Addendum to Final Thoughts

OK, this is really funny. Just on the outside chance that I might lose my work in Zoho, I saved a copy of my post to Word. Well, that was my first act of genius today! When I tried to post to my blog from zoho all I got was a lock up. I tried it 3 times and it didn't go so back I went to good old Word, thank you Bill Gates, and copied and pasted my work into the blogspot. Once again the old familiar is the best!

Final Thoughts

Well, even though I was away I think I was able to catch up on all the weeks of this program. The only thing I may not have written about is Zoho. I'm on there now and writing this in Zoho. This is a fabulous thing for those people who just hate the MS monopoly. It can be used as a kind of political statement. I personally believe that the Gates family does much good with their money so I'll likely stick with the obvious but you never know when you'll be on a computer that doesn't offer the MS office products.

So, thoughts about this program? Hmmmmm. I would say that my favorite discovery was not so much a product I learned how to use as it was the creativity and effort that my fellow staff members put into their blogs. It was a real eye opener to learn about those we work side by side with but don't really get to delve into.

As I opined in the beginning of this exercise my goal is to not be left behind in the information age. So many times we have patrons come to the library - men and women my age - who use their age and supposed lack of work experience as a badge of pride in their ignorance of basic computer skills. I don't ever want to be one of them. I don't understand how people can expect to function in society without joyfully embracing the sense of accomplishment that comes with being a lifelong learner.

Technology is changing at the speed of light and I worry that we'll never have the time to really keep up. Unless one uses these various programs every day one could never become truly adept at all the fine tuning that can be done. I love the concept of this program and I applaud the library administration for encouraging us to participate as part of our work day. I'm wondering if there was 100 % buy-in from those in supervisory positions though. I've heard some grumblings from staffers who simply cannot find the time in their busy day to give this learning and discovery experiment the time that it deserves. Even those of us who were already experienced at many of these applications cannot come close to doing what's required in an hour a week. The result is that we are working on this from home or multi tasking like mad. I think there needs to be a more organized way of making sure that all staff members are allowed equal time to work on an all-staff learning project. Other than that, I feel that this was a fabulous idea and I would likely participate in another such program if it was about a subject that I was even remotely interested in. Since I'm a librarian, I guess we'll assume that it would be!

Week 10 (and a little 9)

I'd just love to win a day off with pay so that I can catch up on all the reading I've missed while playing to learn! My other blog is suffering while I familiarize myself with all the glories of web 2.0.
I will never cease to be amazed at how many zillions of people there are out there who are overly impressed with their own less than stellar talents. Youtube is their home! I've used it in the past but only on a limited basis, generally for political purposes. I've watched the Youtube democratic party debates and I've been to the "Obama Girl" site because I am one. I've also gotten a real kick out of the Youtube video of the book cart drill team presentations at ALA. Otherwise I just don't find time for this kind of thing. It takes me away from reading.

Podcasting comes in handy for me because, as a working person I miss so many radio interviews involving books and politics. My friend Don will send me podcast links to the things he knows I'd enjoy, usually from Diane Rehm or NPR, and I download them to my mp3 player to enhance my exercise routine. It's a fabulous thing! As is our download library. I don't know what I did without it. It is so simple to use (once you're on high speed Internet that is) and the dirty little secret is that those downloads never go away if you don't want them to. You can take your own sweet time listening.

OK, is this my final entry?

Still catching up - Week 8

OK folks, I've spent WAY too much time on this today! First off I took a look at del.icio.us and found that it would fill no practical need for me at all.
Then I played around on technorati which was actually kind of fun. I was interested to learn what the top 100 "subscribed to" blogs are as I'm fascinated by popular culture and what types of information the general public is interested in. I mucked about with the tags that were of interest to me and found that they can lead you to some totally irrelevant sites. Kind of like a "general keyword" search which drives me nuts in its broad scope.

As to wikis - well - hmmmmm. I absolutely see that there could be fabulously practical uses for these but I'm still hugely uncomfortable with the fact that anyone can accidentally or deliberately change your post to a wiki. As a matter of fact I just now almost accidentally changed one in Sheldon's Play House! Eek.

