Week 9: Thing 20, 21, 22, & 23

Thing 20: YouTube. My favorite video was Library Dominos, which was very succinct and minimalist in its modernity. The site was great for finding other videos, like The Anthem of Bilbo Baggins, which was sung by Leonard Nimoy under the 1960's music videos search term. Didn't know he was a LOTR fan, but it kinda makes sense. Also, enjoyed the Conan the Librarian video, which had great shock value and really made me laugh because of it!!! :0) Limitations of the site are the manner in which videos are organized. They are not in Dewey Decimal order when they come up on the screen!!! LOL :)

Thing 21: Podcasting. I checked out Podcast.net and found casts using the terms, library and book reviews. I came up with the Library News podcast, which is located at Arizona University (I believe). That podcast was popular and I also found it to be located in Yahoo Podcasts. I decided I like Podcast.net better than Yahoo since it had RRS links available for me to link to my blog. Ended up linking Library News and Sunnyvale Public Library (which is close to our system).

Thing22: E-books. I enjoyed playing around on the sjlibrary ebooks site (this is not my first time on this site). I looked for Lord of the Rings (of course! :0) ) and found numerous e-books available for free to customers, including CliffNotes of the book! I really feel that sjlibrary offers a lot to its customers-and it is entirely free!!! No annual memberships and there is a lot of literature available, so in terms of quality, it is outstanding!!! I also checked out WorldEBook Fair to do a comparison level analysis, but found that there is an annual fee (about $9.00 p/year) for full access. I also checked out the Gutenberg Project: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page , which is an excellent project, and should be utilized. It has a large number of free books available; however they are limited to books that are out of copyright. So, when I tried to conduct a search on the Lord of the Rings (of course!), there were no copies available! I tried again with both the author name and title, but there were still no copies available! So, since the books copyright is not up, the Gutenberg Project does not have it in their collection. So, for books out of copyright, I would use this website. In the final analysis, I have really grown to fully appreciate SJPL's Ebook site for the books being free, a lot of titles form which to choose, and it is very easy to use!!! :0)*SJPL Rocks for Ebooks!!! go to: sjlibrary.org

Thing 23: Summary!!! Yeah-- I made it through the program!

1. My favorite discoveries were e-Blogger, Bloglines, and LibraryThing. Blogging was actually a much more useful skill than I had previously believed. I previously knew about RSS feeds, but having all the good ones in one place was very good thing as I can get to my favorite news stories easily (without bookmarking everything in my browser) . I also enjoyed learning about Rollyo and Del.icio.us. !!!

2. Librarylearning 2.0 has helped me see the "big picture" in staying technologically in-tune with society. For example, social bookmarking is an interesting way of being connected with people, ideas, and books (as in LibraryThing !). I also appreciate learning skills that have helped increase my tech-ability and also my self-efficacy concerning tech-ability (which can always be increased for everyone in this fast-paced society!).

Also, I love Rollyo!!! :0) I learned from using my Rollyo that I can find a lot of really good information by delimiting the search engines to the ones I am most interested in retrieving information from. A Google search is known as a first-tier search, so that search may bring up more useless information, but a Rollyo searchtool brings searching to another level! Now, I can find useful information from the reputable sources I am interested in. I also enjoy becomming familiar with Web 2.0, which has great ways to search for local events, such as theater.

3. Suprisingly, I enjoy using my blog. Search engines and tools that I prefer to use are in one place-- so I can get to my Bloglines, Flickr, LibraryThing, and favorite You Tube movies all in one shot. It makes it more convenient to have everything you need for social web-browsing in one easily accessible area: the blog!

4. Learning 2.0 is valuable for individual staff to experience in order to become familiar with various search methods (Web 2.0), as well as for SJPL as a whole in general (think Grants). I do believe that staff should be encouraged to spend more time on the web and completing these excercises. We are typically allowed one hour a week to accomplish these excercises (so we have to do them mostly at home if we do not finish). If you offered another program in the future, I would chose to participate! :0)