Saturday, June 28, 2008

Check out the SELCO page - free classes for MN library staff

WHOA! Check out the SELCO page if you're a Minnesota library staffer - free online courses are being offered. Brush up on skills or learn new ones. A fantastic listing. And did I mention they are FREE? Register within the next two days or cry! (But not for too long - they mentioned that they'll be offering another round of sign ups after the 30th sometime.)

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Music & Podcasting

One of the challenges of podcasting is creating a polished work. Music in the intro or to segue can help you accomplish a more sophisticated podcast.

Some websites worth visiting and with great goals are:
www.musopen.com
www.opsound.org
http://www.jamendo.com/en/
http://freemusic.org.ru/

http://www.soundsnap.com/ - Sound effects and loops.

As always, visit the licensing page of the website/artist to find out if and how you are allowed to use their work and what licensing you must make your production.

Have some websites you'd like to share? Please do!

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Neat tools to use from your cell phone!

I recently ran across these two tools:

Google 411 - Connect to any business for free from your cell phone

Jott - "Free voice to text service. It's like your own personal assistant." Use your cell phone to call in memos and to do lists etc that are then electronically converted to text. Now, I don't necessarily promote talking on your phone while driving...but it'd be a great way to make a grocery list or whatever when you are safe to use your cellphone and want to multitask.

Let me know if you use these and what you think.

Monday, June 16, 2008

23). Summary

Holy cow, I made it! *Happy dance!*

This experience has helped me find tools beyond what I knew. One of the best ways it helped me was that I felt justified in seeing more of what's out there - our library director was very supportive of this program.

My favorite discovery...well, I guess it has to be GoodReads or LibraryThing. The social networks were great - I'd belonged to Yahoo! groups in the past for hobbies and interests and to see how slick so many of the social networks have become. Wow.

I'm still looking for others to network with. If anyone wants an ear for a program or wild idea you've got rolling around in your head I'm here. And, once I've got all my ducks in a row I'll be happy to be a resource for anyone else building a podcast at their library. I've been researching this for a while now and am actually into the doing part so I have a lot to share. :o)

I'd really love to see a website dedicated to the 23Things or a wiki that we can start to put information onto so that it has a touchstone that we can continually come back to.

I would definately participate in 24 Things Plus program.

And, if I had to describe my experience in one sentance...

"This has everything you have been wanting to know more about (or didn't know you should) when it comes to learning about technology in the workplace and library."

Saturday, June 14, 2008

22). What did I learn today?

I resolve to keep blogging.

I do find useful tools and I have useful information and I promise to share it. Hopefully someone else will find it interesting or helpful - isn't that what started the 23 Things in the first place? (Besides the fact that the creator was organized enough to put it all together?) I can try to be organized. Really.

What you'll likely find here in upcoming months will some of my own findings on library podcasting. Updates on favorite new authors and books....Maybe some of my own musings on writing.

Some things that I find useful in trying to stay current...blogs. I have several blogs in my iGoogle Reader - I catch up with them when I can and I almost ALWAYS run across an idea or resource that is useful or inspiring.

I also pick up PC magazine or Smart Computing now and again on my lunchbreak. I've come across new and interesting things now that I do searches with the words "social networking" as the main goal. Never know what you'll find!

One thing I have really come to realize is that there is a tool out there for every need...almost. So, if you find yourself getting frustrated about something see if you can find something that will help you out! The internet is limitless and full of possibilities.

21). Beyond MySpace

Okay, so I joined GoodReads and Shelfari. Shelfari - didn't like the graphics. GoodReads - was THRILLED to find out that one of my very good friends is already on there and am happily waiting for her to add me to her friends list.

I also am happy that GoodReads has NO LIMIT on the number of books that can be added to your shelf. As LibraryThing did have a 100 limit and I was bummed.

This will come in handy for those nights of allergy-med induced insomnia. I can keep wracking my brain for all of the books I have read. Ever. YES! [Random high-five Jim Carrey style.]

I will be recommending GoodReads to all my friends who are readers - it'll be fun to compare and see what everyone is reading. Also check out the widgets and the author pages - very cool. Enjoying it like crazy! I enjoy reading authors blogs and pages so this was a fun find.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

20). Facebook & MySpace

Well, I looked at MySpace long ago and was turned off by it. I thought its design was too much like my freshman year locker to be of any interest - messy, stuff all over...

FaceBook is more attractive but you have to be careful not to get sucked into the many games and quizzes. I have a friend who started sending me stuff almost daily. Useless bits of quizzes. But I was able to find my old college roommate on there and reconnect. So that was awesome. (If a blast from the past.)

I get frustrated and perhaps a bit anxious with Facebook, however, in the fact that I do have personal information Out There. [Cue the Twilight Zone music.] So I try to keep things PG even though I am not a PG personality at all times. Sigh. I get tired of having aliases and pseudonyms.

