Podcasts

I guess I must be getting the hang of some of this stuff. I found a podcast of Nancy Pearl's book reviews and I got it successfully loaded on my bloglines account. I didn't even have to review how to do it. I mean, that is success!!!! How great it will be to have Nancy's latest reviews right there when I log on. I guess there are some things that I do like about this new technology. All I had to do was keep on looking until I found it.

YouTube

So my husband has been telling me about all the videos that he has watched on YouTube. I haven't seen many that I have found entertaining. I did however, look up a video my brother told me about. Back in the 1970's our family was involved with a local percussion/brass performing group called the Perscussionauts. The director and percussion instructor recently had a video posted on YouTube celebrating the 30 year anniversary of a trip we took to Europe. I watched and was immediately taken back in time to the good old days. It was so great to see that Howie (he is pushing 90 years old) was still out there and doing what he did best, performing! I particularly enjoyed reading all the responses from people that were in the group back then. I would use this site for this kind of viewing, but lots of the videos that I looked at were less than entertaining.

Award winning Web 2.0 sites

Seems like is has been a while since I have worked on Library 2.0. I am getting to the end, so I am working on finishing it up. I spend a bit of time bumping around really liked the Imcooked site. It was fun, and I loved to see regular people share their recipes and better yet video so you could see them make the dish. I am not sure how you could use this at the library level. I picture it as more a fun site for personal use. I enjoyed it and saw some good recipes that I would make (if I still cooked).

Web based productivity

I'm not sure if this is going to work. I used the templates available on Google Docs. Hopefully you will be able to follow this link to see the masterpiece that I created there.

http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=d3wbfvq_4fwbskvfm

I thought that the templates were really great. It gives you the ability to do all kinds of things that I know that I would not be able to do without a template. I really can see that this is much more efficient that emailing documents back in forth for editing. It also eliminated the problem of not being able to open documents that someone else has attached from a program that you don't have. I really think that is great. I am going to spend a bit more time on this exercise. See if I wait long enough I find something that I really see useful.

Wikis

I really like wikis. As I took a look at some of the examples that were in the exercise, I realized that this was something that I could see as useful to me. The sites that provides information, such as job searches, reader's advisory, programming, selling your library were very interesting to look at and provides timely information to consider. I really think it is a good way to manage subjects that are continually changing. One item I was reading was talking about the intranet being set up as a wiki. Another had procedures manuals in a wiki format so that changes could be easily changed (but not by just anyone). I am not so sure that I think that some things are good canidates for constant change by just anyone. But on the whole I can see that this is a good thing.

Library 2.0

I am getting old and set in my ways, but even I see that libraries will have to change their ways to keep up with the changing technologies and the way that today's information is being accessed and used. No longer do we head to the library to look up information in the encyclopedia, but are more apt to get on the internet to do research. You are more apt to see a reference book being replaced with a database or online sources. It is obvious that libraries will have to move away from the traditional way of the past and change to the needs of the future users. It will take a balance however, to meet the needs of all the generations. There are still a lot of users who just want a good old book, not electronic book. It seems that it will take carefully planning to move ahead to make the library a place where everyone's needs are met.