Is this where it all ends?

Hi there, I'd like to begin my final(?) post by thanking all of you who have taken the time to check out my blog. Your comments and feedback have been appreciated! =) Also, I'd like to thank the library for providing this opportunity and for creating the chance not only to win some really cool toys (the flash drive and mp3 player) but also to become more familiar with some of the latest technological advancements. Thank you.

This post will be fulfilling the final two assignments - summarizing my thoughts about Learning Library 2.0 as well as suggesting a way that the library could incorporate one of these tools into our services. All in all I thought this program was beneficial. I definitely learned about things that I was completely unfamiliar with before, and had the chance to visit sites that I probably never would've used on my own. That said, I also found this program at times to be fairly cumbersome and time consuming. The weekly assignments took me considerably longer than expected (the 30 minute estimate was way off) and I found myself having to complete several assignments at home. Also, this program was problematic in that it competed for my time with some of my more pressing responsibilities. I would be working on a Library 2.0 assignment and thinking, "You know Paul, you really should be working on such and such instead of Library 2.0." Usually, the guilt got the best of me and I went back to work on other projects (hence the having to complete assignments at home comment.)

My favorite assignments included Flickr, Myspace (sorry, but this one turned out to be really fun), online image generators, LibraryThing, YouTube, and Google Maps. Assignments that were less enjoyable included Technorati, Del.icio.us, RSS feeds, and the Web/Library 2.0 perspectives (Zzzzzzzzzz). LibraryThing especially seems like a tool which I'll be using in the future. To be honest, that's actually one of the reasons I'm probably going to keep my blog . . . simply so I can have access to my LibraryThing account as well as Deanna's. =) (Have you seen hers? It's AWESOME!!! Lots of great book suggestions!)

I think the library could really benefit from adding podcasts/online video to their website. Imagine how cool it would be if we could film our storytimes and book babies and then post them online! That would be such a great resource for our patrons as well as other librarians. Also, several years ago the Library had a massive monarch butterfly release at the end of our Summer Reading Program. All summer long families watched the caterpillars progress through the various stages of development. Unfortunately, lots of folks were unable to attend the actual release, and I'm sure a podcast of the event posted on our webpage would've been greatly appreciated. Carrying this idea even further, the library has a Myspace page. We're making a big effort to reach out to our local teen population. How cool would it be if we could post video clips from our annual "Battle of the Bands" program on that page? This seems like a really easy way to reach out to our teens as well as make that resource more relevant.

So I guess that's about it. All in all I'm glad I participated in this program. It was a lot of work and was at times stressful, but I feel that I did learn a lot which is definitely a good thing. (Cue Queen's "We Are the Champions.) So thanks again to everybody who helped make this possible.

I'm pretty sure this isn't going to be my final post, so instead of goodbye, how about see you later! (And here's hoping I can win that coveted laptop!)

NetLibrary

Unlike most of my posts, today's entry is going to be a shorter one (the home viewing audience lets out a collective sigh of relief.) My assignment was to create an account on NetLibrary and then have a look around. The concept behind e-audiobooks is a pretty cool one. I've enjoyed listening to books on cd and cassette in my car and figured that listening on my nifty new mp3 player (thank you City Library!) might be worth trying. Unfortunately, after creating my account I quickly realized how limited NetLibrary's selection is. Being a children's librarian I decided to focus on the children's titles. Unfortunately they only offered 223 fiction titles (which may seem like a lot, but in all actuality, really isn't that many.) I scrolled through the titles and only found one book which interested me - "The Fairy-Tale Detectives" (The Sisters Grimm: Book One). The children's classics category only had 13 titles, none of which excited me.

Not only was I disappointed with NetLibrary's selection but I also felt that their site was difficult to navigate. Initially I tried searching by title and author, but after repeatedly pulling up zero results I found it easier to just browse through the entire category. I think NetLibrary has the potential to be useful, but for the time being it's just a little too limited.

