Overview of Quests

Overall I'm glad I participated in Techtrek. The journey was not always easy, but learning new technology is sometimes difficult for me. I learned things that I might never have encountered, such as delicio.us and rss. Some of the things I know I'll never use again, but I'm glad I now know a little bit about a number of things!

Quest 12 Part 2: Podcasts

There were a number of library podcasts, but unfortunately a lot of them wouldn't play. Also they were all about a year old. I didn't find anything current. I found lots of categories that interested me- gardening, crafts, books, sewing,travel, etc. but again, some of them wouldn't play, the quality was not good, or they were not current. I generally don't listen to talk radio, so it would be unlikely that I would listen to podcasts.

Quest 12 Part One: You Tube

I enjoyed looking at some of the You Tube videos. I did look at some of the library videos. Some of them were very original, but not very well done. The one on Library Aerobics could have been much better, but the idea was great. I know these are not professional actors. I found a few book reviews, and even one from the Topeka Libray about Big Read. It was fairly well done showing books burning.
There were other videos about Big Read. I think that is one way our library system could use You Tube to promote programs.
I tried watching Lonelygirl, but I just couldn't get interested, and didn't finish it.
I found a clip of my son-in-law, Graham Elliot Bowles, talking about the restaurant where he is the chef in Chicago. Really neat!

Bob Dylan and advertising

I was impressed with the Bob Dylan web site and being able to type personal messages. I sent several, but only one arrived. I tried sending one to myself, and it did not arrive.
As for the library using advertising, I'm not in favor of that. When big business gets involved with something, there's always the risk of corruption. Since we're a government agency, I think it's best to keep business and government separate.

Untitled

       

 

Experimenting

Quest 11 Zoho

Well, if you look at the previous blog entry "untitled" you will see that I published this from Zoho. I was pretty impressed with this, and can see that using Zoho will be very useful instead of saving to a floppy or USB drive. Some of the new computers do not have floppy disk drives, and I don't have a USB drive. We have a new computer here at MTP that does not have a floppy disk drive, and sometimes it's the only one available. Anyway, this would solve my problem of moving from computer to computer at work. I will definitely try to become more proficient in using Zoho.

Untitled

Well so far this seems pretty easy and convenient.  I could have used this for the Staff Organization Online Auction instead of typing it in Word. 

Maybe for our Word Classes we should start teaching our students to use Zoho? 

Now I'll experiment with colors and fonts.  There are lots of things on the tool bar to try out.

Now I'll maybe try to publish this.

Quest 10

After looking at all of the fun things to do in this Quest, I still wonder what all of this is about. Yes, the things are fun: slideroll could really be useful for sharing photos.
Evite is cute, but I don't think I would use it, or appreciate getting an email invitation.
Dogster and Catser are interesting, but again, I would have no need to use it. Why would I want millions of people to see my pets?
43 things: I don't really care what strangers want to do, or to let strangers know what I want to do with my life.
Onesentence is sort of cute, but again, what is the point? I must be missing something.
Artpad could be useful. I would like it to sent pictures to my grandson.
The Generator blog is for people who enjoy blogging, I guess.
Anyway, all in all, I don't see what the use to libraries would be except maybe for slideroll.
It's good though that I've learned about these things, because I would never come across them on my own.

Quest 9 Wikiwikiwiki

I've used Wikipedia personally a number of times. It's easy to read, and gives lots of facts. I know it's not necessarily accurate. Sometimes I've used it to find dates, or names, and then verified them from legitimate sources. I would not use it at the reference desk, or recommend it to any patrons. I've never found anything that I felt should be edited.
I liked the library wikis. The St. Joseph wiki had lots of subject headings to choose from. The wiki was set up to be edited by librarians only.
The Library Success wiki looked just like wikipedia. Some of the headings had little or nothing under them, but it was simple to use.
I really liked the book lovers wiki. This is something that I think would be very useful to patrons. Keep in mind that a lot of older patrons do not want to use computers, so having a book lovers wiki would leave out a number of patrons.
The Bull Run wiki is a work in progress. I was surprised to see that it's maintained by a patron, and not anyone from the library. I did not like the way it was set up.
I liked the SCLA wiki- there were some good links on it to library blogs. I noticed that some wikis have been subject to vandalism, so emails must be registered in order to edit.

Quest #8

I looked and browsed through all of the sites in the Discovery Exercise.
I suppose I liked Friendster the most. It seemed more down to earth, with not too many weirdos.
bebo seemed sort of strange with users using lots of abbreviations such as "ne" for "any". I looked at a couple of videos, and thought they were sort of amateurish and boring. Also I didn't find much under the Authors that was interesting.
linkedin is interesting. I did not open an account with any of these, but I did find 100 + people from my university on linkedin.
facebook seems pretty straightforward.
I looked at the Myspace tech trek 2.0- nice!
As for the videos, it's hard to tell if anything objectionable is going to be in them until you start viewing them. Also I did not hear any good music.

