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!