I’m just experimenting with embedding videos into this blog.  Testing…1…2…3!

I admit it.  Two years ago, I was skeptical about the utility of Facebook.  I thought to myself, Facebook is just another way to waste time.  Then I started library school and all my classmates were on Facebook.  So I decided to join.  At first, I made the same mistakes that everyone else does.  I added every application I was invited to and spent hours uploading pictures and writing on my friends’ walls.  Then I got smart.  I removed half my applications.  I realized that with Facebook, you can put as much or as little time into it as you want.  There are no obligations.  I started to (and continue to) view Facebook as a self-updating address book.  Now, all of my friends are in one place and I know where to find them when I need them.

After paring down my applications, I was left with:

Where I’ve Been
Video
Movies
My Library Thing
CiteMe
SuperPoke
Pandora

I haven’t posted in awhile because I’ve been working hard trying to finish up the new Distance Learning eLibrary website before classes start.  If anyone has any constructive criticism, I’d love to hear it.  I did manage to incorporate some Web 2.0 technology into it though.  Instead of creating a page listing recommended search engines and websites, I created a Kirkwood Library account on del.ici.ous.com.  I distributed the username and password to my fellow Kirkwood librarians, so now we can all modify the list without having to change the website itself.  Check it out, see what you think.  If you like it, del.ici.ous is free and super easy to use, especially if you install the toolbar addon for Firefox.

Ahhh…Flickr…

I’ve experimented with it in the past, but got frustrated by the amount of time it took to upload the photos and the limit on the number of photos that I could upload using my free account.  At the time I was trying to upload the photos from my wedding (all 1000 of them) so I got frustrated and quit.

I think I might try it again, especially now that I have discovered that Walgreen’s (and Wal-Mart and probably many others) allow you to print digital photos on demand.  In fact, last night, I had one of my wedding photos printed as an 8×10 and picked it up 2 hours later at Walgreen’s for only $3.  I like the idea that my friends and family can find a photo they want on my flickr page and then order a print online and pick it up in the store the same day.  Hooray for technology!

This is a photo I found on Flickr that combines my two great loves: libraries and Harry Potter.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bom_mot/199087876/

I can understand why many teachers/faculty “ban” Wikipedia as a source for student research but I don’t agree with it.  Wikipedia can be a very valuable source for background research and Wikipedia references often provide students with a starting point to begin their research.  Wikipedia is much easier to keep up-to-date than any other encyclopedia, book or journal article.  I like to think of Wikipedia articles as subject guides with an easy to read introduction.  If I were a professor, I would remind students that the information on Wikipedia is not reliable and needs to be confirmed through another source and leave it at that.

For the Thing # 4 module, I edited the All Together Now wiki.

Whenever you have a group of people, (small or large) and you all want to be able to view AND edit information on a website, wikis are a great idea.  I experimented a little bit with wikis for my Information Literacy class, my first semester in library school.  We used the wiki to review resources we had used in our research projects.  I think wikis have great applications to the library world, especially for resource guides and reviews.  In fact, my employer is maintaining a “What we’re reading” blog that might be better organized as a wiki.  I browsed through the recommended wikis for the “All together now” module and some seem better than others.  Mostly, I have a problem with the lack of organization.  I think every wiki needs to have a table of contents type listing to help users find subsequent pages.  While browsing I found a wiki that lists some of the librarian blogs called LISWiki, so if you are looking for librarian blogs, check there.

Here’s a list of my favorite podcasts…so far.  I hope to update the list as I discover more library related posts.  If any of you have recommendations for either podcast directories or library related podcasts, please leave a comment.

NPR: Book Tour
NPR: Books
NPR: Fresh Air
NPR: Movies
NPR: Music
NPR: Talk of the Nation
NPR: Technology

As a library student at the University of Iowa, I took an amazingly helpful class, “User Education: Multimedia”.  As part of this class I learned how to create my own podcasts using Audacity.  For some reason (lack of time, most likely) I did not explore existing podcasts at the time.  So this is my opportunity.  I used the  selected links for podcast directories, but became overwhelmed quickly with all the choices, so I subscribed to a few NPR podcasts, just to get started.

I have a Mac at home, so I’m excited to get home and try using GarageBand to create a new podcast of my own.  I’m tingling with anticipation thinking about all the library applications for podcasts.  Go go book reviews!!!

For at least a year now, I have been using Google Reader as my RSS reader.  I have not experimented with other feed readers, mostly because I have been so satisfied Google Reader.  Since I already use iGoogle and the Google toolbar, its really easy to access my reader from anywhere.  In particular, I like to consolidate my feeds into category folders like “Fun Stuff”, “Library Stuff”, “News”, and “Friends & Family” so I can read posts from several different feeds in the same window.  Using a feed reader has been critical to my efforts to keep up with new information in my field.  Does anyone have any librarian blogs that you would like to recommend? or recommendations for other feed readers?  If so, please leave a comment.

Welcome to my blog!  This is my first attempt at creating my own blog, mostly because I’m not quite sure that anyone else would be interested in what I have to say.  I think blogging is great.  I love the flexibility and versatility of blogs as a platform for the dissemination of information.  I love the fact that you can post so many different types of media in one place.  I think the technology has great potential in the library setting for communicating important library news to our more web savvy users.

If this blog does end up taking off (fingers crossed), you can look here to find information about Web 2.0 applications and how they can be used in libraries in general and community college libraries specifically.  I am not an expert by any means and it is likely that this blog will feature more questions than answers, but that’s what knowledge building is all about, right?