Nothing really grabbed me from the 350+ sites (picky, picky…) so I checked out Yahoo Answers, Minti, and Wiki-how. I was underwhelmed by the first two, but love wiki-how. It definitely makes for good browsing. The trick will be to remember to check it when I have a question. It also has a lot of tantalizing ‘articles that need further editing’.

I think what I will most use from this course are posting book reviews to the website, and google docs.

Web 2.0 is definitely around to stay, though at this stage it still has some kinks to work through.

Yes, the Contra Costa County library system has podcasts, at ccclib.wordpress.com, of stories read aloud. I have never listened to podcasts on an mp3 player, but have listened to old NPR shows on my home computer. I did not know about podcasts.com, and had fun exploring it.

I’m a longtime user of YouTube, and even have my own page. Since it is mostly movies of my dogs, I will spare you all the address.  I was here on a work computer when I watched the library mummy video, so it was in silence. Still, it was pretty amusing.

I think it would be cool to have occassional vodcasts on the library’s homepage, maybe showing the construciton of a new library, or a librian giving a brief intro to a new library feature. And of course, there are always youtube contests…

I made my own ning network (www.elsobrante.net.ning), and Linda Gribble joined. Also logged onto library 2.0–I assume I did the right one–it’s not a Contra Costa County network, but one that’s been around for a year, and has a ton of members.

Exploring ning I found a lot of sites like mine, with just one or 2 members. Even some of the larger one’s, like ALA’s were underwhelming, with only spardic posts. I think the only site I’d really recommend there is the 2.0 one, that we joined for this assignment.

1. Most of the events I received in my bloglines account I posted to e-vanced myself–they include the kids’ storytimes, and ‘Peter and the Wolf’ puppet show next week.

2. Yes–though I had heard RSS described plenty, actually having a bloglines account made it much clearer. This was a big gap in my 2.0 knowledge, that I’m glad to have filled.

3. I had a lot of trouble subscribing to my library’s programs. It kept rejecting my hugely-long pasted URL as invalid. Then I switched from Explorer (which displayed the source code on the programs page) to Firefox, and it worked fine.

After I set up my meebo acct I had trouble connecting with my ‘buddy’ Erica in the other room–then I thought maybe it just aggregated existing IM accounts, so I logged onto yahoo. After that we connected.

I can see some good uses for IM for libraries, as well as some potential for misuse and irritation. I think it could be really useful in larger libraries that had separate children’s and teen desks, for staff to communicate with each other. The meebo box could be always open, and then instead of picking up the phone one librarian could just type in “teen on his way over for ‘Princess Diaries”, or whatever.

I imagine there would be a good situation for patrons to IM staff, though it’s not really jumping out at me. It would be a waste to have a dedicated staff member available to answer questions all the time, and a non-dedicated staff member might not have time to chat at any time. It seems more of a hit-or-miss thing that something to be counted on. And then the anonymity might temp patrons towards abuse…

I love google docs!! I posted an image, a spreadsheet, and a picture there. Then I shared them with myself at my other e-mail address. I also opened and saved a new resume using one of their templates. This is a great tool for people who want to make documents or presentations or spreadsheets on computers that aren’t equipped with the software. Also a great way to save files when you don’t have a disk or a pen drive handy. I imagine I will be directing patrons to it now that I know how it works.

Then I started exploring what else google had to offer. Then I stopped myself–probably something to do on my own time, not at work…

Well, I did step one of adding an account to del.icio.us (elizweiss) but didn’t complete the process because that would have left a button on my work computer.

It was fun exploring the site. Yesterday a friend gave me a giant zucchini, so I searched for ’stuffed zucchini’ and came up with a long list of recipes. I’m leaning towards the one with the ground turkey.

Yum!

Here’s the URL to my flickr photostream, of the lovely El Sobrante Library:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22462677@N06/

I see that when you just link to the photostream, your previous posts aren’t visible. So you can have  a flickr account with all sorts of stuff on it, but just send the relevent set to your audience. I didn’t know that before.

I tried posting a review about a month ago, following the e-mailed instructions, and couldn’t get a picture of the jacket for my book. This time, I did the kid’s picture book Monster, don’t eat me!, and again the book jacket didn’t come up. Also, the link to the catalog didn’t work. But just now from home I tried it on my mac, and found that all the html code was visible. Through careful scrutiny, I found that one of the isbn numbers I typed was missing a numeral, and that solved the book jacket problem. Then I tried the catalog link from the book below me, which I’d copied to make my review, and discovered that it didn’t work either. The book below it did, though, and when I altered my code to look like it (either adding or removing a + sign–I forget which), voila! I have a fully functional review!!

This afternoon some nice folks from Best Buy came by the library with their x-boxes, and their wii, and the teens had a blast.