Wikipedia- Thing 16

I found that a lot of the wiki entries were very informative. It seemed a lot of them were used to keep customers and/or staff up to date on events in their libraries.

I found it very interesting (and a good idea!) to use a wiki for procedures. We here at our branch have been searching for a good way to keep staff informed of changes that are coming or have already happened. I think we may be using this tool very soon!

I also really liked how the wikis are set up in a bibliographic format. It makes it very easy to use and see the contents of each page.

I think a few of the best applications that I can see this used for is event information sharing and procedure updates and/or changes. We will be talking about this at our next all staff meeting at AB!

Perspectives on Web 2.0- Thing 15

I read a few of the perspectives from different people and found them to be interesting. I agree with the first selection "Away from Iceburgs" when the writer states "We need to focus our efforts not on teaching research skills but on eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need, so they can spend as little time as possible wrestling with lousy search interfaces and as much time as possible actually reading and learning".

While we as a Library are moving towards user friendly interfaces, I think we still have a long way to go. As technology moves on, so will we. We no longer have the monopoly as the writer suggested and we need to "find new ways to bring our services to patrons rather than insisting that they come to us—whether physically or virtually".

Library 2.0 means that we, as Library staff and users, will learn the newest technology in an effort to keep up with the times. We don't, after all, want to have a customer come up to us and have us say "Blog what?" It also means that we will have more informed staff and will find those new ways to bring our services to customers.

Technorati- Thing 14

When searching Technorati, I found several different results when searching for "Library 2.0". All of them had portions of information with "library" and "2.0" somewhere in the text.

Tagging is an interesting way to keep track of your personal information and have it grouped how you would like to see it or retrieve it. The disadvantage to this is if others are trying to explore your information, they may not always come up with the same results if you've used some obscure tag.

Del.icio.us and Tagging- Thing 13

I've looked around this site and find it very confusing. Maybe if I create an account (when I have more time) I can figure it out; I'm more of a "hands on" kind of gal...

I do see the potential in it being a good way to manage your favorites and find them easily by tagging. I suppose that I could see it being used as a reference and/or research assistanec tool, but I would think the person using it would need to know how it works first before diving in.

Most of these things that we have been doing in the "23 Things" I've heard about, but not had the experience of using most of them. I do feel like now that we are getting hands on experience I won't feel like such a dunce when someone comes up to me with a question. (Haven't experienced a lot of these kinds of questions, but I can see them coming down the road with all the technology we offer.

Rollyo- This is thing 12

I have played around with Rollyo and found it fairly interesting. I'm not sure if I would use it that often, but I can see good uses for it.

I looked around at some of the ones listed in the exercise and also searched some other topics myself. I do have to say that it was really slow when I was using it, which was a little annoying.

Otherwise, I find it to be useful but maybe not for my everyday use.

Here is the searchbox I made (Blogger doesn't like the fancy search boxes, so I had to make a boring one...):

Select Search Engine...Shoes, shoes, shoesSearch The Web

Powered by Rollyo

Web 2.0 tools/sites- This is Thing #11

I decided to select the topic of retail (can you tell there's a running theme in my blogs?) and go from there.
I found this really cool site (www.threadless.com) which allows people to post, rate, and create t-shirt designs. I think this is an especially cool way to share designs/art of you are a artist that likes this medium. The picture shown above was one of my favorite designs. (It's titled "Fake Pandas have more fun".)

I also found that you can get RSS feeds about this site with weekly announcements, tees in stock, and Threadless updates. I may have to add this to my Bloglines account...

Needless to say, I've found a new place to shop! :)

This is thing #10

This is my image I created, like it? :)

I got it from www.imagechef.com

It seems these are pretty easy to use, and fun! I'm sure I'll be playing around with these much more, but not on work time... :(