Barenaked Ladies CD signing

Pictures of us meeting BNL at the Snacktime CD signing. Totally addicted to that CD now! Jenna still had her cast on, and they signed that. They were so cool!

Web 2.0 Week 8 - Mashups and API

I had fun this week with the Mashups that were listed as examples: Codex Map, Politicalbase.com, and Qlock. I found searching for Mashups on mashupawards.com and programmableweb.com to be a bit difficult. I preferred programmableweb.com because they had an index. There is an overwhelming amount of mashups in this site, so I found it hard to find something that interested me. The biggest mashup site I would see using at our library us HubMed. I really liked searching that, although I can't imagine that it would ever be used more than PubMed. I don't know that we would ever create our own mashup.

I liked rollyo.com. It's nice to have a searchroll that covers a variety of blogs. I like that once we put in the term "librarianblogs" and search those results, it lists the blogs that are being searched when you enter a term. I browsed through the blogs written about privacy. Most involved technology and if it is a threat to patron privacy. Statements that I found interesting were that Net Gens (teens) aren't concerned about privacy because they want to be found. That would explain the success of sites like MySpace and Facebook!

Summing up this entire Web 2.0 class, I discovered a lot of new tools that I continue to use everyday: RSS feeds and GoogleReader, this blog site, Facebook, del.icio.us. It has been a lot of fun exploring these useful and interesting sites. Thank you for the opportunity to take this class!

Cool mashups

Three really cool mashup sites that the MLA Web 2.0 class introduced. These descriptions are taken from the syllabus for the class.

The Codex Map database combines a book’s ISBN number with Google maps to allow users to browse for books by setting/location.

This money track application from Politicalbase.com takes political contribution data from the Federal Election Commission and combines the data with Google maps to display current campaign contributions by state.

Qlock mashes up world time and Google maps to give you an interactive map indicating the exact time in any location in the world.

Poor Jenna!

She broke her arm April 22 - hairline fracture. She was running on the driveway and tripped. Typical Nilles thing to do! Here she is with her cast. It has to be on for 3 weeks and it doesn't appear to be bothering her.

Web 2.0 Week 7 - Podcasting and Online Hosted Video

I really like the ability to host Podcasts. What a great tool for libraries and other institutions to use for teaching purposes! Our library could use it as some others have done for an orientation. We could also use podcasts for teaching students and faculty how to use our databases. It would be a great addition to the educational services we already provide. If we had these on our website, our users could view them whenever they needed a refresher.

I have used YouTube often in the past to watch videos. I haven't posted any, and I'm not sure that I would want to. It is nice to be able to find just about anything you want. An example of that is my post earlier about the stupidest songs ever. I tried to do the embedding, and it didn't appear to work. I tried to use the "add video" tool, and couldn't get that to work. Embedding it with the HTML code didn't seem to work either. In looking at the Help section of Eblogger, it did say "It's not currently possible to directly host video files on Blogger. However, you can embed or link to video files on your blog as long as they are hosted elsewhere on the Web." So does that mean the way I did it with the links is the way to do it?

Stupidest songs ever!

Run Joey Run
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU0R9qmtLQA

I Wanna be a Cowboy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF-yLJUr1ik

Web 2.0 Week 6: Online photo sharing

I signed up for Flickr. Uploading the pictures was very easy. The best way I would think to use this in our library would be to show what new books we have. I don't think Flickr is the best tool to use for this, but I cannot think of any other way we would use it. I think Facebook or a blog would be the place to post something like this. I do like the various options for sharing the pictures.

Painted toesies!

My coloring book is next to me.

I love coloring.

I'm a Nilles, so I have to be goofy!

Jenna's day in the park with her Mommy.

Web 2.0 Week 5: Web Office tools

This seems like a good way for us to collaborate on a document, instead of sending several versions through email. The document that stands out to me as one that would have been great to use Google Docs for is the procedures/policies regarding cash handling and copy card use. That one was revised multiple times and emailed to everyone. Google Docs would make it easier for everyone to include their suggestions/changes.

