Google Docs

Google Docs would have been a godsend in college. Working on group projects and presentations would have been so much easier. For this exercise, I created a grocery list as a document. I shared it with my husband so that he, too, can add items to the list as he thinks of them. I plan to continue to use Google Docs for weekly grocery lists. It will be even better when we have smart phones and I can just access the list at the store- no more paper! I found Google Docs to be very similar to the Microsoft applications that I am accustomed to using. The spreadsheet seemed to be a bit less user-friendly than Excel, but I am not an Excel expert either. The form was fun and I intend to try to create another one, then send it to some friends and view the results.

Coincidentally, I was trying to find a Dewey number for cloud computing two days ago. I was not sure what exactly cloud computing was, so the video was quite helpful. I really like the concept of cloud computing. I, personally, would rather store most documents "in the cloud" rather than at home. It takes up less space at home and I can access my docs anywhere without worrying about losing my flash drive. I do wonder about the people in or behind the clouds having access to so many documents. I don't think anyone would be interested in my grocery list, but I am sure some people store more personal information in the cloud. Also, it sounds as if some cloud computing is free, and some must be paid for. I do like that you only pay for what you use, IF you have to pay. Cloud computing may be something to watch- definitely a trend on the way up.

Google Maps

I have used Google Maps in the past for driving directions, but I usually use Mapquest instead because Google has given me inaccurate directions more than once. Also, I have compared driving directions to the same location and I found Mapquest's to be superior to Google's (yes, they were different directions to the same place!). However, I do think Google Maps is quite nifty for all of the other things that it can do. I was amazed when I watched the video- I didn't realize it could do THAT much!

For this exercise, I chose to get driving directions from my house to the Boston Public Library (central). I don't think I'll be driving there anytimes soon- it takes one day and five hours, according to Google Maps! After reading through the directions, I clicked on some of the camera icons throughout, and was impressed to have a driver's point of view of the actual location. The only thing I did not like about this feature, is that the picture of my house is an old one, so it has our old, dilapidated mailbox in it. We have installed a much nicer one- I wish they would update it.

I used the "traffic" feature, and it appears that at this moment, most of the highways and streets I would be traveling, are clear and traffic is moving along nicely. What a relief to know that I actually would make it there in a day and 5 hours if I were to leave now. I love the street views and how you can look all the way around. I spent some time just looking at downtown Boston with this feature. That was so cool! Then I tried altering the route my dragging it from George Bush to 121. I may switch back to Google Maps from Mapquest now. I just hadn't played with it enough to know how fabulous it is. Finally, I clicked on "more" next to "traffic" and looked and bicycle routes, transit, and video (some interesting local things posted here from campouts to car washes- I wonder if people purposely post their videos on Google Maps or if GM just "finds" the videos on youtube? So much to explore on this site- here is a link to my directions and map:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=1228+Stillwater+Trail,+Carrollton,+TX&daddr=700+Boylston+Street,+Boston,+MA&hl=en&geocode=&mra=ls&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=50.910968,78.662109&ie=UTF8&z=5

YouSendIt

I wish I had known about this when I was working on my MLS and had all of those bulky presentations to email to group members and professors (or to myself if I forgot my flash drive!). I have used it in the past to send large media files to family (home video type things). I think this tool would be very helpful both in school, and in professional organizations for presentations and other large files. An excellent find!

Tiny URL

I love Tiny URL! I know I will be using this in the future. For this assignment, I went to amazon.com and clicked on blu-rays. I immediately got an impossibly long url. I wanted to copy and past here, but for some reason I can't paste in my blog. I tried many times. Can't do it.

Here is the Tiny URL I created for this exercise. When you click on it, you will see the original URL at the top of the screen: http://tinyurl.com/amazonblurays

Facebook

I created a Facebook account in October 2007 and have maintained it regularly since. It is fun and a great way to stay in touch with friends and family that you don't see often. Of course, it does have some drawbacks and it is important to use your privacy settings properly. I do occassionally get friend requests from people that I don't know and I always just delete them. I've fortunately never had to block anyone, but I have had to delete some posts on my wall. When you have a mix of coworkers, family, and old and new friends, things have the potential to get awkward. I have deleted "friends" for the following reasons:

1. He/she posted something inappropriate or offensive on my wall.
2. She was such an annoying Facebragger that I couldn't stand it. Honestly, do I need to hear about your 3 houses, your nanny issues, ski trips, and children making the cheerleading squad AND the honor roll??? To be fair, I "hid" this person at first so as not to offend her. However this is a person who has about 800 FB friends, so when I was "trimming the fat" on my friend list one day, I figured she wouldn't miss me and I deleted her. Within 1 hour I had a message from her in my inbox asking what was wrong. The weird thing is I really didn't know this person at all. We met briefly through a mutual friend, so I found the whole thing very bizarre.
3. I never liked the person, only accepted a friend request so as not to offend (she is in the same profession as I am), but the minute she moved away, I deleted her due to some offenses she had committed toward mutual friends.

