23 Things #24

My cute little MP3 player arrived and I immediately set it to charge.  I decided to download the book I had checked out several days before.  First,  my computer would not allow me to download the software necessary to upload the book. (I needed administrative priviledge. Once that issue was resolved, it took 3 of us to upload the book because there was a DRM glitch that needed fixing. Lucky for me, one of us 3 is a techie and was able to solve the problem. After that, I had no problem loading the book onto my MP3 player and have been enjoying listening to it.

23 Things #23

Being unaware of most of what 2.0 has to offer before beginning this adventure, the majority of the exercises have been  real eye-openers for me. The journey has been interesting, aweinspiring and informative. Just being “in the know” has made this a valuable experience.  Among my favorite stops along the way were learning about Flickr, Delicious, Library Thing, Image Generator, Discovering 2.0 tools, You Tube and Podcasts.

I’ve always thought it important to keep learning and exposing myself to new things. This exercise reminded me that even when a task is intimidating, and/or difficult, it is sometimes necessary to step out of my comfort zone. The result can be very satisfying.

It surprises me that I now have an interest in exploring more of 2.0 and further exploring and using some of what I have already learned about. It surprises my adult children that I am able to share with them things that they were not aware of.

23 Things #22

A few years ago I was delighted to learn that CCL had added downloadable books as an option in our catalog. A new experience for me, I downloaded a Judy Picoult novel onto an mp3 player and set about listening while working on a project. I loved it. Problem was,  I was not able to bookmark the page when I wanted to stop. I would have had to start at the beginning again. After 4 hours of listening, that was not something I wanted to do. This, I was told, was a problem being experienced by many.

Being disheartened by my  first experience, I have not looked into OverDrive until this exercise. Now I’m excited again, and hopeful that, since the books are in parts, the same bookmarking problem will not arise. I’ve taken out an e-book and look forward to downloading it to a CD so I can listen in the car. (Guess I’ll do that from home.) There are many other books I would like to listen to and am pleased that I can listen to a portion of the book before actually taking it out. I was a little surprised, however, at how many authors/titles I searched for that are not in the catalog. Perhaps they’ll be coming.

23 Things #21

So glad to find out about podcasts. I’d heard of them but not understood what they are or their value.  I am delighted to find such an array of interesting “sites” to listen to. What pleases me most is the idea that I am not tethered to a computer. That I can download these episodes to portable media devices and listen on the go appeals to me. I also like the RSS feature, allowing me to check for what’s new in an expedient way.

I got a little carried away and entered several podcasts to my Bloglines account. One of them is Children’s Book Radio. Hope it lives up to my expectations. If not, I’m sure there are others out there that will.

23 Things #20

This has been a fun interlude to my day. I’ve watched videos of everything from bluegrass music to muppets.  It was enjoyable once I discovered a cure to the problem I was having.  I was getting frustrated with the little circle dots that kept coming on and interrupting the video.  I was told that it was a connection problem, that the video was downloading faster than it could load – to pause the video until the light red line to the right of the cursor was half way down the path – then start it again and  I would be able to watch uninterrupted. Worked like a charm!

I was enjoying the serenity of Monet’s Gardens, when a co-worker walked up behind me and said she loved being there. Hope you enjoy this peek at spring as much as I did.

I imagine putting together a YouTube video would be a lot of fun.  I’ve seen concerts on YouTube – how about library programs? We could certainly reach a much bigger audience that way.

23 Things #19

WCPL’s Face Book page for teens  is well done, has fun and helpful links, pictures of recent programs, and is kept up to date. The teens are becoming aware of it and participating. This seems to be a good way to reach the teens – in a space and format that they are familiar with. I applaud those who are willing and able to construct and keep such a site current.

A friend of my son’s bicycled across China and posted updates of his experiences as he traveled. One of our former part-timers is now teaching in Croatia and posts pictures and interesting bits of information for us to read on her Facebook account. Keeping friends and family updated with information about the important things happening in one’s life makes sense.

While I understand people’s fascination with Face Book and My Space and Twitter and such, and I see the value of them for social networking, I personally am not ready to get involved.  To my way of thinking, the majority of posts are time wasters – for the author and the reader.  Someday, perhaps, when I have something happening in my life that would benefit others to know about,  I may change my mind and jump on the bandwagon. Until then, anything I would have to say would just add to that which I consider clutter on the net.

23 Things #18

I clicked on the short list and – wow – if that’s the short list…..!!! So many things to choose from. So many things to investigate. I decided on Zillow – the number one site for real estate. What a fabulous site. With maps, pictures, details, comparisons, aerial views, mortgage info & help, advice, lists of professionals including real estate agents, lenders and home improvement, local information, etc. And it was all free! I’ll be sending information on this site to my son who is in the market right now. Can’t imagine that it won’t be helpful.

23 Things #17

Zoho looks very interesting. I played around a little and enjoyed some of the features I am not used to using – like being able to replace a word in a document or throughout a document with a more appropriate one by using a dialog box. How easy! I also like some of the templates – and having a sample resume could be very helpful. Allowing multiple users to work on a document at the same time sounds fascinating to me. I’ll have to explore this site more when I have a real application for it. (Wish I had known about it when I was working on family reunion documents and e-mailing drafts back and forth to our committee members for editing.)

23 Things #16

Adding to and editing our own wiki is something I have been doing. Until today I had not used the calendar though. It was very straight forward and easy to use. Hopefully it will be of value to others. This was my play in the “sandbox” for today.

23 Things #14

Apparently Library 2.0 means different things to different people.  My understanding is that basically it gives its users the ability to participate in services offered by libraries.  It creates an environment where libraries  not only keep up with technology, but embrace it as a way to more efficiently deliver services to our patrons. This also allows us to reach a larger patron base, including those who might not otherwise visit a library.

While I find many aspects of this interesting, one application kind of jumped out at me. It seems Hennipen County Library in MN allows its patrons to enter comments about its books in its on-line catalog.

Really?!? Hmmmmmmm. Not sure what I think about that. Do we really want to be that much like Amazon?  (Maybe allowing patrons to post tags would be a better way to go.)