I really would like do more work-related networking. Have a group of cyber buddies that you can talk shop with and bounce ideas off of without worrying about politics, dud ideas...just be able to throw it all out there.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

19). Podcasting

I prefer Podcastalley.com for podcast searching. I'm pretty enmeshed in podcasting right now. I've been designing a podcast program for the library. It's a collection of children's classic literature that's in the public domain (no copyright worries) and I'm soliciting patrons as readers for the content. I'm absolutely excited every time I get a new person interested in being involved.

I've also done recording with Audacity. Audacity is the perfect recording software. It's free and does all that you need it to do and more. For recording equipment we're using a usb hook-up mic to laptop and a few other various sorts of eqipment. (Pop filter, headphones....)

When we have our podcasts up I'll be posting the RSS feed link.

There are many possibilties for libraries to explore with podcasting - one that I've got rolling around in my head if this all goes well is the idea of collecting oral histories or doing a community reading (a different person reading each chapter) of a larger work.

Want to listen to classics or do some reading and share it with others? Check out LibriVox - it's a VERY awesome project. Also check out Project Gutenberg - tons fo eBooks and audio.

18). YouTube

This video cracks me up! My husband (who's from Nepal originally) tells me that India's Bollywood copies everything Hollywood does. He's right. The chance to see anyone else dress in red leather and dance like Michael Jackson is too fun(ny) to pass up.

I have fun surfing YouTube now and again - whether it's playing the old "I Love Lucy" scenes (like the grape stomp) or looking for the Hardee's commercial with the little old ladies asking "Where's the beef?" Of course, there is the undesirable (to me) instances of pornography. And of course there's the copyright issues. Ugh. But it's very fun for the consumer - you can even pull up old cartoons from the 80s that haven't come back by DVD (like the Snorks).

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

17). ELM Productivity Tools

Holy. Cow. This is one of those things that you know you should know more about and I'm glad to have finally had a chance to do more than just skim the surface. (Even though it was more like dipping than dunking - there's so much information here!!)

I will be happy to add this to my arsenal for reference questions...here at my library very few people are doing actual research - and when they do we often come up short when it comes to obscure topics or anything that falls outside of our popular categories (cooking, crafts, gardening, dogs, WWII just to name a few).

These tools would benefit patrons who are looking to do research or even recall an article from a magazine. If we had enough demand for it a class for patrons would be great.

I am already rethinking how I've been researching the topic of going green. (I'm on the green committee here -- I really lucked out compared to one of our poor librarians stuck on the safety committee who gets stuck listening to park and rec and maintenence woes.) Anywho. It's great.

Oh, and I will be working this into one of the classes I'm teaching this summer on how to research medical conditions and live a healthy lifestyle. It's mostly about webtools but this will be a great resource for the more research motivated patrons.

16). Student 2.0 Tools

The U 0f M Assignment Calculator is much more detailed than the Research Project Calculator, however, the RPC lets you sign up and get email reminders whereas the U of M AC is limited to faculty, staff and students of the U of M. You could save your research guide or print it out. I like to print things out so I can write all over them and take notes. And cross things off as I get done with them. Hehee.



Extra handy is the supporting materials page with TONS of helpful printouts. Check out under #4 - you can print out a "Copyright and Fair Use Tip Sheet" (there's an appropriate library handout!) and a "Permission to Use Copyrighted Resource Tip Sheet." There will certainly be helpful pages for longterm planning on projects at a library.

These links relate more to a previous Thing but thought I'd share these free and fabulous resources for organization and planning:
http://www.toodledo.com/

http://www.famundo.com/

http://www.mynotewall.com/

15). Online Gaming

Okay, so I surfed Puzzle Pirates. I was going to try 2nd Life at home last weekend but when it came to downloading more software onto my husband's computer (mine croaked and is now being reincarnated) I hesitated.

So, surfing Puzzle Pirates, I was intrigued to find a page listing all sorts of people who'd met, fallen in love and gotten married or became a couple from Puzzle Pirates. Ah, technolove.

The interactions with other pirates was fun...I wonder how many pirates are people hiding from their day job hunkered down in their cubicles? It was more fun than solitare on my computer - which I enjoy for the mindlessness of it.

Once my computer is back up and running I think I'll try 2nd Life then. I feel guilty putting time into surfing and game stuff in the summer but come winter I'll be ready to sit in the glow of my moniter, I'm sure.

Gaming at our library...well, that's about 95% of what the kids use the computers for. The one time I've actually been asked to help a kid with Word instead of www.PBSkids.com or www.nickelodeon.com I was pretty impressed that he was writing for fun. Yay!

Sunday, June 1, 2008

14). Library Thing

Yahoo! (In the sense of joy, not an internet search engine.) I love Library Thing.

I enjoyed exploring the Zeitgeist - see who the worst- and best-rated authors are, the 25 most-rated books and more. And check out the largest libraries.

On the search page you can do searches on usernames (hint: have fun doing a search under "librarian" and see all the users who come up and then look at their lists).

I also had a lot of fun adding books I've read - the only drawback is that you can only have a hundred books on the free account. Total bummer as I'm sure most library staff will fill personal accounts up quickly!