The End--Not!

Well, our play2learn class is over--it was a great experience! I learned quite a bit about the latest trends and fashions in the tech world and all this knowledge will definitely be a benefit. Thank you Joy and Joan for leading us through this wonderful experience!

Oops not more than an hour after I posted this--Joy sent another assignment! But instead of deleting, what the heck, I THOUGHT I was done, I'll admit it! But I am glad there is more to enjoy!

Wiki Work

After much trial, error and embarrassment (thanks for your patience Joan!) I managed to log on to the Play2learn wiki and post some vacation spots and get my blog listed in the favorite blogs location, per our instructor's instruction :) I myself have to confess that I tend to use Wikipedia quite a bit, especially if I am pretty sure of a fact and just want quick corroboration. It is a very handy site indeed!

On a completely unrelated side-note, can I just say how much I love the spell-checker here on blogger.com?? It is very cool!

RSS Feeds revisited

In my first look at RSS feeds I was inclined towards using the IE built in aggregator. But now that I have been playing with them for a little while, I can see why Joan and Joy recommmend bloglines. So, I successfully exported my RSS feeds from IE and imported them into Bloglines. Very cool feature for anyone who has feeds in IE (or probably other browsers) and wants to have all your feeds on bloglines.

Library 2.0

Having read the assigned articles, I have to say that it is pretty clear that Library 2.0 means different things depending on what type of library you use or with which you are affiliated. Most of the libraries provide an academic perspective--be it university or k-12. Public libraries have a slightly different mission, as much as we would like to think that we are purveyors of information, the reality is that many of our clients view us as providers of Entertainment--be it written or audiovisual. Our challenge is in working with the users of Web 2.0 and providing good quality information and entertainment in an electronic environment, and yet still maintain a positive relationship with our clientele who have no need/use for the library as a provider of electronic services.

One separate observation. Although I found many thought provoking statements in all of the articles, one that struck me quite forcibly (and no doubt as a reaction to my years in academe, wherein I did "Bibliographic Instruction") Rick Anderson notes, "...if our services can’t be used without training, then it’s the services that need to be fixed—not our patrons." And that is a very telling observation. Until recently, patrons have had to conform to our expectations of how to search and retrieve data. The Internet, Google, Web 2.0 have taught them otherwise and we as librarians need to adjust our thinking accordingly.

LibraryThing Redux

Well, as promised, I tried out the LibraryThing importing tool. It is pretty slick! I had a much harder time getting Excel2007 to format the data the way I needed it. In case you want to key a bunch of ISBNs into an Excel file for importation, be sure to format the cells in the column you are going to use as TEXT. This retains the leading 0s for the old 10-digit ISBNs. I saved my file as a txt file and LibraryThing easily recognized both my 10-digit and 13-digit ISBNs. It told me it would take 30-50 minutes to locate and load the items to my library and that there were 297 others in queu ahead of me. And lo and behold, in about 45 minutes when I checked back, all my books where in my library. All in all pretty impressive!

Of Bookmarking and information addiction

Just trying to catch up with the assignments I missed while I was at WDW last week. Del.icio.us was an interesting tool and I found Technorati very fascinating. As with a library catalog, how you search has an impact on what you retrieve. I find myself spiraling downward into information addiction however! For right now, I am not letting myself set up a Del.icio.us account for fear I would spend the next week adding to, updating and compulsively organizing the hundreds (and I DO mean hundreds) of bookmarks I have in IE right now. That will have to wait just a little while ;)

Cataloging Assistance

Our most recent assignment was to use the Rollyo site to create a personalized search tool. I can definitely see the usefulness of this application. I can see a parent or a teacher creating search boxes to direct children or students to the particular sites deemed appropriate.

I created a search tool to assist all of you in cataloging your personal libraries! Enjoy :D

Select Search Engine...Cataloging SitesSearch The Web

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