How May I Help You?

Helen called wanting information about what organizations had received previous Mentoring Children of Prisoners grants. There was a federal grant opportunity open again and she knew that grants had been given in the past and she didn't want recreate the wheel - she wanted to use the ideas of the successful programs. Luckily, she already had the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families website with the information. On the far right was the link to the current grants, and down below, a link for the archives. It was in the Archives that we found the listing for the grantees for the 2006 grants. She was very happy. She also wanted to know if there were any grant writers who could help her. Doing a Goolge search for "grant writing Nebraska" I found a terrific site with listings for Nebraska Grant Writers .

Diane is getting her education degree so she can teach K-6. She said she'd been a para for about 20 years and decided she was going to finish up her degree. She had an assignment to explore how the Puritan movement influenced the literature of Benjamin Franklin and Judith Sargent Murray. We found some information in Gale's Literature Resource Center. It was interesting to learn that Judith Sargent Murray, an early feminist, wrote one of the first "female advice columns" with fictitious letters to help frustrated housewives. These were compiled and published in "The Gleaner: A Miscellaneous Production" (1798) which also included short stories and essays on philanthropy, hospitality, and economy.

It's Jim again, and he doesn't have a computer....so I look for "Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm" in AbeBooks .com - there are several; and for a biography of the Canadian Prime Minister, Lester B. Pearson, by Bruce Thordarson . Of course there are a lot being sold by Canadian booksellers so I limit this by booksellers in the USA - -and find several. He is always looking for a cheap hard cover in good condition. The other interesting question was "Who was the girl who sang the vocals on the song "Simple Things" written by Jim Brickman . Apparently he had tried to get an answer earlier in the day, and this librarian, described to me by our patron Jim as "tenacious as a bull dog," hadn't been able to come up with the information. I felt good that I found a review of the album by the same title which gave the information he was seeking: Rebecca Lynn Howard.

asked James, the most intelligent man I know. I took a human geography class with him at UNL back in 1990. He has a master's degree in just about every social science discipline and is the most well read person, I am sure, in Omaha, and probably the whole state of Nebraska. I found information for him in our "Cambridge History of Japan" Volume 3, Medieval Japan and the "Kodanisha Encyclopedia of Japan."

asked our customer, Jack - - - He is always watching movies on TV and caught this on the credits at the end of a movie he had missed. I found his answer here: Music for Millions (1944) and at Rhapsody I found the music to " Toscanini, Iturbi and Me " I could play for him while he listened over the phone! And oh, by the way, what other movies did Mr. Iturbi have a part? Good old Internet Movie Database to the rescue.

Congratulations to Deirdre who it looks like, masterminded the majority of these exercises. That was a lot of work on top of the workload she already has! I would say this experience was very enlightening. I did take more time to do the exploring, learning exercises, and blogging than anticipated. I've expored some of the other blogs created by my colleagues and there are some terrific ones, with great ideas and creations, but unfortunately, they didn't have time to devote to get to the end. I would think a reward is in order for getting to the half-way mark and encouragement to finish the last half! In doing this, I've discovered that there are a lot of resources that offer similar services, such as video upload. It was originally You Tube, but now Yahoo and Flicker and others are in the game. I've discovered that I've created accounts at dozens of places with dozens of login and passwords. I can see a need for one portal to all of these accounts - of course, that ...

It had escaped my attention that we had the e-books for kids. I explored Tumble Books. Tried out the verb game - -a little contrived but swatting the verb was interactive. There wasn't a story with this and I think that would enhance the experience. As I kid we had an Aesop's Fables album that we listened to all the time so I was glad to see there was an Aesop's audio book available. Also, there were lots of classics, Black Beauty, Alice in Wonderland, House at Pooh Corner, etc. Once I have my mp3 player, I'll look forward to adding some of these and listening. I thought it was interesting that they had a "Story Book" section rather than a "Picture Book" collection, and that I didn't see any of the picture book classics there - probably copyright issues and expenses with having those available here. The books had sound effects and multiple voices and highlighted the text being read which kept them engaging. Under the "Learning Languages...

