I have seen this site before but had never thought about using it with customers. In searching I found some TV commercials and programs from my childhood. I'm thinking back to those questions I had for words to a commercial jingle or pictures (where videos may have helped)which were difficult or impossible to track down.
While tagging helps, the search capability is very uneven. Sometimes I was amazed at what came up and other times I had no results through keywords or tags. Sometimes it meant scanning a broad category like 50s TV which could prove very time consuming.
Our customers may find it interesting to have some of our library storyhours, author visits and programs available on video.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Week 8, Thing #19 Interesting Online Tools
I found some tools for my personal use. In fact, I spent too much time checking out all those links. The categories of City Guides and Reviews and Travel held me the longest. Guess I must need a vacation!
Yelp.com and Yahoo Local both presented excellent information about my immediate neighborhood. Which could be helpful for those travel questions. Under Travel the Farecast site is being added to my watchlist. How good are they at predicting when is it a good time to purchase that airline ticket or hotel room.
I think for library use some of the applications could assist in committee work with being able to share documents and the knowledge that some of these applications and tools exist to help our customers is beneficial.
Yelp.com and Yahoo Local both presented excellent information about my immediate neighborhood. Which could be helpful for those travel questions. Under Travel the Farecast site is being added to my watchlist. How good are they at predicting when is it a good time to purchase that airline ticket or hotel room.
I think for library use some of the applications could assist in committee work with being able to share documents and the knowledge that some of these applications and tools exist to help our customers is beneficial.
Zoho Writer Attempt 3
This is my third and final attempt at creating a document using Zoho Writer. I hope that I can use some of the features. My attempt to use styles and headings was quite frustrating. Text colors changed without my asking. I couldn't seem to find away to change my line spacing between bulleted items. Let me try again.
- I did manage to change text color and size of font.
- I created a table with 2 rows and 3 columns but could not figure out any way to add a 3rd row to the original table. NOTE: The image of the emoticon did not cross over from Zoho and I couldn't seem to get it into my image file. Also for some reason the second row of the table is not appearing.
Name | Address | Phone |
- I used the background feature and the center justification.
- Obviously I created a bulleted list.
- This time line justification worked. Let me try it again.
- Yes it worked.
- Now for headings. This is the highlight style.
Monday
Morning
Back to normal
Evening
Tuesday
PS: Obviously when doing formatting to post to a blog you need to keep in mind what will work on your blog background. For example, the borders of the table and the background colors of the table don't work on this blog design.
Week 8, Thing #18 Zoho Writer
I did not find this as intuitive as I expected. My first attempt went badly as a result of what were apparently connectivity problems at my end. My second attempt went better but there were several things that I had difficulty with in formatting. After creating a table I could find no way to insert an additional row or delete a row. Something I frequently have to do. Also, I couldn't quite figure out styles. The only one I managed to do was highlight a sentence. But when I tried to erase the highlighting for a portion of the sentence I couldn't seem to do that. It was either undo the whole thing (assuming it was my last action) and rehighlight the appropriate area. The Style drop down also doesn't appear to be a toggle of either highlight or not. Obviously more time will be spent with this if I decide to use it.
Attempt 2
This is my second attempt at creating a document. I hope that I can use come of the features. My first attempt to use styles and headings was quite frustrating. Text colors changed without my asking. I couldn't seem to find away to change my line spacing between bulleted items. Let me try again.
- I did manage to change text color and size of font.
- I created a table with 2 rows and 3 columns but could not figure out any way to add a 3rd row to the oridginal table
Name | Address | Phone |
- I used the background feature and the center justification.
- Obviously I created a bulleted list.
- This time line justification worked. Let me try it again.
- Yes it worked.
- Now for headings. This is the highlight style.
Monday
Morning
Back to normal
Evening
Tuesday
Week 7, Thing #17 Adding Wiki Content
This was certainly easier than what I went through with the major editing of the BCPL Wikipedia entry!
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Week 7, Thing #16 Wikis in the Library's Future?
For the public, the St Joseph County type topical subject guide for promoting library resources and services has potential. Highlighting services, collections and specific titles, databases, and future programs to in-library users and to the remote users (perhaps via e-newsletters links, chat, etc.) could help with in-house library instruction for specific topics as well as market the library. How-to documents or tutorials on tech topics or on software applications could assist the novice trying to learn the basics of the new technology.
Access to customer and staff reviews of materials may appeal to some of our customers. It is a way to share the wealth of information from our strongest readers’ advisors throughout the system. Perhaps this could eventually replace print booklists. At the same time as providing readers’ advisory to both remote and in-house users, there is the opportunity to market book related library or community events and news. I do worry about the malicious content when it is opened to public editing. Having had experience with this recently! Yet requiring login and passwords will lessen participation. Princeton’s site requires registration and does not appear to have many active contributors. Would it be another Virtual Book Club where the entire workload falls on staff to keep it going!
The staff oriented wiki could be used for online manuals and training documents with linking to items now scattered on the WAN, memos, management group minutes, etc. Wikis could play a role in providing online instruction, for example on tips for using research databases and other brief tutorials. It certainly is worth considering. Of course that means one more thing for staff to view, create and/or maintain regularly to make it a useful tool. It could be equivalent to maintaining a large website.
Certainly this is a topic for further investigation!
