A new song about librarians

http://addywillknow.pbwiki.com/

Overdrive, Netlibrary, etc.

I have never listend to an entire audio book. I even had trouble with the Stephen King audio release, Blood and Smoke, and I am a huge King fan. So, I doubt I will make it through the title I download, but I will try.

At Dennis'recommendation, I went straight to Netlibrary. I was able to find a title of interest in the horror section and check it out. Unfortunately, I was told I didn't have enough space on my computer at Miller to download the book. I will try again from home and report back.

EDIT: Book downloaded successfully.

Podcasts

Of the three search tools listed, I liked podcastalley the best. Very easy to use and the easiest one to use to subscribe via my Google Reader. I subscribed to Libvibe and SimonSays, a Simon and Schuster poscast with author interviews. I like the idea of podcasts and can see how they can be useful, I'm just afraid I am not patient enough to listen to one unless it grabs my attention from the beginning. If I see a podcast is longer than 5 minutes, I won't even attempt to listen. I guess I have a short attention span.

Flickr revisted

I recently spent a week in NYC. If you are bored enough to look at my vacation photos they are here:

www.flickr.com/photos/jalansimpson

Zoho revisited

 

This is a post written on Zoho.  Last time I tried Zoho I had trouble getting to the site.  Normally, I would not have come back and just been happy with google docs but then I received a comment from someone at Zoho asking me to try again.  Everything worked fine this time and it seems easy to use.

 

Youtube

Below is a video from my friend Brent's Youtube channel. He is the youth pastor at my church. The video is a group of our students dancing on a roof in Alaska. I really enjoy youtube and will be doing a film festival at Miller in the spring for teens and college students to screen their personal short films.

If you want to see some really funny videos go to www.funnyordie.com and watch the Pearl videos with Will Ferrell.

Pandora Radio

I am currently listening to my Bowling For Soup station on Pandora. It's a great way to experience new artists you might never hear otherwise. It also allows me to say if I dislike a song they play so they can tweak my preferences. Now I just need to actually remember the names of the bands I like.

Thing 18

This post was created on google docs. I tried to go to Zoho Write first, but could not connect to the site. I can see the use for the online documents as I work in two different locations and used to email documents to myself so I could work on them from anywhere. Now I can just save them on google and work on them from anywhere.

It's also a good way to create posts for a blog. I get interrupted a lot when trying post to my blog. Using google to create the posts I can save them and continue later before I publish. I will use the interruptions as an excuse for the lack of creativity in my posts so far.

Thing 17

I've added my blog to the favorite blogs page on the Learning 2.0 Sandbox Wiki. Very easy to do. I would have added to another page, but none really looked like pages where additions were welcome and I didn't feel the need to start my own page.

Wiki's

I have a little bit of experience with wikis. I'm sure everyone has been to wikipedia. Wikipedia is a great starting point when researching a subject you know nothing about, but I wouldn't use it as a primary source for academic work.

Of the wikis I looked at from the 23 Things site I enjoyed the Princeton Library book review site the most. Howard County could easily start a similar wiki to allow staff and customers to share their thoughts on books they have read.

I've also found wikis useful after attending conferences. MLA and ALA both had conference wikis that enabled me to have access to all I learned w/o keeping track of a lot of paper. It also allowed me to see the information from the sessions I could not attend.

Perspectives on 2.0

I didn't particularly like the video "The Machine is Us/ing Us" because it tried to make Web 2.0 all about the code and tags. That is not what Web 2.0 is about. Web 2.0 is about connection. Most people probably stopped the video when it started on HTML.

It was interesting to read in "Away from Icebergs" about the end of the "just in case" theory of libraries considering I wrote a paper against that library model 15 years ago. I guess I was ahead of my time.

It's good that librarians and library systems are trying to learn about this stuff. We need to move along with society to stay relevant. Teens tell me that I need to be on myspace or facebook in order to communicate with them. They do not check an "email address". They check for messages on myspace. My niece spends all of her time texting, using IM and checking her myspace. I stay current with her life by doing the same things. Libraries need to be willing to use these same things to reach the teens in their area. A bulletin post on myspace(assuming you get the teens to add you) will reach many more teens than a blurb in the paper or in a library newsletter. IM reference services will help more teens than librarians behind a desk even if those teens are in the library. It is especially helpful to those teens who are too shy to approach the desk in person.

I hope this training leads to more than just HCL knowing what the customers are doing. I hope it leads to HCL using Web 2.0 along with the customers in a way that is beneficial to both sides.

Del.icio.us and Techorati

I have to say that Del.icio.us made my eyes glaze over and I had to force myself to stay with it. I don't use bookmarks a lot as it is, so I didn't see much use for a site like this. I guess if you are one to use bookmarks a lot it would be of use to you.

I have always liked technorati. I was using it before I started the 23 things. I have now registered an account and claimed my blog. I now know how to add a tag to my blog and will start using them regularly. Maybe I can move up in the ranks of popularity with my blog. My friend Rob in Cleveland already has an authority of 35. I need to catch up.