Thing # 21 Wrapping Up

My favorite thing through all of this was refreshing my memory about what is out there and taking another look at things for a second time to see what has been changed and improved. What I like least about Web 2.0 is the sign up requirements for everything, there is not time (or inclination from me) to have to check all of these things to monitor postings and blogs, and wikis, and tweets, and my wall, and tags. I already think that OCL takes great advantage of the technologies out there to make sure we are findable and present for anyone who is looking but especially the teen population who uses most of these applications daily. My Husband and I are on Facebook, other than that our daughter is just now being allowed to use (with monitoring) things like MySpace, FaceBook, and Twitter to connect with her friends....oddly enough my son (10 years old) has no interest in anything other than Club Penguin or Hot Wheels Racing so we leave it at that.

In predicting for Web 3.0, I am looking forward to the use of more complex searching strings to eliminate the need for multiple searched. Not at all sure how I feel about a browser that 'learns' from my prior searches enough that I could ask it What movie should I go see....that might be creepy....and if it starts calling me by name like in 2001 a Space Odessey, well, I may unplug and go back to snail mail and a typewriter for fear of being taken over by the machines!!!

It has been fun...thanks for the ride! Toni Smirniw @ TU

Thing# 20 Listen Nj

I had done this for the branch managers challenge this year as well so will expand on that posting if that is OK....For the Listen NJ challenge I have had an account for a long time, I have frequently used it for books throughout my 2 masters programs especially classics and it saved me a lot of cash and time in putting things on hold and waiting for them to come in! For the challenge I downloaded Janet Evanovich's book Fearless Fourteen to my daughter Lexi's Ipod. She had listened to parts of it in my car on CD and wanted to listen to the whole story...so this was a great opportunity for her to learn how to do it too. I love these book by Evanovich and have been to the burg! This is something I recommend to our hearing impaired patrons and they are grateful to have things available from home when they are waiting for materials from the library.

Thing # 19 Podcasts

There are two of my Walden University Professors that used podcasts for the lectures online and it really made learning the information much easier for me because I retain and learn much easier from listening than from reading boring, dry, black and white text. Having a computer with a good fast system, makes the experience either good or bad (good in my case). I wish more lectures had been done that way, it really simulated being in a classroom with a person in front of you...you can't interact but you see body language and can understand voice inflection more by 'seeing' the person in 'real life'

Thing #18 Delicious

Whenever I am in TR on a Sunday I still use their delicious link to find things and answer questions. It is very handy and can be placed right there on the links of the web browser for one click access. It is not what I think of first when doing reference but there are times I look down and see it and think to use it....you can store a ton of information there instead of in your favorites.

Thing #17 Tagging

From LibraryThing there was an unusual amount of color words used that I found interesting, not my first thought when loking at a book cover but makes sense for those people who are visual and remember the colors used on a cover. Adding tags can get out of hand, I would try to limit tags to the first things that pop into my head when I look at something. No one has tagged any photos, we posted none. I added tags to this blog..boring though they may be! Using the site you gave to create a cloud was more fun and interesting and is appealing visually, it is like an art form in itself!

Thing # 16 Wiki 2

I went to the site...on the sandbox I added my favorite series, Herald Mage by Mercedes Lackey...and to dinner...better late than never some double chocholate pecan pie! It was very easy to add and edit the information there. It is nice they require the login to be sure only people from a designated group have access.

Thing #15 Wiki 1

Ha...I have a guess as to some of the 'changers' of information : )
This application would have been very useful during my graduate school for group projects instead of us emailing the documents back and forth trying to keep up with what was the most current and having to merge copies by hand from one person to the next. I would like there to be a facilitator...I like final say and being in charge, other than that I can see that this would be beneficial, but again for us in a branch this may be addressed by the share point software.

Thing #14 Picnik

This is another site that offers you to access your pictures from anywhere...I would not use it for the security issue...I get creeped out thinking of perople (perverts) looking at hte family pictures with the kids...just creepy. As far as making a flyer for a program...heck yes...the quality of the pictures is very good and you could be very creative in your creation...and it is free, that is the keyword of the day! That is connects with some of the other applications like facebook and myspace is great for those who are using them all the time. It was easy to use with pictures from the web, no harm there as long as there is no copyright issues going on : )

Thing # 13 Google docs

I logged into the google doc and input my name and web site most often visited currently. I like the application for things like the SAIL program which I used the google docs extensively this year as it is the first year TU participated. Looking back at other years, reports, and tasks assigned helped me to plan teen activities for us. As a norm, there are only 2 full time staff in TU and we have not had much need to share documents. With the sharepoint coming to OCL, that may be the better application, we will have to wait and see.

