Working at Reference I’m at least aware of many of our web resources. I don’t always remember them, but I do know about them. I love looking through VILDA, especially with my parents who’ve lived here over 55 years now. They can tell me about some of the places and people in the Fairbanks pictures, and I can show them thing I’ve found while helping patrons, or becoming more familiar with the tool. Last year I took a class on Fairbanks history with Dermot Cole, and VILDA came in very handy!
I’ve tried a couple of the audiobooks from ListenAlaska, and while I like the portability, I wish there were more books to choose from, and more that would allow CD burning. Working with Apple and iPods would be nice, too, especially because most of the people I know have iPods, not generic MP3 players. One of the audiobooks I downloaded and burned to a cd was a book of nursery rhymes for my son. It would have been nice if I were able to go to individual tracks, but unfortunately each cd is its own track. That way, if I want to skip forward to a different nursery rhyme/chapter/etc, I’d always have to listen to the first ones until I got to it. I can only take so many readings of “Little Boy Blue” with a strong English accent! (nothing against the English, but it was at a time my son was learning to speak, and we didn’t want to confuse him with all the different accents and dialects at the same time).
I wish we had more time for movies lately. Maybe we will as fall and winter approach, we’ve actually been enjoying this nice summer. For once we had no smoke, and the weather was relatively warm and dry compared to recent years. It was nice being able to be outside more, and to let Kieran outside to play. The first summer after he came home was the big smoky summer, so we were cooped up inside whenever we didn’t have to be outside. This is such a nice change, but not too good for catching up on movies and DVDs! Soon, we’ll start checking out what we have at the media desk again!
I love Google Maps and Earth! I’ve been using Maps for a long time now. Whenever I want directions somewhere, it’s what I use now. I’ve almost forgotten about my previous map site, MapQuest. They keep adding features, too! Now there’s traffic information and a street view for some of the larger cities. It was really cool to use street view in New York where my husband’s family is. We felt like we were walking down the street, and he could point out their apartment, and other sights!
I like how Google Earth works, in addition to what it does. You can move around easily, zoom in and out fairly painlessly. I enjoyed just zooming into a town and moving around. So I’m easily amused!
I found a couple interesting google map mashups, too. One is the Sunrise/Sunset map, I think it’s neat to see where the sun is currently rising/setting. Another was the IP map. You could look up an IP address, and it would show the map for that area! Unfortunately it seems that most of the IP addresses I could think of didn’t come up at first. I had to zoom way out to see where I was. Once I was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, south of the Ivory Coast! As an expansion of the IP Map, they also have the visual traceroute. The IP I put in had the route starting in Colorado, then to Louisiana, California, Delaware, Seattle, and then down to the Ivory Coast, and back. It was interesting to see where the connection goes.
I like RollyO, I can create a searchroll for some of my knitting sites, book sites, children’s stuff/parenting sites. Seems very useful so far! There is definitely potential for this tool! I created a book searchroll. Right now I have it searching online bookstores, but I could also create one that searches different libraries as well. That would be nice, to be able to see at a glance who might have something I’m looking for, and be able to search multiple sites that I trust. I think I’ll keep playing with this and adding more searchrolls!
Google labs have so many things in the works! I’ve already signed up for the mashup editor, now just to figure out how to do it!
I also started working the the Google Page Creator to create a website, so I may continue working on that at another time, when I have more ideas in mind regarding layout! Since I use Firefox, the Google Extensions for Firefox caught my eye. I like the toolbar with its suggestions, and notebook, so I can collect clippings from around the web while I’m browsing it.
Google Base reminds me of a cross between some of my favorite price comparison sites (including Google’s Froogle), and Craigslist. I did a couple searches, and got a wide variety of results. I do like that I can change options for the search, and they’re performed immediately, in addition to setting up an RSS feed to my search. I’ll have to get those set up later!
I’ve never really been interested in MySpace, it just seems too busy for me. I don’t know how others can make out all the different things people put on their page, they’re so cluttered! I see and understand that many people use it, and I guess that’s one difference with the new generation of web2.0 patrons. They’re more used to multi-tasking, and can manage more things on a page, but they just seem too busy to me.
I totally agree with Rick Anderson’s post Away from the “icebergs.” I believe with web2.0 and libraries changing to a more electronic service, we need to be ahead of the game, and watch out for things that can hold us back, the icebergs. We need to focus more on what the patrons are doing and using, so we may be where they are and help them in the ways that they need. We should be familiar with their online trends and tools, so that we may be able to get them the answers they seek. The world is moving toward a more web-based environment and culture, and people have many more ways and means to obtain the information and research they need. Libraries need to let some things go, and embrace other new tools, in order to keep up and stay ahead of the users. Reading these few posts has intrigued me enough to search for more blogs with similar ideas, to see what others think. This was a very thought-provoking exercise.
There are all kinds of things on the Web 2.0 awards list! I looked around, and one I found was the Guess-the-Google game. It’s fun guessing what the common link is to the 20 pictures it shows, but if you don’t figure it out in 20 seconds, it doesn’t give you the answer, just the first letter of the word, so that’s a little frustrating!
Last.fm is another useful site for music lovers. You can choose artists or songs, and it’ll find stations that play similar songs. I like browsing through and seeing what artists they deem similar, what they have available, and what’s coming up.
Scrolling through some of the other awards, I find I’m already using some of them: Etsy, a wonderful site where artisans can sell their hand-made items on their own, StumbleUpon, (a site similar to del.icio.us) for bookmarks and tags, and iGoogle, which I use all the time!
Browsing a little more, I think I just found my new favorite! Color Blender! I can use this for putting together coordinating colors for my blog, other web work and even for things such as knitting and house-related decor. I love this tool!
I’ve been using Firefox for a couple years now, at least, and love it. I won’t use IE or Netscape unless I need to do/see something on a site, and for whatever reason, the coding is incompatible with Firefox. I love Firefox: it’s open source so I can add extensions (if I knew how to code, I could even make my own), I can use tabs to organize my viewing, instead of having multiple windows open. It’s much cleaner this way, and I can keep track of what I’m doing. While working on Learning 2.0, I regularly had at least 3-4 tabs open: the Learning 2.0 blog, Blackboard, my blog in edit mode, and my blog in view mode, in addition to whatever sites I needed for the particular assignment. It was nice not having so many windows open, and flipping back and forth was fairly easy.
Since I’m so used to Firefox, I decided to still try another browser, and tried Opera. I like how it also uses tabs, and that it utilizes widgets, similar to Firefox’s add-ons. There were some interesting widget available! An analog clock that changes color? It looks fairly clean, and loaded quickly. I didn’t get to “play” with it in too much depth, so maybe I’ll continue to try it when I get the opportunity.
I love YouTube, most of the time! There are some really cool videos put on there. You could find anything almost! We’ve found clips of shows we grew up with, funny ads from the US and other countries. If we’re wondering about something we’d seen ages ago, we’re bound to find it on YouTube.
One of my favorite clips is the “Evolution of Dance:”
There are so many things out there, I can see some inappropriate material making its way on there and possibly being viewed by the wrong audience. It looks like there are some tools in place to protect some, but there will always be someone who gets through.
Libraries could find uses for YouTube: embedding clips of videos/dvds in their collection (with appropriate copyright authorizations), training videos both for local staff and for rural or branch libraries, possibly even a “how to use the library” video. There is a lot of potential for libraries to use YouTube, podcasts, and Flickr in their work.
