Is this really the end? Or just the beginning?

I'm treating this as I would treat a meme.

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
I was skeptical about learning about wikis, but now I think they are a good idea. I liked learning about all of the things that were discovered on the way, and I think the best part was being able to blog and read my friends' and colleagues' blogs and see how much fun they were having with the program as well. Also, it was cool to see the library embracing new technology such as myspace and youtube, and such. I hope that this trend continues. I know that I will always be excited about exploring things like this and applying it to my library life.

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
Yes! I feel that I have learned a lot more about things that I was only vaguely aware of before, and I have learned how things that I use in my own daily life can be applied for use in the library.

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
I actually like wikis now. ^_~

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
Please don't schedule it in the middle of summer next time. It made it very difficult to keep up with the schedule of things. But, other than that, keep up the good work on embracing new things!

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?
Definitely!

Going into Overdrive

I checked out Overdrive media, our downloadable digital audio book collection. I was sad that they weren't seperated into juvenile and adult, and sad that a good portion of my (heavily sci-fi and fantasy related) to-be-read list wasn't on there and also sad that I couldn't put the book onto my i-pod. Still, I found The Host by Stephenie Meyer on there, and that is a book that I've been meaning to read. I listened to the intro and put a hold on the book for when it becomes available. It will be fun to do this at home when I am just messing around on my computer. ^_^

Podcasts

The website that I found most useful was the Library of Congress's directory of Podcasts from the National Book fests. On there were interviews and speeches given by several of my favorite authors: Holly Black, Tony DiTerlizzi, MT Anderson, and Neil Gaiman.

I listened to MT Anderson speak at the 2007 National Book Festival. He read from his book G is for One Gzonk illustrated by Tony DiTerlizzi. The book was hysterical and very off beat and Seussical and I loved it!



I immediately checked to see if we had it in the system. We don't, which begged the question why not? I checked Amazon.com. It was well reviewed by School Library Journal and came out in 2006. So, I have now forwarded the information on to people who can find out why and hopefully get this funny book into the system.

YouTubin'

Ok. Here it goes. I actually tried doing this for my second post but well, youtube removed the video I had posted, probably because it took forever to load. Here is the original video I had posted:



It's the teaser trailer for Twilight. I loved the book. I can't wait to see the movie. I am too excited. There are no words.

As far as library applications are concerned, the possibilities are endless. Advertisements for the summer reading program, programs in general, etc. could be posted to our site using YouTube. Then, there's always this:



This is one of the winning videos from the Teen Video Book awards done by Random House Children's Books every year. I think producing a video like this to enter would be a rocking cool program!

Web 2.0 Awards

Here is a list of some of the 2008 Web 2.0 Award winners. Here is a list of all of the Web 2.0 Award winners I have used or do use now.

- CareerBuilder
- Monster
- Pandora
- Facebook
- Myspace
- YouTube
- GoogleMaps

For the web 2.0 exploration exercise, I explored Upcoming.

CareerBuilder and Monster have never been useful to me. I have never found a job on there that matched my interests. Maybe it's because libraries don't necessarily post their openings on these sites, I don't know. I'm just saying that they have never been helpful to me.

I LOVE Pandora, Facebook, YouTube, and GoogleMaps. The great thing about Pandora is that it directs you to new music. If you type in a band that you love, it will give you songs by them and songs by others that are like them, and you can even further customize your listening experience by selecting whether or not you liked the selection that was picked. I listen to this all the time at home. It's like being the director of your own radio station.

Facebook is more user-friendly and fun than Myspace, in my humble opinion. Both let you connect and keep in touch with friends, but I think the only real thing that Myspace has going for it that Facebook does not is that your profile page is more customized.

