A new season

As the leaves change and the weather cools, it is also a new season within the library.  Mr. Johnston's retirement means staff will certainly miss his steady leadership, dry humor and amusing ties, but this is also an exciting time as we welcome John Spears, a new Director who will challenge us in new directions.

In anticipation of meeting with the new Director, I am writing up a precis of the Department's programming and services.  What a pain ... and yet, it is exactly what I should be doing every few years in order to focus on where we are putting our energy!  The monthly reports or annual summary too often look at a our progress as small chunks.  It's satisfying to step back from this pointillism and take a look at the whole picture.

Discovery Wrap Up

This has been a lot of fun and I hope we can continue this process for other learning opportunities.  Although I had been using some of the elements we looked at (i.e. del.ici.ous, flickr), I discovered other tools that I will continue to use, such as pageflakes, Google Docs / Zoho, and RSS feeds. I think it would be nice to produce some podcasts that could be posted to the library website, but that is a new goal on the learning curve!

Thanks for putting this web discovery together.

Exploring Web2.0 Tools

[[I thougtht I had already posted on these last few assignments!]]
I chose the 'page starter' category and tried both Pageflakes and iGoogle.  On Pageflakes I like that you can create a series of start pages: a general start page; a news page to view headlines from various sources; a web 2.0 page that displays flickr, twitter, facebook or other apps you can choose.  On iGoogle many of the sasme widgets are available but it is a single start page.  I like the look of iGoogle and how you can pick from several colorful headers.  The LabPixies 'notes' and 'to do' lists are very useful on the iGoogle site.

Office Productivity

Applications like Zoho and Google Docs certainly simplify committee work or just sharing files with yourself.  I saved a few files on Zoho that I work on in my office, on the YS service floor, at home, and when I am at the Black Road branch.  This really helps because [1] I don't have Office 2007 at home and [2] my profile doesn't come up easily when I am at the branch.  I do wonder about the security of having files floating in cyberspace, so I'm not sure I would trust really private files to these applications.

Online Book Communities

I have an account with Goodreads and I enjoy participating in several reading groups; currently the Newbery 2010 reading group is my favorite.  Youth Services also uses LibraryThing to organize booklists accessible from our Kids Stuff tab on the library's website.

I find sites such as del.icio.us, Goodreads, and LibraryThing very useful.  Rather than compiling bookmarks on a single machine, with these sites you can access the lists and tags from any computer and easily share suggestions created by others.

Social Bookmarking

I have used both del.icio.us and Diigo to tag information from the internet.  I think I tend to use delicious more often because I'm used to tagging sites for Infozone: the JPL Youth Services account.  I like the features in Diigo that let you highlight or place sticky notes on tagged sites, pdfs or documents.

Youth Services staff have been playing around with several sites to improve access and services to our patrons.  From the Kids Stuff section on the library's website, the HOMEWORK CENTER tab lists subject tags linked to our Del.icio.us account, giving patrons suggestions on websites and articles.

RSS

RSS feeds make it convenient to stay current not only with news sources but also with favorite bloggers.  I set up my reader to include feeds from some of my favorite book review blogs, Newbery discussions, and picture book discussions.  Many of these people or organizations also post notices on Twitter so following them there as well helps me keep up to date.

Blog about Technology

The capabilities of the internet are quite awesome, but with that capability comes problems as well.  I see people trusting the internet implicitly because such an overarching presence seemingly must be authoritative when this is far from the truth.  Although more information is readily available, the problem is more information is readily available!  Inaccurate information, too many logons and passwords, increased identity theft risks ... these are a few of the drawbacks that come with increased access and speed of retrieval.  When the powergrid goes down or servers are compromised, will the new generation know how to kick it 'old school'?

To complete this assignment, I've posted comments on several others blogs.

Video Sharing

OK (maybe against my better judgment), here is a book review for y' all. 

and, I can't resist posting a link to this hilarious video: Your Life Work -- The Librarian. It is an episode of US Government film series on careers from 1946. I'm not embedding it because it is 10 minutes long!

Photosharing

Book Bench

"Jordan Rose, vice president Randolph Rose Collection, has a seat on one of the company's latest bronze sculptures . . . ."

I am intrigued by book furniture ... so often I wish I could buy the things I see on the spot! Another group on Flickr you should check out is Reading in Public.  The Marin Poetry Chair and San Luis Obispo Reading Chair are two more of my favorites.  Click here to see my Gallery.

Book Bench photo taken June 11, 2009 by ALA The American Library Association

Wikis

I like the video example of how wikis can be effective for group collaboration. This approach would assist library staff in working on projects or sharing information. I am skeptical of wikis for factual information ... as with any source, authority and currency are key ... but some of the "how to do it" wikis are very useful as a source of information.

Vote to Renovate Nowell Park in Joliet

Microblogging

I am signed up for Yammer at work and I am @libmaven on Twitter.  Twitter really runs the gamut from annoying incidentals to interesting facts, links, or photo posts that people share.  I especially enjoy following publishers, authors and other book bloggers who often feature links to book contest on their blogs.  It is a great way to keep up on upcoming books or news.  I follow some famous people for fun: Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Fry, Scott Simon, Barbara Walters, et cetera, as well as some other people I don't really know because there tweets are witty or interesting.

Technorati

This is a fascinating site. I found the statistics and demographics very interesting. It surprised me that the Huffington post came up as number one. I guess a lot of people check it ... I don't because it seems to regurgitate other news sites. I'm not sure I agree that "authority" should be based on the number of other blogs that link to a blog. I am in the process of "claiming" my blog but am having connection problems from here at home and seem to get kicked off a lot! I will redo the tagging later with a more reliable connection.

JPL Discovers Update

So I have completed three exercises:

1. Lifelong Learning: the Habits and Steps are handy to keep in mind as we go forward.
2. Blogs: I have created this blog to track my progress and recorded it with jpbb1903@yahoo.com
3. Technorati: an interesting snapshot of what we are all doing here on the web!

A Great Photo from the ALA Conference in Chicago by egmontgal

Talk Like a Pirate Day: September 19th

Welcome to Office 120

So here I am in my office, ready to start our Library 2.0 training!