How May I Help You?

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 ... #&*@!