Raindrops on Roses and Whiskers on Kittens... these are a few of my favorite things...

What were your favorite discoveries or activities over the past ten weeks?
RSS Feeds, Google Reader and subscribing to different feeds/podcasts, playing with the different Wiki's and how podcasts work.  I also enjoy the iGoogle feature where you can see everything on a page when you log on to a computer if you choose to.  (have set this on my home computer as my home page now.)

Do you feel more confidence with these resources now? Was it time well-spent?
YES.  Completely.  Totally.  I am very comfortable with tech stuff, but because I haven't had an actual need to use some of the things we learned about, I had not played with some of the things we learned about before.  This showed me both how I can use these in my personal and professional life as well as showing our patrons.  I do much better when I have a 'task' to complete.  I have always tried to dig around on the research tools and such, but since I didn't have a real 'question' in mind, it was hard to figure out how to use the actual tool very well.  I'd look, try to come up with a question, was unable since I didn't have a good background in that particular subject, so I'd just look around and say to myself "well, I looked at it..."  This was awesome that we had specific tasks to complete

If a similar learning program is offered in the future, are there other resources and technologies you would like to see covered? Any suggestions for how we might run the program differently?
At this point, I am not aware of any resources or technologies that I didn't see covered.  I'm sure they are out there since I'm not in the 'know' of the latest, greatest technology fads.  I'd love to see the 23 Things continue for those who want to participate in continuing to learn new things.  And I think the program worked very smoothly ....  at least from this end it did.  I see now how you guys kept up with all of the blogs and such.  At first, I didn't see how that was happening until the Google Reader lesson came up and I saw that the people I was following on my blogger.com account came up in the google reader as well in a very nice list of how many blogs this person had produced since the last time I had looked.  I decided that I was going to follow all of my staff here at Fairdale just so I could see their thoughts on what they were learning each session to see if it gave me any other insights into what we did that week as well.  And, it was a good way to keep up with who had finished what posts!!

Do you think our patrons would benefit from a similar program?
Hmmm...  if they would come for the training, sure.  Most people I see come in for the "OMG, I have to find 10 articles on Basket Weaving RIGHT NOW. Can you help me??!!"  Not many people come in anticipation of having that research assignment someday where they will need to have these skills. 

It's a safe bet that most people who are on the internet regularly see the interest in the social networking websites.  If we offered training for adults on how to use and set up these accounts I'd bet that would be popular.  This would be beneficial just for showing them how to secure their information to ONLY those people they want to be able to see that information.

I'll bet most people don't know the coolness of Google Reader and RSS feeds, but not sure if anyone would show up for training since its hard to explain how cool it is until you see it.  It's such a huge timesaver and it's in a nice, easy to see updates, easy to use format.

I'd think that the people who would most benefit are those that are around my own age...  mid 30's early 40's who are comfortable with tech, but maybe don't keep up with the cool things that are happening. They have jobs and lives but want to learn a little bit more about new things available out there on the internet. The college students writing those papers don't have time, the high school/middle school/elementary school students already know most of it, and I think it would be too much for a lot of the senior users to comprehend.  (Not all..  I have met some very tech savvy seniors)

Online Reader Tools

#20 Goodreads.
I have had a goodreads account for probably about 6 months or so and have not messed with it a whole lot.  I need to hop on there and see what things my friends who read the same stuff are reading to get ideas of what to read next.  Problem is, I read so many series titles, that it seems as if I am never in need of something to read.  Horrible problem isn't it?  ;) I will def. use this when in need of a good read.  I would also suggest this site to any of my patrons who are big readers who are tech savvy.  I asked Joe Patron to be my goodreads Pal and I suggested that he read this fantastically creepy book I read back in the fall by Justin Cronin called "The Passage".  I forgot to put in the comments field that my blog is called The Doghouse, so I tried to edit my recommendation and couldn't figure out how, so I tried to submit a second recommendation for The Passage but it wouldn't let me.  So, I submitted a second recommendation.  So, Joe P. and I will be great pals I'm sure since I have recommended two books to him so far!