Prior Experience with Podcasts: My son, Brandon, had a podcast about the Cornhuskers - Midwest Coast Bias - so I was subscribed to that before he took it down at the end of the year 2007. I went to the PodcastDirectory.com to see if I could find it and I did-though the links no longer worked. I also tried to find podcasts by using the google maps. Got to Nebraska and found several in Nebraska, mostly Omaha and Lincoln, and one in Sutton. The one in Sutton had nothing. There was one in Lincoln called "The Composer's Notebook" that had interviews with various Nebraska composers, including Carol Curtwright and Jackson Berkey. But another one called "Ben's Bits" didn't have anything of use and after going there and allowing the Active X my cursor started acting goofy. The find podcasts by City was overwhelming - I was going to go to Omaha, but it involved scrolling through all the cities starting with A, B, C, etc., so I gave up. I think this finding section...

I started a You Tube account after our Hawaii vacation in May. Rick was best man at a wedding on Kau'ai and at the luau the night before the wedding our groom, Aaron was taken to the stage to dance the Tahatian Love Dance for his bride, Julie. I got up near the stage and recorded this on my digital camera. When I got home, I created a You Tube account and posted it for all to see. I've since added music I've recorded at various events....In fact, I recorded a fabulous musician at Wavz Beach, Negril, Jamaica in January, 2006. I did a quick look up on the Internet of his name just to see if he was anybody. When I recorded him, he was homeless. I gave him money and was so disappointed that he wasn't at the beach the next day. It turns out, shortly after I recorded him, he was rediscovered by Ian Jones of Baltimore, MD. Claudius was a roots reggae pioneer from the 1970s who had fallen on hard times. He now has a couple of new albums out with Ian. I put the description of th...

I looked at the Twitter feature on the Recipes for Success site. I signed up for this about the time that Stacey Aldrich was leaving OPL and hadn't used it since. She gave me her name so she is currently the only person I am following. I guess I thought you needed to have a mobile device - but no. It works anyway you can get to the web. I notice Stacey was posting Twitters with mobile devices, web, mobile web, Twitterific (Twitter application for Macintosh) and Twinkle -(Twitter application for iphone). I had had an e-mail request a few months ago from an old friend requested to be one of my Twitter followers and so I finally approved him. Tried to get into my hotmail account contacts so I could invite my contacts to follow me, but it said I had no contacts..... I'm not sure why it wasn't connecting because I've got a lot in there. It has a drop down where you put in your email address and then it chooses the msn, hotmail, gamail, etc. It wouldn't let me search my w...

My First Web Doc Experience I am in Google Docs - -November 13, 2008, 1539 - my best friend's 51st birthday. Can it be that I am finally taking part in the technological revolution as part of the O! What a Geek program at Omaha Public Library? I heard about these kind of documents and thought - how cool - to never have to carry a thumb drive (at that time a floppy disc) around anymore. But then, or course, you might have to deal with no connectivity. Would the world come to a complete standstill if that happened? No more Twittering and keeping up on every single move and 140 character thoughts of your friends and neighbors? Ok - I'm getting ready to save this for Thing #18 of the O! What a Geek Experience! Ready..... Set..... Go! Ok - now to find it again. I see I have a "Docs Home" link over here to the right. Sure enough, it is there under the "Owned by me" and "Opened by me" - - I wonder how I can assign it a star, or make it hidden? Let's s...

Wow! Lots of libraries are using this sandbox to explore. Nice to see that OPL had their own little section down there at the bottom. I added a favorite book, too. When I took Micahel Saur's class, he encouraged all of us to do the "classic" version - where you actually had to do a little coding. I don't think PB Wiki even lets you start one of those anymore. So, I hadn't used any of the tools that allow you to make links, etc., so that was fun. Much less labor intensive, although, it was fun to get to know a few of the things that make a site like this tick. I think that the great thing about web 2.0 is that you can create a lot of content WITHOUT having to know all the fancy languages that make it possible. I love that!

Last year, after I attended a Wiki class with Michael Saurs from the NLC, I created a Wiki using PBWiki to use with the Education Committee of the Douglas County Historical Society. I have found it very useful to keep track of our committee work. I originally was hoping that everyone would buy into it and we could do some collaborative grant proposal writing. That didn't happen. It was mostly due to a technical skills gap of the committee members - or, at least a perceived technical skills gap. I have continued to use it to post meeting agendas, meeting notes, sub-committee project information, etc. I will state that it hasn't always been as easy as making a Peanut Butter sandwich, but it has been a learning experience! I looked at the linked sites - the St. Joseph County Public Library reading genre links were good and I noticed that they were also updated in October - and had book jacket covers which made them more interesting than a pure textual site. I think this i...

