Wikis-#16

I think that Wikis sound like a great way to share information. Children's librarians could use them to share programs, fingerplays or books that worked well in storytime. I know that there has been reluctance to put storytimes on the library webpage because of questions about the attribution of fingerplays (its often hard to tell who originated them and who just just put them on their webpage). But an internal wiki could allow librarians from different branches to share ideas.


I liked the subject guides on SJCPL's website. I can see advantages and disadvantages to having a wiki as part of the library website. It would take a lot of work to keep current. And you would definitely want to look at things before they were posted. Local history sources and geneology sources would a great thing to have on a library wiki. There are a lot of people who know specialized sources that even librarians may not be aware of. And some librarians have more expertise than others, and would be able to share their sources and tips for using the sources. I like the way that SJCPL showed a source for looking up obituaries, and then put a link next to it that gave helpful hints about how to search that source.

I also like the conference wikis. It's nice to have so much information all together in one place. As long as you brought your laptop to the meeting, it would be very useful. Assuming there was wireless access available.

I also thought it was interesting that SJCPL had a list of local scholarships, with the requirements and contact people. If I was a patron, I might have been disappointed that they didn't have the actual forms, but at least it gives people an idea of what is available.

Library 2.0-#15

It will be interesting to see how libraries will evolve. I think that one of the biggest changes will be caused by the seach-inside-the-book technology. Just knowing it exists has made me a more impatient reader in some ways. Often, even in fiction, I would like to have access to it. Sometimes when I'm reading, a character will reappear, and I'll want to go back and reread the part where he was introduced. Or, when it becomes clear that an earlier event is more significant than I originally thought, I want to read about it more carefully. And I find myself longing for an edit/find button. My son, when writing college papers, said that when he wanted to quote a book, would often look for an online copy of the book so that he could quickly locate the section he wished to quote.

As much as l like the feel of curling up with a good book, I am looking forward to electronic books that are more pleasing to the senses. The idea of having lots of favorite books available without the clutter of storing them is also more appealing the older I get.

The idea of printing books on demand interests me also. You want to read an obscure book by your favorite author? Here, let me have one printed for you while you wait. I hate the idea of withdrawing books just because they aren't wildly popular. We need to encourage a child's individuality and have books to interest kids who don't think like the majority. I have often ordered out of print books from another branch or system, and recieved a decrepit looking copy and been very thankful for it, because I really wanted to read that book. Following that thought further, sometimes I wish I could just print a new cover for a book, when I know that a certain book is just what a child is looking for, and they take one look at the dreary cover picture and say "No thanks, it doesn't look interesting."

But most of all, I think that libraries of the future will be more of a resource for helping people cope with the new technology. In Havre de Grace, we had people come in wanting us to program their cell phones, download their pictures and help with other types of electronic devices. I'm relatively computer saavy and my husband more so, but we are having a very frustrating time trying to get our computer back up and running. And I think that that kind of frustration, as much as the cost of some of these technologies, is what prevents people from using them. Future libraries may need to be more like the Geek Squad, troubleshooting problems with technology.

Technorati-#14

I enjoyed Technorati and am glad to know it's there. More authors are writing blogs, and there are also other interesting subjects to be found in blogs. It makes sense to me to search blogs separately, and there are definitely interesting things to be found in blogs, and sometimes I hear about ones I would like to look for, but in general I find I need to limit the amount of time I spend rather than find ways to increase the amount of time I spend reading them.

Del.icio.us-#13

I have been struggling with Del.icio.us for a while. I had a very negative reaction to it, perhaps based on other people's comments (it seems very invasive) and perhaps based on its description as a social bookmarking site. But I have more or less gotten over it. Pat suggested I look at it as a portable favorites site and that helps. So I set up an account with a name unlike any of my other accounts and put some of my favorite book locating sites on it. If I open it at the reference I won't have to worry about the various ways favorites are configured there. I haven't been too impressed by looking at other things tagged like mine, but maybe I will find some sites that way later.

Rollyo-#12

Pat was nice enough to invite show a couple of us how to use Rollyo on her day off September 10. We experimented with a couple of searchrolls. This would have been more useful to me if I was still in Havre de Grace. Because the hospital was just down the street, we constantly had people coming in who wanted more information about the diagnosis they were just given. I had favorite medical sites I would look at to give them information. This would have simplified that search. However, I put together a science searchroll more to see how it is done than because I think I might actually use it. The science search engine Scirus is probably better than one I would put together. Perhaps a Native American or Colonial crafts seachroll would be useful here, or one based on other assignments. But for now the sites in Homework Helper are just as easy to access. It's good to know it works in case a topic arises that I think it would be useful to have my own searchroll for. http://rollyo.com/librarianne/fingerplays/

Library Thing-#11

I signed up for a Library Thing account. I cataloged 6 children's books and put tags on them. It looks like some of the other people who ctalogued those books were also children' librarians, as some of their tags looked like Storytime themes. It might be a useful (but not a fast) way to find additional books for a theme. http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php

Library blogs-#9

I deleted the online magazine from my Google Reader account since it was giving me way more articles than I would ever have time to read. I replaced it with two more KidLit blogs, giving me a total of four. I'm much more likely to read them and they have interesting ideas for books for me to read for Readers Advisories. I've been meaning to read them more and it is a convenient way to access them when I have a few spare moments.