If someone does a lot of the Farmville and Mafia Wars type things, I hide the application. Usually, this is sufficient for getting rid of these types of updates in one's newsfeed. I do have some businesses, celebrities, etc. that I have become a "fan" of. It's nice to get coupons and updates about special deals from businesses and tour updates from bands that I like. And,yes, I am a "fan" of the Frisco Public Library. I think it is great that we have an FB page. I would like to see something offered exclusively for customers who are "fans" of the FPL on FB. Maybe a contest- Taco Bueno does a contest on FB in which they give away food to the "Buenohead Photo of the Day"- which is a picture of a person or group of people eating at Bueno. I don't think we would be able to do something like that everyday like Bueno does, but every now and then would be fun and doable. I agree that what makes an FB page successful is if it is updated regularly- not just status updates but photos of events and such are pleasing, too.

Linked In

After watching the 2 minute introduction video, I thought Linked In sounded like a great idea- a social networking site just for business and career networking. I signed up for an account and entered my work and education information. Then, I began looking for people I know and exploring individual profiles. I noticed that you can only see abbreviated parts of a person's account if he or she is not in your contacts. Also, I got a message on one person's profile that said I had to pay for premium Linked In service to obtain their full profile. I'm not a big fan of charging people for access to such information. If someone is trying to find a job by networking and checking job listings on Linked In, it doesn't seem fair to charge fees. Someone who needs access to the information the most won't be able to pay for it. It seems a bit elitist, in my opinion.

I browsed the job postings by searching under "librarian", "library", "publishing", "books", and "pets". When I clicked for details on one of the pet listings, I received a message that said "This company is not in your contacts. You cannot view job descriptions from this company until you have a contact there." I don't particularly care for this aspect of Linked In either. What if someone wants to start a completely new career- something for which they have no experience or schooling. How does one get contacts in this situation?

I added one of my colleagues to my contact list. I browsed profiles by organization, as well. When I did a search for "Frisco Public Library", I just got a list of people who worked there or work there currently. There was no information about the library itself. Perhaps I was not searching correctly, so I will try it with some other companies to see what happens. I think the interface is a bit bland. As I said before, I really like the idea of a professional networking site where you don't have to find out that one of your contacts just went to the bathroom or that he just purchased a penguin for his virtual zoo. I hope that upon further exploration, I will find Linked In to be the type of site I expected. However, at this time, I am finding it to be somewhat bland, abbreviated, and elitist.

Picasa

Here is a link to my photo album I created on Picasa. I hope it works! Ok. It's not working.

Hmmm.... This is my first venture in using a site such as Picasa for uploading my own photos. I have viewed other people's photo albums on both Picasa and Flickr, but never used such sites for my own photos. In the past, I have always just used email to send photos or posted albums on Facebook.

I did manage to upload my photos onto the Picasa website. I am having trouble with linking directly to the album. I will have to consult someone, try again, and report back.

I am not sure that I will use this site personally, as I am fairly content just using email and FB for posting pictures. I do see why photographers would use it, and would spend hours browsing public albums. Some of the photos are beautiful. It amazes me how many quality shots are out there now thanks to digital photography and photo editing software.

Also, I think a photo sharing site could be a good way for libraries to post and share photographs with the public and with one another. Each library event could have it's own web album for public viewing- or just for patrons with accounts if one prefers this option. One thing I do like about it over something such as Facebook is that there is the "slideshow" option and it's more searchable if you are looking for pictures of a specific subject.

As for the linking, I will try again.

Good Reads and LibraryThing

I have had an account with Good Reads for almost 3 years now. I find it very entertaining not only to post my own book reviews, but to see what my friends and coworkers are reading, what they want to read, have read (and their reviews, too). It also helps me to keep track of what I want to read. I see so many books as a cataloger that I probably think 10 or more times a day, "Ooh, I'd like to read that." If I want to remember any of these titles, I can just search for them in Good Reads and save them in my "to read" shelf. Then if I finish a book and think "hmmm... what next?", I can go directly to my "to read" shelf for ideas.