The power of web 2.0 became apparent last week when Manya asked about borrowing my digital camera to take pictures of the Fan.Art.Fusion contest entries. My batteries were low so she used the library camera. Within the next day I had an invitation on my Face Book account to check out the cool slide show she had put together of all the art entries for her Fan.Art.Fusion art contest and exhibit on OPL's Flickr Account, which I then promptly sent to my friends. View it here (still haven't figured out how to make the link and pretty this up!). http://www.flickr.com/photos/30648453@N06/sets/72157608655636804/ For this "Thing" I also explored the Tame the Web blog and read some of Karl Fisch's musings. One former posting was about contributing to a 3rd grader Abby's travel wiki virtually and with a real postcard. So, I went to Abby's web page and this is what I found (obviously written by Abby's teacher or parent): "Due to the overwhelming response...

...asked the appraiser..... She was appraising a quilt done from the blocks that were published in the World-Herald from October 1939 to February 1940 that was being donated to the International Quilt Center. http://www.quiltstudy.org/ We have all these quilt blocks in a drawer in the back room filing cabinet - I've never used them before. Apparently this quilt was done in the colors and materials that were suggested and so it had more value than other quilts that she has seen done on the same theme. The quilt center, located in Lincoln, didn't have this in their collection. She valued it at $3200.

I went to Technorati - signed up - tried to "claim" my own blog- but when I tried to link to site they sent to my e-mail they were experiencing "technical difficulties" - - I did discover that they have an advanced search feature so that makes it easier to find blogs pertaining to certain subjects. Also, they have an authority rating system which is also a nice feature, so I found the #6 rated site on permaculture US, but just now, as I went back to find it again, it didn't come up, even under the advanced search for those sites with lots of authority. Oh! I found it again http://www.permacultureusa.org/ but even though it is ranked #6 it has no fans! There didn't seem to be a way to sort the results by authority ranking, which I think would be helpful, but maybe I'm just missing this feature. I did read the annual report for Technorati and found it interesting that 3/4 of the bloggers are college educated, 42% have a graduate degree. I linked to some o...

I've been using Delicious since I took a class taught by Michael Saurs from the Nebraska Library Commission a year or so ago. I started it to keep track of all the accounts that I have set up at various websites with encrypted info regarding my user name, passwords, etc. I just need to remember my username and password to my Delicious account, then I'm fine...and remember to log out when I'm done! I mark the items "do not share" so they are not shared with the wider community. For this exploration, I went to Technorati - to do a blog search for permaculture - got down as far as Home and Garden. There may be further refinement but I didn't see how-so I'm not sure how indexed this site is. I did a search in the Home and Garden section for permaculture - and came across someone who had blogged about permaculture and had mentioned the MyFarm project in the San Francisco area. (Here is the website http://myfarmsf.com/ ). I had heard about this at the Bioneers C...

Select... Permaculture Search The Web I created a Search Roll for permaculture since I'm interested in making our yard output oriented rather than input oriented. I added four permaculture sites that didn't have a lot of commercial flashy content so hopefully my search results will be productive and mostly crap free. I wasn't sure why it didn't stay named how I named it. This is the 2nd time I've tried to get it into my blog - looks easy from their website, but didn't save the "permaculture" name on it, but I see it is on the drop down menu.

http://www.librarything.com/home/PrairieStar I started a collection of prairie themed picture books when I was a children's librarian. My friend Denise has always wanted me to put these online. Guess I can do that now. I entered all the "B" authors and it was fairly simple, and with Jason Kaspar's help, I even got my tags on correctly. I see where one title doesn't have a cover - and I guess I can scan and add that. It will be interesting to see who else shares my collection..... it also means one more username and password to keep track of ... #&*@!

