Fuffy's Aunt

Summary

2008-10-24T06:16:00.000-07:00

Here's Fluffy!!

I found the exercise did take quite a bit of time, however I do think it was worthwhile. One of the new library committees best practices recommendation was the use of blogs. The exercises allow us the opportunity to explore and learn, before we are faced with having to do something important for a committee.

Just to prove the that this is a learning experience, somehow I created a second blog with the same name with part of my postings appearing on the second one. I had to copy and paste the posts into the "real one". I hope to delete the "extra" one. Time will tell if I am successful. Just when you think you have learned something - you get tossed a problem! It has been a bit of a challenge at times and frustrating, but on the whole worthwhile.

The Library world is changing quickly. It is difficult to predict what we will be doing in the future. Exposure to a wide variety of topics is useful as background information for the next library venture -- what ever it may be!

Audio books

2008-10-24T06:14:00.000-07:00

The last exercise in exploring audio books was interesting. The first one Gutenberg Books contained classics, books which were no longer under copyright protection. It covers all subject areas from history and medicine to stories for children. The second one Free e-books has books arranged by type of book. Looking under the mystery category I was surprised to see that none of the books give the author. The third option for free audio books The online books page is made available from the University of Pennsylvania. It has the ability to search by LC classification which is nice. Saw several books that would be interesting.

Audio podcasting

2008-10-24T06:13:00.000-07:00

I explored the both Podcast.com and Podcastalley.com for finding podcasts. I found the categories very broad. I eventually found under the Education category and keyword Library technology a podcast from James J. Hill Reference Library 2006 Speaker Series the lecture by:
How’s Your R.O.I? – Return on Internet?
Monday, July 30, 2007 5:18 PM
Teri Ross, principal of Imagine That Consulting Group, Inc., discusses the importance of knowing and understanding the results of your Internet marketing efforts to make appropriate adjustments and improvements. Learn how to get an Internet marketing “Profit and Loss” statement for your investment in real time and to manage your budget to achieve the best results in the shortest time.

The podcast highlighted how fast technology is changing all areas of business. Libraries are just part of general technology race.

You Tube

2008-10-24T06:12:00.000-07:00

I watched a video on YouTube from the B.C. Courthouse on Finding Forms & Precedents, Part 2 - Library Catalogue. It illustrated the searching of the catalogue to find shareholder's agreements. I noted that beside the video on the right side box it indicated 2:18 (2 minutes and 18 seconds). I found it useful to know how long the video was before committing to watching it.

Almost all the videos under the search for Library were from a public service point of view. This was one of the few that was more instructional than a public service introduction to the library. The only use I could think of for use in our department (cataloguing) was to create a video of our tour - "Day in the life of a book". It would be best if the sections could be done in short segments so that you would not have to view the entire tour in one sitting. It would also allow a viewing and discussion approach. I wondered about using it for training of cataloguers. I think it would be difficult for several reasons. One is the time involved - both to create it and also to view it. The second would be to find an exact topic you wanted to review, I don't think would be easy. The topic would have to be something that does not change. You would not want to redo the work every time you had a tour. We do not have tours of the department that frequently to be worth while and I think by the time it you need the video again there would have been significant changes in the department that the video would have to be redone.

I noticed that Western Libraries had their welcoming to the library video on the first screen, having received a lot of hits.

Biblio.com - Web 2.0 Award winner

2008-10-24T06:10:00.000-07:00

I explored the short list of awards. Biblio.com Biblio.com was the 2nd place winner in the books division. It is a website for selling books, rare books and has a list of bookstores with web sites. I found a new one listed for London - Auctionpost, 535 Canterbury Road, London, Ontario N6G 2N5 Canad. I could see the site being useful for acquistions of rare / out of print material.

Zoho Writer

2008-10-24T06:04:00.000-07:00

Zoho Writer

The use of the Zoho Writer could be of use in the Library system for working with a group of people across the Libraries for working on a special report. It could be useful if your computer doesn't have the word processing, spreadsheet, etc. software on your computer. It can create .pdf files which our present version of Microsoft Word does not do.