Quest #8 Social Networking

I have read several of the linked articles. I'm having a little trouble understanding how people find library MYSPACE pages by chance. It seems that a library would need lots of publicity for blogs and networking pages to be worthwhile. Do these sites encourage reading? If it's getting people to talk about books, then that's a good thing. Also I understand teens must be 14 to get accounts. How is the age checked? What teen would say they're 12 if they want to get a page?
My children have MYSPACE pages (they're adults). They like them because they've been able to reconnect with long lost friends from early school years. They might never have found some of these people.
One of the articles really downplayed the incidences of sexual predators on these sites. Even if it is a small percentage, it seems it's still something to consider.
Why not talk to people in person that you know, and meet new people that way? Are people so lonely that they have to meet people on a computer?

Quest 6 Technorati

I used the Advanced Search for Library 2.0. I found 31,408 using the keyword search. I tried it with and without quotation marks. It separated the words "library" and "2.0"
For the tags I found 6,296 blog posts. I had the best results with the Blog Directory Search. Even though only 249 blogs came up, they seemed more relevant. I tried other search words in the blog directory, and had much better results than using the initial search or the tag or keyword searches.
I still don't find it interesting to read other people's blogs, and I'm at a loss as to how it could be useful in my job.
Yes, useful to disperse information, but not to find it. After all, most blogs I've read are people's opinions.

Flickr photo

Here is the original photo of Heidelberg, Germany I was trying to link.
Click here

Flickr- Quest 7 continued

Well, I got another co-worker to help me, and it worked. I would have had no idea how to get the link in without her help. Now I'll try another one. Here is a link to a photo of Charleston that I really like.
Click here

flickr link

Well, I'm having a heck of a time entering a link to the flicr photo. I've tried copy & paste, edit html, insert link, and asked for help from a co-worker. Nothing has worked so far. the address comes through, but not a link you can click on. Help!!!

Flickr Photo

Well, here is the link of a beautiful photo from Flickr of Heidelberg, Germany. This is a view from Philosophenweg from the other side of the Neckar River. The ruins of the castle can be seen above the old part of the city.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/junnn/303339926/

Technorati

Well, so far I am not impressed with using Technorati. I've tried lots of different subjects, or tags, and most of the blogs are very boring. Also lots of x-rated things come up even when I put in something like gardening. I just have no interest in reading someone's blogs, but it's good to know how to find them.

It's Delicious!!

I just set up my account on Del.icio.us account- pretty simple. I saved 4 sites that I like to look at about Read-alikes and articles about library activities from a newspaper in FL. The one about the read-alikes will definitely help me when patrons ask for recommendations, and my mind and the minds of my co-workers go blank.

Coming right along...

I've just posted another image from Imagechef- works pretty well. I think I'm beginning to catch on!!

Pfeiffer University

Welcome

Welcome to MTP

New Look

I just experimented with changing my colors. I could get a new look everyday!

Bloglines- What is it good for?

Well, since using my bloglines account a number of times, I'm wondering if I really like it after all. It seems easier to use websites saved in my Favorites. There are some websites that I like to view the whole site, and not just selected articles. Anyway, the jury is still out on this.

Quest 4

Here is the URL for my bloglines.

http://www.bloglines.com/public/MTP

Blog Link

Welll, I asked the question, and found out that the library bloglines doesn't have a feed, and can't be added. That solves that problem.

Quest 4

This is one quest that I've really enjoyed, and I've found it to be useful. It was very easy to set up my account in Bloglines- much easier than setting up the Instant Messenger account.
I enjoyed looking for sites that could be helpful in my job on the reference desk. There are several literature sites I found, but unfortunately they didn't have feeds. I will continue to search for sites that will be useful to my job, as well as useful personally.
I did try to subscribe to the Tech Trek blog feed but the message I got was that there was no feed, and I didn't find a link. I will try again, and then ask for help if it doesn't work.
I decided not to make my account public.

Time Zone

I just noticed my time zone settings were off- I've reset it to Eastern Time. Let's see if it worked.

Messy Messaging

After many failed attempts I finally was able to IM ccplhelp. I know I could have used plugo, but I wanted to use Yahoo. I finally realized that Yahoo Messenger had not been downloaded on our staff computer, and that's why nothing was happening. It always said no one was online, and I knew that couldn't be right. Anyway, today I downloaded it, and added addresses, and sent my first Im to ccplhelp. I do have experience with live chat from my job in St. Lucie County Library System. They have ASKALIBRARIAN, which is a state -wide service. The desk is staffed by various libraries around the state, so you may be chatting with someone from another library system. It is for use by any Florida resident.

Learning Habits

The hardest thing about learning for me is #3 Habit. I have to remind myself to view problems as challenges. I get very frustrated if I can't figure out something right away. Technical problems really throw me. I usually have to get away for awhile from the problem, and start completely over later on. I need to have more patience with myself when I'm learning something new, and realize that eventually I'll find the solution or answer. I'm not shy about asking for help. Often that will provide the solution for me.
The easiest habit is #7- teaching or mentoring. Once I know a procedure or method, I'll glady share what I know, and how I learned it.

MTPWEB

This is my first ever blog, so it's all new to me. It's exciting to be learning how to do this. I hope I will be successful in getting my thoughts and information across.