Since I signed up for iGoogle and was messing around with some of their tools, I signed up for their Google Reader. I could "discover" other blogs that they suggested were similar to my interests. I did that and found several local newspapers and news outlets plus a few library related. I added KETV and OWH news feeds. I could also just click on "Add a Subscription" and could do a search by keyword. I searched for "library" and it came up with many individual library feeds as well as the Wikipedia entry for library. I signed up for the "librarian.net" & "Nebraska Library Association" and "Nebraska Library Association." I also subscribed to the "Fresh Air" podcast and to a couple bloggers from O! What a Geek.

I'm at NYPL Mid-Manhattan Library at 42nd and 5th Avenue trying to use their Internet. At least it is free - just had to show ID and wait for about 40 minutes. Just like home, they've got all the features shut down, so can't have more than one tab open at once. For this exercise I'd like to comment on how much people are willing to share and reveal about themselves and their friends on their "social networking" sites. I haven't explored a lot of them, mainly Flickr and Face Book, but I'm sure it happens in the other sites as well. In exploring, I've determined that I want to try to be cautious about how much information I put out there for all to see. When I rant about a social issue or cause or air my political views in person, I am usually doing it in front of people I know and trust. I don't feel like it is in my best interest to do this in a forum without any boundaries. It is great the technology can unite people of like mind and vie...

Ok - - - explored - found where I could order some really cool tiny photo calling cards - - I've received a few of these in the last few months so NOW I know where they come from. Found I can make a book with my own text and photos. Sure wish I'd known about this when my friend Pam was sick this spring. I made one for her on the Wal-Gren's website only to have my connection "time out" after spending about 2 hours working on it and having to start all over again. Probably would have been easier AND more expensive from here. Posters, calendars, postcards--we could make a few of those from our excellent postcard collection to sell......I FINALLY found the fun free tools - the group of librarians with librarian trading cards - - scrolled through and found a couple of OPL's very own librarian's with trading cards, and discovered that the "travelin librarian" at the Nebraska Library Commission is one of the leaders in number of librarian trading c...

I have heard a lot about Flikr but had never made an account so this was a first. One more account and password to remember - *$!&%#! I uploaded pictures from Carol Connor's retirement party at Spaghetti Works I'd taken last Friday night. She was director at Lincoln City Libraries for 30 years - I was an employee there for about six. I wanted to share with Lincoln City Libraries staff so this was an easy way to get started. I've yet to figure out how to invite those people to look. I copied and pasted my information about the party into all my uploads before I discovered there was a "batch" option so I'll have to try that next time. I mapped the location right down to the address of Spaghetti Works. (I love when I encounter maps with photos!) I made a set of the photos and I did tag one photo with owhatageek and am still in the process of seeing how to get it loaded here........It is one of the catalogers with a funky hat during the milliner portion of the...

7.5 Habits of Life Long Learners I think it is essential to be a life-long learner. The easiest habit by far is accepting responsibility for my own learning. I have always looked for opportunities to expand and learn. The hardest habit is using technology to my advantage - - I feel like a lot of the technologies require login names and passwords and some require numbers, letters, characters, but only 9 or 8 or 4, some in caps, etc., and that has always been frustrating when I can't remember! HOWEVER, I have found that with Delicious, a new technology, I now have a way to bookmark all my web based sites and to keep notes for my accounts and passwords (encrypted to give me enough hint to get in). I am also on the verge of a real cell phone - I have a Trac phone which I only use about 500 minutes a year and keep off except when I'm traveling - but I am reluctant to be tied to a technology and to be "findable" 24/7. I like quiet and silence in my life. I will procee...

Mike told me he had just reconciled with his former wife - they had been divorced for thirty years. He was wanting some reconciliation quotes. I found a couple he liked: "The worst reconciliation is better than the best divorce." - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616) "The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions." - Thich Nhat Hanh, (b 1926) Vietnamese monk, writer, activist Source: www.ThinkExist.com

This is what you get when you call Omaha Public Library now days - an enthusiastic and friendly greeting. In my instance, it is "Omaha Public Library-Downtown, This is Joanne, How May I Help You?" This year at our annual staff day we were had "Zing Train" training by Zingerman staff from Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the fine art of customer service. Immediately after staff day we implemented this greeting system wide. We started by attaching the greeting to each and every phone until we now have it (mostly) down pat. My goal with this blog is to relate how I have personally given great customer service to people who I have helped at Omaha Public Library. Source: http://zingtrain.com/home.php