23 Skidoo!

I really appreciate the opportunity to experience all of these exercises and sites. As I said in an earlier post, the most important thing I think we should all take from this journey is to remain open minded about the potential for all of these applications. We could put the feed for the Nancy Pearl podcast on the page with the text reviews, or create our own content for book reviews or news about upcoming events. The possibilities are endless once we have the technical ability to get them on our library web site. I also think we should keep reviewing the social software sites for marketing opportunities for the library. We have an entry in Wikipedia but what about on FaceBook or YouTube or MySpace or???? I learned when creating content for our web site that have links sprinkled in several places just increases the likelihood that someone will land on exactly [:)] what they need!

I do hope for future programs like this that the oversight committee reads the blogs and comments so that any questions that arise from individuals are addressed. That would be a big undertaking, but maybe everyone could be assigned to 3 o4 4 people to monitor.

I'll do this again for future learning purposes but I don't expect that I will be blogging anymore or visiting the sites for personal use. Just don't have time or enough interest. OverDrive will be an exception to this.

Thanks very much for putting this together, TACkies!

OverDrive is Us!

Well, I am quite familiar with OverDrive and the problems our patrons have with it via the plethora of questions we receive on QuestionPoint. The reality is that we have over 1500 successful downloads every month so we know it is working and working well for most people. I had a call this week from a young lady who is a resident of our area but is away at college out of state. She is using OverDrive from her dorm room and finding it very wonderful! Talk about a virtual experience! :-) I got an MP3 player over 6 months ago and always intended to download something but never have--amazing how life gets in the way. There are lots of titles in the audio books section that I would use--just need to do it! Maybe when I get the new MP3 player from this exercise I will have one for music and one for audio books. Ah, technology--so much to do, so little time! Besides, which I still have to watch at least 8 episodes of Law & Order a week or I go through withdrawal.




Also, great, great news is coming at PLA--OverDrive will soon be compatible with iPods. Yahoo!

Don't bother me, I'm in my Pod!

Well, except for the fact that "pod" makes me think of the movie "Cocoon," this was an interesting exercise. I listened and read about podcasts, then explored Podcast Alley and NPR. I really like the availability of book reviews on NPR and subscribed to the feed for Nancy Pearl's reviews since I am familiar with them from our subscription to the print evrsions we post on our library web site. This is the link for the feed: http://kuow.org/rss.php?program=nancy. It is in my Bloglines account.

#20 YouTube MeTube WeTube

Had lots of fun wandering around YouTube looking at library promos. So it looks like we need a video of our book cart drill team on there! Lots of university libraries included--one of the best is Oregon State which is led by a master's student. I liked the one from Fulton County Public Library (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV1gJd96P94) which is a very brief promo of all the stuff and services on offer. Would be fun to create this and then have it on our web site as well as on YouTube.
You Hoo--I got the video to embed in here!

#19 Cool Tools (Wasn't that the name of a class?)

Lots of cool tools out there but wow can people waste time. I wonder if this means that our brains will be sharper and we will have fewer "senior" moments. They do say game playing is a defense against dementia! Guess the Google is impossible! I do however see some great value in Yahoo's Upcoming as a way to track events of interest in your area or in another destination.

Google Docs

Us Scottsdale folks don't need to be sold on this one since we have been using it for about 2 years for our Today in the Call Center. This was suggested and implemented by Kate Herman and Krista Bolan and many of us have added information to it over time. It is an invaluable way to get a quick notice about something out to the desktops of all PCs used during call center hours system wide. We hear that this is soon to be expanded to include all service desks and to be renamed Today in the Library. It's a great tool for finding out if the new bus passes are in or if a class has been cancelled.

So this is Oregon!

I guess it is not surprising that my husband Paul and I love Oregon. It is the complete opposite of Phoenix--water, coolness, rain, lush greenery, etc. We started visiting when my son attended the Benedictine seminary outside of Salem and have been back many, many times. This picture is of Cannon Beach, one of our favorite coastal destinations. I posted this in the Favorite Vacation Spots part of the Library Wiki.