"Method 12"

My favorite discovery was of the bookmarking website Delicious. Having this bookmarking account has helped me tremendously! It has saved me time and confusion! I have websites on there for both professional and personal uses. This whole learning experience has given me the knowledge to feel more secure in adding to our library resources and in assisting patrons in gaining information. The only part that I had trouble on and did not like was trying to access one of the articles in the 1st method.
I would love to explore more web based aspects. I wish this course covered MORE!
I did like the way the course was set up for self-paced self-discovery. If there were more "training" topics set up in this manner, I would definitely work through them!

"Method 11"

Podcasts are a great alternative to reading. I wish they were as easy to access as readable information. It is convenient because of the mobility of it, just depending where you download it. With any download I tend to stop and steer clear, especially with my work computer. Any downloads need approval from a supervisor or city IT tech. That's a big pain so I don't do it. If our library and was more technology savvy, we could do podcasts for our patrons. Well, in that case our patrons need to be more technology savvy as well for it to be utilized to its fullest. It is not something our library will be doing immediately.

"Method 10"

I have never used a wiki before. I have had thoughts on how I wish there was one central place that people can add information to and well, there it is! With a little more exploration I'm sure that I can find exactly what I'm looking for! This is great not only for my personal use but for me professionally and for the library. I can use a wiki to get and share ideas on programs and books and LOTS of other subjects. I could use a wiki for website links to various subjects for our patrons such as holiday crafts, songs, activities, and others. This would be good because anyone can add to it versus items being posted on a website with only 1 other staff member being able to make changes or add to the site. Book lists would be great as well along with book series titles and corresponding "if you like this series try this.....". So many doors for information gathering and exchange are possible!

"Method 9"

I have done chats before on various sites; myspace, facebook, and yahoo. Instant messaging is so much faster than e-mailing and waiting for a reply. It is simple as well! You just click a button and start typing instead of entering an e-mail address, typing the text, and pushing send, etc, etc, etc! I wish everyone had instant messaging or chat options because it would make life easier. There are some businesses that I frequent that I wish had a chat option! It would be alot better than having to call. As far as chat for the library, I can see it being a great aspect for a large library with an abundance of staff, but not for our library with a small staff at this time. It would take very creative time management and dedication.

"Method 8"

I do currently have a personal facebook account and a personal myspace account. I do not use either for work/professional purposes. I have yet to dive in to the use of these for work. If I did need them for work purposes, I think I would create separate accounts. Once I created my accounts, I had contact with people who I had not seen or spoken to in 3 to 10 years! We had lost contact and this was the way it was reconnected. So in general, I think they are beneficial. My work does have a facebook account that I have access to and can make posts and such. That is the only thing that I foresee us having due to the fact of social networking sites being very time consuming and we have a very small staff!

"Method 7"

Wow! I have been wanting this type of thing! I visit a lot of websites to get ideas. I end up book marking them or writing them on paper with a key word so I can access the website at a later date. I usually end up losing all those pieces of paper! And I never have them when I need them because I have left them at work in my desk and I'm at home. This will be so much easier to manage my websites!
This is also great for libraries as well. I tend to get tired of googling topics and going through websites to see which ones provide the exact information I'm looking for. I would love for someone else to have already done the work and I can go through their sites or other popular sites. This would be great for our library patrons as well. I would love to have this or an account accessible through our website to make it not only easier for patrons to view related websites that provide the information they are seeking, but also to get them to explore OUR library website! Speaking of I have a meeting with the library website webmaster this week to show me how to "do" the website myself! YAY!

"Method 6"

"Flickr versus Picasa"

Well, both seem very time consuming (for my time allotment anyway). I did not like having to download Picasa. That took our city IT tech to download to my city computer. Yuck! I also do not like it because of accessibility. It is a running computer saved program so it leads to failure and error reports and a mess. It seemed very jumbled as well. Options were not clearly posted or available as in Flickr. In Flicker you have the simple almost "tool bar" across the top. For computer challenged people like me, Flickr is best!

