Having fun in the Sandbox

I had so much fun playing in the sandbox! I found it was really easy for me to use because I have sites such as myspace, livejournal and even this blog that have similar features. I have also created other webpages through aol which is why I did not have any problem linking my blog to ocl webthings blog. Pbwiki is a great site for employees to keep informed on what's is going on. Last year I volunteered in an elementary school computer lab. I think pbwiki would be a great program for computer teachers to use with students. As part of my volunteering I would update websites of any of the teachers that had them. It would be a lot easier to have all updates on one page. Plus it would be a great activity for teachers to do with students.
Pbwiki is very similar to programs that colleges have for teachers to share information with students. Right now I have some professors who post assignments on what is called "shared files" that they can control. This would be great for libraries to use. For instance: instead of having to email everyone we can just put an attachment online that way everyone can get it.

Wikis

I must admitt I am a big fan of wikipedia just to look information up real quick however, I was always taught in school not to use the website as a source for research papers. Now I know to check the history and discussion tabs to see if the information is copyrighted. I looked at the OCL article on wikipedia and checked the history and discussion tabs. Wikipedia used the ocean county library website as a source. Someone also corrected a mistake, they changed country to county. I never really knew the history of the OCL until I read that article.
So of course I was curious and had to look up some wikis. Here are some I found:

• http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Mets
• http://www.digitalscrapwiki.com/?t=anon

Library 2.0 / Web 2.0

Away From the Icebergs

I thought for the icebergs "Row your library boat into the Web 2.0 environment" was a very cute and catchy phrase. The article has some great points such as libraries having more resoures available to patrons that they don't need to get a "just in case collection." I know some books or movies we get numerous copies like any of the Harry Potter books, or any movie that just comes out on dvd. I remember when the last Harry Potter book came out all branches, I just looked it up and we have 142 copies in the system! I know from working at Whiting we do not have a lot of kids come in our branch due to heavy senior citizen population and I have not seen one of those books get checked out since they were on hold for everyone last year. I know a great way to prevent mass amounts of movies is to have a movie night at the library. If we have programs the one of the first days a new dvd comes out then not as many people will have need to put it on hold.

Getting Familiar with Technorati

I set up a Technorati account which I thought was really easy. They only ask you for an email, password and username. First I searched around the site and searched for "disney" and "ronald reagan" (he is my favorite President) I found a lot of interesting blogs a few Disney ones were about peoples' vacations in Disneyworld and best places to stay. I was surprised to see how many blogs about Ronald Reagan were related to the upcoming Presidental election.
I claimed this blog on my technorati account and titled it "ocl webthings" so if it will show up if anyone types in ocl webthings. I added two sites two my favorites so far, one about Ronald Reagan and another about Right-winged Politics. There really is some cool blogs out there. I was not sure how to delete a blog on favorites because I accidentally added all of the blogs from the website the Ronald Reagan article was from. So I clicked on the help button and went to FAQ. Then I put in the word favorite and the question came up how to delete a favorite. It is really simple all you have to do is click on a little red x when you open up your favorites.

Claim for Technorati

Technorati Profile

Thing 13 del.icio.us

There were things that I did and did not like about del.icio.us I was so suprised to find that there are over 27 million blogs which has doubled in the last five months. I wonder how many blogs there will be in 5 months from now. I think it is very easy to find information by tags. I also like that I can make a shared reading list.
The one thing I did not like about del.icio.us was having to download the toolbar onto the computer. I don't mind downloading it onto my laptop but I did not want to download it on another computer. I did create an account but am going to have to wait until I get home until I can set it up. Luckily, Desiree already made an account and showed me how it works.

NetLibrary and World Cat

The one thing I really like about NetLibrary is the site is easy to navigate. I searched for a couple of things: including politics, some Presidents from the past and my favorite F. Scott Fitzgerald. I also looked up popular authors like Mark Twain and Victor Hugo. I was not surprised to see we had a lot of Mark Twain's writings as ebooks. If anyone came in the library and needed assistance on NetLibrary I feel pretty confident that I would be able to show them how to use it.

The first book I searched on World Cat was 7th Heaven--James Patterson's new one. I knew we have it and I figured a lot of other libraries would have it to. Ocean County library popped up first and then Monmouth County. When I typed in one of my college text books, the closest library that had the book was in ENGLAND!!! That was really suprising to me. I think World Cat would definitely help people fill out Inter Library Loans. I think if we taught more people how to fill them out properly more people would use them.