#23 Last but not least

"Mom is so cute!" my kids said after I showed them my blogs. "You are the second mom who has a Facebook account among all my friends." my daughter commented. When I showed my son the application of Google.Docs, he was so impressed and said: "This is the first time mom taught me something." After he saw my puzzled face, he added: "I mean computer-related." He thought I was "computer illiterate". Now I proved I could do it like them or even better. This is all because I took the journey with Queens Library Learning 2.0. When I first started 23 and 1/2 Things, I wasn't sure if I could accomplish it. Each time, it took me so much time to learn the new Thing, but as I was working towards the end, I felt so much better and more comfortable. Working in the branch, you are constantly interrupted or distracted by various things. I could never finish one entire blog without being interrupted. The good thing about Blogger is that you can go back to your earlier blog anytime and edit it. Through this journey, I have learned more than I have expected. I set up my goal of learning the very basics such as jargon or technical terms, but it turned out that I could do them all. My favorite exercises are Google Docs, Upcoming events in Yahoo, RSS feeds and Library Thing. Those will help and actually helped me in the daily operations of the library. I posted several events that will take place in the library through Upcoming using Google Docs. This helps to increase the visibility of the library in the community.

If Library is going to offer another discovery training, I will participate again without doubt. I hope next time the training will start a little bit easier and give more time for each exercise. As a beginner, I need more time to review, preview literature and practice. I am so glad that I achieved my short-term goal and am looking forward to the next challenge. This training will definitely benefit me in the future. I will nominate QL.Thing team for Lamplight Award for next year!

#22 Audiobooks

If it wasn't for this learning exercise, I wouldn't know that we have such a big collection of Digital Media. The good feature of this Digital Media Catalog is to let you browse the eBook shelf. It holds eBook & Audio Book Fiction, Nonfiction, Video by Genre, Music by Genre, etc. The collection is very impressive. I looked under eBook & Audio Book Nonfiction and found
Non Fiction
Business & Finance
Children's
Cooking & Food
Health & Fitness
More Nonfiction

I was interested in Cooking, so I clicked on it, then I found the book "Easy Sushi". The calatalog gives very detailed information about the book including the content details, format information, description of the content and digital rights information which I consider very important if the customer wants to burn it into CD or DVD or transfer it into other device. It is so cool and I might want to download it once I get to my computer at home.

#21 Podcasts directory tools

I went to Podcast.net and searched Book Reviews in the search box. I got a long list of blogs. The Book Voyages caught my attention. It is "a podcast about children's literature from the point of view of a school library/media specialist. It features reviews of books as well as inteviews with students and authors." This site displays the URL of its feed right below the title and it is so easy to locate. I just right clicked the mouse and copied shortcut and pasted the URL into the Subscribe text box of my Bloglines. It is as easy as copying newsfeeds in the earlier excersice. Here is the link to my Bloglines with two podcast feeds added: Book Voyages and AssistiveMedia Fiction: http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs

Podcast.net also lets you add a podcast. When you move down to the lower part of the page, you will see a bar of ADD YOUR PODCAST, just click on it and then follow the instructions step by step. Once your podcast is added, you can monitor how many audience you will get. The entry will be automatically updated. In addition, your podcast will be searchable in the directory.

#9 Feeding Frenzy - a make-up exercise

I think I missed #9 assignment. I took a look at #8 and the requirements for both assignments are so similiar, but anyway, I am going to find more feeds using some of the various blog search tools. I tried Topix, Blogline Search, Syndic8 and Feedster. As an experiment I went to each site and searched for "travel in New Orleans" in their default search box as I am going there for a training workshop in January, 2008 (I will take some photos there and share with you in my blog later). I tried Feedster first but it didn't work. I tried several times and it always gave me the error messages. So I tried Topix which listed all the information, and about 25% is relevant to what you really want. You had to click on each entry to find the image of feeds. Most of the time, you don't find any. Blogline's Search is very similar to Topix. The best of all is Syndics8. I searched "travel" in Syndics8's search box and it lists all the sites with Feed URLs, Feed IDs, Site Names, Created, Approved and Changed dates, Status of whether the site is syndicated or awaiting repair. It even provides information on languages. It took me no time to add my favorite feeds to my Bloglines. When I searched "travel in New Orleans" and it listed one matching feed and it is exactly what I wanted - New Orleans City Guide, though it is waiting for approval for syndicated.

#6 More Flickr Fun - Mosaic Maker

Today I went back to check if I finished all the assignments and found that I missed this fun one. So I tried FD Toys' Mosaic Maker to create a photo mosaic from my digital photographs. I had so much fun! It lets you be creative - choose a layout, make an arrangement of photos, select background color and border color, etc. and it gives you all the possibilities of making photos -- themes, colors, shapes. I chose to upload photos from my digital camera instead of URLS so I had to sign in before uploading the photos. It only took a few minutes. Actually it is pretty easy to manoeuver.

#20 YouTube - RFID in libraries

I like YouTube. It is very easy to comprehend. It makes things that people never saw before now visual. It is especially good to show people on how to do things. With our new RFID system, I think that we can do a demo on RFID check out function via YouTube or other video hosting sites.

This is the video from YouTube on RFID technology used in libraries. I like the second and fourth parts of the video on the smart and quick inventory function. The vedio shows one of the advantafes of RFID system used to scan books on the shelves without tipping them out or removing them. The hand-held inventory reader can be moved across a shelf of books to read all of the unique idenfication information. It can also identify items which are out of proper order. It will save librarians tremendous time to search and inventory the collection by using portable reader and portable computer. I hope it will come to Queens Library system very soon so we don't have to move the collection to the book truck and then to the DRA terminal to determine the status of each item.

#19 Discovering Web 2.0 tools - Events "Upcoming"

I took a look at the "Upcoming" - an events planing/scheduling organizer from Yahoo. You can search events in a designated area without signing in. You can narrow the search by category or by date. If you want to add new events, you have to register with them. I successfully added one of our programs in December to the site. Here it is (yahoo events upcoming): htttp://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/325756/?ps=5

It also shows the area of the map where the event will take place. It is a great tool for libraries to do a outreach, and publize their events in the community - more efficient than distributing the paper flyers in the neighborhood.