Web Time

Created with dumpr.net - fun with your photos

dumpr.net

Created with dumpr.net - fun with your photos

Found a fun website that will make pictures from anything. Above is the Amazing Circles made from a pix of our building. And above that Museum. You can post to blogs from site, email, save to Flickr.

Week 10 - Is this the end??

I enjoyed going thru the different tasks. Even on the sites I was familiar with I learned something.
Having a blog for this project will hopefully remind me to keep it up for other things I learn. I have enjoyed Flickr, but did not know about the online photo editing tools. I can see using them, especially Picnik in the future. The avatars are fun. Being able to write documents, etc. online and share with others could be very helpful, especially if several people were working on a project together, but in different locales. Listening to podcasts are something I want to find time for. There are a number of library related ones out there, but as usual, the problem is finding the time.
I've been looking at Stephen Abram's 43 things. Some of them I have already done, not including iHCPL, some I don't want to do and there are some I want to try.
Some of the 23 things are already being used at the library, Overdrive, Flickr, blogs, YouTube. And for the staff Del.icio.us, some wikis.
I have enjoyed the learning process. I'm not sure what else could be used at HCPL. I think we have made progress in the Library 2.0 area. I try to help patrons and fellow staff members whenever possible with web stuff. I try to let patrons know about our ebooks and NetLibrary. I try to educate and show rather than just do it for them.

Week 9 - YouTube workaround

This is a link to the video that I wanted to show.
It's called "Get a Library Card"

Week 9 - YouTube test

We'll see if this works.
Just trying anything


Well, I've tried three different videos and none of them have worked. I go to YouTube and click on the embedded script and paste to the Edit Html tab and when I post, there is a box with nothing in it and then when I click a couple of time, just a different colored box. Argh!

Week 9 - Downloadable Media

I have used OverDrive audio books and have been able to find books and music that I want to listen to. There is a good selection of titles. I also went into the movies and downloaded a part of a movie. The selection is kind of odd. A lot of older titles and many children's titles. There don't seem to be many newer titles, a couple that I think were on cable at one time.
It's nice to have access to free books. I also have an Audible account and enjoy it as well. There is access to many more titles, but you have to subscribe and pay for the items.
The main problem with LibriVox is the titles are all older since they are in public domain and you don't know how good the readers are going to be. I'm not sure I would use this site/
Wowio seems to be classics and some vanity press. However, the craft section has a couple well known publishers and some very good titles. The nonfiction that I checked seems to have one or two well known publisher with a few titles and more from publishers I have never heard of. I think this might be a good site if you are selective about the titles. I did find a title in the craft section that I downloaded.

Week 9 - Podcasts

I searched the listed directories, plus another for libraries. Podcast Alley and Podcast.net seemed to have the best hits with some duplicates. Podscope and Yahoo! didn't seem to do as well.
Of sites found, SirsiDynix Institute seems to have a good selection that I would like to listen to.
Podscope doesn't seem to hit many searches on target.
Postcast Alley's magic term was 'library'. With that one, I got over 100 hits, many from different libraries.
Some of the ones I am finding seem to only play on a pc or iTunes. I have downloaded a couple of mp3 podcasts in the past and they worked fine on my player.
Podcasts are something I would like to continue with in the future.

Week 9 - YouTube continued

OK, I've gone back to trying to embed a YouTube video on my blog. I have followed the instruction on the iHCPL blog, I went to the source page from iHCPL and copied that code and tried it, I am doing all of these from the Edit Html tab in create posting, I have followed YouTube's help page with these instructions...
Yes, you can autoplay movies! In the "About This Video" section of the video watch page, we give you the source code to embed the video:
(then follows their code for this)

To make it autoplay, just append "&autoplay=1" after the video ID so it looks like this:
(then follows their code for this)

substituting my video address for theirs in both places.
I got it to play once from one of these, but it would not play a second time.
I have tried several different videos. The most I get is a box that shows up when I mouse over it.
I don't know if there is something blocking me or what but I have become VERY FRUSTRATED trying to do this!!!!

Week 9 - YouTube and video sharing

I have a YouTube account. I had been finding some movies that I wanted to keep track of, including the skateboarding dog. I have also done bookcart drills. I don't tend to spend a lot of time on the site, but it is a fun site.
One problem with using it at work is dealing with the CIPA disclaimer notice everytime you try to do anything. I understand why, but it is still annoying.
Doing searches on librarian comes up with some very good videos - some ads for libraries, what librarians do, and some libraries have tours and instructions online.
I tried multiple times to embed a YouTube video, but following instructions and trying everything I could think of, I was unable to get the video to embed. I don't know if I was missing a step or what, but I give up!

Week 8 - Web-based Apps

This is my first time to use Zoho. So far it has dumped me twice and made me start over. I have no idea what I did for it to do this.  I also haven't found where to name docs after they have been saved.

