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.

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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?