North Pole Sunset

"A scene you may never get to see, so take a moment and enjoy God at work at the North Pole. This is the sunset at the North Pole with the moon at its closest point. And, you also see the sun below the moon. An amazing photo and not one easily duplicated. You may want to pass it on to others. The Chinese have a saying that goes something like this: "When someone shares with you something of value, you have an obligation to share it with others!""

Web 2.0

I decided to explore the site www.upcoming.yahoo.com. I looked for events in Owen Sound, Ontario. There were 3 listed - 2 at Georgian College in September, and one at the Owen Sound Library in November! It was fun to see that one! I would check out this site again. It might be helpful in the library for the reference desk staff looking for local events. But maybe it would be more helpful for the library to post library events to this site.

I still find the www.osaic.com website to be the best one I've found for local events.

Google docs

My previous entry, about my cold, I wrote in Google docs and then published to my blog. I found it very straightforward and easy to do. In fact, I was surprised at how well it worked, first try! I did try to post a calendar too, but it was much too large so didn't work, so I deleted it.

Here I go, setting up a google document. What shall I write about? My cold? I had a sore throat when I worked on Saturday, spent 2 1/2 hours in bed on Sunday afternoon, and felt really bad calling Richard at 7:15 Monday morning to tell him I thought I should be staying at home, rather than going in to work. What a welcome back to him after two weeks of holidays. Thanks, Helen, for covering for me.

Gwen.

Sandbox

It's been a long time since I've played in a sandbox!

It was fun to see what others are reading, watching, eating, etc.... However, if one doesn't put their name with their comment, we don't know who it is!

I will add more to sandbox at a later time. I hope others will too.

Wikis

The Bull Run Library wiki – I found this site fun. They have an excellent resource called Elf “for anyone who wants to reduce overdues, families with children and lots of books, individuals with several library cards, anyone who requests a lot of holds. It delivers email and/or RSS alerts before items are due, email and/or RSS alerts on overdues and holds, consolidated list of yours or your family's library loans and holds, cellphone text message alerts for holds (US and Canada), and real-time checking by browser.” It’s probably costly, but perhaps it’s something our library could look into? It would certainly help a lot of our patrons - many are still complaining about their overdue fines with the "new" no stamping system! And think of the staff time it would save calling (and re-calling) patrons to tell them their holds are in, and the amount of postage saved not sending out overdue notices! Not all our patrons have computers, but their patrons must not either. It might be worth contacting them to find out how it is working for them.

BookLoversWiki is another fun site. It’s interesting to see what people are reading and find out what they think about books – as long as they don’t give away too much information. I think it might be fun for our library to have a wiki where patrons can review books.

What I don’t understand about wikis is the fact that anyone can edit them. What if some “idiot” decides to just go in and for the fun of it mess things up? Is there any way they can be traced/stopped?

Library 2.0

I looked through the five perspectives, reading some, scanning some, and rereading some. The one that interested me most was "Away from Icebergs". I liked the analogy of the libraries being boats, and the warning to look out for icebergs. Libraries (boats) are small compared to the potentially huge disasters (icebergs). Libraries must be careful when trying to keep up with the times. We mustn't be in a huge rush to change things. Change can be good, and so can progress. But I think we'd all agree that it isn't always good. Input is important. We're a small city. We must think of the needs of our patrons, from all different ages and incomes.

I can see our library becoming much more computer-oriented. But we must remember the patrons who cannot afford computers at home. Or the ones (perhaps elderly, perhaps not) who have no interest or are "afraid" of technology. As we're learning taking this course, there is a LOT of information out there! And some of it can be quite mind boggling.

I think Nadia's plan for a focus group is an excellent one. Perhaps something similar could be set up for the Adult part of the library. We would need to have a good cross-section of people, all ready to voice their opinions, ideas and concerns.

I don't think the idea of curling up with a good book will ever leave us. I know I, for one, would not sit and read a book from the computer screen! Perhaps the way of the library will become more for checking out books for enjoyment reading while the research part will be done by computers, either at the library or at the patron's home. Who knows? It certainly gives us lots to think about.

I don't think the personal touch of the library should ever be discontinued. I think there are many, many patrons at our library who enjoy the quick chats at the reference and circulation desks, the chance to share happenings in their lives, find out a little bit about ours, share what they thought was a good read (or not), just see a smiling, non-judgemental face saying "hi, how are you today?" Let's never lose that!

Technorati

Well, here it is Sunday afternoon. I'm battling some type of cold/virus today. Spent about 2 1/2 hours in bed, but I'm up now, and still trying to get through Week 6 of our course. I admit, Technorati had me just about ready to give up (thus the cartoon above!). I couldn't see where I was to do "a keyword search for Library 2.0 in Blog posts, in tags and the Blog directory". I was so frustrated! Thanks, Dale, for your help!

I still find Technorati rather overwhelming, but can see how it would be a great site if you were looking for a blog on a particular topic.

Like Joan W., I doubt that I will continue with my blog after this course - I'm just using it as a learning experience. I'm quite nervous of too much personal information getting out there on the web!

Whew! Technorati - what a challenge for me!

Del.icio.us or Delicious - you decide!

Del.icio.us

Well, here it is Monday evening, and there's a draw tomorrow, and I doubt that my name will be in it. I've finished the del.icio.us lesson, but that's as far as I got. In fact, I was so frustrated with it yesterday, I was about ready to throw in the towel. But finally the lightbulb came on, and I get it. I've set up a del.icio.us URL. If you want to check it out, it's http://del.icio.us/newg. At first I thought del.icio.us was something that I would never use. But when I realized that I can access it from any computer, I think it might come in handy now and then. But I don't think it's something I will use often.

I do see del.icio.us as both a great research tool and an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere. Personally, I doubt I'll use it much, but it's good to know it's available to me.

Rollyo

Well, I did as asked, and went to Rollyo and built my own search tool. (http://rollyo.com/gwen/celebrity_gossip_etc/). I did this entirely as an exercise though, as this is not something I can see myself using. As Jody said in her blog, if I want to look at one of these websites, I'll just go to favourites. I organize my favourites in folders, so it's quite simple that way (and works for me!).

Most of the exercises in this course are interesting, but some are quite time consuming, and as Shirley said, wintertime would be better! I do think that they are more relevant to reference staff than other staff in our work environment, but some of it will be fun for those of us who spend lots of time on the computer at home. And it's nice to learn new things.

That's it for now!

LibraryThing

I joined LibraryThing and posted a few of my favourite reads. You can find these at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Gwendolyne.

I plan to "play" more with this website. I like the idea of seeing what others are reading the same things I am, and what other suggestions there are for my reading tastes.

Hot! Hot! Hot!

I'm on holidays this week! And we're in a heat wave! So I'm not spending nearly as much time outdoors as I would like. Oh well! Such is summer. And a break is supposed to be in sight tomorrow.

It's been too hot to sit at the computer and work on the weekly assignments. So tonight I have the fan blowing right at me, and I'm doing a bit of the required work. I've tried some of the generators. Under The Generator Blog I tried the Simpsons one, but couldn’t view it all on the computer screen, so therefore couldn’t save what I did. I found the Kanzel generator rather boring. I tried the YourGen text generator and made the above banner. It was kind of fun and something I might use now and then.

I tried http://www.comicstripgenerator.com/ and came up with the following. I found a picture of Jack Nicholson from "About Schmidt" and I added what I thought was a humorous Jack Nicholson quote I found.