Finding Tools And Their Use

I tinkered around with Wufoo https://secure.wufoo.com.  This offers many different forms that I felt would be applicable to libraries.  It is free.  Registration, permission, health forms as well as invitations, job aplications and lots of others are available.  There are standard forms as well as the choice to customize your own. 

I also checked out Hair Mixer.  This is also free and allows you to see yourself with a different hairstyle and color.  I thought this would be useful for a library program such as a make up makeover for teens or women in general.  You upload a photo of yourself and try on a style.

Deceased Authors 2008

Below is the document that I created in Soho Writer.  I would like it to be a document that others could add to.  Can anyone let me know how to “add” people to work on it?  I tried to add some emails but it didn’t take.  I added a comment space.  Perhaps I will get results that way.

A few months ago I attempted to use Google Docs. with a friend in Sacramento.  He was unable to open the document and work on it.  it was quite frustrating and many emails and phone calls did not solve the problem.  He is an IT person and could not figure out how to get it to work.  I’m hoping that Soho Writer will be friendlier.  Here is the link to the document http://writer.zoho.com/public/exlibris330/Deceased-Authors-2008.  Is it okay to make something like this public?

LIST OF AUTHORS WHO DIED IN 2008

Tony Hillerman

Michael Crichton  

Studs Terkel  

Arthur C. Clarke

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Gregory McDonald

James Crumley

WIKI EDITING

Thing 16 was easy.  Either the site is very user friendly or I have assimilated all of the previous learning and am able to retrieve it when necessary.  If I have learned all of this I am truly amazed and about to have it declared a miracle. 

I linked movies and a book to our catalog.  My link didn’t look like another link that was there.  Also when I put the cursor over the link it didn’t come up as a clickable link.  I may not have linked it properly.  If anyone can tell me if it is right or wrong I would appreciate it.  Should the colors and fonts all be similar or is it okay to get wild and crazy with colors and fonts?

I have to give wikis a thumbs up for being useful and user friendly.

WHAT IS A WIKI

Wiki means quick in Hawaiian and after visiting several of the suggested wiki sites the name is appropriate.  Information is found very quickly. St. Joseph County Public Library had an interesting site.  It highlighted local authors.  From the site you could place holds on titles, very convenient. 

YALSA showed how easily information about a convention could be disseminated using a wiki. Besides giving dates, times and locations for all of the activities it also listed local things to see and do in the city.  Looks very useful for planning and staging a large event.

Bull Run Library, Fairfax Reads… highlights the “most circulated books of the previous week.”  Readers can reserve a title, read and write reviews.  I found that feature very interesting and helpful for readers.

I like the ideas of wikis and could see the use of them in  CCLS.  I would be interested in having one for Downingtown Library in some fashion.

LIBRARY 2.0

GATHERING QI

Thing 14 has given me food for thought.  I started with wikipedia Library 2.0 I visited the Orange County Library System and built a snowman.  The snowman then led you to books on Snow families, Yeti and other things.  Seemed very friendly and interesting way to present a book theme.  This was imbedded in a  blog “Is your OPAC fun” that was posted on LibrayThing.  Ours isn’t but what an undertaking to make it so.

Another thought was training patrons to use the digital collections,flickr etc. or to have the catalog be friendly enough that they can teach themselves.  Another huge undertaking.  An article on OCLC Web 2.0 and where it will take libraries… that was interesting.  Wasting funds on collections that can be accessed on line.  Coming to grips with the fact that information will be found online and not in books.  Teachers will need to be educated on that one… they keep requiring book sources.

The last and most thought provoking is the privacy issue.  Librarians railed at the Patriot Act and yet LibraryThing has all that information right out there for the taking.  What should we consider as private?  After reading that I’m just not sure how privacy can or should be protected.

Technorati Blogs Buttons and Tags

I’m connected to yet another site with another username and password.  Claimed a couple of blogs as favorites but was unable to tag them.  I searched “library 2.0″ under general search and had 20,000 plus hits.  Refined it under blog posts and had 486 and 754 under blogs.  Could not search under tags… it went to web 2.0 instead of library 2.0.

 As I do these assignments and get further into the blogosphere I feel more and more isolated.  I see in my mind millions of faceless people facing a screen rather than interacting face to face with one another.  I see the value of it all for research, it gives you vasts amounts of information with very little work.  For much of the other stuff I would rather see people unplug and venture out to a coffee shop and share some ideas with a warm body facing them instead of a monitor.

DELICIOUS

I took the delicious tour http://delicious.com/ and visited some of the sites.  I felt overwhelmed with information.  I would have to spend longer than the 90 minutes that I did to sift through the info and relate to my life in some way.  I did open an account with delicious.  However I can’t seem to find the button that I installed on my toolbar.  Hopefully my husband will find it and point it out to me.  Perhaps I didn’t install it.  I’m hesitant to do certain downloads and uploads for fear of crashing the machine.  Will try the button thing again later.