I'm going to try to do several things with it including importing it to my blog. We'll see.

I was on vacation at the Quilt Festival for a week taking classes and shopping. One class I took was a basket weaving class. Here are a couple of pix.

 

                                                              

       

 

I don't like the fact that you don't seem to be able to adjust the size of a pix once you have imported to the document.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was not obvious how to post to the blog, but someone here figured it out. I have also looked at Google docs and might use it instead, though Zoho seems to have more apps. I'm still looking at them.

Week 8 - Social Networking

Well, I'm back from vacation and mostly missed the Horizon meltdown.
Now, I had signed up for Myspace and Facebook accounts sometime ago to see what they were like. And because I have a Yahoo account, I've logged into Yahoo! 360. I just don't really get the point. I know the kids are able to put up wallpapers, and other stuff on their sites. I have not been able to figure out how to do this and it all seems to take a lot of time. Also, it is frustrating to use Myspace at work because you have to keep clicking past the restricted page.
Looking at some of the other social sites:
Xanga lets you look around and seems to make it easy to change themes, look at pix, videos, etc without having to register on the site. The HGTV site looks like fun. Catser is also fun. Ning seems like an OK site. You can search for groups that interest you.
I guess the answer is, if you are young and like keeping in touch with Myspace, or Facebook or whatever site you use, then great, but this is not my thing. I would rather blog.

Vacation

Well I'm on vacation this week at the Quilt Show at the George Brown Convention Center. So no iHCPL till next week. See you then.

Week 7 - Technology & commenting

I am SO HAPPY to be able to download audible books. Even in our system, we don't have everything I want to listen to. I download from our site and from Audible. I enjoy reading Gizmodo when I get a chance to try to keep up with what is coming out. Technology is changing faster than I can keep up with it.
The second part, I left a comment on Whitty and Reason's blog about etiquette in using technology and found a Buffy fan. I do try to look thru other blogs when I have a chance, but very seldom comment. Maybe I can start a new habit.

Week 7 - Wikis

I've used Wikipedia as a starting point for some reference questions. There are good links and info, you just have to be aware that info needs to be verified.
I also like Library Success. There are some good ideas for programs and other information that I want to check into.
I liked the BookLoversWiki also. Might we be able to do something like that for patrons to add to? Possibly for next summer's adult reading club?
The St. Joseph County PL's subject guides is something that would be useful for people new to an area. It might be interesting to find out how much upkeep is involved.
I also added my blog to the favorites list and added a link under the Favorite Animal page. It was tricky to get the name of the web page to hyperlink. It took me several trys to get it right.
Wikis can be useful for libraries, but there would need to be moderators to keep the information correct and to keep inappropriate material off of the pages.

Week 6 - Library 2.0 & Web 2.0

There has been a lot of discussion about Library 2.0. Making everything easier for customers to use, website design friendlier, using new technology, and looking for new ideas to incorporate into the library.
Michael Stephens of Tame The Web makes good points about what the 2.0 librarian should be like. Looking to the future in planning, involving IT in design and what needs to be planned for. To realize planning may need to happen quickly, technology is changing at a very fast rate, but to make sure the technology is valid before buying it.
Rick Anderson has some valid points about people not needing hard copy of reference materials when they are available in online databases. One problem with that is sometimes a library subscribes to a service one year and drops it the next. Then you may not have the materials at all because you don't have the hard copy. If the library subscribes to a necessary database, they need to decide if they will continue to subscribe or if they are going to drop it. Making websites user friendly is what customers expect. They are used to Google or other one stop search engines or having a list of subjects to click on to take them to what they want.
This happened to me once. I had pointed a customer to a certain database and the next week the person was in to use it again and the database had been dropped and was no longer available. And we had nothing in hard copy to replace it.
That said, I refer customers to databases they can use at home to save them printing costs and that they can use after we are closed. I try to show them how to do the search they are interested in and let them know to call if they have any problems.
The online books and downloadable books have also been of use to customers.
One problem our catalog has is subject headings. As a librarian, I have trouble with subject headings. Many are old and/or not descriptive. Others seem to be applied randomly. One of my favorites is Women's Studies. It can be on anything from a book on feminism, to science fiction, to mysteries and thrillers. Sound Recordings for records, Sound Recording Industry for record/music industry. I don't know if tagging book entries is the answer, but subject headings that are more current are needed. Other books have no subject heading and others in series all have different subject headings.
Anyway, I think we are moving in the right direction, but because of the nature of the beast, it will be an ongoing project.