#21 Bookletters. 
I subscribed to two of the bookletters YEARS ago from LFPL.  I think Susan Martinez told me about how cool they were.  I am subscribed to Book Sizzle and Science Fiction and Fantasy.  This keeps me aware of what books are popular and what new things are coming out soon that could be a best seller.  Since I order the Science Fiction/Fantasy hardbacks, the bookletter of the SF/Fantasy lets me make sure that I have ordered the 'hot' items listed.  The majority of the time I have purchased them before they appeared on the list I am happy to say.

#22 Novelist.
I had not used the Recommended Reads section of Novelist before.  It's a very handy feature. I can see using this feature with our patrons who have a specific genre that they enjoy browsing. The Recommended Reads category I chose was Fantasy.  Then I chose the sub category of Urban Fantasy. I found a book that looked interesting called "Magic to the Bone" by Devon Monk.  Had not seen or heard of this title or author, so I put it on my reserve list.  

I regularly use Novelist with our patrons to bring up series titles and the order in which to read the series titles. I was recently on there and also discovered that when you are looking at a specific book, you can look at the subjects from that book and choose some of the themes that you like which may bring up books with similar themes that you have not read. So, obviously, Novelist has a ton of features that I was unaware of which means I need to dig a little bit more on their site to see what else I can find on there.  I can totally see using this for all of these features for our patrons who are looking for new authors in genres they are interested in. Other tools I'd recommend to our patrons to use to find books interesting to them would be Amazon.com and the website http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/ 

Wiki Tiki Tavi

OK First...  You guys ROCK out.  You put the WoWWiki and MuppetWiki on the fun list.  Whoo hoo!  :)

Thing #18:  PBWorks.  I went to the Restaurant part and added my fav restaurants in the 'Ville.  Then I headed over to the Fav Television Shows tab and had to tease whomever put Glee on their list... then I added my own list of fav. Television shows.  I went back later and discovered that there is another Fringe fan in the system!! And they embedded a Fringe trailer from YouTube for season 3!! AWESOME show!  It takes a bit to be able to navigate the pages since I'm fairly unfamiliar with wiki stuff other than the "BIG" wiki, but I finally got the hang of it.  I had some very minimal use of PBWorks a few months ago when MIS was creating a document for Fairdale's new library opening, and I saw it in action, but still never really got the hang of what it was about and such.  I think I have a better idea what it is about now.

Thing #19
I totally get using Wiki's for sharing information in Libraries to our patrons.  Are there moderators in situations such as this so that a person has to prove they are a Librarian in order to change content on these sites?  I can see lots of badness ensuing if a random person with an agenda edited pages a Librarian laboriously slaved over.  AND..  can  you see WHO changes these pages so that if there is a person who is a 'trickster' and enjoys playing practical jokes on people, you could see who was changing the content? 

Now for the fun...  I am totally enjoying all these geek-fest Wiki fun pages.  Wookiepedia!!  WoWWiki!!!  MuppetWiki!! Wonder if there is a Dog Wiki??  I'll have to check on that one.

Can we see a potential use for wiki's in the library system to advance our mission?  Sure thing.  What that could be?  It's astronomical.  In house, it has tons of possibilities for groups that currently meet a ton and are working on a certain project/s together.  They probably wouldn't have to meet quite so much and could add content, edit content etc. from their office computers.  For use of our patrons, some things could be constructed like some of the pages we looked at today about local information/authors/local records/vital statistics information, etc.  It would have to be set so that the random person couldn't change content on the pages though.  It's hard to come up with an idea of how it could be used in a hypothetical situation when such a situation isn't in front of you at the moment.  I'm trying to brainstorm here and think of ways that we could practically use it both in the system and with our patrons.  I'm blanking. We will blame it on little sleep due to an aging dog with arthritis who paces at night. ;)

YouTube, NetLibrary and Podcasting

Big surprise, YouTube is way more fun than anything else this week.  I of course decided to see if I could find some really entertaining Shiba Inu websites.  There were tons.  This one was hilarious...  there was a series of videos of this Plucky Chicken confusing this poor pup.  This was the best of them.

NetLibrary is something I use every once in awhile at home to load on my iPhone.  I searched and found a book called Undead and Unfinished by MaryJanice Davidson.  Duration was 7 hours, 37 minutes.