YouTube is awesome. I think you can find pretty much any video on there. I found someone who had uploaded all of the Jem and the Holograms episodes. That was pretty cool. Also, you can subscribe to certain "channels" and they'll email you whenever that user uploads a video. I've done that with my favorite band. ^_^

And GoogleMaps is wonderful. It's one thing to be able to get directions. It's another to be able to edit those directions so that you are travelling on roads you are familiar with/would rather travel. For example, I'm not a big fan of highways. So, I can drag and drop my route onto a parallel surface street with no problems. That's what makes GoogleMaps so useful.

Last but not least, Upcoming. I created an account, added an event I was attending and searched the events. It was meh. I have a similar system with GoogleCalendar. Add an event, invite friends, comment on the event. This is more public, but it doesn't recommend other events that would be similar to what you've picked. It only recommends other events at the location you've picked. As far as a library application goes, it would be a good place to publicize our events. Especially if you are a teen looking to go to something other than the "Bare Buns contest at Club Copa". But yeah, I wasn't that impressed.

Oops!

Oh my goodness! I haven't posted about Teen programs since May! (Bad, Bad Mimi). We have had a host of the normal programs that all turned out well, but with summer we've stepped things up a notch. We had a HSM2 program. We showed HSM2, and teens were prompted to wave props in the air/shout things kind of like a Rocky Horror picture show showing but much more G-rated. It was a blast. I started crying at a particular part in the movie, and the teens thought that was pretty funny. I also showed them how to do the dance for All for One. It was a great program, but I liked it better when we did it with the first movie. The first movie was just more fun.

We also did a trivia game based on the Worst Case Scenario books. The teens loved this. It was so cool to see them all working together, and also accepting new people into their group.

Finally, we've had the BOB orientation and practices. They have been going really well, except for a few hang ups. For example, at the first practice, the kids hadn't read as much as I thought they had. I'm really excited for this though.

We're gearing up for programs in July now including a cosplay workshop!

Zoho Post

I have actually used something like this before in google docs. As a writer, I find google docs incredibly helpful to get criticisms from other writers and to offer my own critiques because of the function that allows you to have multiple drafts as well as the online component of it. I like that I can take my writing wherever I go and that other writers can offer changes or suggestions, whether I choose to use them or not is, of course, another story .

I was surprised that, as we already have google accounts, why we didn't just use google docs. (Although, I will admit to having problems with google docs, such as formatting changes when I actually try to save it on my hard drive.) However, after, messing around on the Zoho site for a bit. I can see that Zoho has a lot to offer besides word processing, and it might be worthwhile to look into some of those applications as well... now that I have the account. Zoho Notebook and Projects might be interesting applications. I will definitely have to look into them. I will let you know what I think of them when I have time.

Technorati Tags     8,week,23,things

PBCLS Wiki

After playing around with the pbcls wiki, I don't think we are using wiki's to their full potential. After all, if we just wanted a list of our favorite bookmarks, we could easily use something like del.icio.us. The idea of wiki's is to post content that links to other content. For example, I posted a little about my favorite band in the pbcls wiki and gave a link to their webpage which is fine, and I think that's essentially how it's supposed to work, but instead of just listing links, you have add content. For example, if you are adding a link to your favorite band, you have to say, why it's your favorite band. I understand that this is an exercise, but I still think we could be using wiki's better than just as lists of our favorite things.

Wiki

I like this. Besides wikipedia, I've only ever used wiki's once, but I didn't create it and did very little editing, and a lot of reading. Even with wikipedia, I don't really create/edit, I read. So, I was understandably skeptical about this whole thing. First off, I have a predjudice against wikipedia because I've been told that since anyone can edit it, the information may not be accurate. While that's true, I've always thought it was a good source for pop culture materials, but not really for research.

Recently, as in just before this web 2.0 thing kicked off, I discovered wikiHow which is a useful site about how to do just about anything from being a glitter goth to cooking a five course meal. And I love that site. Anyone can post on it, and others can comment on how useful they found the how to.

