Monday, March 9, 2009

Thing #33 Travel 2.0

http://www.boo.com/ the "collective wisdom" website had NO knowledge when it came to me trying to find information about places I'd like to travel to.

http://www.greenroutes.org/ offered some interesting places to check out the next time I stravel up to Duluth or to the Twin Cities. The nearest green location on the map from where I am is in New Ulm at Morgan Creek Vineyards (I've been there and it IS neat!).

http://www.igougo.com/ I'd visit this site again if looking for info on places I'm travelling - would easily choose it over http://www.boo.com/.

http://www.mapness.com/ I am now debating between using mapness or MyGoogleMaps to create a mashup of places I visited on my honeymoon. (There were a lot of places!) Mapness lacks some of the bells and whistles that MyGoogleMaps does, so I think I will keep to that but will keep Mapness in mind.

http://mykugelhopf.ch/ I could easily surf My Kugelhopf for quite a while. The pictures are great!

Some of my favorite travel sites:

www.exploreminnesota/myfavoriteminessota/ - Explore Minnesota is awesome but making it even better is My Favorite Minnesota - people can make lists of their favorite places and share them - I've found some great lesser known places to go visit that are much closer to me. Very helpful and fun!

*ExploreMinnesota is one I regularly recommend to patrons who are surfing OR purposefully searching for Minnesota travel information. It is a fabulous site with so many tools!!!
Also I've found Babelfish useful when it comes to translating http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ ...haven't had a chance to travel and use it since I haven't gone far lately but I do use it now and then.

I also enjoy searching based on a location and "food blog" - you never know what you'll find. Half of the memories of a trip is the great food you ate. Mm, like the pasties I had up at Two Harbors at Vanilla Bean.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Thing #32 Google Maps

I created a mashup of handy places to take a book and read in the town I work and shared it. I'll probably create on of places my husband and I visited on our honeymoon in Washington state. Maybe I'll scrapbook that for posterity - I always thought for sure I'd remember all the places we went and stayed at but my memory is already getting fuzzy. How disappointing.

I've enjoyed the Google Maps functions when going places I'm unfamiliar with. When I looked up the SELCO site I could even "drive" along and look at sites along the main roads in Rochester. Very impressive. I sometimes also like to use it to armchair travel...see sites I'd like to visit or have visited and just wanted to check out for fun.

I wish there was a Google Maps mashup of movie locations used. Then maybe you could travel and stop and recognize sites used in your favorite movies. That'd be fun.

I really couldn't think of a way that it'd really be that useful for our library.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Thing #31 Twitter

I've added Twitter to my iGoogle page. I have a 3G phone but have not opted in to any of the texting services (do so little of that) that Twitter wouldn't be useful on my phone at this time...but I could see it maybe being that sometime.

I use my Twitter account as a professional tool - I've found some nifty links that others have shared: http://www.mcm.org/educators-groups-parents/parenting-in-public/history-of-wakanheza/ Wakanheza program was started in Ramsey county but offers some good info that can easily be applied in a library environment. If not for Twitter I'd never would have found this.

I'm now listed in the TweeterDirectory. At first I missed librarians under the education heading...almost put myself under "Knowledge Management." LOL.

I've found that Twitter is.....what you make of it. You might find that you never use it or why would you even want to? It is more likely to be that if you don't experiment with it. Even now, I find that I try to check mine daily (although sometimes I forget) and maybe every other time I'm on. Some people I've subscribed to only post personal stuff (Shouldn't have partied last night.) - things that I'd never send out to cyber land. And others, you never get a sense of who they are. I hope I'm in the middle. Otherwise, what's the point?

I use it more for microblogging and then some conversing. That's where I'm at on that scale. It's a super tool that I wish existed for me when I was in college.

Podcasting for Libraries

Podcasting: Searching for Content

Searching for literature in the public domain can be simplified by using the internet as a tool. Be careful of the resources you use as many personal websites on the internet may be unwittingly using content that is still copyrighted. Literature by A. A. Milne that features his character Winnie-the-Pooh is still copyrighted, yet, many personal websites have work posted by this author.
Websites that might prove useful for research purposes are:
www.gutenberg.org
www.books.google.com (Search for books marked as Public Domain)
www.archive.org In the end, keep in mind that you are the one responsible for knowing the works and being sure of the existing rights, if any, of the work to prevent yourself from infringing on copyright. Copyright infringement is punishable by law with statutory damages being awarded up to $150,000 per willful infringement of each work.