Podcasting.  I'm not too impressed with the organization of the sites that we looked at for searching for podcasts.  I searched for Science Fiction books/reviews/movies and came up with very marginal things that didn't even look recent until I just happened upon one called Adventures in SciFi Publishing.  I decided I was going to follow this one since it seemed like it was a current podcast that was still adding new materials. 

So, I went to the website of Adventures in SciFi Publishing and told it to follow the podcasts with Google Reader.  The computer in the back room exploded and said it didn't understand something or another.  So, I came to the back on my computer and figured out that Google Reader HAD added it even though it objected to it on the computer in the back room.  Then however when I found a podcast to listen to on the site that sounded interesting, it wouldn't load on my computer in my office.  So, I looked it up on my iPhone on iTunes and am listening as I am typing here. 

I'm thinking if we have patrons who are really interested in using our computers (with headphones I'd say!) to listen to podcasts we are going to need to make sure that our computers are capable of doing so.  Especially since I had two issues with two separate computers when trying to subscribe using my Google Reader and then later just to listen to it.

Extra Credit

Took me a few minutes, ok, several.. but I added the Library's video feed to my iGoogle page.  So, yay for me.  :)

RSS Feeds... you guys might have created a monster here....

RSS Feeds are AWESOME.  I found a few World of Warcraft RSS feeds (Blizzard, Wowhead and Warcraft Pets), two of my favorite authors (Neil Gaiman and Ilona Andrews..  will look for more!) and a favorite band of mine Rush. I was hoping I could follow this really cute Dachshund on youtube and have the updates show here, but alas, I guess youtube doesn't do that.  I did link my personal youtube username with my google account here, so when we are done with the 23 things, I'll have to change my google contact email address to my personal one I guess.  I was hoping it would allow me to see more options such as an RSS feed but it did not and I became a fan of the page with my work email. 

I can totally see this being a new addiction of mine.  I follow most of the world of warcraft ones on Facebook, but you just randomly see the postings rather than easily being able to scan all of the updates that are posted.  When you just check websites randomly, you might miss something interesting.  This gives you a 'one stop shopping' kind of an experience where you can scan through the postings for each site you follow and see what sounds interesting to you.  You can also look and see immediately if there are any updates on the pages that you follow via RSS feeds from your Google reader.

And yes, I can totally see myself using this from now on.  See what you guys created?  ;)

Reference Tools

10a. Emailed.

10b.  Article published 3/18/08; 4 sons

10c.  LFPL Does not physically own these journals according to Worldcat.  We do have access to Full Text articles of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy and Clinical Medicine and Research in Academic Search Premier.  We do not have Full Text access to Telos but do have Abstracts available through Academic Search Premier.

11a.  Mutual Fund Vanguard Target Retirement 2020
Name of Manager:  Duane F. Kelly
Stewardship Grade:  B
Overall Morningstar Rating:  4 Stars

11b.  LCD TVs Consumer Reports 2008-2009
We do have access to these reports through Ebsco's Academic Search Premier
Dec. 2008, vol. 73 Issue 12 p. 28-33
Dec. 2009, vol 74 Issue 12 p. 23-28

11c.  No surprise, Starbucks would be the biggest competitor in the 40202 Zip code for someone that decided to open a coffee shop.  (Unless you count Dunkin' Donuts which I don't.)  No one can hope to compete with big business like Starbucks, so the next level of local competition in that zipcode would be Mocha Delight and the Coffee Pot Cafe which both earn between $160,000 - 200,000 and both have a credit rating score of a B. 

What research tool do you find most useful, either for library or personal use? 

For the average user, I think the most used source that we looked at today would be the Consumer Reports information or using the Periodical/Magazines databases to find things such as Obituaries.  For students, the Periodical/Magazine databases are invaluable by being able to access and print off the articles they need for school projects.  For the Business person, the Business Reference USA would be really exciting to have access to.   I was really excited to have such questions to make me do some digging with the databases.  When I sit down and look at them on my own, I tend to not have a question in mind so it's hard to come up with an abstract question to ask myself so that I can learn how to use the databases.  It would be awesome if every now and then someone could throw us some questions (for those who want to do it that is!) to research to keep our database skills honed. 