Podcast 2.0

This week's assignment was to learn about podcasts. At first I had trouble differentiating between podcasts and online videos such as those offered on YouTube, but after some exploration I think I'm beginning to understand the difference. I explored both "Podcastalley" and "Search Yahoo! for Podcasts" and was FINALLY able to locate a podcast that I wanted to add to my Google Reader account. Initially I used Podcastalley and came up with everything from "Ron Paul Fancast" ("The place for people who are Ron Paul fans and for the rest of you who don't know why") to "The Colbertcon podcast" (a sampling of clips from Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report") to a Sesame Street podcast. Unfortunately, most of these podcasts hadn't been updated recently. (Dr. Paul's and Mr. Colbert's sites were both last updated in January 2008.) I wanted something more recent so I looked up NBC's "The Office" and found a site called "That's What She Said," a podcast providing in-depth commentaries and critiques on every episode of the hit T.V. show. According to Podcastalley this site was last updated on April 28, 2008. Much better! Just for kicks I searched for the same podcast on Search Yahoo! and immediately found it, with the added bonus being that it was completely up to date. That's right, it had the most recent podcast dealing with last Thursday's episode. After exploring Search Yahoo! I decided that I like it a little better than Podcastalley. It was very visual (which works well for me) and included more graphics and video clips, and the kicker was that it was actually up to date. I added it to my Google Reader account with only minor problems (I found that it took me a few minutes to re-familiarize myself with Google Reader since I haven't used it in several weeks.) Podcasts are interesting and it's good to know how to look for them, but honestly, at this point I'm not sure how much I'm really going to be using them. But that said, who knows? I may find myself secretly listening to "That's What She Said" right after next Thursday's episode of "The Office." Shhh, don't tell anyone.

YouTube: Why the Internet Was Created!

Thank you, Al Gore! Thank you. If it hadn't been for your "inventing" the Internet we never could've enjoyed the amazingly fun and addictive video sharing site that is YouTube.

YouTube is great. This is a site which I've (unfortunately) spent many a happy hour playing around with and exploring, watching clips that range everywhere from classic '80s cartoons to funny puppet shows (more on that later) to insightful political propaganda to "classic" music videos. You can find just about anything here. Anything. Sure, as was mentioned in the Library 2.0 tutorial, quality may vary (both in content as well as presentation) but it's still a whole lot of fun to look around.

I really don't feel like I need to say much more. YouTube speaks for itself. I will say this though. I HAVE used YouTube before to help answer patron reference questions. On one particular occasion a patron approached me trying to find out the title of the book that Belle is reading during the opening musical sequence in Disney's "Beauty and the Beast." After unsuccessfully looking through our Disney picture books as well as searching on Google (sorry Google), I tried trusty old YouTube and, sure enough, found that someone had posted the entire opening musical number. Unfortunately the book in question didn't actually have writing on the cover so I was unable to answer the patron's question, but I was at least able to go directly to the source and find that out. I thought that was pretty cool.

Oh, and thanks to YouTube I found my new favorite T.V. show, "The Office." If you haven't had a chance to see it you should definitely check it out. Very funny stuff! I decided to post a clip that relates to our preschool storytime. For four years and running Deanna and I have done a storytime on "Space," and without a doubt, one of our most memorable stortyime moments occurred the first time we acted out Ernie's song, "I Don't Want to Live on the Moon" (from Sesame Street.) So I've decided to post the original song, as seen on Sesame Street. Maybe one day the Library will start videotaping their storytimes, and then I could post our version of the same song. Wouldn't that be cool? So here it is - Sesame Street's very own Ernie singing "I Don't Want to Live on the Moon." Enjoy!

And the Oscar goes to . . . . .

. . . Google Maps!!!

Today's assignment was to select and explore any site/tool from the list of Web 2.0 winners and blog about it. I decided to learn more about Google Maps, the first place winner (in the category of "Mapping") in SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards.

Google Maps is AWESOME!!! I began by typing in my home address and sure enough, within seconds it not only came up with an overhead grid view of my street and the surrounding neighborhood, but also displayed a dialog box which showed a thumbnail of "my house." (Note: Google's picture was actually a couple houses off from my actual house. But still, that isn't bad when you consider what a monumental feat they've accomplished!)

Users are given the option of seeing a location's street view, the traffic conditions, street maps, satellite imagery, as well as the street maps combined with the terrain (a topographical map.) Street view is very cool, very addicting, and only slightly creepy (this could be a stalker's dream.) The satellite imagery looks like the views an individual would see were they to use Google Earth. The traffic conditions tab allows users to see what traffic conditions are like on particular roads at various times of the day. (Note to self - never drive southbound on I-15 in the Farmington area on Monday morning at 8:00 a.m. Traffic appears to be at a standstill.)

