Week 8 Item 18 Online Productivity

 A Test Posting to see how well the thing works.



Like pretty much everything else thus far it was pretty easy to create an account in Zoho writer. It pretty much functions as a typical MS Word document and would be great for people who don't have access to that program from home.

Week 9 Item 20 Discovering YouTube

I found YouTube by accident when I was searching for something else and have been enjoying it ever since. It's amazing how creative people are and what obscure stuff a person can find. For instance there was a song from the summer of 1989 that I couldn't remember the title or even the artist of. All I recall was that it was a mix of popular songs from the 50's and 60's. Turns out the song was called Swing the Mood by Jive Bunny and the Master Mixers. It took me a little bit to figure out how to post it to my blog but once I did it worked great. This technology would be quite useful for the library because it could show all the interesting activities and programs that are going on that make going to the library so much fun.

Week 3 Item 5 Exploring Flickr

Front of the Winchester House,
originally uploaded by starlen.

I worked here when I was in college. The general tour usually takes an hour and five minutes and takes one over a mile through various rooms of Sara Winchester's house. People say there are a lot of supernatural things that go on there but my only experience was one I was sweeping on the 4th floor of the house and heard my name being called but nobody was there.

Week 3 Item 5 Exploring Flickr

Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum,
originally uploaded by keolson81.

I used to work at the Egyptian Museum and part of the standard tour was to talk about this replica of the Rosetta Stone. The original is in the British Museum and it was the key to finally understanding Egyptian hieroglyphics. It's divided into three scripts Demotic, Greek, and Hieroglyphics, all saying the same thing. It was really easy to find and I was surprised that there were so many entries about this San Jose museum.

Week 9 Item 23 My Library 2.0 Journey A Summary

I learned a great deal in my journey through the Library 2.0 program. But I must say I enjoyed creating the "Library Trading Card", Flickr, and going through YouTube. My lifelong learning goals were affected in that I'm planning on taking more computer classes to continue to stay up with what's out there. It's just amazing how much stuff is available on the net and how creative a person can be with just a little bit of knowledge. As for the program itself I think with all the hints, classes, and other opportunities and having the time to go through it all was worth it. If another discovery program was offered I would participate, just a bit earlier than I started with this one.

Week 9 Item 21 Podcasts

I was having some trouble with the office library computer and will attempt to listen to these at home. I did however add the postings to my bloglines account and am curious to see how well they turn out. Nothing all that earth shattering just entertainment postings of Star Trek Pioneers and the Sci-Fi.com Battlestar podcasts.

Week 8 Item 19 LibraryThing and cataloging some of my favorite books

It certainly was interesting to see just how many other people enjoyed some of the same books that I did.

Week 7 Item 17 My entry in the Learning 2.0 SandBox wiki

I added comments about one of my favorite books The General's Daughter and my all time favorite move Star Wars before it was called A New Hope.

Week 7 item 16 Wikis and how libraries are using them

These Wikis are very interesting in that they can be designed that pretty much anybody that knows anything about a topic can add there two cents worth to the posting. The title for the one really says it all about the post Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki. This is another one where the title sums it all up: Welcome to the Official Wiki for the 2006 ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans! This one had all kinds of information about the event including about the city, public transportation, and the like. These can really be used as information tools to help get the message out about SJPL.

Week 6 Item 15 Web 2.0, Library 2.0, and the future of libraries

I read the first and last articles of this activity and thought they were both rather interesting. When it comes to the "just in case collection" the author does make a valid point, however, even though the web is a great resource there are times when it goes down so that a print collection is still necessary. Plus there is a certain segment of the population that still likes having the material in their hands to read so that's also something to consider. When it comes to "reliance on user education" San Jose Way has helped take this strictly from librarians and shifted some of the teaching to support staff so that everybody is a "teacher" Also when it comes to the "come to us" model of library service again there is always going to be a segment of the population that enjoys the physicality of the library.
As for the article last article about the library experience of the future personally I'd really enjoy Library 3 and 4.0 but I'm not sure how practical it is.
Honestly Library 2.0 is many things to many people and to me it's all about empowering staff to learn a variety of skills to help the customer

Week 6 Item 14 Technorati and learning how tags work with blog posts

It was actually quite interesting just doing a quick perusal of the Technorati popular videos I noticed a Youtube posting about a "sad Kermit" that was intriguing. But when I actually searched on "Learning 2.0" there was a plethora of items that came up over 26,000 in blog posts, 513 in tags, and 208 blogs about Library 2.0 Again tags are a good way to help narrow things down when it comes to searching.

