Saturday, March 3, 2007

Week 9

Item 23
I have a definite sense of achievement as I finish this course. I learned a great deal and it is great to finally understand what blogs, wikis, del.icio.us, flika etc really are. I may not have an in depth understanding of all the things covered but as a librarian I realized long ago that you don't have to know everything you just have to know how to point customers to the right resources. I now feel a little less out of touch with the new technology and have very much enjoyed showing some of the sites to my husband. He is a computer engineer but was unaware of some of the tools covered. He was also disdainful of some, especially wikis, which I think are a great idea!

As for my favorite exercises, I loved playing with flicka and I found wikis a fascinating idea. Because of this course I have posted something on the YS wiki and plan to use it more. I have also learned how to create links which has already been very useful to me. I also feel a bit more confident approaching new technology on the computer.

As a part time librarian there was no way I could complete this course during work time so I have done a lot of it at home. In spite of that I would definitely be open to another such course.

Week 9


Item 22
Well I finally did something I've been meaning to do for a while. I went into the sjpl eBooks catalog and tried to down load a book for my personal use. I discovered that you have to set up an account which I did. I decided to down load a Spanish learning course. I managed it fairly easily but had some problems opening it on my laptop finding the right application and so on. However my computer geek husband came in handy again.
I also visited World ebook Fair and looked through their free downloads. Nothing looked very interesting to me and those Books I did try to download seemed to require a membership.
I remember when everyone was saying traditional books were going to obsolete in a few years time. That doesn't seem to be happening. I think the SJPL eBook is very useful for people needing information on a subject which is not available at a particular branch. However eBooks do not seem to have taken off in the leisure reading arena.
Just to set the record straight here is a photo of my husband and me. He does enjoy other things apart from computers!

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Week 9

Item 21
I didn't realize that there are sites where you can search for podcasts so this exercise was quite a revelation. There are podcasts on just about anything. I had a good look around the sites and then, following instructions, looked for library related podcasts. I discovered that Sunnyvale Library has a podcast link which is updated regularly. There are podcasts about story time and other things such as health issues and searching the internet. I added this link to my Bloglines account. For once I found it simple and did it in a couple of clicks.

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Week9

Item 20
I went to YouTube and looked at many really strange videos. I decided to down load this one of an elephant painting.
I discovered that I can't get the video to play from my blog as you will see if you try to play it. However I created a link to the video in You Tube so you can see it. The reason I looked up elephant painting was because I had come across a children's book on the subject and wanted to see if I could see some elephants in action, painting. I think linking library materials to Youtube videos could be a useful tool. Also I saw some library promotion videos that looked quite interesting

Week 8

I signed up for Library Thing and started my own catalog. If you click on the title of a book in your catalog you can get member ratings and reviews that members have written. All the books I entered were pretty highly rated with around four stars. There were reviews for each of them too.

Week 8

Item 18
Explored Zoho Writer and found some interesting templates. Below is the short document I posted to my blog from Zoho Writer. I was very simple to do.

Zoho Writer Blog

This afternoon I went to my son Peter's last basketball game of his high school career. It was a play off game and unfortunately they lost so they are finished. In spite of the lose Peter had a great game and I felt very proud of him. His brother came home from UC Davis to watch the game which very nice. Peter is hoping to go on and play college basketball so he still has many games to look forward to.