I am very frustrated with the presentation part of this. It is very very slow, which may be because I put pictures in it, but don't all presentations have some sort of graphics? The other frustrating part is there is no way to export the presentation to PowerPoint or another web tool. I guess I can understand that they wouldn't want you to use another web office tool, but it should allow you to save it to PowerPoint. The Word and Excel portions let you export your document. I found this aspect of Google Docs very irritating. Zoho.com was pretty much the same as Google with presentations. Zoho has a lot more options on the toolbar, but it is also much more confusing. I wanted to export, and I clicked it and nothing happened. Did it export, and if so, where did it go?

This week's blogging assignment: "Is this the future of all software products? What do you think?" Based on my comments above, I don't think these web tools would completely replace all software products. It is a nice way to share documents with others and it does allow more than 1 person to work on the same document without several emails being exchanged. I can't foresee these tools replacing current software products, but I think it is a great additional resource to be able to use.

Web 2.0 Week 4 - Social Bookmarking

del.icio.us is a lot of fun. Some users have huge amounts of bookmarks! I usually am only at 1 computer, but if I am at another computer, it will be nice to have my bookmarks accessible. It was fun seeing who else has tagged the same sites as I did. For instance, me and 1 other person tagged Hinsdale Humane Society. I don't know who that person is, but I am guessing it is another volunteer. In looking at her bookmarks, she has many of the same interests I do.

I think this would be a very useful tool in our library. The thing I really like about del.icio.us is that it organizes the bookmarks in a way that makes them easier to access than using "favorites" in Explorer. I like the organization capabilities in del.icio.us better than in "favorites". We have a links page on our Library's web page, but using something like del.icio.us would enable our students to click on the toolbar and get to them more quickly than going through our links page.

Latest pictures of Jenna - Easter and general 19 months old pictures.

Week 3 Web 2.0 class - Social Networking

I signed up for Facebook and Linkedin. I had already had a MySpace account, with nothing in it. I must say, Facebook and MySpace are very overwhelming. I can see that MySpace is popular with teenagers. I did not really care for it because there is way to much stuff on every page that I looked at. They were all too "busy". I liked Facebook for the networking aspect. So far I only have 1 friend, and she is a huge Facebook user. She has added a couple of friends and I received that notification. It is still confusing to me. I liked Linkedin. That did seem to be the more professional networking site. I contacted some of my co-workers that had already registered to ask them to be one of my contacts. We are a relatively small university, so I was surprised that there were 50 people registered from here.

I can see where privacy would be an issue on both MySpace and Facebook. I do like that both sites ask for the other person's permission before you can be added as a friend. I didn't look that in depth into Facebook, but I know on MySpace you can make your site available only to people you allow to see it. I do like that feature.

Since we are a medical school, I am not sure that either MySpace or Facebook would be useful for us. I think Linkedin would work well in communicating with the faculty.

Differences between wikis and blogs

I am having fun working with wikis and blogs. There is so much that one can do with both that it is rather overwhelming. The main difference that I am finding between wikis and blogs is that anyone can change any wiki page that has not been locked. This is scary to me. When I was added the links to my blog and my wiki to the class lists, I could change that whole page if I wanted to. As one of the instructors stated in an email to us, someone had alphabetized the lists. That was a very nice thing to do. The point of starting a wiki would be to allow others to add and edit pages. This facilitates communication and collaboration. With blogs, you can communicate with the author but only through the comments. You cannot change anything on the blog itself, which you can do with wikis. A blog would be used for information purposes, like library policies, hours, holiday closings, etc. A wiki can be used to communicate among staff members, or even between faculty members and library staff.

How to use RSS feeds at our library

One way to use RSS feeds in our library is having the tables of contents of journals sent to the faculty. There are several faculty members who have the TOC sent to them, but they have to go to each individual journal and subscribe there. On the library's web page, we can create subject areas, such as Pharmacology or Marine Biology, and share our organized RSS feeds with the faculty in those areas. We would use an aggregator such as iGoogle to facilitate this.

It is only a few weeks until the start of the baseball season - go Cubs! Jenna has much more hair now than she did is this picture. She got to meet Ron Santo and Pat Hughes last summer during a Cubs broadcast. Now at 19 months, Jenna loves to dance to "Go Cubs Go"