I love the idea of an open catalogue like Open World Cat, as long as ,like WorldCat, the core material isn't changeable. Also, Wiki's in Plain English was an awesome video. It made me really understand the benefits of wikis. Inside the system, it could be useful to share programming ideas or coordinate programs between many different branches. Or to answer patron questions, like an FAQ wiki.

I was skeptical at first about this, but I like it now that I understand it a bit better.

Delicious Technorati with Library 2.0

Sounds yummy doesn't it? ^_^ These are the next three things in the 23 things project.

1st-- We were asked to explore del.icio.us-- a social bookmarking site. I think this a cool idea, and I could definitely see its uses professionally. It would be cool to be able to bookmark sites with craft ideas and program ideas and share that with other people and see what other people have found interesting in the same categories. Not that I could do this at home. (I tend to bookmark inane things like icanhascheezburger.com and 80's cartoons on youtube.)

2nd-- Next I headed over to technorati (awesome name by the way!) I searched the library's website, but I didn't find much related to it. I did learn about the new I-phone and twitter when I searched Web 2.0. I would think the idea of twittering was cool if it weren't imitated already on so many other social networking sites. So, Web 2.0 committee-- no twittering for you! ^_~

3rd-- The last thing I had to look at were some library 2.0 things. And my first thought was. What a cool time to be a librarian. (or to be becoming a librarian) The entire concept of library 2.0 is awesome. The landscape of the library as we know it is changing. I'm sure that's frightening but it's also exciting. One of the articles mentioned Myspace and how many libraries are using that to reach out to their patrons. I've been an advocate for that since I came to the library. Another talked about how libraries of the futures will be shaped more by patrons. (Not that we don't already work to supply our patrons with everything they need) But the content will be shaped by them. For example, the online catalog of the future may allow patrons to tag books. What a neat idea.

All in all, it made me excited to be in the profession that I am in.

a picture is worth a thousand words

But just in case you can't read the words, it says:
"book rental service?
was just thinking, my sister does -a lot- of reading and spends like $1000 a year on books alone, most of them she reads once then never looks at again. is there any kind of like... video rental store but for books? would make things cheaper, plus once one person has read one, the next person can get enjoyment from it, etc."

I wish I knew the origin of this. It was posted on a community I belong to. If it wasn't a joke, what a great way to be an advocate for the library.

Story Generator

We Tell Stories is a fun online story generator. I particularly like the fairy tale generator.

PSA: Beware of Pirates

As you can see, I've been having fun with image generators. A little too much fun. ^_~. I found this doing a search for a read poster generator. It's technically a motivational poster generator, but it works. I had a lot of fun messing with it.

Also, in the spirit of reading (because you don't want pirates to get you), I also looked at LibraryThing. I was on LibraryThing for all of a month before I found Goodreads, which I like much better. Check out what I'm reading:

Digging for Dinos

What was I thinking?! Honestly, I think I was crazy when I thought pasta fossils would be a good craft. I knew it when I saw the kid drop his entire tray dirt and all onto the floor. The dig itself went well. One kid was upset that they weren't actually digging, but everyone else had fun. Also, they liked the stories. So, that was good. But yeah, whoever said pasta fossils were good for 5-8 only had like 3 kids or something. With 51 people in the story time room, it was a certified zoo. The floor is trashed and I'm going to continue working on it on Sunday. Cindi said that she is going to ask the cleaning people to clean our carpets early. I hope it works. The kids seemed to enjoy it though. I guess that is a good thing, and Cindi wasn't mad. She laughed when I asked her that and said it would all wash out and that I was the most adventurous of all of us when it came to programming.

I was proud of that, but also felt a little bad because I know if anyone else were planning something like this, they would have figured out the contingencies. Like, there was no way that the dirt was staying on the trays. I just thought "WOW! That's a really fun idea. I want to do that." That's why I like working with Amanda. She always points out the dangers of what I think will be an awesome program, and if we can't find a way around it, then it's tabled until we can.

Also, I got my b-day cupcake today. It looks incredibly yummy. Thank you everyone!!