I imported a document from Word with no problem, however it does not support WordPerfect documents.

Some of the drawbacks I see to using the software are:
1. You have to be connected to the internet to use it. At work it is no problem, but home use with limited hours could be a problem.
2. You can work on a document offline - then upload it to Zoho Writer and it will update the shared document on line noting the changes.
3. You can keep track of versions which could be useful for a project.
4. The agreement states that they can change from free to charging for the service by notifying you. You have the option of paying or terminating your account. However if you were in the middle of a project that had a tight time line that could cause a problem.
5. Your account will be terminated if it is not use for a long time. - Amount of time is not specified.

The result is I could see using this if need to collaborate with a group of people over an area, or it was a type of software you only use occasionally like a spreadsheet. The problem I see for using it at work is that we do not use a word processor that often so that our account would likely expire before we needed it again.

I would want to make sure that any documents were easily moved between work / home software packages and I kept a copy of any relevant documents on my own computer. Since I use WordPerfect at home I would have to convert the files to html before transferring them since it is one one format that can be use.

I wrote this blog in Zoho Writer and published it from there.

Creating a PBwiki

2008-10-07T10:18:00.000-07:00

The second part of the Wiki exercise required the listing of your Blog on the Learning 2.0 PBwiki. I do not want my blog to have such a wide publication. Since the goal was to prove that you were on the site I created a wiki instead. This is the link to Fluffys. I also created a link to the CBC News on that page. The method of creating a link is very similar to creating a link on the Blog. It did not involve the use of [url name] combination as mentioned in the exercise when adding a item to a favorites page.

Wiki - Discovery

2008-10-07T07:51:00.000-07:00

Wiki's are intended to be quick and easy to create, edit and delete. This is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that the learning curve to produce is low, the time from thought to product is short. However the curses are more numerous.

1. Anyone can alter a post, which has resulted in vandalism of sites. I saw a request for email confirmation on just the few sites that I visited.

2. Quick and easy to do, doesn't mean that it will be a sustained and continually updated page. Many of the pages were either incomplete or outdated. Nothing had been added for a year or more.

3. The idea that everyone is going to contribute often means that no one does.

4. I think they may be useful for collaborating on projects with a tight time line where people need to communicate and update a paper quickly with a defined group of people. The idea of a wiki of book reviews was good, but it changed to having the book reviews attached to the cataloguing record. The small number of reviews in the wiki compared to the number of the books library means the chances of you finding a review would be very small indeed. I think it would be a project that might get some support for a while, but would be hard to create the will and support for a long term effort.

Library 2.0

2008-10-03T11:07:00.000-07:00

Libraries are constantly changing and it will only continue. Our one constant is change. We have explored cooperative purchases, collections and cataloguing. The methods have changed from sending photocopies of catalogue cards to inputting data in Innovative's ContentPro for the sharing of Western Libraries special collections. The article by Tom Adam about Western winning III's ContestPro challenge highlights some our recent achievements.

New technologies will allow for new and different cooperative ventures. In the past the ventures were usually between libraries, then libraries and publishers, companies, in the future it may involve more of our patrons - both phycially in the library and the virtual ones!

The goal remains the same to serve all our patrons to the best of our ability.

Technorati

2008-10-03T08:29:00.000-07:00

The variety of topics and the number of people who are viewing and reading the blogs is amazing. I did not have as much luck finding blogs of interest. The volume of blogs is huge and I think my interest level was limited for the amount of time it takes to find things.

Del.icio.us and Tagging

2008-10-03T07:03:00.000-07:00

I found the exercise interesting on a lot of different levels. My first impression was that the topics and the categories were too broad to be of much use. In viewing the tags listed with each of the articles, again the tags were too broad. I think you would be successful more by luck than by design, unless you had arranged for a group of people to work on a set project.

