Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Thing 51

I’ve recently read articles for and against having libraries join social networks on the web--librarians all for it while some non-librarians (but hopefully library patrons) are against it. One article I read was in Computers in Libraries (November/December 2007 vol. 27 no. 10 issue). For myself, I’m all for it.

Libraries & Librarians already do physical outreach driving to preschools, etc. Social Networking on the Web just means extending our outreach into the Internet. I really liked what I read in the sites linked to from this assignment. In searching the web for more examples of what other libraries have done, I found some other great sites:

http://www.webjunction.org/do/DisplayContent?id=17981 has a really great article about how a library can set up a social network on the web

http://www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Social_Networking_Software is a great wiki with examples of libraries social networking on the web

Meredith Farkas' Informations Wants to be Free Blog has a great blog entry pro/con about libraries social networking

TameTheWeb.com has a couple relevant entries for this topic:
http://tametheweb.com/2008/02/25/links-in-the-hyperlinked-library-2008/
http://tametheweb.com/2007/04/the_social_library.html

These were just a few sites I found doing a simple search for Libraries and Social Networking. So much more came up, pointing out that many libraries & librarians are thinking about this and actually doing it. It is so great to see what other libraries are already doing. I just hope that my library will someday be doing those things as well.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Thing 50


Ok assignment. It was somewhat fun to look for something odd to cook or to watch a famous actor that I like cooking. I’m not really into cooking, so didn’t find anything I would actually want to make. I would recommend imcooked.com to any patrons into both cooking and computers, though--especially if they enjoy watching cooking shows on TV.

Thing 49



Great assignment for work. I really like Soundsnaps sound effects—I browsed by category under Animals, then Insects. There are great Insect sound effects to download for bees, crickets, etc. I can see adding that sound to our library web pages for Summer Reading this year—have insect sounds playing in the background as people read about our many fun programs for the theme Catch the Reading Bug @ Your Library. For other times of year, I can see just picking a sound to add to the website to identify that month. October Halloween spooky sounds would certainly be lots of fun to add.




I must say Musigy looks neat. I would definitely recommend it to any musicians I know.

Thing 48

It was fun to look for free songs to download. I like that you can play all of them for free at Music.download.com, even if you can’t download them for free. Easy to find the free songs--when you click on the yellow ###### beside words free MP3, it automatically brings up the free MP3s. However, once you change how the songs are sorted, the songs that now show up are not all downloadable free MP3s. It took me a while to find one that I liked which I could download for free.

The downloading was easy as well—just like downloading anything from the internet, Of course, you always want to keep track of where you are saving your download and what name you saved it as so you can find it afterwards.

I think this site would be really easy for patrons to use.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Thing 47


This exercise was a lot of fun. Even me, who is not instrumentally inclined--I can sing, but not play an instrument--could make music at Jamstudio. I emailed my song and you can try hearing it here.

Thing 46 Updates

Well, I didn't really need to do this exercise. Since our library system didn't start Library 2.0 until July 2007, most of the updates PLCMC has discovered to Blogger, Flickr & Mashups, Bloglines, Finding RSS, The Generator, LibraryThing, Rollyo, Del.icio.us, and Technorati were already in place. Obviously, The Generator blog is always updating, reporting new image generators out there. I have discovered that those image generators that I've used to add items to my blog don't always continue to work. And really, that's all I can say. In another year (or less), there undoubtedly will be changes that are new for those of us at PLYMC.