Week 8, Thing #19 - LibraryThing

I've had a good time using Library Thing. I enjoyed seeing the lists of others who had read the same books that I had. I can see that this could become quite addictive. I was amazed to see how many groups there are associated with Library Thing. I joined the Children's Fiction group. I also invited my daughter to join Library Thing. She often is looking for recommendations for her book group.

I'm thinking of also starting a library that lists the childrens' books that I always recommend - or should I do that in a blog, or a wiki, or which of the many tools we've looked at in the past few weeks?!?!? I really have to start thinking about the right tool for the information that I want to put out there.

Week 7, Thing #16 - Wikis

I've spent quite a bit of time looking at wikis, and then reading the blogs of those who have already done this. I appreciated the suggestions that many of you made as to how to use a wiki in a library setting. It seems like most librarians who have started wikis are in secondary schools. I would like to see more from elementary schools.

I think that until I try starting a wiki, I won't really know how much I like it and what the advantages and disadvantages are. I do like the idea of a book lovers wiki. I'd love to start one for students to add their summer reading selections to, along with their reviews and recommendations. I'm not sure how this would work out for elementary students. A few people suggested starting a wiki for library staff or volunteers and this sounds intriguing to me. I don't know how comfortable volunteers would feel adding to it.

I enjoyed the article, "Using Wikis to Create Online Communities" with all its excellent suggestions. Recently the librarians in my district have been working on long range planning documents as well as plans for the "Optimum School Library" (requested by the superintendent). We had several meetings and I see that we could have set this up as a wiki and worked on it collaboratively. I will be on the look-out for other opportunities to use this technology. I will be on leave for 2 months soon and perhaps I can use some of that time to start a wiki. As I said, until I use it myself, I won't really be able to evaluate its usefulness for me.

Week 6, Thing #15 The Future of Libraries

I decided to take this class because I felt like I had fallen behind in the technology world. I didn't know what RSS or del.icio.us were referring to, when I came upon them. I was afraid that if I didn't catch up, in 20 or 30 years I'd be like my mother who can't figure out how to reset her microwave clock when the power goes off. I figured it was too early to start falling behind.

When I read the article from OCLC, it confirmed what I'd been thinking, you really can't afford to fall behind in something that is affecting so many parts of our lives. Web 2.0 is the center of a new digital lifestyle that changes our culture and touches every aspect of our lives. It drives everything we do. I actually knew that - I keep my laptop on the kitchen table and whenever I need to know anything, a substitution for buttermilk, or what time the movie starts, or how to get somewhere, I find it readily. I just hadn't quite put it into those words for myself.

The concept of the Icebergs definitely raised some interesting points. I was especially interested in the just in case library collection. Luckily, I work in an elementary school library and it is still very necessary to have books on anything and everything because you can never anticipate what budding young learners will need a book about. I very much enjoy buying just in case books and I'm always thrilled when someone is excited by them. However, I can see that secondary school librarians aren't compelled today to have something about everything.

Another iceberg of interest was the idea that the services need to be fixed, not our patrons. I often am frustrated with our online catalog that requires students to spell authors or tiles or subject correctly, otherwise it looks like we don't have what they are looking for. One could say that perhaps they will learn to spell better this way, but in fact, they just assume we don't have it. I think in this case the service needs to be fixed. Couldn't there be a message, Google does it, saying Did you mean ...

I was wondering how Library 2.0 would affect elementary school libraries, other than in research, since in the younger grades, the book is really the attraction. In Christopher Harris's article in SLJ ( May 2006), Say good-bye to your mother's library, he makes a number of suggestions, such as using LibraryThing.com, blogs and podcasts to facilitate book discussions and booktalks. I was glad when he said,
the heart of the concept, though, is not about the tools, but rather the communities and the conversations that they make possible. He also feels that the flexible vs. fixed schedule debate will come to an end in Library 2.0 as services extend beyond the walls (if you have them, I don't) of the library. He has a number of great ideas and I highly recommend his article.

Week 6, Thing #14 Technorati

I would have to say that Technorati has been my least favorite site to explore thus far. I have really taken to Del.icio.us and have cleaned up by bookmarks, added tags and made them uniform to avoid duplication, observed others' tags, and made decisions on what to share. When I looked at Technorati, it just seemed like overload. The advertising on the page and the numerous links on topics I wasn't interested in, turned me off. I did do some searches on blog posts, tags and the blog directory and much preferred the results in the latter two. Without them, Technorati would be totally impossible. I'm glad I know it exists but I suspect that at this time, I will not be spending much time there. I think that by using Del.icio.us for my own bookmarks, I learned much more about the need for effective tagging.

At this time, with this blog, I do not think that anyone outside of this class would be interested in reading it. It's possible that in the future as I create another blog, I would consider wanting it to be part of a Technorati tag search. Right now, there is way too much to read out there.

Week 6, Thing #13

I began my del.icio.us investigation by trying to watch the video but that link didn't seem to work, so I decided to take the plunge and open an account. This was easy to do, though the home page did look intimidating at first with all those tags. After I opened an account, I did a search on Google and found some others had posted tutorials, but I'd already figured out what they had to say.

I imported the del.icio.us button and tag icon onto my desktop. I use Firefox so I used their method, it's a bit different for Explorer, I think. Now I was all set, except I didn't have any bookmarks, so I imported the bookmarks that I have stored on my computer. This was easy but did take a long time for the import. I thought I was just importing one folder's worth, just to see how it would go, but it turns out that I imported all of them. This amounted to 56 pages of bookmarks (10 per page). I would recommend weeding your bookmarks before you do this import.