What research tool should we be telling more people about?

I think more people would be interested in knowing how many journals/periodicals/magazines have full text articles out there.  The ones I saw today were not only full text, but were also in full color and were just a digital version of what was in the actual magazine.  Just with their library card, they have full access to these day or night from a computer. Also, I'm thinking that if more people in the Business community both for work and personal use knew what a great resource Business Reference USA is, they would use it a lot more. 
 Pretty cool.

If LFPL could only keep one research tool to carry out its mission, which one would you choose and why?

Personally, the research tool I use the most is Novelist.  If we HAD to choose, this is the one I would pick because it is invaluable in helping our patrons discover what book to read next in a series, how to find similar series authors, find all the books a particular author has written, etc.

Photo sharing

I have to admit, I have toyed with the idea of creating either a Flickr or a photobucket account.  I never really could see the benefit of doing it, so I didn't.  I see now.  If you want your digital pics safe somewhere so in case your harddrive explodes or heaven forbid, your house burns and all of your pics were on a hard drive, you are hosed.  I created a Flickr account last week and have decided that more than likely, I am going to upload our pics to the internet. It just takes motivation to sit down and do it!

I did some random searches for Louisville, Kentucky to see what I could find.  I looked up Las Vegas, Nevada, Lake Tahoe, Nevada, and my favorite dog breed the Shiba Inu.  I found tons of pictures of everything I looked for.  For the average person who is looking to travel, looking to see what a particular dog breed looks like, (or wants to see pics of their favorite dog breed) or wants to see what pictures are available from or about their hometown, photo sharing websites offer the world to them.

For work purposes, Photo Sharing sites have a ton of uses.  We have patrons looking for a picture to add to their homework that they could use Photo Sharing sites for. Pictures from these sites could be used to spruce up a Power Point presentation. Someone could be creating a flyer for a service such as mowing lawns where they could find a nice picture to use. People could be on the Internet looking for cool places to visit where there are plenty of good photo opportunities or any number of other travel uses.  And tons of other things I'm not thinking of at the moment. 

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn Oh MY!

I'm very comfortable using Facebook, but I did delve into my privacy settings and paid attention to what things could be shared about me by my friends' facebook settings.  It was totally beneficial to me to look at those settings and see how I could make sure my information that is 'out there' is locked down to my satisfaction.  For the most part, I see our role with our patrons and facebook to be just being familiar with it and knowing where to go when they are having problems with it.  The question I usually get about facebook is "how do I add my picture to my profile?" 

I had a Twitter account as well, but don't tend to use it as much as my facebook.  I was curious about it so I got an account close to a year ago now.  It's amusing at times and is nice being able to look into the lives of those we admire such as authors, radio personalities, etc..  but for the most part, it's just ok to me.  I can't really see myself using it for helping patrons other than something that is happening in the news 'right now' that hasn't hit the newspapers or the media yet.  Even then however, how reliable can we count it to be?  I'm a bit skeptical about using it as a source for questions.  I think it is however very important to keep yourself in the technological loop so that you are aware of how these sites work just to be able to help people who get stuck using them. 

I do not have a LinkedIn account and am unsure if I will create one.  It would be good to see how it works and such for patrons who want to use it, but I'm not sure I want yet another username/password to keep track of out there in the vast space of the internet. 

Google services

Wow, I knew Google was awesome, but I had no idea it was so versitile!
The things I think would be most useful when helping patrons would be Google Docs,  Google Books, Google Patents and Google Maps. 

The only one of these I have ever used is Google Maps.  I discovered this years ago and thought it was awesome I could get a 'real' view of streets and such.  I think Google Docs is awesome for people who do not carry a portable drive such as a jump drive.  It can be accessed from any computer that has internet access.  Google books is handy when you are trying to figure out where a quote came from.  From my experiments with Google books, it seems to have a variety of books both new and old that are on there.  I tried a classic Shakespear quote and a random quote from an author I currently read.  Both were there.  Google Patents is very cool as well.  We do have the occasional patron who wants to do a Patent search and we usually direct them to the Main Library.  Well, NO MORE!  I'm going to show them this.  I am not sure that it is as comprehensive as doing an official patent search, but at least they have a starting point with this.