Access to customer and staff reviews of materials may appeal to some of our customers. It is a way to share the wealth of information from our strongest readers’ advisors throughout the system. Perhaps this could eventually replace print booklists. At the same time as providing readers’ advisory to both remote and in-house users, there is the opportunity to market book related library or community events and news. I do worry about the malicious content when it is opened to public editing. Having had experience with this recently! Yet requiring login and passwords will lessen participation. Princeton’s site requires registration and does not appear to have many active contributors. Would it be another Virtual Book Club where the entire workload falls on staff to keep it going!
The staff oriented wiki could be used for online manuals and training documents with linking to items now scattered on the WAN, memos, management group minutes, etc. Wikis could play a role in providing online instruction, for example on tips for using research databases and other brief tutorials. It certainly is worth considering. Of course that means one more thing for staff to view, create and/or maintain regularly to make it a useful tool. It could be equivalent to maintaining a large website.
Certainly this is a topic for further investigation!
Week 6, Thing #15 Library 2.0 and Our Future
When I started with the Maryland 23 Things program, I thought Library 2.0 was strictly a new technology happening. While technology certainly is a component, Library 2.0 also has implications for decision-making on services, staff training, the mission of the library, involvement with our communities, the user in our library, our remote users and the non-library user. It builds on BCPL’s customer service philosophy and “Give ‘Em What They Want” and asks for us to really understand our present and future customers needs and how we can serve them.
Week 6, Thing #14 Technorati
It’s nice to have a search engine for blogs. As conference speakers or authors and columnists who write in the print media now maintain blogs, the ability to quickly update your knowledge through blogs and postings is exciting. It is proving useful for one of my workplan assignments.
You could spend hours trying to figure out which search feature presents the best search results. Trying all the search options, I found that for Learning 2.0 the enclosing of the two words in quotes helped. My best search was in the Advanced search option using Keyword by exact phrase “Learning 2.0” and then clicking on blogs about Learning 2.0. However, trying other topics, this search strategy was not always the best. I found the Directory search not useful for searching at least 3 topics. The results were much too broad and resulted in finding many irrelevant listings. I need to play around with the search features more when I have time.
I was not at all surprised at one were the top blogs or favorited items. Global social networking is quite apparent as reflected in these listings.
For use in responding to customers, the authoritativeness of the poster or blog author must still be paramount. You need to be cautious in using blogs as resources. With some reservation it might prove useful to those seeking opposing viewpoints on a topic.
You could spend hours trying to figure out which search feature presents the best search results. Trying all the search options, I found that for Learning 2.0 the enclosing of the two words in quotes helped. My best search was in the Advanced search option using Keyword by exact phrase “Learning 2.0” and then clicking on blogs about Learning 2.0. However, trying other topics, this search strategy was not always the best. I found the Directory search not useful for searching at least 3 topics. The results were much too broad and resulted in finding many irrelevant listings. I need to play around with the search features more when I have time.
I was not at all surprised at one were the top blogs or favorited items. Global social networking is quite apparent as reflected in these listings.
For use in responding to customers, the authoritativeness of the poster or blog author must still be paramount. You need to be cautious in using blogs as resources. With some reservation it might prove useful to those seeking opposing viewpoints on a topic.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Week 6 Thing #13 Del.icio.us
What a great idea to allow access to relevant bookmarks between multiple computers and then to be able to discover additional great links from other account holders.
For reference assistance, the ability to post to a blog could assist in the creation of subject guides and topically designed reference tools, I guess. But I do worry about the possibility of people being led to sites through tags stating unverifiable facts and only personal opinions or beliefs. Is the customer receiving information from someone who really knows what they are talking about?
For reference assistance, the ability to post to a blog could assist in the creation of subject guides and topically designed reference tools, I guess. But I do worry about the possibility of people being led to sites through tags stating unverifiable facts and only personal opinions or beliefs. Is the customer receiving information from someone who really knows what they are talking about?
Week 5 Thing #12 My Vacation Planning Search Tool
For library use, I think searches on narrow topics, for example math resources on a homework help website/blog or the MD AskUsNow Partner Support Pages may find this useful. The PLCMC example seems much to broad to be supported by Rollyo. The Site Search on our website seems more helpful to me in finding info on our website.
There are certainly possibilities for personal use here. Here is my Vacation Planning search tool created through Rollyo.
There are certainly possibilities for personal use here. Here is my Vacation Planning search tool created through Rollyo.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Week 5 Thing #11 My Library Thing Account
While I was familiar with Library Thing and have recommended it to those customers who want to have a list of all the books they checked out, this is the first time I really explored it. I can't wait to spend more time with it. I particularly want to study the tagging and whether it could provide readers' advisory suggestions. Of course it may also help me remember the author or title of that good book I read about ... but now what was its title?
My catalog is at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/bellefontaine
My catalog is at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/bellefontaine
Week 5 Thing #10b My Squirrely Image Generator Attempt
Well here we go again. Well the image I created in a 3D Stereogram Generator appeared briefly on my blog than mysteriously vanished. It had some great colors but now the Generator doesn't work. So instead I used the Totem animal generator. This is suppose to be my totem animal. Guess I am a little squirrely at times.
"Perhaps you feel insignificant within the vastness and impersonality of our modern world. But remember the squirrel - how many oaks have grown out of his winter nut stash? The squirrel's message is that our lives are of more import than we can ever know."
www.crowcity.co.uk Words and design by Sam Malone Totem drawings by PK Rollings
Week 5, Thing #10 My Avatar
I'm finding this blogging quite frustrating. It seems that either I can't log in or I create a post and it doesn't appear only to mysteriously show up more than an hour later. However, let me try to post my Avatar. Well, the preview shows it's there so let's give it a try!!
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