The end

Huzzah, finished :)

I like these sites for students :)

These are a lot of really cool sites! I glanced at Stikkit but liked Comindwork and Backpack better. Seems to be lots of things we could do with Comindwork and students could use is for their school projects (that way all the notes stay together, no one forgets them on the bus, teachers could check on progress, etc).
I created an account for Backpack. The example of making a comparison shopping page grabbed me (am looking at having to buy a car in the next year). It will be really helpful to have all the different makes/models/etc in one place to look at together. I am feeling my way through the setup and so far the Help & Support links have actually had useful information (I know I had to stop and get over my shock at that one). The calendar part is for paying clients only (I like the one hanging on my wall a better anyway). The rest seems great. Hmm....well, maybe I spoke to soon. I was noodling around a bit to get better acquainted and found that maybe the part where you can add pictures (for example of the cars you are comparing) might just not be included in the free version (am waiting for an email back from support). Which is really quick and the answer is that the picture and file uploading isn't included in the free version. I will play some more and see if I can set up links to the websites with the pictures. For $5 a month you get most of the bells and whistles. Still, I could just write it all down and spend the money on yarn :) It might be very useful if you needed a sort of family organizer to keep track of projects and appointments and so on for everyone. That could be worth $5 a month.
I really liked the look of mySchoolog but decided not to sign up for it (since am not a student and wouldn't really use it). My nephew could really use it to keep track of his school and hockey schedule (guess which one he spends more time on?). It would have been a great help for me when I was a student. I might just email a former co-worker who left for grad school and give her the link :)
I hope we can find a way to make all these websites highly visible to our all our patrons involved in any kind of learning program.

Caw?

Actually twitter but now I am getting that song about the robin goin' tweet tweet tweet stuck in my head and am trying to replace it with something from Poe (did I mention the sun is gone and I am depressed again sigh). Um...once again I can't see me using this personally and haven't thought of a way to use it for the library (maybe an internal bulletin board for throwing out ideas like the one Pam send in her email for advertising the library?). Did I mention the sun left again after teasing us for a whole half a day? Hmmm...on a less serious note, I just realised that twitter could eliminate half the world's annoying forwarded email messages if I could just get my grandpa and his friends to twitter to each other all day instead of forwarding every piece of email they get to everyone in their address book!

Facebook....

First off ow! My headache wasn't improved by trying to read all that on the computer screen :( Okay, that's my whine for the day. I am not incredibly enamoured of the idea of Facebook for my personal use. I have a hard enough time keeping up with my friends in real time let alone online (I really only remember to check my personal email once a week if that). Having a Facebook page for the library might be a great thing if it is kept up and kept interesting (maybe by one of our younger staff who live and breathe this stuff?) as Meredith Farkas pointed out. However, given the current struggle to keep up with all the tasks all of us are already trying to complete it might be a bigger bite then we can chew. Or not, if we could have a really great page that would involve the younger patrons more actively than they are currently. It seems to be a case of simply having to duplicate the information we have on our homepage and "rephrasing" it for a Facebook page - all that information Meredith was saying helped attract and keep younger patrons is already on our homepage. The feedback/comments would be wonderful to have to get a quick look at patrons current needs. I am just wary about Facebook for personal use due to privacy issues. Once it is on the Internet you can never really make it go away. Seeing what my ditsy cousins put on their Myspace and Facebook pages (and this is with their parents' supervision!) just makes me shake my head (ow, not today though). They are completely ignoring how easy it would be to find them in person (example, one posted a picture of her and her friend posing on her friend's car with the licence plate in plain view and her hometown listed on the page!). I know it can keep distant friends in touch easily and cheaply, it just still makes me a little wary. On the fence about ready to fall off on the I still like rotary phones side of things (hey, you have to admit that the original Nintendo games were great or else why would they be remaking them for the Wii? I know, that is getting into the touch tone phone era but close enough).

Wiki 2

I found a great image to show us all the bits of a hardcover book and what to call each piece :) I thought since we have a bit about what happens to new books when they come to us I would find something about the construction of the books themselves. It was easier than I anticipated to add the image (however I missed seeing the sidebar with the up/down arrow and paniced twice and deleted the image because I thought I had erased the existing material on the page). I still think the wiki is a neat idea but I foresee lots of problems with so many people being editors (I am only semi computer literate and know how much I can rearrange things without meaning to and/or noticing). I don't know if it will be an easy tool for everyone to use (I am thinking of the frontline staff and their tight schedule/high workload/iterrupted access to computers). Tee hee, just read Underground Dweller cause my brain froze up. As usual, much more entertaining/well-written/reasoned than my little blog bits. However I have the best youtube video linked! Back to wikiland (good name for a little desert island, neh?). Can anything be done about the scrunched up type on the sidebar? It was giving me a terrible headache trying to find where to click.

Wiki

Yeah, brilliant title but it is Monday. Hmm...could be cool to have book suggestions for different ages and tastes shared from branch to branch. I liked the Book Lust wiki, got some titles I need to checkout. The Stevens County Wiki had some good info on it. It makes me wonder if it could simply replace the normal webpage of a library? I am not a tech person so I have no idea in what that would entail but at first glance they seemed to have a lot of similar info to what we have on our website. Then we could simply have a public and staff wiki. Of course that would depend on what the public would be allowed to edit in the wiki. Sorry, I am giggling ever time I type wiki. Can't help it. And wiziwig just makes me think of Fizzgig from the Dark Crystal. Sigh, just another sign of my misspent childhood. Am off to correct spellings and so on in the fake branch.

Youtube makes my nephew laugh...

he loves watching the alphabet song and Cookie monster. I had to sign up and set up a playlist for him :) Oh, the assignment? Found the fish video and some videos I enjoyed. You'll find the Muppets now on my blog (get that song out of your head now! mha, ha, ha). The librarian video is great except for the annoying pauses (guess the filmstrip just didn't want to change with the times). Youtube is another one of those great tools you could use for all sorts of things (emergency knitting help, etc). It's definitely becoming a staple in our society for all your infotainment needs (Chad Vader is hilarious by the way). Not necessarily an educational tool but enjoyable none the less.