Saturday, March 29, 2008

Thing 22 managing info

Today I was overwhelemd. With a long vacation, two national conferences.. I haven't checked my bloglines in 45 days. Well, it was over 2,000 entries. I decided to just wipe it clean and not read them.... I also realized that I can't let it go- I subscribe to a lto of blogs, podcasts etc. and I really need to organize them better and to narrow them down to a core list. That is my resolution this week- to organize my blogline a bit better.

Also, I have great support through my colleagues with web 2.0 stuff, so I hope they will continue sharing sites, networks, etc. with me and vice versa.

Really, keeping up with your aggregator I found is the best way to stay informed, and to LISTEN... lsiten to the radio, to the television etc. that is where I often find interesting programs.... like the Internet history series on the Discovery channel, 60 minutes, listening to NYT podcasts... listening is great, especially for me as I have 2 hours to kill every day while riding the bus.

Thing 21 Ning

I just joined Ning and Ttwitter. I don't get the whole microblogging thing. Telling people that you jsut drank a bottle of water, got done with a meeting, etc. Sure I like knowing if you are at work, at home, at a conference.. overarching things, but I don't need to live your life via twitter... I jsut don't get the appeal. maybe it is because I am nto a big phone talker- I have friends who will tell each other everything they did via the phone, so now you do it real time via twitter.

I do like how with nonprofits the world of social networking can be a GREAT thing. For example with OCLC's open worldcat- if someone actually buys an item through amazon from that program's site a portion of the $$ goes back to the library they designate (or so they claim- I don't know of any library that has received $$ from the program yet). GoodSearch with nonprofits can join and then have people use the search engine and they get $$ from every one's search with that search engine. There is a lot of potential on the web for nonprofits.

Thing 20 Facebook

I have had a facebook account for a while now... it has been great! I have reconnected with high school friends taht drifted apart during college and now we have dinner once a month or so... Facebook's creator claims he wants Facebook to connect the world- he has lofty goals, and I wish him much luck. Facebook and LinkedIn have been great for me to connect with people personally and professionally. Though I think there is a fine line of privacy here that many don't think about- how much to share with the world or even with the vendors... that information might never go away. That is something I am trying to be more aware of- my lasting imprint in the online world and how vast it is!!!

MINITEX just created an organization page... not sure how we will use it, just to create announcements on our events etc. but it would be great if we could create widgets for MTX programs.

Feel free to friend me in Facebook :) I <3 library staff!

Thing 19 podcasts

Thanks for promoting our On the Road with MINITEX Podcasts. As a heads up I am hoping to podcast with Nancy Pearl, so you might see that in a month or so. If anyone has suggestions for interviewees, topics or ways to improve our podcast, please let me know- we are still learning and trying it out. I would liek to use garageband to create podcasts in the future because they allow .mp4 format output which allows pictures to be linked to the podcast, so you could see an image of who I was interviewing etc. Right now I use Audacity, which is free, and great in that regard and easy to use, but sin't as fancy as other software.

Podcasts I subscribe to are: grammar girl, library geeks, slate magazine, U's TEL vodcasts, LIBVIBE (GREAT for lirbary news around the country), palinet, sirsidynx, ACRL, OCLC connections and conference connections. I have so many, but onyl a coupld are daily or even weekly. it is great to download and listen to on my way to work on the bus. I can be entertained, use my dead time between work and time more effectivly and be more informed for my job.

Thing 18 You Tube

I love the link that you all posted that lists all the video sites: http://web2.econsultant.com/videos-hosting-sharing-searching-services.html what a great resource.

Does anyone get blinkx? I just don't get the appeal of searching videos... I watch videos when someone shares one with me, or when there is something specific I want to watch, like an episode of Desperate Housewives, for example. And I don't think it is that accurate.

A friend of mine helped make the IT vs the librarian videos- I think they are great! Reaching out to the community like that... though not sure what good it does to the rest of the world, but library staff sure appreciate it!

I love these video sites- they have a wealth of inforamtion. However, I am also a supporter of copyright, and it is a huge challange to keep up with sites like this and to police videos to makes ure they are not breaking the law... we will see where this goes as there are about 3 major lawsuits against Google for YouTube related items. I hope it doesn't go away, but I think it still needs tweaking. It also brings up a presentation I saw a while back where the speaker illustrated how the younger generations disregard copyright laws (not that they are preferct- I think they radically need to be changed- thank goodness for creative commons for trying to do that) but I think You Tube is a great teaching point parents and teachers can have with students on what copyright is and what is okay and not okay.


p.s. I am hoping to post something to YouTube in a month or so for work possibly.

Thing 17 ELM

ELM Rocks! :) But I am biased since it is my job to promote and use ELM all the time. I love soem of the new changes each of the vendors have made to the databases. Though finding NPR Podcasts in Gale can be tricky as they don't have a sort by podcast avaiable yet, they are a great tool to have. Another tool that we are promiting a lot right now is the RSS ability EBSCO has without having to create a personal account. This I think is fabulous because numerous users don't want to create another account, somethign to remember, but instead they can jsut take the RSS feed and plug it into their browser and presto- it is done! However, we are aware it doesn't work with all agregators- we are trying to troubleshoot the issue.

Page composer is ackward- I think ti could be improved. People have a hard time with having to move each citation or bit of text to rearrange things... but it is a nice addition. I have got a lot of feedback from K-12's though that they don't find it very useful as they have a page composer software at their school frequently, or a course management system that they have to use.

Thing 16 Calculator

I love RPC, and the Assignment calulator- I also love seeing so many schools link to them or adapt them to their own institution. Being a graduate student I have used the University of MN's version of the Assignment Calculator to remind me to to each task and to keep me on tack. I really enjoy the deadlines that are produced, even though they are tentative, and often I have to rework them to fit into my real world schedule... it is nice to see how if I don't procrastinate how much time I have to do things, versus when I wait and everything is due one day after the previous step how hecktic it all is.

I think the most useful past of the RPC is the new teacher version- the worksheets are fabulous, and when I should educators that is what they are so excited about.