Now that the 23 Things challenge is completed and I've been bitten by the blogging bug, the question arises as to how to use my blog. There are many possiblities. There are many interests I'd like to explore.
It definitely will be library oriented, but there are so many areas of library science to choose from. Collection building has been one of my careerlong interests, library management issues for public libraries is an ongoing learning project, and there is always the day to day trials and tribulations of the exciting library environment. It is never, ever boring at the library and I can say that after 30 years in the field. I would like this blog to be useful and helpful to others. It should be worthwhile.
Currently, I'm reading and studying about blogs, Blogger and possible uses of blogs for libraries. I have discussed this with my librarians and we are planning to launch a branch blog around the first of year. Hopefully, our enthusiasm will be contaigeous and most of the staff will be interested in working on the blog in some aspect.
Current reading:
Blogging and RSS: A Librarian's Guide, by Micheal P. Sauers
Blogging in a snap, by Julie C. Meloni
The Rough Guide to Blogging, by Jonathan Yang
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Saturday, October 6, 2007
The Challenge Completed!
Thursday night I coached a staff member in starting a blog. Leticia was amazed at how easy it is to get started. We discussed establishing her profile and embellishments like photos and labels. The most fun with this exercise was seeing the enthusiasm become contaigous. Leticia is one of our bilingual staff members and she has been instrumental in extending and profecting our service to the Latino community. She is planning to use her blog to aid in this crucial area of library service. She made me very proud. #22 is completed.
The 23 Things Challenge has been very time consumming. It has opened new dialog between the professional staff. Our enthusiasm has trickled down to other staff. One Library Assistant (LA) and our Head Clerk have taken a Web.20 class provided through the training department at Orange County Public Library. Other staff have asked more questions about Web 2.0 and some of the 23 Things. I think this will be the buzz at our branch for many months. The LAs have been more curious about the Challenge and I expect most of them will be checking out the Challenge list and trying some of the 23 Things on their own.
Personally, I feel my technological knowledge had grown by leaps and bounds. There have been many, many things I have wanted to learn or explore on the computer and Internet. Committing to the Challenge has proded me to take steps in this area. I have even had my neice teach me how to text message. I don't really have a need to text message or I would have done it sooner, but it is something I needed to know and understand. I'm learing about digital photography and some of the Challenge has stirred me a little further in this area. The more I learn, the more I need to learn, the more I will continue to learn. #23 is complete.
The 23 Things Challenge has been very time consumming. It has opened new dialog between the professional staff. Our enthusiasm has trickled down to other staff. One Library Assistant (LA) and our Head Clerk have taken a Web.20 class provided through the training department at Orange County Public Library. Other staff have asked more questions about Web 2.0 and some of the 23 Things. I think this will be the buzz at our branch for many months. The LAs have been more curious about the Challenge and I expect most of them will be checking out the Challenge list and trying some of the 23 Things on their own.
Personally, I feel my technological knowledge had grown by leaps and bounds. There have been many, many things I have wanted to learn or explore on the computer and Internet. Committing to the Challenge has proded me to take steps in this area. I have even had my neice teach me how to text message. I don't really have a need to text message or I would have done it sooner, but it is something I needed to know and understand. I'm learing about digital photography and some of the Challenge has stirred me a little further in this area. The more I learn, the more I need to learn, the more I will continue to learn. #23 is complete.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Home Stretch
Today I successfully moved my picture to the profile. This was a great accomplishment, since I have been trying to do this for three weeks. I worked with image generators a little with the same frustration. I need to find some written directions to work with. And I posted the picture of the library on GoogleMaps. So #19 is completed. The picture is not visible yet. I understand that it takes several days before it is available. I would like to get #10 completed today and maybe #22.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Finishing up
Over the last few days I have worked on #19. I really liked Google.Maps. I usually use Yahoo.Maps, but since they launched a new version have really struggled with it. Google.Maps is much more user friendly, like Yahoo used to be. I have made the switch. The only thing that remains to be done on #19 is add the picture of my library. The picture is too large to insert, so I need to crop it and insert it.
#20 was fairly easy. I have viewed videos on YouTube before. There was a contest, I love my Library. I viewed the five finalists and voted. Then I spent some time locating some videos that I remembered from watching network news. They were relatively easy to find. #20 is completed.
#21 I was very surprised to see that Yahoo Podcast will be ending at the end of October. I was not able to navigate it without opening an account. I didn't see the point of opening one, so I googled podcasts. I read the Wikipedia article on podcasting. Then I googled video sharing and found the DVGuru at www.dvguru.com. There was a very good article on the ten top video sharing servers. You can go to the article for the sites at http://www.dvguru.com/2006/04/07/ten-video-sharing-services-compared/. I checked out Social and Vimeo from this list. I also found www.podcastalley.com and www.podcast.net both list podcast servers. I did a search using the tag "libraries" and found 9 entries at www.podcast.net. I checked out NPR at www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast-directory.php and www.digg.com. #21 is completed.
There are just a few more things to do. I need to move my picture to my blog profile. I need to post my library picture to Google.Maps. The pictures are too big and need to be cropped. Once I have done this it shouldn't be too big of a problem to move the picture. I'm not satisfied with #10 and want to review image generators and add a tag to my blog. I still need to complete #22 & #23. I hope to finish this up by the end of the week.
#20 was fairly easy. I have viewed videos on YouTube before. There was a contest, I love my Library. I viewed the five finalists and voted. Then I spent some time locating some videos that I remembered from watching network news. They were relatively easy to find. #20 is completed.
#21 I was very surprised to see that Yahoo Podcast will be ending at the end of October. I was not able to navigate it without opening an account. I didn't see the point of opening one, so I googled podcasts. I read the Wikipedia article on podcasting. Then I googled video sharing and found the DVGuru at www.dvguru.com. There was a very good article on the ten top video sharing servers. You can go to the article for the sites at http://www.dvguru.com/2006/04/07/ten-video-sharing-services-compared/. I checked out Social and Vimeo from this list. I also found www.podcastalley.com and www.podcast.net both list podcast servers. I did a search using the tag "libraries" and found 9 entries at www.podcast.net. I checked out NPR at www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast-directory.php and www.digg.com. #21 is completed.
There are just a few more things to do. I need to move my picture to my blog profile. I need to post my library picture to Google.Maps. The pictures are too big and need to be cropped. Once I have done this it shouldn't be too big of a problem to move the picture. I'm not satisfied with #10 and want to review image generators and add a tag to my blog. I still need to complete #22 & #23. I hope to finish this up by the end of the week.
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