Longhairlibrarian's Weblog

Web 2.0 wrap-up

longhairlibrarian — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:27:02 +0000

I did finish this a while back, but just didn’t get around to posting until now.

I believe this was/is a very good exercise for introducing us to the various tools available on the internet to do a variety of interactive tasks. I currently use several of these tools on a daily or weekly basis. I feel more comfortable now in helping patrons with some of these sites.

The zoho.com or google docs sites are especially useful for patron who don’t own a floppy disk or flash drive and need to save documents. Of course it means we will probably also have to help them sign up for an email account, but that is fine.

I use delicious, google docs and facebook regularly and twitter occaisionally. I read other blogs regularly but am not sure if I’ll keep this one up or not.

It has been fun and educational at the same time.

Social Bookmarking / Delicious

longhairlibrarian — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:18:13 +0000

The RRC committee considered delicious as an option for the AACPL Recommended Sites this year. I created a delicious account for two of the categories. We decided it wasn’t quite friendly enough and we couldn’t make it look as nice as we wanted so we didn’t choose to go with delicious.

Every branch was giving a delicious account to use if they wanted for their information desk computers. I did add lots of entries to the NCO one. http://delicious.com/aacplnco

This delicious site is on all the information desk computers at NCO. It includes the ‘favorites’ of the NCO staff plus many of the most used sites in Recommended Sites. I use it all the time now. I prefer delicious at times over the recommended sites because it is faster to search.

I like being able to tag the entries with words I use and can remember and other people can use the words / tags they want to and they are all there for everyone to see and use.

Delicious is very easy to use. I AM glad they did away with all the periods in their name because that was just confusing.

I also created my own personal delicious account for my personal use. It includes many of the ones I use at work, too. http://delicious.com/dbmatt

Wikis

longhairlibrarian — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:47:34 +0000

I do look at and use the Materials Management wiki on a regular basis. I was on the Reference Resources Committee this past year and the notes from that committee are posted here. I do like getting an email notice when it is updated so I keep aware of what is on that wiki.

I did use the Long Range plan wiki to post comments a few times during that process. It is good to have a place to go to check on current happenings.

I also use the New Tech wiki once in a while.

Last summer I created a wiki to use while planning a training workshop for a conference. This was a great tool for the 3 of us to use since we live in different parts of the country.

Wikis need to be kept current to be useful. Once the conference is over or there no longer is a need for the wiki, it can be deleted or not updated.

Wikis can be simple or complicated, depending on the need and on the expertise of those who are creating and updating it.

Online Office Tools

longhairlibrarian — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 21:41:09 +0000

I’ve used zoho.com and googledocs to save documents online. Last summer when I was working with 2 other people to coordinate a workshop at a library conference, we used googledocs to create our handouts. We also shared a powerpoint presentation using googledocs.

I believe we should encourage any of our patrons who do not have a flash drive or floppy disk to use either googledocs or zoho to type their resumes and papers and letters. This way they don’t lose what they have typed after they leave the library. It is a free way to have access to word processing and even presentations similar to powerpoint. Both online programs will accept Word documents or PowerPoint presentations so you can save and edit them. They are not quite as powerful as the full Microsoft versions, but they are close enough for most of our patrons’ needs.

We should all feel comfortable with these programs online so we can assist patrons.

I did post my zoho document that I created while working on this exploration.

Web 20 assignment 2009

longhairlibrarian — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 21:34:23 +0000

Debra Mattingly
5 February 2009

I just tried to copy and paste something from a Word document and it didn’t work today. I’m sure I’ve done this in the past. Wonder why it doesn’t work today?

If I go up to the top bar and click EDIT then PASTE, it works. But the PASTE button above in zoho does not work. Why?

Copy and paste inside this document does work.

Control-C and Control-V did work just now with a Word document:

It should automatically return you to your named assignment page. If not, click on the name on the left column, under My Docs, to open your assignment back up.

Yes, this is U2′s Bono
Yes, this is my husband, Terry Mattingly
Yes, I have talked to Bono on the telephone when he was trying to find Terry
Terry has known Bono and U2 since the 1980s – before their rise to huge fame
Bono keeps his private life private — His first born is only about 1 year older than our daughter Sarah
This picture was taken in DC in the Senate building
Terry has met and interviewed many very interesting people

Web 2.0	Can be fun	I like zoho
I also like google docs	Colors and fonts are fun	I want work to be fun can you tell?
It is very cold outside today	I enjoyed the half days for snow last week.	Our Sarah is a Senior in college! Where did the time go?

There are 259 words above in this document.

Library Thing

longhairlibrarian — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 01:18:57 +0000

I created a Library Thing account a while back and entered a few of my JK Rowling and Madeline L’Engle books. I have LOTS of books. This takes a while to enter and I just haven’t found the time to do that yet. I do hope to catalog our entire home library one of these days. We do have about 10 book cases full of books in our house.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/dbmatt56

I attended a conference summer of 2008 where the main speaker for our conference was the creator of Library Thing — Tim Spalding. He was a GREAT speaker and showed us lots of wonderful ‘libraries’ on Library Thing.

I think this could be a great place to recommend patrons who want to keep up with books they have read — if they are at least a little bit computer savvy.

I think Library Thing ‘could’ be used to catalog collections that are not in Sirsi (or there any?) or create a Maryland ‘library’ with the Gold Star collection for patrons to browse.

I’d love to have the Kuethe Library collection catalog somewhere. Library Thing might be the place to do that.

RSS Feeds

longhairlibrarian — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 18:02:23 +0000

OK. I’ve spent several hours looking at and setting up RSS feeds from various friend’s blogs and web sites. I have a GoogleReader since I have a gmail account. I also have a Blogger Dashboard Reading list.

I tried to put a link to my GoogleReader on this blog but haven’t succeeded yet. I’ll work on that a little longer.

I like being able to look in one place to see what other people have added to their blogs without having to go to each blog or web site first to see if it has been updated.

I will add a few more librarian blogs shortly to my GoogleReader and make some comments.

AACPL could have an RSS feed for new titles cataloged; or programs coming up in the near future.

Flickr

longhairlibrarian — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 20:32:01 +0000

I just finished looking at lots of pictures that the Library of Congress has posted. These are amazing. I wonder how many photos now have more metadata than they did before. How many have people been able to add names and more details to? I’d be interested to know.

This would not have been possible several years ago. Web 2.0 can be amazing.

Don’t know if I’ll start a Flickr page of my own or not. I have trouble keeping my Facebook photos uploaded and up-to-date. Do I want another one? Of course anyone could see my Flickr photos and only some can see my Facebook photos. I also have photos at http://www.photoworks.com/members/dbmattingly. This is an ‘old’ site that used to be just for ordering photos from film. They are trying to move forward in this digital world.

Twitter

longhairlibrarian — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:49:18 +0000

OK. I have my twitter posts on this blog but not sure how to get my ‘friends’ twitter here. The FAQ on wordpress helped some but still not quite there. It says “Alternatively go to http://twitter.com/home if you also want to include your friends tweets.” But I don’t see an RSS option to right click on. Anyone else on wordpress and using twitter on their blog? Just curious.

Reading blogs

longhairlibrarian — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:38:19 +0000

I’m reading a bunch of blogs today just to see what others around here have been doing. Interesting reading. And fun. Wish I had more time to spend on this.

I’m intrigued with Twitter. Trying to decide how I would use it. I use email ALOT and chat rarely except with AUN. But I do text on my phone, so maybe I’m halfway there.