"Method 5"

I found a picture on Flickr interesting to me....a dog....in the driver's seat....cute! I got an uneasy feeling however knowing that I needed to pick one to come back and link in my blog. Permission and privacy was ringing in the back of my mind. Not sure how I feel about pictures (especially mine) being available for WHATEVER type of use! I do currently share pictures on Myspace and Facebook. Mostly of myself. I seem to always be short on time, so posting pictures is not a daily or even weekly thing for me. I do want to upload my pics to a website for PRIVATE storage though!

The library does have aFacebook page. We do not have any pictures up yet. A very touchy and very time consuming issue with photo release forms, etc. With a small staff it seems like more trouble than it's worth especially with the very limited amount of people who use the Internet to look at or get information about our library. This is definitely something that I need to research more and cover with my library director!

"method 4"

I do currently have news feeds from small library websites. I do like that I can do so much from google! I need to make myself get in the habit of logging in to goggle on a daily basis. In spare time I will play around on some websites I currently visit for personal reasons to see if they have a news feed subscription option. Some that I just subscribed to are:
http://www.librarystuff.net/feed/
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/newrss.xml
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/videos/Fu7XciJi6xY/related?client=ytapi-youtube-watch&v=2
http://connect.ala.org/taxonomy/term/6238/0/feed
http://www.slideshare.net/rss/latest
http://rss.suite101.com/audiobooks.xml
http://www.onlineuniversitylowdown.com/feed
http://z.about.com/6/g/childrensbooks/b/rss2.xml

By the way....I am the children's librarian hence the children/library subscriptions lol

“Method 3″

OK so I am doing this "Two Step" program so I can learn more about resources and programs on the computer. SO far I am discovering new things and love it! I never knew that there were "hosts" out there in which you could do so much so such as Google with docs and e-mail and other apps as well! I thought Google was strictly a search engine! It will be very helpful and beneficial for me to use hosts like google to do my work and access it from various computers. I have had the problem of programs such as Microsoft office or publisher not being current or the same on two computers that I use. This is a problem because my document or work that I need to access is not accessible or workable on a different computer! Frustrating! It would be great to have it be the exact same regardless of the computer in which I am trying to retrieve it! I am not ready to use the cloud to put all of my information on (especially items that I do not want to share with the world). I have concerns with if the "cloud" goes bust in one way or another, what happens to all of my information? Am I exposed to everyone? How easy is it to hack my saved information?
Now as for using the cloud for our library patrons..........not too sure or confident in that. We are a small basically rural library. We have a staff of 6. Very difficult to train all staff in the new computer technologies and have them help, train, or assist our library patrons as well. This would be very time consuming and staff consuming. Some of our patrons are barely getting by on their understanding of e-mail, "cloud" usage or dependability on it would be very far-off if at all. HOWEVER....google docs would be very beneficial to those patrons comfortable with e-mail. For example a patron uses the computer......they spend an hour typing a document.....they do not pay attention to their time count down and the computer kicks them off. What happens to their work they just spent an hour on? Irretrievable. They did not save it....they definitely did not save it and e-mail it to themselves which takes several steps.....they cannot log back on because they already used up their time for the day and cannot be extended since they are not logged on (in-house library issue, sorry)......and even if they had saved it to their desktop they cannot retrieve it the next day because our computers wipe clean over night. With google docs, none of this would have happened.
Just my thoughts and opinions. Back to learning.........

Method 1 and 2

I believe that web 2.0 is the future. Practically all our information is coming from the web in one way or another. It is the easiest way to link everything and everyone in our world together. Library 2.0 is the way to use web 2.0 for library needs of the staff and employees but also for us to better assist our clients/customers/patrons. I think it is a major change for libraries. Libraries were typically a place to go to find needed information on various topics and to read for fun or entertainment. With the world relying mostly on and available on the web, it makes books practically obsolete for obtaining needed information. What someone could find in an encyclopedia, can now be found on the web, making it faster and easier to get the information. I believe libraries have two choices in their future direction, either become a place for strictly leisure for people who enjoy reading, or get on the web 2.0 band wagon so as to continue to be a resource for the public community. Some libraries will struggle with this. Big city libraries will seem to have an easier time with this based on the fast paced surroundings and people pool who they can choose to hire versus a small rural library who has limited employees and qualified people and limited training resources (not to mention a slower paced mind set). There are some opportunities to smaller rural libraries; however most of them are available through the web. In that case, these individuals don’t know how to access the information!

This is my first ever!

So this is my first blog ever!