Week 7: #17 Technology

What a perfect week to blog about techology! As of this blog posting, Horizon has been down for three days. We apologize to our customers and assist them the best we can. In spite of it all, they have been really understanding. We can't help what we can't control. I feel really bad for the circulation staff who has cartloads of books to check in when the system comes back up. Technology affects each of us daily at home, work, and school. The majority of the time, it makes our lives easier. But when it fails, we suffer greatly because we have become so dependent on it. When the library's system crashed, I was reminiscing back to the days of card catalogs. I remember when computers first entered the library scene. I was reluctant to use them because I thought they would change everything traditional I had grown to love about libraries. I can admit now that it was change in the right direction. Even with the problems we've had over the past few days, I wouldn't want to go back to card catalogs. We must trust that the system will be up and running soon. In the meantime, we'll roll with the punches, laugh about it, make adjustments, serve our customers, and move on.

Week 7: #16 Wiki

I'm glad to say that this exercise was very easy. My daughter uses a wiki for one of her classes, so it is not entirely new to me. I was hesitant to enter my name and email address to log in because I thought we were allowed to be anonymous throughout the iHCPL training. After logging in, I placed my blog on the favorite blogs page. Wikis are great for groups of people who want to share information with each other or the public. They can serve specific purposes like the ALA 2007 Conference and my daughter's class. Or, like the St. Joseph Public Library did, a library can create a wiki for the public by categorizing books, links and other information by subject. Patrons find this kind of arrangement very user friendly.

Week 6: #15 Library 2.0 & Web 2.0

As the library constantly evolves to meet the needs of its patrons, library employees must be knowledgeable about the technology in order to assist them. Furthermore, the tools we provide to our customers must be designed with the user in mind. The five perspectives on Library 2.0 and Web 2.0 were very interesting. I found John J. Riemer's "To Better Bibliographic Services" especially relevant. Customers want a user-friendly catalog that gives them unambiguous results that match their searches; otherwise they will become frustrated and won't use them. They especially like being able to do things for themselves, like place their own holds and renew their items online. Allowing customers to leave feedback by posting comments or ratings is a way for them to share their experiences with other users. I recently discovered that Pasadena Public Library uses a ratings feature similar to Netflix:

http://halos.halan.lib.tx.us/screens/ratings.html


Can HCPL incorporate something like this into its catalog?

Week 6: #14 Technorati

I think my brain is feeling overloaded with all of the new technologies we've been introduced to these past several weeks. Technorati is a tool used to search blog posts. I got over 6,000 results when I typed in "Learning 2.0" into the keyword search--way too many! I was more pleased with my results for "ihcpl" in the basic search. I like how you can view posts, blogs, videos, and photos related to your results by clicking the corresponding tabs. I decided not to "claim" my blog because I don't want to create another online account. I can see how useful Technorati can be when searching for blogs with certain content.

Week 6: #13 Tagging and Del.icio.us

It's not hard to see the value of Del.icio.us. There have been times when I've used a computer away from home and wanted to look at a particular website, only to find myself thinking, "I have it bookmarked at home!" I am definitely going to set up an account.

With Del.icio.us, your bookmarked sites are mobile. How cool is that?! As mentioned in the Us.ef.ul beginners guide (which does give very useful tips to the novice user), it would be great for students doing research for the same reason. They can bookmark the sites they are using, and then use computers in different locations without losing their information. Of course, this service would benefit library patrons too, many of whom don't own their own computers. It's just another great service that I didn't know existed until now. Actually, I had heard of it before, but didn't know what it was or how it worked. I'm learning so much!!!

Week 5: #11 Library Elf

I attempted to get onto Library Elf this morning and was not able to. I was relieved to find out through the email we received that the problem was not my computer or my connection. Luckily, a coworker (who was a little bit ahead of me in the iHCPL program) showed me her Library Elf account a few days ago. It's really neat, so when the site is working again, I will definitely check it out and blog about it. It seems like a service that I would use.

Week 5: #11 Library Thing

I couldn't figure out how to get a nice little widget on my sidebar, so here is what I wound up with. I can see how LibraryThing would be useful to people who read a lot. I'm not sure that I will use this much after this exercise. It's yet another log-in and password to remember.

Avatar me!

Oh my gosh! I'm so cute as an avatar! This one was just for fun.

Week 5: #10 Image Generators

DW motivator poster
Originally uploaded by Tinkerbell's Flickr photos

There were so many to choose from, I used Flickr's Motivator for this exercise. It was so easy! I uploaded a photo from my computer, changed the color of the background, added the words, and wa-lah -- my poster was created! I was able to link the image to my Flickr account and then blog it from there. Now I'm going to go play with some of the other image generators.

Week 4: #9 Finding Feeds

So much information, so little time! I've never really experimented with feeds before these exercises. I guess this is supposed to help simplify our lives, but I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with all of the "stuff" out there. I viewed the four feed finders suggested on the iHCPL training blog. I wasn't really sure what I should be looking at or looking for. My initial thoughts are these:

Feedster's website was colorful, but the posts on the homepage seemed dated (a week or more old), although it was supposed to be "new posts on popular topics." When I put in a word to search for feeds or blogs, I often got results that were completely unrelated or got no hits at all.

I liked that Topix was news-oriented, and the layout of the webpage was easy to navigate. When I input a search topic, I received relevant hits.

Syndic8 looked very confusing, but I wanted to see what it had to offer. It had a very busy looking homepage with some info that I could have lived without (10 newest users ?), so I ignored everything else and went straight for the "search for feeds" box. I got a lot of hits, and I liked that it had links to all of the different newsreader accounts, including Bloglines, so you can add a feed immediately.

Technorati is well laid out in an easy-to-navigate format with very current posts on the homepage. However, it was updating so rapidly, I almost had trouble keeping up! I got a lot of hits for the searches that I did, as well as related tags that really helped expand my searches.

I've learned a lot this week. It's easy to become overwhelmed with all of the different sources for obtaining information out there. Newsreaders like Bloglines keep our favorite feeds and blogs organized.

Week 4: #8 RSS & Newsfeeds

Ahh, yet another online account to keep up with. This was easy once I got the hang of it. I had the tutorial open in another window/tab so I could go step-by-step. Some of the feeds I added were news related (national and local), Houston's weather forecast, and a few iHCPL participants.

I can certainly see its usefulness. You don't have to go to each site throughout the day. Bloglines updates your feeds when something new has been added, so all you have to do is keep up with one site. However, I subscribed to iHCPL's blog and it was not updated with the Week 4: #9 assignment on Bloglines as of the time of my writing this post. It's on the main blog, but was not showing that a new post was available to view on Bloglines. Is there a lag-time?