Week 6 Item 13 Tagging and discovering Del.icio.us

The tagging is really useful to help narrow down a search but as for Del.iciou.us itself, perhaps because I was pressed for time I didn't really appreciate it. I thought it was interesting in the podcast about the whole "folksotomy" thing and how it sets up reading lists and a syllabus that helps people connect with "good material" a "shared reading list" and "collaboration" All these options make them attractive for students to get their projects done.

Week 5 Item 12 Roll my own search tool with Rollyo

I attempted to do this the other day with just a simple one for Star Trek. However when I tried to add it to the blog it didn't work for some reason. Here was the Rollyo link:

The Joy of Star Trek

Week 5 Item 11 Web 2.0 Awards List Exploration

I took a look at various examples of the awards list such as craigslist, lastfm, etc but I kept coming back to YouTube. Honestly I guess it's just the easiest to use and will play the whole song rather than just samples that lastfm does. Craigslist does certainly have an interesting perspective on classified ads.

Week 5 Item 10 Online Image Generator

Sometimes trying to get images to post can be problematic. After searching through the various online image generators I found a Dilbert image that I thought would work. I entered my text and went to put it in the blog. I had saved it on my computer so I just went to add image, chose the layout, and here was the result.

Week 4 Item 9 Useful library related blogs/ news feeds

I have to admit that I was running out of time to complete the project and only breifly looked at each one. To me they all seemed that same and there wasn't really anything that differentiated them.

Week 4 Item 8 RSS feeds and setting up my own Bloglines newsreader account

script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src=http://rpc.bloglines.com/blogroll?id=john.muller@sjlibrary.org

If a person knows what their doing this could really save a lot of time and effort, however I was having problems with it and it didn't seem to want to work for me.

Week 3 Item 7 Technology

I purchased a digital camera recently and have really enjoyed the benefits of this technology. Chief among them was the ability to actually see the pictures one is taking before spending the money to get prints of them. I think at one time or another everyone has exposures that have been "wasted" and this is a slightly more economical way of making sure you don't miss the special moments of ones life.

Week 3 Item 6 Flicr mashups & 3rd party sites.

I created a simple library trading card and it was fun and easy.

Plus I was able to add it to the posting without too much trouble.

Week 9 Item 22 eBooks and Audio eBooks

It's important to note that a simple spelling mistake in the title of a book can effect ones results. For instance when I typed "The son also rises" I didn't get any results. However when I typed the title correctly "The sun also rises" it came up with 4 results related to the Ernest Hemingway book.

Week 1 Item 2 Pointers from lifelong learners

Of the 7 1/2 Habits of Life Long Learners I found that the easiest for me to do was the first one about setting goals. My problem sometimes is actually following through on some of those goals. The hardest habit for me to do was seeing problems and challenges to overcome and not as continuous hassles to have to deal with.

Week 2 Item 4 Register one's blog

Registering the blog was easy, straightforward, and now I'm ready to go out and explore the world of Library 2.0

Week 1 Item 1 Read initial blog & find out about program

The introduction to the program and Mary's comments stressing that "one can have fun in the library" were a good way to kick off the program.

Week 2 Item 3 Setting Up A Blog

Signing up for the blog itself was relatively easy and straight forward. However, I was a little confused as to how to get back into it once I logged out. One must be sure to use the "new blogger" Google account log-in rather than the "old blogger" using your blogger account log-in.