My Thoughts on Bloglines

I guess it's useful. I mean, when I did a search of RSS feeds I found a few sites that I visit outside my normal sites that had RSS feeds that I would be interested in, but really... if it has an RSS feed, it probably has one on livejournal too. To me, it would have been just easier instead of getting 8 million different accounts to use a site like livejournal. Then, you can access not only your friends blogs easily but also RSS feeds. Really, outside of work, LJ/Facebook/Gmail are my one-stop (ok, I guess technically 3 stop) shop for all my internet needs. In fact, as a paid member, you can even create syndicated accounts using the RSS address of the feed that you are interested in. The only advantage of a site like bloglines is if there wasn't already a community or feed on lj that you were interested in, you would have to pay on lj to gain access as opposed to having it all lined up for free on bloglines. Still, with such a huge community, I'm sure lj has something for everyone, and the few feeds/communities that you couldn't find, how hard would it be to just visit those sites?

Taking a page out of Kate-monster's notebook

The internet is really really great
I’ve got a fast connection so I don’t have to wait
There's always some new site
I browse all day and night
It's like I’m surfing at the speed of light

I’m glad we have this new technology
Which gives us untold opportunity
Right from you own desktop
You can research browse and shop
Until you’ve had enough and you're ready to stop

~Avenue Q

That being said, I'm not one of those people who believe that the digital revolution is going to kill the printed page. I think that as far as reliable information goes, you should always look in a book. (A bias passed down from many a history professor with good reason.) And there's something about cracking open a book and reading it that will never lose its charm.

But the internet is pretty amazing. Current, pop culture information that wouldn't necessarily appear in books, like song lyrics or cast-lists for upcoming movies are at your fingertips if you know where to look. You can make friends from all over the world or keep in touch with people over long distances at the push of a button. That's awesome.

I actually had a conversation with my husband about this. We were talking about how we didn't really grow up with internet, but as teenagers, we quickly adapted to it. It's weird, how often I am online. I can't imagine when I was not, even though I know that I only got the internet in 8th grade. I can only imagine what it's like to grow up with it at your fingertips.

Sometimes, this worries me. I don't necessarily think it's good for kids to be plugged in at a young age. I mean, I think computer skills will be important to them in the future, but at the same time, I can't imagine allowing a kid to play something like an MMO-- it worries me. Things like too dangerous, who knows who they could be talking to, and too addictive pop into my head. Which is hypocritical to say the least, as I play MMO's.

I suppose, the answer, as with most things, is parenting and setting boundaries. I'm glad that even though I didn't necessarily grow up with the technology, I am familiar enough with it to know both the benefits and the dangers.

Anti Prom Pix

These are just the ones that had me. ^_^ If you want to see more fun pictures of anti-prom, check out this link.

Anti-prom was a rocking cool program. Thank you to the cool branch that organized it. ^_^ Just know, that I might actually have to steal this program idea.

Study Questions

Neal Shusterman is one of the most awesome YA authors out there. Not only did he call when he heard about our book discussion of Everlost, and spent a good amount of time on the phone with our teens answering their questions about the book, but also, he put our book discussion questions up on his website.



Everlost under "Discussion Guide".

An Evening of Great and Terrible Beauty

After a bit of a rocky start (aloe vera gel stuck in funnels), the Great and Terrible Beauty program went really well. We made after-shower mist and body glitter from the book Girl's World Book of Bath and Beauty. That book is a great resource for creating a spa-day soapmaking program/party.

The after shower mist went quick and easy once we figured out that pumping the aloe vera gel directly into the bottles worked just as well. The body glitter was fun for everyone. It was incredibly goopy and messy which the boys loved.

Then, we made henna tattoos. I still have mine. I wil have to take a picture. This was also fun. Amanda did mine, and several people had really neat designs. All in all, it was a fun evening.