I was led to a website for book discussion mavens called BookMovement.com which I really liked even though it didn't have any discussion questions for the book I'm talking about tomorrow here at SC! That's ok, I don't generally use the questions anyway, I was simply testing the efficacy of the site. Also found out that we can post book reviews of our own to WorldCat. That was an eye opener.

I managed to get my blogspot posted in Sheldon's Play House but couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get some of my vacation photos up there. Lucky for you guys - you won't have to be bored with those! That's all the techie stuff I can handle for today.

Playing Catch Up!

I'm back from vacation and going through that "breaking in" period where you try to remember what exactly we're doing here! With a book discussion and a reference workshop due in the next week I'm definitely thinking the "play to learn" needs to be on the back burner for a few more days.

Still, I feel guilty when I don't check in each week to see what's happening with my co-workers on their way to being techno-geniuses. I have to tell you, in talking with friends and hearing that most of them still don't have time to do these weekly projects at work but rather, must do them at home on their own time, I still have reservations about the efficacy of the program. It seems that we are adding to the techno-stress of our staff rather than relieving them of the burden of not understanding what our patrons are facing.

Of course, here at SC most of our patrons still need to be walked through Word or hand carried to their e-mail provider, so Web 2.0 is like another planet to them. It's hard to maintain enthusiasm for these new technologies when we deal with patrons who pride themselves on their Luddite tendencies!

I've read through the blogs for week 7 and especially enjoyed Michael Stephens. He seems to have a more balanced philosophy of Web 2.0 and its impact on libraries. While I totally agree that we've got to be 10 steps ahead of our customers all the time to remain relevant (which is why I SO see the importance of making Chat Reference a permanent part of our reference delivery service), I still envision the library as a haven for the non-techies who come to us to learn language skills, participate in innovative programming, or introduce their kids to books and the glory of words. Let's not forget these people in our drive to be wired.

Social Networking

OK, no one believes me but the fact of the matter is that I'm really not that social. I love my privacy and my quiet time. On the other hand, I like to be up on things and take pride in knowing what's going on locally and in the world. So.....I'm familiar with social networking sites and at Kat on the Beach's invitation I did create a MySpace page several months ago. The trouble is, I never go to it and honestly could just care less about it. I just had to prove to myself that I could do it.

I do think it's a fascinating phenomenon and love the idea of libraries being out there on My Space. Of course, I knew that our Askalibrarian service has a presence there and I can tell from reading over the transcripts that it is used. Fantastic!

I didn't go check on the ubiquitous Tom only because I was at Swofford's Alley first and saw the answer to the question!

I'm having trouble concentrating on our project this week as I'm trying to get all my work caught up before I leave for vacation Weds. Talk to you all when I return!

What great co-workers!

I just want to say a word about what I see as the very best outcome of this 10 week exercise. It's really not even about becoming more adept at technology, although that's certainly a plus. It's really about teamwork! I've been so impressed reading all you folks' blogs. Almost everyone writes, "thanks to so and so for helping me, I was able to put up an RSS feed, or I was able to load my photos to the web." This is fantastic.

Library Sue, another one of our tech gurus, has just given me a hint regarding another picture site that seems to work smoother than those generators. Too bad though because I really liked the photo I generated. It was a lovely, big 747 on a runway with the logo "Wanderlust" on it. Speaking of wanderlust, I'll be getting out of Dodge for a few weeks and won't be able to complete my assignments in a timely manner. Sorry, but I doubt I'll be blogging from the cruise ship. At least not on this blog - maybe on my book blog though since I plan to cart at least 6 books with me (not to mention the 3 on my mp3) and Don will have his laptop.

I went to Library Thing, made ANOTHER account (good thing we're writing down all these passwords) and then I made a list of some of my favorite reads. It's somewhat interesting to see how many people who are on LibraryThing read the same titles that you do and I guess I could see that, if I was really lonely and had no one to talk to about books, I might enjoy speaking with one of the other 300-some folks in the whole of LibraryThing land who, like me, mention Frank Rich's autobiography Ghost Light as one of their all-time favorites. I kind of doubt I'll be back there too often.

Undeterred!