When you import them, it uses the name of the folder you have them stored in for the tag. I realized that I'd like additional tags and started editing each one, adding tags and choosing whether I want to share my bookmarks. Sometimes it was difficult to decide on a good tag. If others had bookmarked that site, I could see what they had chosen for tags. This really helped. Another thing to get used to is moving through your pages of bookmarks. They are arranged in the order they were added so to go backwards, you click on "earlier" and to go forwards, you click on "later". Somehow, this was counter-intuitive for me.

As you can imagine, it would take some time to edit 560 of these, so I abandoned editing quickly and started weeding my bookmarks. Many of the links no longer existed and I didn't care about others so I got it way down, but I'm nowhere near finished. It is kind of addictive to organize these, add tags, see what others are using for tags, see what other bookmarks they have, and then you get distracted by the other great websites you're finding. Clearly, this will be an ongoing process, since I have been saving bookmarks for years. Happy is the person who is just starting out with fresh bookmarking! By the way, bookmarking new sites is a snap - when you want to bookmark a site, you just click on the Tag icon and a box pops up and you put in the tags you want.

Right now, I'm happy to have my bookmarks online because I will be in Zurich for 2 months this spring and now will have access to my bookmarks on whatever computer I use there. I haven't had time to think of library applications yet, but I'm sure I will. I'm anxious to see how you plan to use this in your libraries. I had fun with del.icio.us (though I do have to think about how to spell it and put the periods in, every time I type it - thank goodness for the icon on my toolbar). Next I have to learn how to bundle the tags. So much to learn, so little time.

Week 5, Thing #12 Rollyo

I had not been aware of Rollyo before, but now I'm sure I'll make great use of it. For starters, I made a Searchroll called Zurich Travel. This is because my husband will be on sabbatical in Zurich for 2 months this spring and I will be joining him. I will want to do some searching on various aspects of life there and this will make it easier. I found out that I should only add sites very specific to Zurich. For example, I tried adding a Fodors.com search on Zurich but only the general Fodors.com site came through. That happened with several of my original search sites so I had to delete them . I still managed to find several I wanted to add. Rollyo has been a great find.
I found the site a bit awkward at first. Once I registered it became easier to work with my searchroll. I enjoyed looking at the searchrolls that others have made also.

I can imagine using Rollyo in setting up search sites for students involved in research projects. This will limit their searching to useful sites that I can preselect. I'm looking forward to using it in this way.

Week 5, Thing #11 Exploring Web 2.0

I went to the Web 2.0 Awards list to look at some award-winning sites. There were enough there to keep me fascinated. I tried to limit myself to just a few but will come back and explore even more as time allows.

Medstory, a health site, was very comprehensive and allowed you to drill into specific sites having to do with the health topic you were looking for. You could keep refining your search. Right off the bat, if you typed in a condition, you were given drugs used to treat it, procedures, clinical trials, articles from news media as well as research articles, people involved in research, etc. I wished that in the research articles, my keywords would have been highlighted in order to find them easily. I think students researching health topics would find excellent sources here.

I tried out Kayak for awhile, looking for some cheap flights and I thought that the site was easy to use. I liked being able to zoom in on flight times, layover duration and trip duration. I thought it was good being able to see all the comparison of prices of other sites. It seemed very user-friendly. In the end, the flights weren't cheap enough for what I was planning to do, but that's not kayak's fault. One annoyance was that every time I went back to try another set of dates, it would wipe out my destination airport. The application here is purely a personal one, not for a library setting.

I also tried out Guess-the-Google and found it to be a very clever and addictive game. It moves very quickly. It's a little frustrating because, if you don't guess the answer, they don't give it to you. They only give you the starting letter It's fun to see the top scores of day and you can enter your's, if you want. It might be stretching it, but it would be a fun way for students to practicing keyword identification and making connections.

I went to Ning and looked at the various social networks. Some just have a couple of people, some haven't really gotten off the ground. I searched on some topics that I could be interested in and found some groups but at this time, I just don't have the time to join one of them. However, it is good to know how to track them down.

I played the Traveler IQ Challenge and thought it was fun and let you practice your geography skills. This would be great for the students in my school since they are very into the National Geography Bee each year. As a part of this exercise, I practiced adding this widget to my blog. They say you can add it to your website if you copy their html code, which I did. The problem is that their text color is pale yellow and doesn't show up well. Their widget conditions say you can't alter their test. Any ideas on how to fix this? I also don't know how to change the color in their html code.

IQ Traveler Challenge is brought to you by TravelPod, the Web's Original Travel Blog ( part of the TripAdvisor Media Network )

Week 5, Thing #10 Image Generators

I had a great time with the Lederhosen Dance Generator. The directions are in German, which makes it challenging. There was something similar going around before Christmas, with dancing elves. I had made those for friends, using their pictures, and they all enjoyed them. This one was more fun because you could mix together various dances. I made one of my son, and my granddaughter loved seeing her uncle dancing. She watched it over and over. If you want to watch it, click HERE, then just wait for him to start.

I also tried out the Chinese Name Generator. We have a Chinese language program in my school, starting with kindergarten. I think this would be fun for the students and teachers.

I briefly looked a few others but these are all time-consuming distractions, so I decided to move on to other things. I hadn't known how to add links to these posts so I'm glad to have gotten that down. That's the thing I really learned.