I tried the "get directions" feature and was very impressed. I love it!!! Prior to this I've used Map Quest (which is great too), but I think from now on I'm a Google Maps man. As with Map Quest it gives the user a map as well as detailed directions. It shows the total distance as well as approximate travel time. There's an option which allows the user to avoid highways (it will map out an alternate route using only side streets.) The user can drag the cursor over the map and actually customize/change their route. Google Maps also allows the user to send the directions via email, get reverse directions, and most importantly, print the directions. The printed page includes the detailed directions, map overview, start and end maps, as well as the start and end address, and the total distance and travel time.

This is an extremely useful tool. It will benefit me both in a professional setting as well as in my personal life. Thank you so much Google. And well done! Well done.

"It's Alive!!!" at Google Labs

Well, the good folks over at Google never cease to amaze me. I just got through browsing some of their latest "creations" over at the labs, and it's pretty cool to see what they're coming up with. Here's a quick review of a few of the features I explored:

Google Sets:

I'm not sure how useful it is (although, come to think of it, I guess the point is to sort of imitate the "cluster" concept found on other sites such as Clusty and Mooter) but it was definitely fun seeing whether or not it could predict and/or find relationships for the items I entered in. For example, I typed in "Keira Knightley," "Johnny Depp," and "Orlando Bloom" and Google came up with a list of other actors from "Pirates of the Caribbean" and various other films. I typed "Big Bird," "Cookie Monster," and "Grover" and Google came up with Bert, Ernie, and the rest of the Sesame Street gang. Trying to be clever I typed in "Donald Trump," "grilled cheese," and "Survivor" but unfortunately Google couldn't find any direct correlation. Isn't it obvious? Oh well, nobody's perfect.

Google Suggest:

This is a great feature, and to be honest, I don't understand why they aren't using it yet. Yahoo already does this sort of thing on their site. It seems pretty handy in case you're not really sure of the spelling, or maybe you want to see related topics, or maybe you're just looking for a quick time-saver. Also, it seems to me that the suggestions are shown in order of popularity, so in a way it already fills the role of Google Trends.

Google Trends:

I thought it was interesting but I didn't really see the point. When I visited this site I noticed that Star Jones' popularity had recently spiked (due to her recent divorce announcement.) Isn't it sad that that's what it takes in order to get noticed these days! How do the folks at Google decide which "hot trends" to post anyway?

Google Extensions for Firefox:

This had several cool applications. Namely, "Google Browser Sync" (synchronize your browser settings across computers, restore tabs and windows from your previous session) and "Google Send to Phone" (send text messages of web page content to your mobile phone.) I was wondering if Google Browser Sync might allow an individual to access their favorites from any computer. If so, there goes the necessity for sites like Del.icio.us (which in all honesty is fine by me.)

Google Mars:

I'm already a HUGE fan of Google Earth (WARNING: THIS PROGRAM IS HIGHLY ADDICTIVE!!!) so by all means, why not throw in another planet? It looks like for now they've only got a portion of Mars displayed which they're then repeating over and over . . . but I'm sure this will increase in time.

It looks like Google has some pretty neat stuff in the works. It's exciting to see what's out there as well as what's waiting just around the corner. Now if only Google could come up with some sort of fool-proof dating service. I can see it now - "Google Dating . . . where you're guaranteed to find your perfect match every time." Hey, a guy can dream can't he?

Online Application Tools . . .

. . . or, How Google Continues to Impress Me

Today's assignment required that I experiment with a few online application tools. I didn't have any luck with Zoho simply because I lacked a username and password. NumSum wouldn't come up at all. However, I found several applications on Google Docs that I liked quite a bit (and could actually see myself using.) Well for starters, Google Docs (which I'm currently using to type this post.) It seems like a decent word processing program and appears to include all the basics. I really like the fact that I can access this program from any computer, as long as it has internet access. Not needing a flash drive/floppy disk is kind of cool. I also like the Google Calender feature. Up to this point in my life I haven't been very good at planning things on calendars (taking the time to write things down takes TOO MUCH effort! ;) I've tried to keep track of important dates in my head) and it's worked so far, but it seems like I'm having to keep track of more and more stuff so it might be a good thing to train myself to start using a calendar. I guess it's either between using an online application like this or writing information down in my day planner (which has been collecting dust for the past few years.) I guess the only limitation with Google Calendars is that I need to be near a computer in order to access it, whereas my day planner or some other pocket calendar could be carried around with me all the time. I also looked at the Google spreadsheets but haven't yet had too much of a need for spreadsheets. I'm sure in the future this might also come in handy. Basically, the main point I've gleaned from today's exercise is how ridiculously versatile and user-friendly Google is and how much I wish I had bought shares when it went public. Doh!