Teen Book Discussion: Rules of Survival

(May Contain Spoilers)

The discussion was very interesting. On the subject of which family they would rather live with, they were decidedly divided. Both groups brought up good points. For the DuBois', the point was that as long as you were not a step member and went along with the party line, you weren't really in harm's way. For the Walsh's, at least it wasn't forever.

The discussion about who was most evil out of the books that we read was also a good point. The majority decided that Lisette from Locked in Time was the most evil. Although, there were some votes for the warden from Holes and Mary from Everlost. Honestly, I didn't even think about the warden when I was coming up with questions. So, that whole part of the discussion came as quite a shock to me. Nikki from Rules of Survival was voted "has the most problems".

Also amusing was when we talked about which family you would rather live with, the Walshes got a lot of votes simply because Nikki got mad at the kids for doing housework, and a lot of people said it would be nice not to have to do chores.

All in all, a fun night. Next is: Evening of A Great and Terrible Beauty.

Twilight Trailier

This is the official teaser trailer for Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. It's coming out in December. I think my whole dept. is excited for it.

Blogging in Libraries

How can blogging be effective for libraries?

Well, for one, blogs can connect us to other library professionals, paraprofessionals and students. I know of several online library blogging communities where people who work for libraries share problems, ask for advice, or just talk about their jobs.

Blogging can be useful in many ways. If library employees blog about programs at their libraries, someone might see them and either want to come to a program or create a similar program of their own. If a library employee posts the plot of a specific book that a patron is looking for but never heard of, someone out in the great wide world might see the post, and be able to help.

This has actually happened to me. At my library we had a patron looking for a specific book about a family that eats nothing but rocks and sticks, and the youngest member of the family tries to convince them to eat better. The book was written in the 60's, before I was born, and I'd never heard of it. But, I posted the description to community, and got several responses, including the title of the book that the patron was looking for: Little Brute Family by Russel Hoban.

These are just a few examples of the way blogging can be useful for libraries.

7.5 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners

I realized after playing with Blogger that I needed to actually post about specific things. The first being the subject of this post.

This was an interesting, quick course. I think I'm a lifelong learner anyway. I love to read. I always love learning new things. There are at least 3 languages that I'd like to learn, and this fall, I'm going back to school for my MLS.

I definitely don't think I'll have a problem with step 7 1/2, which was play. I'm a big kid at heart. I don't think you can do what I do and not play. It's one of the many many reasons I love my job.

As far as difficulties go, I guess it would be setting a timeline for myself. I like the idea of the task list. In fact, I always have a to-do list on hand, several, in fact-- one for each aspect of my life. But, as far as pacing them out with specific deadlines... that's rough.

Still, I feel as long as I have an idea of what needs to be done and when it needs to be done by, it will be accomplished. And as the 71/2 habits tell us, "Attitude is everything."

Teen Book Discussion

Tonight, at our Pizza and Pages Book Discussion, we'll be talking about Nancy Werlin's Rules of Survival. This book was awesome, very intense. I highly recommend it. One patron told me yesterday that it was her favorite of the one's we'd picked so far. That was cool to hear, especially as this is the last P&P until fall.

I had a bunch of questions about the book, especially because I like to tie the current books that we are discussing to books that we have previously discussed. I think, for that purpose, Rules of Survival was a good follow-up to Locked in Time by Lois Duncan. There were a lot of comparisons to be made. I hope the teens feel the same way.

Hello Blogger!

This is going to be interesting. I've blogged before, but I've never used Blogger. Now, as part of our library's 23 Things program, I'm going to be using Blogger to track my progress with Web 2.0 technologies. Also, we are getting a blog for "Battle of the Books". I am co-coaching the WEL team with a co-worker. The idea is to use the blog to post calls for questions, similar to an icontest community. Then, at the end of each week, allow users to answer the questions. I am very excited about it. Getting the BOB-blog has kind of been a pet project for me. I'm interested to see how it will turn out.

Anyway, I will post next week as well, when I find out what new and exciting topic we will be covering. ^_^