Google Docs and Online Gaming...

Verdict: Both Addicting!

The picture above is of my favorite online game, Bookworm. I actually had the game installed on my computer a couple of years ago and had to dis-install it because I was spending waaay too much time at it. Another online site that I love is Garfield.com. The two treasure hunt games are such fun--what could be better than looking for donuts?

Back to Googledocs: I've used Googledocs for at least the last 2 years. I started because a laptop I had been using, that had a ton of writing and documents on it, completely crashed and there was no saving anything on it. Can you say pissed off?

Anyhow, discovering Googledocs was awesome. I have all sorts of documents saved on it, and learned how to do easy spreadsheets through it as well. Way easier than Excel IMO.

Another neat thingy I discovered through a coworker yesterday is Dropbox. It's an online storage "box" for your documents/photos/presentations that you can share with other people. You can even back up files to it, sync stuff... it's pretty neat and will be a lifesaver as I finish up my final paper for my MLIS!

YouTube Fun

I guess this video "dates" me, but I love the Little Rascals, always have.

Considering that sites like YouTube and Vimeo reach such a huge audience, and considering that virtually anyone, anywhere might see what you record, it could be useful and successful... or potentially your worst nightmare, depending on what you post and how you present it.

I could see libraries using YouTube to advertise Summer Reading for kids, for soliciting donations, for publishing book trailers (Our Teen librarian has created a few of them for us this year!) and perhaps even for just sharing the love of reading through a different media.

Podcasts and Webinars

Sorry I missed last week; I was taking a much-needed vacation. And luckily for me, I've done both of the items for last week! I have podcasted multiple times for my work and once for library school, and have attended webinars for work as well.

On to the next week...

So Many Things, So Little Time...

Wow, what a lot of things this week! Good thing I have done two of them already:

I used to use Yahoo! Messenger all the time several years back. What I loved best about it was the emoticon people, especially that grungy old guy that would yell "Oh, YEAH!" when you clicked on him. He was hilarious. My son loved the guy that puked.

Although I am not on GoodReads or LibraryThing, I have been on Shelfari for at least 2 years, maybe longer. It's very similar to the others and it is nice to have a virtual "shelf" of stuff that I have read. I usually don't post reviews, but I tag my favorites and rate the books as well.

As far as Facebook and Twitter are concerned, well... I have concerns about Facebook's security, and frankly, I'm pretty private. I will likely join twitter instead, but I'm trying to think of a cool theme or slogan for my account. Blank so far.

Need to look into the ALA thing some more. Maybe tomorrow.

Flickr, tagging and images, oh my!

First, the image (everyone say 'awww'):

Okay, now I'll start gabbing.

The above is from a needlework my mother did ages and ages ago. It's this big wildlife scene that's very detailed and sweet, with all different types of animals on it. The bunny happens to be my favorite one. Next image:

Some seasonal cuteness I did last fall. I discovered awhile back that I'm much better at smaller projects like this one because I actually stand a chance of completing them.

Now on to this weeks' assignments:

Though I have had a Flickr account for quite some time, I had forgotten about it. It was nice to re-visit and mess around with some of my pictures. Weird thing is that even though I reset my defaults to "anyone", as the assignment suggested, still some of my pictures were saying "visible to friends and family only". So I have to go to them one at a time and re-reset them individually I guess. Tagging was something I never thought of until I went through this assignment; it does make sense to put some kind of label on your images so if you want ONLY the shots of grandma but not the grand canyon, you can tag them as such and it will sort them out on a search.

I have played around before with a lot of the word imaging sites like Image Chef, etc... My personal favorite is Wordle, which creates word clouds out of your writing... it can be customized for font and color--just keep clicking! I had a lot of fun making my own mini lego guy too--there were WAY too many color and style choices, I could have played on that thing all afternoon.

Below I embedded a video of sorts onto this blog and it worked! Huzzah! Give a listen; it's truly one of the funniest things I've heard in the last year.

Movie Testing

Okay, I think this is going to work, and if so, huzzah! It's probably the funniest phone message I've ever heard.

Firefox and Wiki Wiki Wikis

I use Firefox all the time, at work and at home. While overall I like it, one complaint I have is that many times their updates "cannot be installed" for some reason or other when I try to install them. I now usually wait until they've sent me notices to upgrade this or that at least three or four times before I upgrade, because it never seems to work otherwise.

I had to participate in a wiki when I took my Access class in library school a couple of years ago. While the process was educational, the topics we had to wiki were BORING and I got really tired of posting to the wiki. Thankfully, once I had a grade, I could stop!

I've decided to create a wiki for 21 Things all about youth librarians' favorite topic: Summer Reading!! (I know, I know, try to contain yourselves, lol...)

I figure, Summer Reading never really ends. If you're not actively doing it, you're planning for it somehow. So why not have a wiki where ideas/thoughts/concerns/complaints/brainstorms/braindrizzles/eurekas can be shared?

Right now I'm waiting for PBWorks to send me my confirmation email so I can get started.

(checking her watch, checking her mail, tapping her foot...)

UPDATE: Here is a link to my Wiki: SummerReadingNeverEnds

Excuse me, waiter???

Definitely a kerfluffle with my social mention soup...

I added the social mention widget to my page, but it isn't displaying any "social mentions" of my library. I had my library name in the search box... what gives? I must have messed up somewhere, but exactly where... hmm... Will investigate and see what happens.

Delovely, delightful, delicious

Hey! I signed up for delicious! My address is: http://delicious.com/ek21things

Now, hopefully I can figure out how to bookmark something!

UPDATE: I did figure out how to bookmark. The only speedbump I found was finding the "add new bookmark" link to add more bookmarks. It wasn't really obvious on the page, which made for some temporary frustration.

I have signed up for Google Reader already, so I didn't need to sign up again. It can be useful to track websites, etc... but I always forget about it. That's the thing about all these extras. They're cool, but I have to remember to use them!

Google Earth Technology and Questions

I'm torn about Google Earth. On one hand, the technology that enables me to look at real-life pictures of my neighborhood, the farm I grew up on, etc... is fascinating. How do they piece all those images together so well? The street views can be so helpful, especially if you're trying to locate a business or something and you can view ahead of time what the area looks like.

On the other hand... I value my privacy. Does the world really need to know what my house looks like and that my chimney needs replacing? No. Do I want Google on my street taking pictures of my house? Not really. Do I have a choice?

On to the questions:

• How has technology already changed your job? Your personal life?

Technology has changed my job by making me responsible for more activity in the same time period. This means that, for example, not only do I have to make signs to advertise an upcoming program, I also must put the program on the online calendar, make certain it shows up on the Kid's page of our website, and make certain our Web guy gets the info onto the library TV up at the circulation desk... there's a lot more steps to take.

In my personal life, it has changed a lot of things. Mainly how I contact people--instead of trying to reach my son on the phone, I text him because I know he will look at a text but may not bother to answer his phone.

• How do you think we can best prepare to serve the upcoming generations who are tech-savvy at a very young age?
  

I think the best thing we can do is to encourage exploration beyond the known. You'd think that kids, being so savvy, would just jump on the online catalog and look stuff up for themselves but they don't. They're almost afraid to try and learn anything different from what they already know. I also think that kids today don't have time to process. Information is just jammed in constantly and they need a space to escape, to contemplate... the library can be that haven.

• How could your current library services be enhanced by technology? Or how have they been enhanced already?

In my library we blog, have an online book club, offer online sign-ups for programs, and are expanding our digital book collection for techno-readers and listeners, just to name a few things.

First Post!

Hi everyone! I'm just starting the "21 Things" program and have created my blog!

More to follow...