I'm back to try another day......OK, wasted 20 minutes and still can't get my really cool photo into this blog. Trying one more thing and then I've got a book discussion to work on....Ah ha! I received an error message from blogger..........later

Oh yeah, this is why I don't try to anything fancy to my "myspace" page or to my other blog for that matter. Life's too short to spend this much time trying to be clever. I love the results when someone else does it - for instance the Ft. Myers presentation at staff day Monday - but I just don't have the patience for it myself.

Week 5 - Generators (not for hurricanes)

Well, I thought I was the clever little wench by making a picture to post on the page. I saved it to my pictures and can't seem to get it to load. I'm going to experiment with it right now. If you see a photo below you'll know I got it together! Kathleen tells me it's them - not me. Whoo-woo. I'll try again later..........Time's a wasting.

RSS Feeds - Week 4

Oh yes, this week was MUCH easier than last week and the flickr fiasco. (thanks everyone for your suggestions and comments by the way). I'll go back in there and try again when I remember to bring some of my great travel photos from home.

Meanwhile I already had a bloglines acct. and I have successfully set up an RSS feed from my other blog which is all about books. Bloglines is a huge timesaver and organizer - perfect for library types who prefer to have their information categorized. It's also excellent for those of us who have grown into that forgetful stage in life where we don't even remember what we named our own blog let alone all the other ones we'd like to see!

I receive Laura's professional collection blog through bloglines, along with her personal one. I also get all my daily political fixes there through the dailykos, Slate and Huffington Post. I am absolutely loving the free range librarian, Karen Schneider, and now I'd like to add some of my co-workers' fabulous blogs, so do put up an RSS button.

Where's everyone's photos?

OK, I downloaded a photo to a disk and then attached it to my Flickr acct. It took just fine but when I then searched for other photos tagged LCLSPTL I got no hits. Not even my own. Ann did the same thing last night.
Help geeks, what are we doing wrong?

Frustration!

OK, readers, I'm sorry to be negative - especially on a Monday - BUT...anyone who works at South knows that our network is sooooo slow that you could turn gray waiting for a picture to load. In fact, I did! If you're going to work on week 3 you might want to save yourself some angst and play with it from home or from your laptops.

Flickr seems perfectly fine but not anywhere near as user friendly as the Kodak photo sharing software that I have on my computer at home. I had no trouble loading a photo to my MySpace page - yup, don't laugh, I have one. Not that I ever use it, I just wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. Thanks Kathleen!

I did finally get a photo to open and I created it in Flickr's Warholian design which is quite cool. (think Marilyn Monroe) The only problem is that the picture isn't of me. I've got to get the other person, she who must not be named, to give me the green light and then I'll put it up.

Talented and Original Staff!

I just wanted to say that I've been reading the blogs that our co-workers have created and I am so impressed with the level of originality and the quality of the writing. What a delightful way to get to know eachother better.

By the way, look out folks. I'm on the prowl for techies who might want to join our Live Chat Reference group. Until next week..........

7.5 Habits and Me

Hello to everyone who is "playing" for the next 10 weeks. I have to admit that I already have another blog - have had it for about 6 months now - and it is addictive! You begin by thinking "who in the world cares about what I have to say," and you end up just writing your heart out. Pretty soon you'll be subscribing to several other blogs and, before you know it, you're online 24/7. I even caved in and had high speed hooked up at home.

One of the habits that I believe I have and that works for me is seeing obstacles as challenges. I'm pretty fearless about facing the huge challenges in my life and I believe they've all made me a better person. It's the little frustrations that send me over the edge. For instance, one of the initial obstacles I had when beginning this program was getting the video from Sheldon to load. Our technology here in the library doesn't always keep up with the speed of our learning! 20 minutes later, while I was working on something else, all of a sudden up popped the video. Go figure.

Probably the habit that I'll need to work on the most is gaining confidence as a learner. I still get a nervous stomach every time I hit "publish." I really do love adding new talents to my repertoire yet I've found that the older I get it truly is more difficult to stay focused and remember things. I'm seldom far from a pen and legal pad!

In closing, I think that this is a fabulous idea for our staff. I do believe that developing a comfort with technology should/must be part of our core competencies. Let's have fun!