Thing 56

Smilebox assignment. Easy to do. Similar to Scrapblog--but without viewing problems (Scrapblog never liked fitting itself into display so you could read & click buttons). You can make scrapbooks, postcards, email cards, slideshows, etc.

Here's the URL to my Smilebox creation:

http://smilebox.com/playEmail/4d7a41344d5455304d5877324d6a59324e5467780d0a&sb=1

I think it was easier to just post it directly to my blog than to email it to myself and then copy/paste the URL into a blog entry. Not sure what the point of that part of the assignment was.

Library uses--obvious, you can use it make computerized scrapbooks. Also, online invitation postcards to announce programs.

Austintown Library Smilebox creation

Make a slideshow - it's easy!

Computer Generated Flannel Boards updated

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Thing 55

This was both a learning experience and fun assignment.

I had never actually made a PowerPoint Presentation before. Now I had a reason to make one, and I even had an idea on what to put in it, since I had just recently come up with a tutorial for my fellow librarians. It was easy to do--may not be the most polished presentation, but for a first time attempt, I'm happy. Now I had something to upload into SlideShare. Uploading was interesting--I know we have a fast connection, but the presentation did not upload fast. I actually ended up uploading it 3 times because it didn't seem like the uploader was working--took over 24 hours for the presentation(s) to actually upload and convert to SlideShare's coding for the web. I did find searching, embedding presentations in blog, and embedding SlideShare widgets in blog very easy to do.

I can see this as being a very useful web application to promote to people needing to do PowerPoint presentations. Great that you just put your presentation on the web and then it's available anywhere you go that has internet access.

My Own Slideshare

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Slideshow found using SlideShare

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Thing 54

Great assignment! I really like Bookjetty. It's very easy to use. I like the ease in adding books to my library, easily marking them as wanted, reading, or read. The tie in with Amazon.com works great--I discovered upcoming books by my favorite authors that I very much want!

What more can I say...I just really like it alot. One of the best book-related sites that Library 2.0 and Library 2.1 have pointed out to us.

Thing 53

This was another interesting assignment. Good to know that there is a web site for book clubs like Litlover; however, I did find it very limited. Litlovers is devoted only to lovers of 'serious' literature. They actually call it "imaginative fiction" as opposed to escapist "formulaic fiction". And, according to the first lit course, they seem to say that all fiction is either one or the other. Looking at the Reading Guides for books, they are further limiting "imaginative fiction" to mainly those books suggested by Oprah's Book Club--must be realistic fiction of any time period, dealing with serious issues.

My main problem with all of this is that there is great literature done in other genres than just best-selling realistic &/or historical fiction. It seems like they are saying any other books are just pure "formulaic fiction". This is a severe limit to the audience for this web site--so many people read mysteries, romance, suspence, thrillers, sci-fi, westerns, biographies, other non-fiction, etc. Many books in these genres are challenging, not written to just one basic repetitive, simplistic formula. I, myself, read a great variety of books. I 'escape' into anything I read. Many times I learn new things from what I'm reading, whether it's non-fiction, biography, fantasy, sci-fi, or mystery. None of the authors I've read for myself are listed on their site. I guess my mistake is that I've never been fond of the books that make the bestseller lists or the 'classic books' assigned by teachers.

In all--I found it a 'stuffy' web site that looks down on other types of fiction. I've come across that attitude before. I once had a class where we were actually assigned to read a science fiction book--one student who did not like sci-fi wanted me to tell her all about the book so she wouldn't have to 'demean' herself by reading it.

For the library, I guess we can recommend the site to any book clubs and patrons working on books promoted by Oprah.

Thing 52

This was an interesting assignment. Clipmarks seems to have a pretty good webapp up and running. I wish you didn't have to install the button on Internet Explorer to do it, though. Once installed, I did find it easy to clip and post to the blog. I also embedded my clipcast in my blog--you can see it at the bottom of my blog page. I could clip sentences, paragraphs, images, and video, and post them directly to my blog and/or save them to my clipcast. I learned one slight bug with Clipmarks--apparently video clips can be posted to the blog but will not save correctly to a clipcast.

Library applications--I can see this as very useful for online reference work. You can send clips as answers. Great thing about the clips, too, is that Clipmarks automatically puts the source info. (website) with the clip.

Trying to Clip a Video

clipped from www.youtube.com

Dragon lore from www.strangescience.net

first time clipping

clipped from www.strangescience.net Despised in the West and revered in the East, dragons have a long history in human mythology. How did the myth start? No one knows the exact answer, but some "dragon" bones probably belonged to animals long extinct — in some cases dinosaurs, in others, fossil mammals. Starting in the early 19th century, scientists began to find a new kind of monster, one that had gone extinct tens of millions of years before the first humans evolved. Because the first fragments found looked lizard-like, paleontologists assumed they had found giant lizards, but more bones revealed animals like nothing on earth today. Did these terrible lizards ever coexist with people? No. Although some creationists claim that medieval dragons were really dinosaurs that survived into modern times, this notion enjoys no support from any credible scientist

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.

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.