It's already November

My favorite thing about selection lists is to read titles that make me chuckle out loud... Here's a few: "The Better to Eat You With..." it's about fear in the animal world. Very clever I have to say... Here's a topic I just wasn't expecting to see: "Raising Steaks". This one is what the title says. The subtitle clarifies:" The Life and Times of American Beef". It's kind of like the book, I think it was called Rembrandt's Nose or something. Really? Is anyone going to want to read it?? I mean mostly people would want to eat a steak, not read about it... Oh well, who knows, maybe it really is something. I don't think I will find out though...

OKAY, I keep reading the titles and now there is a book on Hamburger, Pancake, and Pizza with the subtitle of "A Global History". And I thought the beef book was bad...

Funny Titles

While doing selections for collection development, I always have a good laugh when I read certain titles. I always say I want to write the titles down that sound funny or creative. So, today my favorite funny sounding titles are in no particular order: Fat Free and Fatal, A Case of Exploding Mangoes (this one caught my eye due to my great buddy here at the reference desk), The Legs are the Last to Go (in which case I disagree with the author... I wish there was a foot store where you could exchange your bad feet for a set of good ones...), Dogology (I really wanted to order the book just because of this cute title), Ted, White & Blue (just sounds funny) as does The Encyclopedia of Phobias, Fears and Anxieties (don't give that book to a hypochondriac), and Something on the Side. I generally love the food titled mystery series perhaps for the reason that I love food... Today I came across the most annoying subtitle: Hardworking man meets softhearted woman in this contemporary novel (I mean the entire inside cover??). I have to mention one of my all time favorite titles in creativity which is DomiKNITrix. What a clever title for a knitting book. I have also proposed a ban on titles that use boolean operators :-)

This is not the end because that would be too sad

I did not make too many brand new discoveries on this journey. There was not enough time to learn about how to use the new things I was not familiar with. The wiki sandbox was probably the most useful one tool I tried. I want to make a communication wiki if others in my department will like that idea. I also enjoyed doing the things that I was already somewhat familiar with. Oh yes and morphing into a panther was pretty cool :-)

There is so much to learn and I will continue to spend time on my own to learn more about these many tools that I was introduced to during this journey. If there is a similar program in the future, I would certainly volunteer to participate. I like programs that push me to learn new things.

I would definitely recommend more time for novices to web 2.0 and perhaps a buddy mentor system to help those who feel overwhelmed.

Overall, I enjoyed the program. I would like to continue my blog in case I find interesting things to share.

Overdrive

As I began teaching about learning styles to my own students, it became clear to me that I was never really an "auditory learner". I have always loved writing and prefer that as a way of communicating because I can see it. I am definitely more visual (which is one of the reasons I use different color fonts to see the different posts I have written more clearly). Hence, reading an actual book has always been appealing rather than checking out an audio book. Although when one of the libraries that I worked for discarded their collection of the most notable philosphers of American political heritage, I did snatch those up and listened to them in my car while driving to and from work.

I did go and explore Overdrive as requested. When it first came out, I went to through the tour and looked around in order to help customers reach these resources. Now for the first time I listened to a few excerpts. Although I had somewhat difficulty with not seeing anything related to the audio I was hearing, I was able to concentrate and "get interested" in the books I selected. I noticed that having the excerpt is a wonderful way to "hook" a potential customer into checking out the book. Although I love historical fiction, fantasy and different kinds of stories. I actually spend much more time reading and browsing non-fiction. I therefore looked at the titles from the genre section and chose "Self-Help" section. I believe that the most imortant thing about our life as humans is to figure out how we can improve ourselves in order to become better people to be around. I am very intersted in different topics in psychology and read about ways to cope with every day stress of parenting, marriage and life in general.

I did not download the programs on my computer at home but I might. Audiobooks are something that I will keep in mind and perhaps utilize in the future. However, currently I am concentrating on preparing a proposal for my online class, so further explorations in Overdrive will have to wait.

Podcasts

It is slightly cumbersome to explore Podcasts at work on computers where we do not have speakers. However, I did listen to a few children's stories from a library's website and thought it was a clever idea. I will have to let my little dude listen to a Podcast on a Peter Rabbit story and see if he can pay attention. Personally I found the NPR site helpful. Here is the link again http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php

I also added a feed from BookExpo America. It might be a useful one to follow about new and upcoming titles for collection development for the branch.

YouTube Experience

Well, after some trial and error and asking Dan, I finally got my video on the blog. The reason I chose the advertisement for the Summer Reading Program is because 1) I'm on it (STAR!!) 2) The Programming Committee came up with it and I'm on the Committee :-) 3) As member of the Programming Committee it is my job to promote the FUN SUMMER READING PROGRAM! 4) It is the best Youtube video in the history of Youtube videos!

I have explored YouTube before mostly to watch all the funny Cat videos available. However, it can be annoying because all kinds of videos that could have inappropriate content pop up. One time I saw a really weird video of a prank that was played to a delivery guy. A lady pretended that a human being was their cat and then the cat / person asked the delivery guy for help to get out of there. It was borderline disturbing although I'm sure it was meant to be funny.

Programming Committee Stars on YouTube

Exciting Web 2.0 Awards

Yes! At first I thought: "Here we go again. A massive incomprehensive site with an unlimited amount of possibilities. Where do I start?" However, to my delight, most of the award winners I perused, seemed very good. Especially Last fm peeked my interest. I have always been a music lover but I have not been so good at identifying who plays what and this will give me a chance to learn more. I also liked the I'm cooked sight which I could see some of our patrons using. I'm still not quite sure how to apply some of it to the library but as I explore more, the ideas will come...

