was interesting to look at the history tab. I never went into this. I did not know that you could contact the contributor. I never thought about it.

Somewhere in the history tab I saw a something posted by vampireken about TR being haunted.

Interesting.

Picnik

Picnik is really fun. It would be fun to display posters and flyers in the library. Kids would get a kick out of seeing a photo of themselves at a program that is all doctored up.

As for using Picnik with customers, I don't know how much we would use it in the children's area. They may enjoy using Picnik themselves, if online games do not take priority.

I thought it was really cool to see the photo from different angles.

Picnik would be a lot of fun to use to manipulate photos for a family photo card!

Google Docs

Google docs is really cool. I know how frustrating it can be to have many versions of the same document. I can see this being a big time saver.

This may be useful for preparing my monthly narrative for the juvenile department. Co-workers can add any program details that I could pick from to prepare the final report. This could be useful as details can be added immediatley. I'm afraid that if everyone added to it for the final report, it could get far too long.

Twitter

I dion't like Twitter. I don't find it to be particularly "user friendly". I tried to search some people (without much luck), so I decided to try Johnny Depp (aka-My Johnny). A lot of hits came up, and I was not quite sure which one was "his", if he has one!

Facebook

Although I am not on Facebook, I find it very intriguing. I prefer person or phone contact, and really don't want to spend my free time in front of a computer. I have only used Facebook to try to see a picture of someone.

Facebook is fascinating. It is definately changing interaction for people that I know who use it. People have looked up old classmates and gotten back in touch or have made new friends. I have only used it to try to see a picture of someone.

The privacy issue seems to be pretty well covered in Facebook. It was interesting to me that you can remove yourself from Google. I would never have though about it, but the person that I looked at on facebook was actually found through Google.

Intersting.

NetLibrary

I did not find NetLibrary very easy to use. Showing a customer how to use it does not seem that it would be very easy or quick. It may need to be a structured time to teach a customer. It could aslo be confusing to a customer that an e-book can be "in use" and may not be available when they want the material.

WorldCat

WorldCat is a great resource. I searched the book Pinkilicious and was able to find that it was also done as a musical. I had no idea. This is one of my favorite books to read aloud. It is interesting to see how many langauges the book was published in. This could be helpful to us and patrons. I have one patron who uses WorldCat to search movies in Persian.

This is a great additional resource to find materials that can be acquired through ILL. It is also nice to see the distance of the libraries that hold the title. This could be very useful if the report is due tomorrow!

Also, good to see where you can purchase the book and what it will cost. I never heard of World Books, although they were the most expensive.

LibraryThing

LibraryThing is very interesting to use. I searched for apples, juvenile. I got a message that nobody has mde that tagmash before. It said to wait while it recalculated. It did pull up a list. There were some unique spellings of juvenile that it pulled up (juvenil, juvenille). It did pull up a list with apple books and others that were just juvenile and not related to apples. Library Thing will be useful to try some new titles for storytime. I am very excited about the area to save a list of books to read. I can get rid of my snippets of paper!

link: http://www.librarything.com/home/Terheeb

Beyond Google

I tried carrot2. I really like the topic tree. I searched "mouse". Under the rat/mouse heading, I found a rat Mouse Club of America. If anyone is interested, there is a Bay Area chapter. Eeeeeek!

It was very interesting to use the google-vs-bing search engine. I have to say, I liked the Bing display better. It is nice to have the topics organized. I searched Hungary. Categories included maps, weather, Hungary facts, etc.

I will definately use Bing and Carrot2 in the future. It makes searching your "category"much more organized. This will be great for our patron to know as an additional resource.

P.S. - I showed a patron how to use the Google dictionary feature, but also gave her a dictionary in print.

This was a fun exercise. Thx!

Google Advanced Searching

Many of the sites seem to be the same with searching and limiting to nj. gov and searching within the NJ website. However, I did get the 15 page PDF when I did a google search limiting to NJ gov sites. I did not see it when I searched within the NJ state website.

For patrons, I feel that it is important that they learn about the domain names to be effective evaluators of information. I had patrons in the past that wanted to get reviews of appliances from the internet. I did explain that a .com may not be the best choice, many will try to sell yiou things. I instead directed them to use the consumer reports db in Power Library.

Google Power User

I went into Google Labs and looked at Google Trends. I searched Halloween costumes, Starbucks, and Lakewood. Searching Lakewood by regions was interesting. The highest searched areas for LAK (1) US, (2) was Israel. Give Google Trends a try, it's a lot of fun.

I have used the dictionary in google in the past. Just for fun, I put in Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. I am anxious to try 800-GOOG-411. I just have to figure out someplace to go!

RSS

RSS is really cool. My first experience was listening to a Rick Steves broadcast with my nephew on the way to Canada. For the Web Challenge, I subscribed to Meg Cabot's Diary and Unshelved.

Unshelved is a lot of fun, thank goodness for book drops! I did click on a link in Unshelved regarding Sam Wyly and it was a dead link.

I also signed up for "Meg Cabot's Diary". It is really neat to see the personal side of Meg Cabot. Her husband's cat has a very interesting name!

Google Reader

RSS is really cool. My first experience was listening to a Rick Steves broadcast with my nephew on the way to Canada. I subscribed to Meg Cabot's Diary and Unshelved. Unshelved is a lot of fun, thank goodness for book drops! I did click on a link in Unshelved regarding Sam Wyly and it was a dead link.

It is really neat to see the personal side of Meg Cabot. Her husband's cat has a very interesting name!

Web 2.0

I had fun playing with the "Farecast" site. I know a lot of people who have used online sources to book trips and hotels, but I have never used them. It was interesting. I will use this resource in the future when deciding on travel plans. Maybe 2010??


I went onto Revolution.com and found a great recipe for an after school snack: Cherry-Almomnd Snack Mix.

I read in the herbs and supplements section that there is supportive evidence that ginger reduces the severity and duration of chemotherapy-induced nausea. I thought this was interesting. I would personally be skeptical of taking herbal supplements, but it might be worth asking a doctor about.

In the 10 foods that should be in every man's fridge I did not know taht frozen OJ has more vitamin C content than the carton.

So much info, so little time!

I really liked the site upcoming.com. I searched Bucks Couty and found that there is going to be a "Jim Hensons' Fantastic World" exhibit at the James A. Michener Art Museum. I want to make this one!

Camping

I went camping for the first time in 22 years this past July. I have to say, I was in a pop-up camper.. it could have been worse. We got a late start on a six hour ride. The truck almost didn't make it pulling the camper. After the pop-up was set up, the door fell off. It was a rainy, muddy muss. We went to go the the K-Mart, but discovered that it was no longer there. Used a GPS to find a Wal-Mart. When we got back, one of rain/shade tents collapsed from the weight of the water. Can't wait to try tent camping!