I had never browsed LibraryThing before, and I find it to be like Good Reads on steroids- or on really good vitamins! You can do all of the things that you can do on Good Reads, and so much more. I created an account and added a few books to my shelves, then browsed the FAQ's and various groups. I checked out the "Librarians Who Use LibraryThing" and found threads about everything from electronic books to creepy patrons. I will definitely continue to use this tool for consulting others regarding library issues. I think it could be helpful to me as a cataloger, as well. I found it really interesting to read about MARCThing and ISBN check. As far as on a personal level, I might use it to catalog my own collections. I wish that there was a LibraryThing for CDs and movies. My husband has been wanting me to catalog our A/V collections for a long time and LibraryThing for CDs and movies would definitely facilitate me in that endeavor.

Delicious

I could spend many hours here. First of all, I love that I don't have to worry about losing my boomarks when I switch computers. I know that was an issue when I changed computers during the move from the old building- all of those useful reference sites- gone! So, we saved them in folders on the Network. But what if you are not on the network? Delicious to the rescue.

Right now I am building a list of bookmarks for work at:

http://delicious.com/libraryselkie

I have two categories right now: 1. Cataloging and 2. Favorite and Useful Libraries

I will build one or more for reference as well. I plan to use Delicious for my personal bookmarks, too. This is such an awesome tool. Now, if anyone needs to use any of my bookmarks, they will be available at one URL. No more searching through emails to find the site that someone sent you months ago.

Tagging Along

Tagging may be the illegitimate child of subject headings. It works like a subject heading, but since anyone can do it and it's not declared "official" by a body such as the Library of Congress, it remains unrecognized as a member of most library catalog families. I think tagging could be something very useful for customers who are browsing the catalog. For instance, in a MARC record for a romance with elements of fantasy, one might see subject headings like "Fantasy fiction", "love stories", and "magic". However, the 520 field might mention such things as "shape-shifters" or "sylphs". If these words were tagged, it could take customers to records for other books involving shape-shifters, sylphs, and the like. On the other hand, word association is often relative, so I can see where someone might click on a tagged word and get results she doesn't think are associated in anyway with the tagged word.

I have used tagging on Facebook for pictures and notes and I think it is mostly a useful tool. sometimes, it is confusing, though, if someone tags a picture of someone's kid with the parent's name or just tags a picture because he wants a certain person to see it (even though the tagged person is not actually IN the picture.) I also find it helpful when reading articles and come across a term I would like to know more about. With one click, I can access such information.

Instant Messaging

I have used instant messaging through Google, Facebook, and Communicator. Also, I have used chatting for classes and for reference work (through Answer Zone). My first experience with it was for one of my online SLIS classes at UNT. I thought it was an excellent way to get an entire class together without having to physically be in the same room. Graduate students generally have very hectic and conflicting schedules. There are some people who live miles away from the university, people with full-time jobs with varying hours, people with families to take care of, people with disabilities, and some people with all of the above. The chat room was much more convenient for meeting than meeting physically. It was also nice for people who are somewhat introverted, like me, as it is easier to ask questions, make comments, and be "heard" online than it is in a classroom. Another benefit, of course, is that you can show up to class barefoot and in your pajamas if you so desire! The classes also had chat rooms available for group work assignments and that was a godsend. I wish I had that as an undergraduate, as well.

I think IMing can be a good way to answer reference questions. However, it is important that the reference librarian is not on the desk while he/she is doing virtual reference. It is not fair to the customer in front of the librarian, nor is it fair to the customer online, if they do not receive 100 percent of the librarian's attention. Virtual reference is wonderful for people who cannot get to the library. With a tool such as Answer Zone (or is it Ask a Librarian?) you can guide the customer to the sources online. Of course, there are downsides, as well. My experience with it was not very good because 1) I was on the reference desk when I was doing it 2) Very few people were using it at the time 3)When people did use it, the majority of them were asking circulation questions about their local library which was almost never the library at which I worked. I found myself looking up the phone number to the Fort Worth Public Library many times as I could not access Fort Worth library accounts to see what books were overdue! Additionally, there were pranks. Now that we have caller ID, kids tend to make prank IMs instead of prank phone calls.

When I signed up for a Gmail account a few years ago, I had my first experience with personal chatting. A few friends saw that I was online and started a chat. This happens sometimes on Facebook, as well. It's not that bad if you are not doing something else- but if you are in the middle of typing an email or uploading some pictures onto FB and someone says, "Hey, what's up?" and wants to chat it can be kind of annoying. I do realize that you can change your settings so that no one can tell if you are online or not, so that basically solves that problem. On the other hand, I think it would be excellent for talking to someone overseas rather than paying for international phone calls.

I have used the Office Communicator a few times. I find it to be a good way to tell if someone is "in a meeting", "offline", "away", or "available". However, I don't really see it as much different than sending and receiving email. I have heard that you can keep track of your conversations through it, and I can see how that would be beneficial. Also, I can see it being used for short meetings within different departments. I know staff are using it to send APBs, but I don't see the difference in that and sending a library-wide email. Either way, everyone gets the message immediately (unless, of course, they don't have their email up....).