Sad Suvi

 I was just about to write how happy I was that this was so similar to my oh so familiar Word but now, my text color and font refuses to stay as the choices I attempted several times.

PBCLS Wiki

This was one activity I really enjoyed! I wish I had more time to play... It has been a busy evening and so many "interesting" people have been by either by phone or in person. Needless to say, I got diverted from all the fun stuff. I edited my favorite vacation page and saw a comment on the favorite music page that I just had to go and complement - yes I edited that one too. I hope everyone finds this activity as fun as I did :-)

Wiki's Have Potential

I have looked at the Library Best Practices Wiki before. I was browsing through different categories and found a few things that were informative or helpful. However, I don't care much for the Wikipedia format of the page with boring colors and information all jammed together. I do love the idea that people like me who are not super techie can create information on a web page without memorizing html code etc. The nicest wiki was the Bull Run Library one because there was a bit of color and large headings. I have proposed in the past that wiki's could be a great way to communicate within a building and between departments. For example a branch wiki could be useful because you can inform everyone quickly about patron situations or about some item that needs to be taken care of a certain way. However, the downside is that not everyone is on the computer all the time and still might miss timely communication. It would still be worth a shot to try.

Future of Libraries

All I can say is that we need to keep up with the times. However, it is very difficult if you are not naturally techie. I am just learning about Library 2.0 now and I can see the benefits of how it can help us serve our customers better. However, I can't understand much beyond that. It's almost like a sci fi movie...

Technorati not my cup of tea

What I wanted to say is technocrappy... I did not like it. I find it confusing. This is the first excercise where I felt I was truly wasting my time. Either I don't understand how it works or it is not set up very well. When I would click on something, I really didn't get anywhere. The one posting I wanted to read, was incomplete. Click, click, click, still no where... seems like my first days on the WWW...
To use this I would need a one on one tutor.

Delicious

I have had a delicious account before, so without reinventing the wheel, I once again went back and looked at it trying to remember why I don't use it. My tags were pretty messed up because at some point I "imported" favorites and the tag line had added the word "imported" to many of the tags... I now went and fixed some taking that extra name off. So, some of my tags were useful, some web pages had been deleted and some were just old things I had looked up and not relevant. I had never really searched before so I did that and didn't find it too helpful. I looked at popular postings and did find the web 2.0 tag useful. I added the web 2.0 directory that 20 billion other people have tagged as well.

Library Thing

I created an account at the librarything.com I added some titles but found the process very time consuming. Perhaps there is a quicker way to do it than add titles one by one but honestly I don't have that much time to play around to figure that. I will ask if anyone else who uses if there are any time saving tricks. If you are reading this blog and have answers, please comment!

Who is that Wild thing

Watch me turn into a
Panther at YouWild.org

RSS and Bloglines

When I first heard about RSS feeds, I created a bloglines account. Then I created another account when it was yet another topic of discussion at a previous job. I got very excited about adding different interesting feeds such as news, health, travel, and library information. However, over time, I noticed that I did not take the time to logon to my bloglines and have time to read all the feeds that were coming in. The few times I have gone to read, I have looked up health news and other news and it has been very interesting and informative BUT I tend to start feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information I am unable to read. So, the conclusion is that I haven't used bloglines much. If I could add the RSS feeds to another site that I already go to, I might look at it more. I like the idea of Mimi's one stop shop when online. Also, if we had it on the library webpage, that would be helpful.

Flickr

I have to admit that I did not use Flickr to upload the previous photograph. I learned about picasa from Bremus and used that free program to upload that picture. Since we have gmail accounts now anyone can use picasa photo editing program as well. I downloaded it on my computer at home and it scanned all the pictures in the computer automatically. Then you can work on them (of course I haven't learned how to do that yet...). I did create a flicr account using my existing e-mail. If you want to find my flickr account, my userid is suvimorales all together. I don't have hardly any pictures there yet though... I will have to work on that.

The Little Viking

My Little Viking!

Using Blogging in Libraries

One of the reasons I was so excited about the Web 2.0 project is how we could utilize some of these features to enhance our jobs, communication and customer service. A blog could be a great way to feature programs before and after the event has occurred. For example, our Anti-Prom Party pictures could be in a slide show on the teen programs blog enticing other teens to come and attend the next great event and so on. These blogs could be linked right to the front page of the library website for easy access.
For teens I would also suggest public blogs where they can add their experiences of events they attended at the library or books they read, etc.

7 1/2 Habits

I suppose I was to write down my thoughts about the 7 1/2 habits of highly successful lifelong learners.

I try to live by this creed all the time. I am currently taking classes at FSU to try to learn more about library leadership and promoting the value of libraries to the public at large. Before that I was taking classes for fun at a university I worked at. I took ethics, singing for actors and college algebra. (I had poor guidance in high school and college and did not realize I would need better math skills in order to further pursue my education i.e. the GRE... ). Before that I completed two Master's Programs while teaching full time at a high school where I was also the senior class sponsor... Need I say more??

I do have a problem with writing all my goals down. I might write goals down sometimes but I rarely write down all the steps or check off progress.

Moving along slowly

Today I put a picture for my profile. There are so many things to learn and I need to practice more on how to work with photos in the web environment. Hopefully we will be able to offer a class at the library on how to do some things with digital picture. I know I'm not the only one who wants to learn how to do manage and share photos online. I'm sure it is one of our tasks in the future here on the 23 things as well...

It's alive

I may personally not feel alive and ready to learn new things as I'm exhausted from my travels with a toddler BUT this blog now has a beginning!

I look forward to improving my techonology skills and sharing any thoughts and ideas along this journey.