Thing #23

Finally finished! It was an excellent discovery process. I learned many new and useful tools: My Delicious, blogging, Flickr, and Zoho Writer were among the most useful. I have added Picture Book Subject Lists to Zoho Writer, so that several of us may work on them at the same time. This training also allowed me to explore more fully other tools that I was aware but hadn't investigated in depth. Among the frustrations were the many broken links and links that had outdated dates. I would definitely want to have similar training that would be more up-to-date.

Thing #22

NetLibrary and Overdrive should have been higher up on this list, as these are resources on our Website and librarians should be knowledgable about them. I have already taken the online webinar for Overdrive and attended the training for NetLibrary at Staff Day. However, I have never tried to download a book from my home computer! It's easier to check out a audio book, than to spend time downloading a book to my iTouch. I have resolved to try it!

Thing #21

Exploring podcasts under the "Discovery Resources" was extremely frustrating, as many of the links in the podcast directories were dead. Podcastalley.com was the only directory that worked, but many of these podcasts, under the subjects I looked for, were outdated. A Google search for "Library podcasts" brought up a great podcast for the Free Library of Philadephia: http://libwww.library.phila.gov/podcast/. This is a podcast of their author events, up-to-date and also with an archive. What a terrific idea--a library can certainly expand their audience by this method. Should MCPL try this?

Thing #20

I've been aware of You Tube for quite awhile, but have never explored it. After searching "library" found a pretty interesting library rap-"The Dewey Decimal Rap":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHiUQb5xg7A.

Also looked at a school's math presentation--sure wish this was available when my children were in school. What a wonderful tool--but who has time to explore all these wonderful tools?

Thing #19

I explored several sites on the Web 2.0 Awards list. Many sites that we have explored through this training are on the list: Flickr; Zoho; Google Docs; and deli.icio.us. I explored the travel sites and liked Kayak http://www.kayak.com/ which will search several sites at the same time for hotels, flights or cruises. Should be useful as my brother moved overseas.

Thing #18

I signed up for both Google Docs and Zoho Writer, and tried to load the Picture Book Index onto both. This online tool would provide easier access to the Index and thus make it easier to update. Google Docs does not have enough space for the Index, but Zoho Writer was able to upload about half the list. This should make it easier for several people to work on this, and am hoping to recruit some colleagues from other branches. Very optimistic about this new (to me) tool.

Thing #17

The Sandbox wiki links did not work. However, I did google sandbox wiki and read about what it's supposed to be used for: experiment with using a wiki, without the contents being posted. It might be interesting to try a systemwide wiki for Picture Book Subjects and Fiction Subjects.