Wednesday, October 29, 2008

#13-Tagging, Folksomonies & Social Bookmarking in Delicious

I am starting to feel overwhelmed by all the new things we are doing and decided not to create one more account at this time. I did poke around Delicious and figured out how to view other people's bookmarks and their comments and tags. The reasoning behind tagging is starting to become evident to me (I didn't see the need in Flicker). I can see how this would be a really helpful tool when doing research-as long as people are adding tags. Viewing other users' bookmarks can lead you to similar websites that have already been previewed and found to be useful. It is like others are doing the work for you! We don't do much research here at our branch, so I don't know how helpful this technology would be at work, but I did let my college sophomore know about it and how he could use it. He half listened, as he usually does to anything I have to say these days, and with his usual foresight told me he didn't really need it because he doesn't have to write many research papers. Maybe someday he will value my wisdom and experience : >

Monday, October 13, 2008

#12-Roll Your Own Search Engine

After doing the Rollyo exercise, I feel proficient but I don't understand the finer points. Again, more time will need to be spent on it in order to fully understand. I did practice adding a widget, but I don't think that links to my search roll, so here is the link

http://rollyo.com/mhoffman/camping/

That is the part I had trouble with; finding my search roll after I created it and finding the tiny little button for the link. I can see some great ideas for using this technology in the library. You could create all sorts of search rolls for your patrons on subjects that are of interest to them. For example you could create a search roll about politics with the upcoming election on patron's minds. You could include each candidate's site, the Douglas County Election Commission site, news sites, etc.... You could create rolls about the Nebraska Cornhuskers, emergency preparedness, homework help, tax preparation, job hunting, just to name a few. This would allow patrons to come in and find the most helpful information (based on our experience) easily in one place.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

#11-A Thing About LibraryThing

Well who among us wouldn't adore LibraryThing? We are book lovers after all! What a great idea and I like how libraries can use this technology to get input from it's readers. I looked over the links and set up my account. This by far was the easiest technology we have looked at in this journey. After adding a few books I decided to try something new. It took some extra reading and time, but I figured out how to add my LibraryThing list as a widget to my blog. It looked a little scary to see HTML code and not know what exactly to do with it. This is where Michael Sauers lost me in the technology classes I have taken from the Nebraska Library Commission. I was afraid I would mess it up completely, but to my delight, it worked the first time! I didn't take time to tag my books, but will go back and do that later. I also wonder if as I add more titles if that will change what shows up in the widget? We'll see as I continue to work with it.

#10-Play Around with Image Generators

Well I checked out all the suggested image generators and I must say-how cool! I had no idea such fun things even existed. Now if I only had more time! I can see myself returning to the Letter James site and using the personalized free e-cards and images to jazz up my blog. As you can see from the picture, I spent most of my time on Wordle. These are some memories that my boys came up with of our dog (see post #5). This is what I learned. Wordle does not separate words by putting commas in between, it separates words by spaces. I had many phrases, like Paper Dog, that didn't make any sense once the Wordle picture was created because Paper would wind up at the top and Dog at the bottom. I found that by taking the spaces out, PaperDog, it would keep them together in the final picture. I also had trouble getting it into my blog the first time. I still don't know how I did it and after it finally showed up, my text was different and my margins were messed up. This is my second attempt, so hopefully it will go better this time. Still it was easy to use and I will probably make more Wordles in the future. I can't wait to put this one in the shadowbox I am making for my husband for Christmas-shhh...it's a surprise! My teenager and I had a lot of fun playing with Yearbook Yourself too.

P.S. The second time I tried, I did the blog entry first and then added the Wordle and it worked much better.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

#9-Finding Feeds

I went through all the tools that you can use to find feeds. Some were more useful and easier to use than others, although I probably need to spend some extra time to become more familiar with each. I used the Bloglines search tool and found some feeds that I added to my Bloglines account. While Topix is a very interesting site, even after searching I did not understand how I could find feeds there to subscribe to. I understand how it gets it's information from feeds... Syndic8 is also interesting, but harder to use. Technorati is kind of like Topix. My understanding is that it searches blogs instead of newsfeeds though. The only way I can figure out how this is helpful to me is if I find something I am interested in and trace it back to the original blog/newsfeed and subscribe there. That seems like a lot of work, so I guess my favorite tool after this exercise is the Bloglines search tool. It is easy to use and easy to get the feed into my Bloglines account.

#8-Make Life "Really Simple" with RSS & a Newsreader

I took Michael Sauer's RSS class a while ago, so this was a good refresher for me. What I like about RSS is how you can use a newsreader to go out and gather all the new information about things you are interested in and it will bring it together in one place for you. Very convenient! I also like how it clears everything out after you have read it as the default. You have to choose to save something. That works well for someone like me who has trouble managing information in this overloaded information age. It can get away from me pretty quickly. What I don't like about it is that I get it all set up, and then something changes and the newsreader has trouble retrieving the information. This has happened to me many times since I originally set up the account. Even though it is frustrating for me to have to go back and set it up again, it is also a good lesson and reminder. I do the E-Vance calendar for our branch, and we have been told many times not to make changes once the event has been published because it can mess up the RSS feeds. Evidently, they are tied to specific pieces of information and changing that will cause someone that subscribes to have the same trouble that I have experienced when the newsreader goes to retrieve that information (at least that is the understanding I have from my end). The other thing I have trouble with is finding something I am interested in following on a regular basis, though I see that is something we will be working on in the next thing. So until then.....