Week 7: #17 Blog About Technology

Technology - It is moving way to fast for me, although I really do like all the new features. Online banking, fast fill holds, online texts, email, faxing, photosharing, quick access to almost anything if you have a fast server and know what you are doing, the list is endless. I wish more sites would use the same "basics". It is hard to learn all the new programs. Maybe that will be one way libraries can be useful. They can direct users to user friendly sites.

I posted a comment on the "iStar, you Star, we all Star" blog. This person seems to think alot like me.

Week 6: #15 On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0

I added my blog to the hcpl wiki favorites. I then received numerous (understatement) emails from the wiki everytime someone did something to it. I have now chosen to "never" receive email notices. I did find some interesting sites on the wiki. I will definitely be coming back to this for further review.

Library Elf : My Experience

Twice this week at work I had customers mention how they had trouble keeping track of all their library card records. I work at a library where many customers have 2 separate county library cards and a college card. It they have kids they all have numerous cards and mom or dad have a devil of a time keeping up. Many have gone to insisting that the kids use only mom or dads card. Kids want to use there own card and get sad when they can't.

Library Elf to the rescue. I've been telling these customers about libraryelf and they are so thankful, excited and impressed with my knowledge.

I have found it very helpful myself.

Week 6: #15 On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0

I read all the perspectives and agree. We have to provide a service that customers want and need. If customers don't find what they want where and when they want it they will go elsewhere. Providing obsolete service will be the death of libraries and some company will provide the service and charge for it. The internet is definitely the way to go now and keeping up with technology is going to be the most important aspect for libraries.

Technology is changing so fast, it is hard for librarians to keep up with all the new sites and software and how to use them. The same goes for customers. We have to be aware of what is going on so we can direct customers and help them. Obviously we do not have to time train people on all these new changing ideas. We need to make our interfaces easy enough for customers to use on there own. Directing them to these sites, user friendly sites, will be our new job.

Libraries must expand both physically and virtually. They need to stay as advanced as there savvy users and make information available to the less savvy user. This won't be easy but is something to strive for. Embracing change and a willingness to try new ideas is probably the most important thing for individuals and library organizations.

Week 6 : # 14 Getting Not-so-technical about Technorati

When using the Key Word search of blogs in Technorati I got 10 times as many results compared to using tags or Blog Directory. I wouldn't want to have to go through almost 7000 results to see if any looked relevant. I would have to be pretty desperate to go through 684 results. The results in Tags and Blog Directory seemed to be close to the same thing. I imagine if you added a few more tags you could get even closer to what you want.

Popular Blogs in Technorati seemed to be high tech sites, music and video downloading sites and celebrities. I don't see myself using this much.

Halloween Smiley

Here is a smiley I found through an image generator found in "The Generator Blog".

Week 6 : #13 Tagging makes the web 2.0 world go round.

I subscribed to del.icio.us and was able to succesfully add the buttons onto my cubicle computer. This was not an easy task for me. I thought the best part of del.icio.us was that you could move from computer to computer and access your information, but we can't put the buttons on our "circ profile" computers. Is this something that may happen in the future? I can see the benefits of tagging and bookmarklets but you sure have to have a lot of time. I imagine once you take the time to learn a site it will become easier.