Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Week4Thing9
After playing with several of the suggestions for finding library related blogs and feeds, I personally found Technorati to be the most useful and user-friendly. I found several cool library related blogs, but I'll only take the time and space to list one: tametheweb.com. It has some really great information on a variety of library topics including Library 2.0 tools, ALA, current events in libraries, and lots more. I've subscribed to it and will likely find myself perusing it often.
Week4Thing8
I have a much clearer understanding of what RSS is, that's for sure! I've heard of RSS for a long time and even used a it a bit, but really didn't see the purpose or potential until going through some of the videos and tutorials. One of the reasons I don't "surf" for news and points of interest is because of the time involved. Now there is a solution to the time issue! I'm still trying to completely get the hang of the "subscription" process, but it's coming. At one point I tried to subscribe to a blog and somehow wound up putting it on my Microsoft Feeds instead of getting it sent to Bloglines. I haven't tried Google Reader yet, but will have to at some point to see if one is easier.
My url for bloglines is: http://rpc.bloglines.com/blogroll?html=1&id=s_lfsears@clarion.edu
I'm wondering how to get a website to become RSS-feedable. By that I mean, if I wanted to make my library's homepage subscribable to patrons, how would I go about it? If this was touched on in any of the information this week, I missed it. Anyway, I think it would be great to be able to have patrons subscribe to the library website so they could be notified of updates, changes, and new information posted.
In considering other uses for school media centers, I think it would be great if students could subscribe to feeds that pertain to their classwork. I see it being especially beneficial for political science/current events classes. If students have assignments dealing with news and world events, they could subscribe to news feeds and/or topics pertaining to their studies.
Last semester, I had a bit of personal experience with RSS. For the Database Searching class, I used RSS feeds to notify me of new articles that were published on some of the databases I was searching for the final project. If students began a project or paper enough ahead of time, this is a viable use for high school as well. Some of the ACCESSPA databases offer this type of service. Obviously, it's not going to be useful if a search is generated the night before a paper is due, but given some weeks a student could be notified of new articles and information that might be pertinent to his project.
My url for bloglines is: http://rpc.bloglines.com/blogroll?html=1&id=s_lfsears@clarion.edu
I'm wondering how to get a website to become RSS-feedable. By that I mean, if I wanted to make my library's homepage subscribable to patrons, how would I go about it? If this was touched on in any of the information this week, I missed it. Anyway, I think it would be great to be able to have patrons subscribe to the library website so they could be notified of updates, changes, and new information posted.
In considering other uses for school media centers, I think it would be great if students could subscribe to feeds that pertain to their classwork. I see it being especially beneficial for political science/current events classes. If students have assignments dealing with news and world events, they could subscribe to news feeds and/or topics pertaining to their studies.
Last semester, I had a bit of personal experience with RSS. For the Database Searching class, I used RSS feeds to notify me of new articles that were published on some of the databases I was searching for the final project. If students began a project or paper enough ahead of time, this is a viable use for high school as well. Some of the ACCESSPA databases offer this type of service. Obviously, it's not going to be useful if a search is generated the night before a paper is due, but given some weeks a student could be notified of new articles and information that might be pertinent to his project.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Thing 7 (week 3 continued)
I'm sorry if my posts seem a bit disjointed. I do a bit of the weekly activities at a time, when I have time, and I don't get everything into one post. Bear with me folks!!
I guess one of my new favorite technologies has become blogging. The possibilities are endless and I love the edit-ability (I doubt that's a word, but it fits here!) of blogging. I don't know how many times I've posted something or tried something and it wasn't right or not exactly what I wanted and all I have to do is go to the "Dashboard" and fix it! For example, I tried posting the link to my trading card and didn't think I'd done it right, so I tried a new tack. When I checked out my blog, found I had two posts and two links for it. Not liking the first one, I simply deleted the post and viola! I have one decent post and link. I know that may sound really basic to some, but for me it's learning even the simple things that keep me intrigued. I also just see so many applications to blogging, and the ease of integrating other technologies into a blog makes it even more appealing.
On another note, I've had a couple experiences recently that have really encouraged me to promote technology in the library. First, at two different times in the past seven days, I've had patrons ask me about AccessPA and how to go about searching for books and using the catalog. I was thrilled!! One patron was in the library at the time, so I could physically show her what to do and some additional benefits to the database. The other patron was the postmistress who stopped me as I was picking up the library mail. I briefly explained how to go about the searches and borrowing requests, but encouraged her to stop in so I can show her more. What kind of hit me in these experiences is that even though the access and information has been out there for a long time, it wasn't until these patrons had a personal need to know that they sought further help. Can it be said that along with putting the information out there, our jog as librarians also consists of helping people see WHY they need it???
The second experience has to do with a patron who is severely hearing impaired. He comes in about once a week, uses the computers, borrows books and also asks me to interlibrary loan books for him. My usual procedure is to call patrons when their books come in. He cannot hear on the phone, so he gave me a relative's phone number who then would get in touch with him. After several times of calling this third party, it dawned on me that the patron communicates over the phone by texting. I let him know that it would be possible for me to text him directly if he wanted me to and if he was comfortable with that. He was,and now all I have to do is text a simple, "your books are in" and he's there to pick them up rather than having to wait for someone else to remember to tell him. If this were something I was doing on a larger scale or in bigger library, I'd likely see about having the service available through a library chat/text website like aim, for example, to make it a professional library "service."