Blog Action Day

I may be a day late, but I didn't get to it yesterday. The environment is something everyone needs to be concered about and Blog Action Day is a way to be involved.
I tend to have a rant about every strip center that goes in, every subdivision that goes up, the people building them come in and the first thing they do is to clear cut all the trees. Once upon a time, subdivisions at lease, left trees up as something good to have. Now they cut them all down, build houses, and plant a twig in the front yard and call it a tree. This also destroys the habitat for that area. Birds, small animals, insects are all destroyed. And at the rate things are destroyed in city areas, there will not be a place for the animals and birds to move to. Many years ago, in the evening, there were huge flocks of birds of different kinds that would roost around town. Now there are only grackles and not many of them, relatively speaking. Scissortail birds were every where, now I seldom see one except in the country. Lightning bugs have vanished from many areas. It's all very depressing.
Businesses need to realize trees are necessary and valuable to people, animals, birds, and insects. Don't cut the forests down! Leave trees for everyone and everything to enjoy.

Week 6 - Technorati

I've tried the different searches with varying results. The search for blogs about, with exact phrase came up to almost 7000. Going to tags search without quotes is about 23,000 and with quotes 6300. The blog directory search without quotes was 465 and with quotes 280. Using quotes makes a big difference. The blog directory search with quotes seems to narrow results to library/librarian blogs. I recognized several of the blogs as ones that I have read or have in Bloglines. Many of the other sites are much more general.
Going through the 100 most popular blogs, I see several that I recognize. Looking at some of the other popular links, I liked the movies and dvds as ones I might like to look at. The others, not so much.
I'm still not sure that this is a site that I will use very much. I tend to use Google news or Bloglines to keep up with current stuff. It's not overwhelming like Technorati is.

Week 6 - Tagging with Technorati

OK, I understand the concept of tagging, let's see if I can make it work. I've been enjoying the challenges of the 23 things. So far I've already known some of the things, but other things, like tagging and editing pictures online are new.


Technorati Tag: PLCMCL2

Week 6 - Tagging & Delicious

I have had a Del.icio.us account for a couple of years. It is very handy when working at a branch that isn't my own. I am also working on the HCPL account. I was reading the Several Habits help list and found out about subscriptions. I had not tried that before, but will now.

Week 5 - Library Elf

I have subscribed to Library Elf for a couple years, shortly after it first came out. It gives a very nice presentation of everything on your account. It tells you what's due, overdue, holds, things ready to be picked up, and things about to be due. Fairly recently I noticed book reviews showing up. There are links to Amazon and WorldCat for finding the book. I like it much better than the one the library has. Better formatting, gives more info and it looks pretty.

Week 5 - avatars one more time

After doing some things on another project, I finally found out how to put my Yahoo avatar on the side of my blog where she can stay and not just have her in my post. This is a continual learning experience. What you learn for one thing will answer your question about something else.

Week 5 - more LibraryThing & Goodreads

I explored a little more on LibraryThing, found the groups where the librarians are listed along with some other groups I might check in on.
I signed up for Goodreads. The one extra thing I like about it is you can list items you would like to read. It also has a widget for recently added books. I'm not adding it at this point.
I like both of these programs and will have to see if I use one more that the other.

Week 5 - Backtracking to avatars

Saw a great avatar on another site and decided to create one of my own. She is below and the site is Meez. It was a lot of fun and there are many choices in dress, background and actions.

Week 5 - Which way?? - avatar

Week 5 - LibraryThing

I already had a LibraryThing account, but hadn't done much with it. They also have added some features to the site. I've gone thru and added books and audios. I also added a widget, though it seems to just show the blog. I am still exploring the site.
I have also been looking at other blogs and finding new and interesting things on other people's sites. In some cases I am trying them out on my blog.
I found Widgetbox and am trying out some other widgets. I found my favorite cat, Maukie, and added her.
It's fun to try out things other people have used. I think I will pick up more than 23 things.

Week 5 - generator

The Movie Poster generator.

Week 5 - Avatar

I was able to get my Yahoo Avatar into my blog. Still trying to get her on the template.

Week 5 - generators

I picked Garfield up at Comic Strip Generator. It was easy enought to make the comic, but it doesn't quite fit and I'm not sure how to change that without possibly changing the entire layout.

Week 5 - Generators

Well I started playing around with some of them to see how they worked. The ribbon generator let me put a Breast Cancer Awareness ribbon on my page.
The Blog Header Image Generator let me change my blog header to something more exciting.
I've done an avatar on Yahoo, but I can't find a way to get it to my blog and from their help, not sure I can.
Still playing with some of the other generators. Will check back.

Week 4 - more on finding feeds

Well, I thought I would give them a second or third or fourth (I forgot how many searches I did the other day) chance. I went back to the four listed and tried a broader search term. Technorati did the best, finding a number of blogs on target. syndic8 did so, so finding a few. Topix still doesn't have a clue. Feedster did well also. And Bloglines did quite well. I would still choose Bloglines if I was looking for new blogs. It's handy, easy to use, has good results.

