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?  ;)