The End-Exercise 23

1) My favorite exercise was definitely LibraryThing although some of the image generators were interesting too. I use Yahoo as my main e-mail account and I like the ease of creating Yahoo avatars which can be used for e-mail and Yahoo IM. 2) I am happy to have been exposed to the newer technologies that younger generations are growing up with and perhaps taking for granted. As I said in an earlier exercise's post I think it is about time that libraries are proactive rather than reactive about current technologies available. 3) I am surprised at how easy blogging is once you get used to it. Although I used to keep a printed journal/diary that I used as a means to vent my emotions and to record thoughts and ideas so as to be able to compare, contrast, and weigh different options, I found that about the time I got engaged, I have my now husband to use as a sounding board and to share my many joys and very rare low points and like my photo album coming to an abrupt end (also mentioned in a previous exercise's blog,) so too has my journal writing. 4) I have already mentioned that I think it would have helped some of us to have regular progress reports and although comments on each blog would have been nice, I know that each of the Virtual Services team members had many participants to keep track of and it would have taken alot of tim to post comments on each and every blog entry for every participant. Finally, if another discovery project like this was offered in the future, I would participate in it. Although if this program were any indication, I might not have a choice in the matter, as my boss made me do it!

Week 9, Exercise 22

So I explored the SJlibray's ebooks site and the Project Gutenberg site. Although, I personally prefer to read actual print books and indeed most of the books I read are too contemporary to be on that site due to the present onerous copyright law. I read all 3000+ pages of the unabridged print version of "War and Peace" years ago and when I looked it up on the Gutenberg site, they only had the abridged version of approximately 1230 pages. Not that I would want to read even that many pages on a computer, but if I wanted to read a poem or a really short classic, I could see using this site. Maybe some day people will evolve eyes that are better adapted to read print on-line or even develop cyborg eyes that have perfect vision, can filter out the glare and harmful effects of staring at a computer screen, don't get eye strain, etc. But until that time I don't really see the extensive use of e-books as being practical. So concludes exercise 22 and I am on to the final exercise.

Week 9, Exercise 21

So, I added the Laughing Librarian podcast to my bloglines. I picked this because I had heard of Laughing Librarian through my "Library Underground" listserve and the songs are actually really funny there is one about OPAC and one titled "Library 2.0 is evil". There didn't seem to be very many general library podcasts and I also didn't see one for SJPL and/or SJSU, but I didn't look all that closely. Anyway I believe that is it for this exercise. Almost done only two more exercises to go..

Week 9, Exercise 20

I am having some trouble with the You Tube exercise, but I think this should work:



I chose this video because it is a rant from a regular "problem" customer about the library I work at. Although I don't care for YouTube because it is just a multimedia kind of blog. Lots of people with too much time on their hands making videos. I also don't care for the amatuer and poor quality of most of the videos. I don't really see much value for libraries, as the videos would be lost amidst all the movies, unless someone was really looking for a video about libraries.

Week 8, Exercise 19

Well, I was finally able to get LibraryThing on the sidebar of my blog, but then my blog was not responding. I had to exit so I'm not sure that it is there still. I think I will actually use some of the features of LibraryThing in my personal life. Right now the books listed are books I am reading concurrently. I rarely read only one book at a time. I have two books at work that I am reading, and four at home: two non-fiction and two fiction, although one I haven't actually started reading because I own it, so I am trying to get through the library ones. Working at the library is a mixed blessing. Don't get me wrong, I love my job, it's just a never-ending struggle of trying to catch up on my reading when there are always authors getting my attention and when I find an author I really like, I try to read all their books or at least all the books that are similar to the one I found I liked.

Week 8, Exercise 18

Well, as it said in the last post- I made it in Zoho Writer. But it doesn't look any different from a word document. So I don't really see any benefit, because, I never need to import documents from one place to another. At home I only play games, check e-mail, IM, and occassionally buy things on-line. At work I have all the MS applications that come in the Office package. So I don't think I will ever use Zoho Writer especially since when I tried using a spreadsheet template, all I got was an error message from Internet Explorer. Maybe I will try again later? But I believe I have satisfied the requirements for Exercise 18.

Untitled

This is a sample document created on Zoho Writer. So this is very similar to a Word document.   I would like to know more about the spreadsheet options.  So I will attempt to send this to my blog, then experiment with the spreadsheet-like template.