Digg

I dug it. I really did. I liked that there is a list of the top "diggs". The one for today was of a cat playing with an iPad. Being a cat lover, I had to watch it and then share it on Facebook. I read a few of the popular stories that interested me, as well. I think one of the coolest things about this site, in my opinion, is that I saw several items that are not on the "regular" news and some entertaining items that don't make the rounds through email. I could easily see myself spending hours on this site.

How can this be applied to libraries? I think it would be fun to use certain aspects of Digg in the customer side of the catalog. For instance if someone "digs" a book or movie, they could click on a thumbs up symbol (or whatever our symbol happens to be). If the catalog worked the way that Digg does, to keep track of how many "thumbs up"s something gets, it could be posted and updated regularly on the library's home page. Then, anyone visiting the website could see a "what's hot" among customers. The "thumbs up" is a nice alternative to writing a review, as well, since in only takes one click to do it. Many people don't want to commit to writing a review- no matter how short it is!

Twitter

I have to admit, I have been avoiding the whole Twitter phenomenon. It sounded annoying to me to have to hear about people's everyday activities like going to the restroom or making a sandwich. I really just don't care about these sorts of things which is one of the reasons I dislike reality television. Additionally, I have a Facebook account, and I find the status update to be sufficient for finding out what my friends are doing and to let them know what I am doing. But for the purposes of this exercise, I decided to give tweets a chance.

I signed up for the account, and picked someone to follow. I quickly "unfollowed" him because he tweets often and as I said before, I don't care to hear everything that someone is doing. I can see, however, that Twitter could be useful for libraries, even if it is not one's personal preference for communicating. It is a quick and easy way to get updates out to a lot of people (because it seems almost everyone is on Twitter these days). It could also be used for brief movie and book reviews. Librarians could use it to find out what their customers are tweeting about, thus, assisting them in collection development, program planning, and more.

RSS Feeds

I saved one on my toolbar and have another couple coming into my Outlook box. I am new to this and to Google Reader, so I am interested to see which of these I prefer. They seem very similar in that if you subscribe to a website, the updates come to you, rather than you having to go to the website. The main difference may be about location- where are the updates most convenient for me- in Google Reader, Outlook, a toolbar, or somewhere else completely? I can see benefits to all of them- but when I am at my work cubicle, I think Outlook is most convenient. I particularly like that the feeds go directly into a specific folder that is already named when it arrives in Outlook. This is much more expedient than just having updates come into your regular inbox with everything else. The toolbar thing is nice if you have only one or two sites that you subscribe to. It could become cluttered and confusing if there are too many feeds on the toolbar.


Libraries could use RSS feeds to send updates to customers to the place in which it is most convenient for them. Again, no searching needs to be conducted on the part of the customer. He/she simply receives updates about programs, new materials, etc. as they are available. I think it is important to have some sort of notification system for when there are new updates as customers may not always remember to check their feeds. Also, librarians could subscribe to feeds about collection development, cataloging, genealogy and reference (among other areas of interest).

Google Reader

I have had a Google account for quite awhile, but had not used Google Reader until today. I started with subscribing to my blog and to a couple of coworkers' blogs and putting them in a folder. Then I explored a bit and was surprised to find that the first three websites that I visited did not have feeds to subscribe to! However, I suppose I can use Twitter to follow the latest on these sites. I successfully subscribed to the Unclutterer and a Dallas news feed, and then found several other interesting sites that Reader recommended for me. I subscribed to a few of those, as well. Overall, I thought it was quite simple to use, and it is nice to have the latest updates appear, rather than always having to check your favorite sites every day. I need to play with it more to find out how to better organize everything. For instance, what if I want to view updates from just one of my subscriptions rather than weeding through updates from the others? I am also curious as to what a bundle is.

I can see library staff and patrons being able to use this tool for library updates. So, if there were an FPL feed, it would contain updates on the latest events, materials, etc. I could also see that having categories of feeds might be helpful. For example, a Frisco mom might want to know all updates about storytimes, but not be interested in adult programming or materials. And of course, someone else might not want to go through all of the storytime updates, as she is more interested in author visits, the latest materials, or the Storytelling Festival.

I don't know if I personally will be a longtime user of Google Reader since I just started. But there is only one way to find out. Explore and experiment!

LRC- not just my initials

Also a learning resource center..

Legal Research Center

and

Labrador Retriever Club!

Better Late Than Never

Hello friends,

I am just starting the 23 things- hence the title of my first blog. Will I finish them by May 24th? Stay tuned to find out....

LRC