Thing #12 Twitter

Twitter is not my choice of communication tools, mostly due to the fact of the short posts...if you have something long to say you would be twitterpated!!! (HA I just wanted to say that word so I had to work it in somehow!!). Many people use it for mundane comments, the sites like CNN and OCL I usually want the whole story and I already get that from my homepage updater or RSS feeds....or (imagine this) I can actually pick up the paper on the shelf and read it in print...yes then I have to wash the black ink off my hands but hey, sometimes I like it that way. I can see where the texting age and the teens would really use this a lot since it is free and phone texting is not always.

Thing # 11 Facebook

I have been on Facebook almost a year not, my family asked me to join in an effort to do a geneology project and find all our relatives. Normally I would not have joined, again there is not enough time in the day with work, school, family, kids, etc to "check" all of these extra things. Facebook offers chat and basically an email (post on the wall) service as well as the recommendation fo friends if you and your friends have duplicates. As far as privacy, there is only as much published as you put there...as always if you don't want the world to know, don't put it on the Internet!!!

I am already a fan of OCL on Facebook.

Thing #10 NetLibrary

I have used NetLibrary for my 2 Masters Classes for textbook access so I did not have to buy the books. I recommend students to sign up for the account so they can have access as well. I have also taught classes on book access that included NetLibrary and other things like Learning Express Library book access. It is a wonderful tool we have available to patrons and staff.

Thing #9 WorldCat

I have used WorldCat for many years since taking a class in 2004 about it. The great thing is that you can see who has the item, what format it is in, and if it is available to request. It is an invaluable tool for ILL in that you can see who is close that has the item or determine if we have a relationship with the possible lending library...in addition to the material information that can be used to fill out the form. It is especially handy if our system is down to find if we have items for customers to borrow...it is a back-up to the IPAC.

Thing 8 LibraryThing

I have had a LibraryThing account for a while now http://www.librarything.com/catalog/tsmirniw I rarely have used it other than for the challenges, there is just not enough time in the day. As far as the site goes, the thing I like the least is that if you do a mash search no one has done before, which I did with Fantasy, unicorn, it took a very long time to get a list....however if you know the title or author things go much faster.

Thing # 7 Beyond Google

I tooled around in the Bing vs Google for a bit and it reinforced the fact I really do not like Bing and how it pulls up information from a search...a simple search for Tuckerton Library brings up many un-relevent things in Bing but the very first result in Google is the right one...GO Google!!

Using Worio was interesting....it did not always give relevent related searches ...I did Tuckerton Seaport and the "discover" opions were not very helpful with anything. Yet I did it for SPCA locations in NJ and the "discover" options listed other adoption agencies, rescue organizations, and animal rights sites...so that was helpful. I would use this especially if I was having difficulty finding what I wanted using my 'normal' searches.

Thing # 6: Advanced Google Searching

In searching google for underground railroad site:nj.gov the first item to appear was the 15 page pdf file of the 374 results: the NJ State website gave 180658 results found and that is way to many to sift through to find good sites. For the nj town names site:nj.gov on google, I came up with a website that listed the following:
Local Name-Municipality-County
Forked River-Lacey Township-Ocean
It was very easy to use and will definately come in handy with reference!

Thing #5 Google Power User

I chose to look around in the google site and on the second page found a "In Quotes" site that you can type in certain words and see who quoted them...for example Obama and the word libraries will return the following....(It is nice it includes the date and source as well!)

Obama wrote he “spent a lot of time in the library. I didn't socialize that much. I was like a monk.”
Sun, 28 Sep 2008 WorldNetDaily

Thing # 4 RSS

It is way to easy to get carried away with RSS feeds....I chose just two for me...Quotes of the Day and iTunes Top 10 Songs. The thing is getting enough time in the day to work, take care of the kids, clean house, do homework, take care of the animals, and then check RSS feeds....Oh Boy!

Thing #3 - Web 2.0 Awards

In tooling around I found the imcooked site was very useful...my 13 year old daughter is recently obsessed with cooking so I can tell her to look it up cause I do not know recipes by heart : )

The other site I thought was great was the comiqs site that lets you make your own comic strips, an excellent tool for a teen program using the computer to do strips that they can print out and share.

Thing #1 and #2

Off and running in the OCL challenge!