Thursday, November 29, 2007

Final Thoughts on Semester 1

It's been very informative. I was reading a fellow Winnefox colleague's final thoughts. He is absolutely right on saying that he hopes libraries will use some of these Library 2.0 tools. I can see Oshkosh using a few of them (provided staff time to do set them up :) I would love to see more interaction with our public on the site, especially for book reviews. My supervisor and I have already talked about a few ideas for the site.

As a part-timer with a child, its hard to find time to keep up with technology. Having Project Play has made me sit down and learn more. Looking forward to Semester 2.

Wiki or not to Wiki

My home computer is being so s l o w today, I couldn't look at the library examples for wikis. I'll try at work. Curious to see what the St. Joseph subject guides look like. Oshkosh is always looking at new ways to present our subject guides. OPL should have a wiki entry. Will comment again after looking at some sites.

Added the Morgan House to the Oshkosh wiki. Library was already added and thought the Historical Society could use some pr.

del.icio.us

Well, I've learned about del.icio.us, but I haven't gotten too excited about it. When I checked out the libraries that are using it, I felt that its overwhelming. Too many sites to look at. Guess I'm an organized/limited time person and like to "cut to the chase." I want a short list of links not a long list of topics to scroll through. Guess I'm in the minority. I'll have to use it more often to see if my opinion changes.

I do like the concept of tagging. Somebody may assign a better tag to a book than I would or have a different perspective on a book than another person. Again, I'll have to get used to putting tags on my blog and also the library's Hot Topics page.

Thursday, November 1, 2007

LibraryThing

I didn't know this existed. It's great. I can use it to keep track of what I've read and get some suggestions. I can see us using this for Readers' Advisory in our library. We could make some reading lists or even get some read-alikes for display purposes.

Here's my library As you can see, I'm into series. The Covington & Cape Light books are similar to Jan Karon and Miss Julia books - its characters all reside in the same town. "Night of the Howling Dogs" I read along with my son. He's a sixth grader who is finally enjoying reading, but its hard to find books for him. Currently, he's reading the first of the Alex Rider books by Anthony Horowitz.

I asked for suggestions similar to "Night of the Howling Dogs." They did suggest Lawn Boy by Gary Paulsen. He read that book and enjoyed it. It recommended "Schooled" by Gordan Korman. I'll have to have him try that one.

The problem with all of these Web 2.0 products is finding the time to keep up with them. I don't go on my blog except for the class and I haven't checked my feeds in over two weeks. Where do people find time to do all of this?

WLA

Went to Wednesday session. Enjoyed the keynote speaker. He inspired me to read his book on Vince Lombardi. Also went to podcasting session. Sounds so easy to do. Hope to start doing some on our site.

Flickr



Flickr rules! Guess I need to figure out how to use Flickr. Everybody uses it. I would like to use it personally to upload some family photos. I've scanned relatives that I would like to share with my family. A genealogy set. For work, we could definitely use it for library events and get comments back. Would like to post a historical photo for assistance or some kind of contest.