#23 Finished at last!

TS Fay sort of interrupted my progress on this learning program but now I'm finished at last - yay!

Overall, this was a very, very good experience for me, both personally and professionally. It reminded me of some services that the library offers that I had kind of forgotten about (like Overdrive); it turned me on to some cool things that I had not done before (like Bloglines - I am a total addict now!), and it helped me get more comfortable with current Web technology, which will definitely help me in assisting library customers.

I do think, however, that the time commitment was greater than predicted, although I spent more time on some lessons than others. It was hard to find even one free hour a week to get to it, especially in the last few weeks, and I know of quite a few people who simply quit because they just couldn't find enough time to do it. Which is sad, but that's the climate in public libraries today - not enough funds to pay enough people to do the job. I worry about our future as an institution.

But back to the matter at hand. The other issue I had was that there wasn't a lot of consistency in the links that were included in each lesson. Some opened up a new window when you clicked on them, some didn't. Some were even broken and wouldn't work at all. This would have been very confusing to a newbie who didn't know their way around a Web site.

For the next go-around, I'd recommend a longer period of time to work on the lessons (how about just one lesson per week instead of several per week). I'd also like to recommend that someone go over each lesson with a fine-toothed comb and check all the links to make sure they work and are consistent. I'd recommend new windows for all offsite links so that learners don't navigate away from the original page, to which they must return to post their comment to finish the lesson.

As to the question of whether I would participate in similar programs in the future? Absolutely yes. It was very valuable and lots of fun. Thanks so much to everyone who worked on this!

#22 Overdrive

I enjoyed looking through Overdrive to see what new titles have been added since the last time I used it at least two years ago. Looks like there are some new titles since I last looked, so that's pretty cool.

It was easy to log in with my library card number & PIN - I liked not having to set up a separate account in order to use Overdrive like we have to do on so many of our online services (and in the ILLiad system as well - customers get very confused having to have two separate accounts for requesting things. But I digress.)

I'm not a fan of having to download a piece of software onto my PC in order to use Overdrive but I guess in order to have a book checked out and usable on your PC for a length of time, you have to have the software that enables you to access it until your checkout period has expired. I have the software loaded onto my home computer and have listened to a few titles (again, this was a while back) but probably won't do it at work - no time!

It was easy to search for titles and look at the selections by category, although I wish there were an easy way to break down the levels within each category. For example, I can look at all fiction, juvenile fiction and young adult fiction but I can't limit the SciFi/Fantasy category to exclude juvenile fiction and have to wade through many titles I'm probably not interested in. It would be nice if some additional searching capabilities were implemented to make it easier to find exactly what you want. The keyword search box is fairly limited but works well.

Other than that, though, I wonder how long we can afford to continue offering this online resource? Are people using it enough to justify the cost? I am not a big fan of audio books but I can see this increasing in popularity as more and more people get MP3 players that they can carry with them on trips, etc. If we can't afford to buy more titles due to the budget situation I'm concerned it won't get enough use to justify the cost. We can let customers know about it but if it doesn't offer what they want, they won't use it.

Nevertheless, an interesting resource, and one I tend to forget about, so thanks for the reminder.

#21 Podcasts with Odeo

I looked through Podcast Alley because I liked the name. It was easy to find podcasts of interest to me using the directory. When I found a podcast I was interested in I went to subscribe and found out this is one of the sites that requires you to download some software. Since I am at the public service desk right now (working on this between customers), downloading software isn't an option.

So I tried Odeo, and found that it was extremely easy to find a podcast I liked and add it to my Bloglines account using the RSS feed link on the podcast page. I added an audio program called The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, and although I haven't had a chance to really listen to it much, I did test it and found that it works perfectly with no requirement to download software of any kind. Much easier to deal with.

Fun!

#20: YouTube

YouTube is a great way to waste a LOT of time! My favorite thing to get on YouTube is music videos - here's a video by one of my favorite artists, Iron and Wine:



I found it fairly easy to search for videos using the search box. I like how they offer search suggestions, I assume based on previous search strings, as you type. I also used the video tab to see Most Recent, Most Viewed, Most Discussed, etc., which I found pretty fun. The subject directory wasn't all that useful as it is more time-consuming to drill down to what you want - keyword searching is so much quicker! But if you don't know exactly what you want I guess it might be useful.

As a reference librarian I can't recall too many reference questions that could be answered with YouTube but it's not inconceivable that I will get one in the future, so I will definitely keep this in mind.

#19: Mango Languages

I looked at Mango Languages, a free, interactive language instruction site. Twelve different languages are offered, with recordings of native speakers included in the lessons so users can hear the correct pronunciation. It was easy for me to do a free trial of the site, and I assume it is just as easy to register and get the full thing.

I liked this a lot and might recommend it to a computer-savvy customer who wants to learn a new language, especially if materials on a particular language are checked out or unavailable.

I'm glad to know about this site.

Thing 18: Zoho Writer

I'm creating this with the Zoho collaborative online word processor. After reading the Welcome document I decided to play around with various features just to see what they are like. So here goes:

Here's a table.	Works pretty much the same as Word.	It's pretty easy to use.
Although it's not so easy to change the width of the columns.	If you right-click on the table you can go to table properties and see some additional stuff you can do.	But I still couldn't figure out how to change the width of the columns. Oh well.

Next, here's an image. Again with a right-click, it was pretty easy to align it on the right and have the text run down the left of the image. It was a bit big at first so I decided to re-size it and ended up having a LITTLE trouble with keeping the aspect ratio consistent. Grabbing onto the corner "handle" does not insure you will maintain the aspect ratio of the image like (I believe) it does in Word. No matter, as long as you are aware of it you can make allowances.

It doesn't look like you can set it to "float" over your text or be able to be moved around and have your text accomodate it. Word's better for that.

Let's see, what's next? How about an emoticon? Well, that's not very exciting, but it was easy.

I know - I'll insert a link to my blog:

http://cbaileyjpl.blogspot.com/

Guess that's all for now.

Well, now that it's posted I see that the emoticon didn't transfer over. Oh, well. Still fun and pretty easy to use.

#17 Playing around with PBWiki

I thought the wiki sandbox exercise was fun and fairly easy. Added a few favorite movies and added my blog to the Favorite Blogs list. Um, that's all I have to say...