I guess one of my new favorite technologies has become blogging. The possibilities are endless and I love the edit-ability (I doubt that's a word, but it fits here!) of blogging. I don't know how many times I've posted something or tried something and it wasn't right or not exactly what I wanted and all I have to do is go to the "Dashboard" and fix it! For example, I tried posting the link to my trading card and didn't think I'd done it right, so I tried a new tack. When I checked out my blog, found I had two posts and two links for it. Not liking the first one, I simply deleted the post and viola! I have one decent post and link. I know that may sound really basic to some, but for me it's learning even the simple things that keep me intrigued. I also just see so many applications to blogging, and the ease of integrating other technologies into a blog makes it even more appealing.
On another note, I've had a couple experiences recently that have really encouraged me to promote technology in the library. First, at two different times in the past seven days, I've had patrons ask me about AccessPA and how to go about searching for books and using the catalog. I was thrilled!! One patron was in the library at the time, so I could physically show her what to do and some additional benefits to the database. The other patron was the postmistress who stopped me as I was picking up the library mail. I briefly explained how to go about the searches and borrowing requests, but encouraged her to stop in so I can show her more. What kind of hit me in these experiences is that even though the access and information has been out there for a long time, it wasn't until these patrons had a personal need to know that they sought further help. Can it be said that along with putting the information out there, our jog as librarians also consists of helping people see WHY they need it???
The second experience has to do with a patron who is severely hearing impaired. He comes in about once a week, uses the computers, borrows books and also asks me to interlibrary loan books for him. My usual procedure is to call patrons when their books come in. He cannot hear on the phone, so he gave me a relative's phone number who then would get in touch with him. After several times of calling this third party, it dawned on me that the patron communicates over the phone by texting. I let him know that it would be possible for me to text him directly if he wanted me to and if he was comfortable with that. He was,and now all I have to do is text a simple, "your books are in" and he's there to pick them up rather than having to wait for someone else to remember to tell him. If this were something I was doing on a larger scale or in bigger library, I'd likely see about having the service available through a library chat/text website like aim, for example, to make it a professional library "service."
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Things 5 and 6 Week 3
I'm going to try to post a link to a "trading card" that I made. Hopefully it will work! I used bighugelabs.com to generate it.
http://bighugelabs.com/photos/f0929acdacfcf024bd0c521c9736fdcb/decked4537f6921146f8a7a182611a5fde191546982a
I'm finding the more I explore these "things," the more adventurous I become. As I was playing with photos and flikr, I decided to add a photo to my profile which I hadn't attempted before.
I've also done option b of the discovery exercise: used a picture from one of my library's summer reading activities, and tagged it. I was surprised at how easy it was. These sites are very user-friendly and they "mash" with each other very well. Bighugelabs.com has a link to Blogger to make it so quick to share pictures.
http://bighugelabs.com/photos/f0929acdacfcf024bd0c521c9736fdcb/decked4537f6921146f8a7a182611a5fde191546982a
I'm finding the more I explore these "things," the more adventurous I become. As I was playing with photos and flikr, I decided to add a photo to my profile which I hadn't attempted before.
I've also done option b of the discovery exercise: used a picture from one of my library's summer reading activities, and tagged it. I was surprised at how easy it was. These sites are very user-friendly and they "mash" with each other very well. Bighugelabs.com has a link to Blogger to make it so quick to share pictures.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Week 2 - creation and avatar
Well, I believe after adding some gadgets and an avatar, my blog looks a little more personable. I had a hard time finding a site that wasn't too involved to create my avatar. I wasn't as ambitious as Valerie to try the talking creator!! :-) My avatar isn't completely me, but at least I had fun creating her! I'm glad through the course of the past year I've learned enough about technology to be ablet to save it and insert it into my blog...I would have struggled with that a year ago! Progress can be seen in many ways, thank goodness!
Here goes...
Welcome to my blog. :-)
I'm thinking this will be a great way to refresh the blogging skills that we learned last fall in Intro. It is actually fun to blog, I just find I don't have the time to do it unless I'm "forced" to in a manner such as this. Maybe I'll find a way to work it into reaching out to my library patrons. I've already got several patrons who regularly write book reviews for me to post in the library, which other patrons rely upon for their next book selections, so maybe a blog would be a way for them to interact even further...hmmm.
Has anyone tried this?
I'm thinking this will be a great way to refresh the blogging skills that we learned last fall in Intro. It is actually fun to blog, I just find I don't have the time to do it unless I'm "forced" to in a manner such as this. Maybe I'll find a way to work it into reaching out to my library patrons. I've already got several patrons who regularly write book reviews for me to post in the library, which other patrons rely upon for their next book selections, so maybe a blog would be a way for them to interact even further...hmmm.
Has anyone tried this?
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