I gained a slightly different view after reading "Social Media for Business - Who's Doing it Well & How" by Lidija Davis on Read Right Web . The grouping of people into categories and targeting your message is not new, however the desire and opportunity for people to interact is new. I expect it will be a gradual shift to exploring opportunities. The social media exist because a large number of people have a desire to interact and it is new. It assumes people have the time and desire to so.

The last line in the article I think would give someone pause for thought. "And her final tip? "Realize that you will have to give up the fallacy that you have control"".

Rollyo - discovery

2008-09-30T08:09:00.000-07:00

I tried the program Rollyo which allows you to create your own search engines from your favourite URLs. I tried to use library catalogues and discovered that it really only wanted to search web pages not databases. It is a Google alternative.

After trying a few searches under the various Rollyo search options I found the resulting lists long and not very useful. The use of quotes to create a phrase did not change the search results. Since the search results were not useful I would not use Rollyo.

LibraryThing

2008-09-29T09:29:00.000-07:00

I found that I could spend a lot of time with LibraryThing. It allows you to catalogue or keep a list of books that you have read - or even want to read. It was easy to use, however I found that adding titles by using Amazon.com took 11 minutes to load while load a title from the Library of Congress or one of the libraries from the list took just a few seconds. It was interesting that several University library catalogues are available to choose from but not UWO's. London Public Library's catalogue is also available. This is something that I might actually use.

Image Generators - Site to print Graph Paper

2008-09-29T07:42:00.000-07:00

The The Generator Blog has many sites that produce images to try. The one I found interesting was incomputech was for printing graph paper. Besides the standard graph paper (useful for layout garden designs) it includes papers for calligraphy, music, accounting ledgers and various circles, triangles - even guides for writing Chinese characters!

Syndic8 and Technorati

2008-09-22T12:48:00.000-07:00

I found both Syndic8 and Technorati to bring up too many feeds which I was not interested in looking at. It would take too long to sort through to find something of interest. I would not use either of the sites.

Finding Feeds

2008-09-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

I found it interesting that some sites I thought would have an RSS feed for news items - like the Ontario Genealogical Society, which recently revamped their web site do not.

I found mostly blogs and then tried using Google to find some different topics with an RSS feed.

RSS Feeds and Blogs

2008-09-22T12:01:00.000-07:00

Libraries can use the RSS feeds for new acquisitions, as London Public Library is currently doing.

Using readers to collect the latest information from blogs could save time in checking them frequently. However, time is at a premium and most people can not spend time looking at material which does not impact their job. The problem would be to find blogs or RSS feeds which have a narrow enough focus so that all items would be of interest. Very difficult to achieve, unless it is a blog created and used within your area of the the workplace.

I could see using it for projects which a group was going to work together on. All members of the group would need to participate in posting - rather than just one or two people carrying the load. It would be of some use for personal reading on topics of interest.

Technology and Libraries

2008-09-22T07:38:00.000-07:00

Libraries have a long history of using the "latest" technology. In 1970 the library world was not too sure about the new computers and what they could be used for. Data processing was taught because they thought that computers would be used in accounting -- only in accounting. Today if the computers go down -- so does the library. The new "toys" of today could become the tools of tomorrow with uses we can't imagine.

Freeport Bahamas - Where Fluffy lives.

2008-09-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

This photo was taken from Flickr of Freeport Bahamas by toddcan. This is where Fluffy lives.

Flickr Color Pickr - Flowers

2008-09-17T07:59:00.000-07:00

I used the Flickr Color Pickr and chose the subject flowers. As you chose a colour the pictures of flowers around the colour wheel changed to that colour. It could be useful for planning a garden design by giving you possible flowers in a particular colour.

Gardens at Elborn College

2008-09-17T07:30:00.000-07:00

Here is a photo of the gardens outside our windows at Elborn.

Back from holdiays

2008-09-17T07:24:00.000-07:00

Ready to start blogging -- Back from holidays. The trip to Vermont was great