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!