Week 4 - Finding feeds

OK, I tried all of the ones listed. I was doing several very specialized searches.
Technorati needed me to be specific and even then it didn't find much. Syndic8 did well on one of the searches. Topix doesn't do hobbies or crafts or other things like that at all. It looks like its main point is news. It never found anything I was looking for. On Feedster, the tab for blogs made it easier to search and I found a couple of blogs on my subject. The one I found the easiest and most successful to use was Bloglines. For the most part, I was not impressed with any of the outside feed finders. I don't know if it was my subjects that were just not indexed by those sites or what.
Back when I first started blogs, I was reading The Shifted Librarian. The first aggregator she talked about was NewsIsFree. I got an account with them and used it for awhile. Then she talked about Bloglines and I went to them. I started out just searching them and found several library/librarian sites and subscribed to them. After that as I read blogs, they would mention other bloggers or have them listed on their sites.
I would also find the RSS logo on sites of interest and add them. Now, I basically just try to keep up with what I have. Sometimes a site quits posting and I'll drop them or someone mentions a site and I'll add it to try it out. If nothing else, I will try a search on a subject and blog and things will usually pop up. And most people list favorite blogs on their sites, so it makes it easy to add blogs that will probably be what you want and they have been screened for subject matter.
If you don't like a site, there is always delete.

Week 4 - RSS aggregators, Bloglines

I've used Bloglines for a couple of years now. I haven't had much time recently to keep up, but I can drop into it and read when I have a chance. I think I have about 50 subscriptions. Most are to librarians, but some are for gadgets, others for things of interest to me. I'm trying out their Beta Bloglines as of today. I'll have to see how I like it. The format is a little different.

Week 3 - Snipshot

And this one was also easy to use.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Week 3 - pixer

This image was done in Pixer. Also easy to use, you just have to save to pc.







This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Week 3 - Picnik Bird in a Basket

Bird in a Basket
Originally uploaded by me

I've just played with picnik a little bit. I seems easy to use and does a good job. Will try the others.

Week 3 - APIs, mashups, etc.

Just looking at some of the different things people have done, I don't see much of interest to me. I found a jigsaw puzzle site that pulls pix from Flickr, and Tagnautica is weird and an easy way to kill more time than one should. Anyway, just some comments.

Week 3 - Flickr mashups, etc

I hadn't used mashups much before this and I haven't gotten thru all of them, but of the ones on the page, I like trippermap. Being able to post pix is kind of fun. Didn't really see the point of Colr Pickr. Trip Planner is fun to daydream with. If traveling, it would be fun to journal a trip and post pix as you went along. I would have liked the trading card site except you had to give permission for the site to access your private pix as well as the one you were using and I didn't want to do that. I'll find a different way to do that. I have used my READ poster as one trading card.

An experiment based on another blog

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Week 3 Flickr

I'm doing this all out of order. I've had a Flickr account for awhile, plus I work with the branch account. So I'm familiar with uploading, posting, putting into sets and collections.

Week 3 - Pix, first thoughts

OK, I have done the posting from Flickr. I left thoughts about my problems on a previous post. I really think there should have been better instructions on linking the Flickr account to the Blogger account from Flickr.
OK, rant over.

Liberty Belle B-17

Liberty Belle B-17
Originally uploaded by scallen

Finally figured out how to post from Flickr to my blog account. There really should be more information on setting up the link between Flickr and Blogger. I do fairly well with things and I spent time looking on help screens, etc. before I found the item that said you had to get permission and then how to get permission. Much of this will not be obvious to newbies.





This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

B-17 Liberty Belle

Visited Hooks Airport.

I was having problems uploading from Flickr, so this was done from my pc.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Online Safety

I try not to use any identifying information about myself. When I sign up for websites, I will use initials and my last name, which is fairly common. If I have to give an email address or snail address, I have multiple accounts and one or two that I use for possible junk mail and I use a PO box if they require a street address.
I don't like the idea of putting much info about myself out there. Other blogs I have I keep private and every so often check to make sure they don't show up on a search. Same with my Flickr account. Only a few public type photos are out for everyone. Most are restricted to friends/family.
If I talk about work or people I know, I use initials or made up names just in case someone finds my account.
I see alot of kids putting up all kinds of info and wonder how much is going to come back to haunt them.
If I am helping someone register or get email or whatever, I will usually suggest using initials instead of first names, etc. Also, if someone is setting up an email for resume or business purposes, I will suggest that what they choose for an email name is not too weird or off the wall that might put a business off from hiring them.
Back to the original - I do try to be very careful about what I put online.

Setting up

I'm setting up this blog a week early because I will be on vacation next week. I have other blogs, but not anything I want to share.