Online Image Generator-#10

Search Engines-#7

I signed up for two beta search engines. Google is certainly an easy search engine to use and I admit to using it to answer most of my reference questions, but as much as I like it I don't think that any one organization should have so much control over information. I found Goshme on the list that was sent out of alternative search engines. http://www.goshme.com/login.jsp It differs from most meta search engines because it keeps the results from the different search engines separate. You type your search terms in the query box and it gives you a list of search engines. You can click on any one, and see what results it brings up. It brings up a number of search engines that I wouldn't have thought of using. (And I found a new squirrel fingerplay for my storytime next month). But it lists some search engines that didn't seem relevant, and which returned zero results. But it is still in the beta stage so maybe that will be worked out later. Definitely worth trying. You do have to set up an account to use it while it is still in the beta stage. I learned a lot from reading the white paper that they posted. It talks about a number of specialized search engines that look in interesting.

The other search engine I signed up for is Powerset, which was written up in this morning's Baltimore Sun. http://www.powerset.com/ It is a natural language search engine. It is very new. You also have to register to use it. They said they are admitting new users slowly and will issue an invitation at some future date. So I have not yet been able to try it out.

Hakia is another natural language search engine. Also beta, but you don't have to register to try it out. http://www.hakia.com/ It will be interesting to try out. The newspaper article said that one of the drawbacks to the natural language search engines is that slight changes in the wording can bring up different results.

Flickr Fun-#6

I made a calendar with a picture from a mountain in Scotland using bighugelabscom/flickr. It looks very nice. When our home computer is up and running I may do more months and print out the calendar pages.

Flickr Redux #5

Garden behind Hill Top Beatrix Potter's late 17th century farmhouse where she wrote many of her stories
Originally uploaded by valencia4321

I have returned to Flickr in a happier state of mind. Our home computer is still down, so I do not have access to those pictures. But my daughter emailed some pictures from her trip to Great Britain. So I can play with those pictures. I asked for pictures with no people in them after I lost track of one of my pictures. I am happier to experiment with anonymous pictures. I have four of these pictures in my Flickr account. This is a picture of Beatrix Potter's garden at Hill Top Farm.

Tagging-#14

Today I'm going to learn to tag and I am going to tag this post

RSS-#8

I must not have saved my previous entry about RSS, because it is not here. So I will type it again. I set up a Google Reader account and added a feed. I tried to add several websites on my own and none of them had RSS feeds, so I selected from their suggestions. They are interesting, but more time absorbers than time savers. I do think the account will be useful in the future, but right now I am feeling frustrated by all the different user names and passwords and how they overlap or don't overlap. I have reset some passwords intentionally when I couldn't find them, and some unintentionally when I didn't realize that different accouts shared the same user name. OK, I'll come back and edit this post to say that the missing post showed up as a draft. So, I'll have to remember to check that location in the future.

Flickr-#5

I've spent more time on Flickr than I hoped to with very little result. I've sent a picture into the unknown using the email method. So I'll have to find another photo to experiment with that I don't care so much about. Right now the home computer is nonfunctional (it is being worked on), so I don't have those pictures available. So I have skipped ahead to RSS and will return to Flickr later.

Setting Up a Blog and 71/2 Habits-#1

Setting up the blog was no problem. I love to learn new things. Especially when I can see how useful they will be. Staying focused when there are so many other deadlines is harder. And I'm not so thrilled about posting my thoughts about things. But I'm working on it. I am enjoying talking with others about the things that we are learning. It is much easier working together.

Find Out About the Program-#1

All right. I set up my blog at the Technology Fair which was months ago. I finished setting it up just before we had to switch groups. So I wrote a quick line and promptly forgot my password. It was as good an excuse as any to put things off for a while. I'm really excited about the program--there are lots of things in it that I would like to know how to do. It just came at too busy a time for me to give it enough attention. Summer Reading is not a good time for other projects. And I am just beginning to feel settled in at Bel Air. But I haven't been ignoring it totally. I just haven't been writing blog entries. The first one is the hardest. So I will try and catch up.