Yea! I Made it to Thing #23

Even though this seemed like a long and sometimes scary journey, I must say I have learned a great deal about newer technology tools. Some of the tools will be useful in a library setting - Just the other day our library director asked me to hep her set up a blog for our library when I finish the Nebraska Learns 2.0.
I think my favorites were Instant Messaging, Flickr, and LibraryThing. I even suggested LibraryThing to a library patron the other night. She, like other patrons, say they think they should keep a list of books they've read, so they don't check out the same book again. I told her maybe using LibraryThing to list books she'd read would be helpful. I will suggest this to others who talk about making a list of books they've read or want to read, depending on whether they use the computer a lot or not.
I am very thankful that this class was offered - many of these were things that I had heard about, and knew people who used them, but because of my "busy lifestyle", I just never took the time to explore them. My 15 year old keeps telling me that I need to get on FaceBook, because my 2 younger sisters are on, but that never was enough to get me interested. You would think that I would have gotten on FaceBook because our oldest son in Washington has an account, and used to have time to post pictures of our grandson in his album. Now that I'm considering it, he has gotten too busy to have time to put pictures on very often!
And if you offer another discovery class like this in the future , I most likely would participate - I learned so much from this one. Thanks for offering the class Allana, Christa, Michael and Susan, and thanks for the help you offered along the way. (I would probably have asked for more help, but knew you weren't up when I was working on many of the lessons!)
Keri Anderson

Thing #22

Podcasts - not my thing. I took a look at 2 of the podcast directories, but couldn't seem to find anything I liked. Then I looked at the library related podcasts suggested that I could get into. And I even checked NETV and Nebraska.TV for podcasts. When I did find a podcast I wanted to put into my Bloglines account, it wouldn't let me. I tried several times, different ways (and even with the help of my IT knowledgeable husband), so I tried to find podcasts through Google. I finally got Crochet Side podcasts into my Bloglines account. Yahoo!

Thing #21 - YouTube

I have received YouTube videos from others a few times in my email, but had not set up an account for myself. Well, I just did that - they kept telling me my password did not work, and I finally got it reset. Based on a video that a friend had sent me, I searched for Il Divo and found several videos. The one she sent me was Il Divo singing "Amazing Grace" which was just that - amazing! I couldn't embed this so you could enjoy it, but I was going to try to embed Il Divo and Celine Dion singing "I Believe in You" - as you can guess I couldn't get it to work. Guess I'll have to work on this. I also would suggest that if you like that, look for videos of Celine Dion and Josh Groban. He is one of my favorites.
Anyway, I like some things about the site - like many things you just have to pick and choose. I think YouTube is accessed by a lot of people in libraries, but I don't know of too many who put their own videos on.

Thing #20

Wow! So many choices - of course I had to check out several categories, rather than just one like was suggested. How else was I to know what was available? Under the Books category, I liked the 1st place tool - Lulu. Because I have a couple children's books I wrote down in the last year (that just might be fun to publish for my kids/grandkids) this looked like a good sight. You can publish with no set-up fees, and choose hardback, paperback, photo album, calendar, cookbook, etc. Then you decide the cost. I'd have to check it out, but it sounds interesting to me. Maybe it could be useful in the library if someone came in and said they were writing short stories or children's stories for their kids, or wanted a way to publish a cookbook for their organization's fund-raiser or their kids for Christmas.
I also looked at the 1st place tool in Geneology - MyHeritage; Zango in the Games & Entertainment category; and Craigslist in the Classifieds & Directories category. I'll probably explore these more later.

Thing #19

I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel - I kept thinking I might not make it. But now I have joined Google Docs (instead of Zoho Writer, since I could sign in with my Google account info). It was really easy, and I decided to accomplish something that I would need to do soon anyway - make an agenda for my Extension Club's February meeting. I had a lot to put in, since I won't be able to go, and needed enough details to be clear to the others. So I did not publish it to this blog, because it would be uninteresting to others reading my blog.
I want to explore more on Google Docs, such as Picasa Photos. Who knows? I really liked this. I like that I can save my documents online and access them from anywhere with Internet access and not have to save them on a USB flash drive. This could be beneficial to students who sometimes forget to save them to a flash drive, leave it at home when they need it in class, or have to borrow someone else's.

Thing #18

This was fun! I created an account on the Nebraska Learns 2.0 wiki and added my blog to the Favorite Blogs page. From there, I added to the Favorite Movies and Favorite Vacation Spots. Maybe another time I'll add to others, like Favorite Books and Favorite Music.
I really liked this experience. Thanks.

Thing #17 - Wikis

I looked at all the library wikis listed under the Discovery Exercise. I liked the Book Lovers wiki and could see how a wiki for the Annual Conference could be useful if you wanted more info on what to see and do while at the conference. It would be nice to get that info from people knowledgeable about a conference if you had never been to one, or about a city you hadn't been to before.
In one article it stated that in public libraries, where the technological skills of employees can range from high to non-existent, wikis can allow everyone the ability to develop the website, which would then reflect the imagination and good ideas of the entire organization, not just a select few "tech-savvy" people.
Ways I think our library could use a wiki would be for subject guides, and maybe for a book lovers club. I also think the use of a community wiki is a good idea to disseminate community info, but am not sure it wouldn't be better set up on the city's web page. Oh, I know we need to attract people to the library who may otherwise never visit it, but where do small libraries find the time to do this?
Using the Library Success Wiki might be a good idea, if the library staff has done something truly creative. That way libraries could look for things to help promote their libraries, or other services they might be able to use.
And I think in larger libraries, they could use a wiki to share policy and reference manuals, as well as other relevant news.