Gia’s Weblog


Wildcard Week, Woot!
August 27, 2008, 12:11 am
Filed under: Uncategorized

I did a brief tour of some of the sites listed for the wildcard…some of them looked interesting. I got a kick out of DoMyStuff.com, although to be honest there wasn’t much stuff in my area to do for people. It would be an awesome site if more people used it. I’ve already signed up for 43things.com, I love that you can set goals for yourself and connect with people who have similar goals. To be honest, I’ve totally burnt out on social networking sites. I just don’t have much to say anymore that anyone would find interesting. I tried doing Twitter, but again I don’t do much besides go to work and then go home. I’m sure my on-line followers would love to hear about my grocery store outings, but alas. I have to admit I get a huge kick out of Craigslist (still), Yelp, and Digg. I have a list of blogs a mile long that I read nearly everyday. If I didn’t have Gawker or the Superficial to amuse me at the end of a day I don’t know what I’d do.

But I guess this really doesn’t answer how this web 2.0 stuff would be effective for WORK. Sure I know several dozen ways to kill and waste time on the Interwebs, but how would I put it to practical use? I think some of the social bookmarking websites would be great for Youth Services librarians–we could pass around storytime ideas, booklists, or online games for kids who come into the library. If we had bibliographies we could share with remote patrons that might be pretty helpful.

I certainly don’t think that Library 2.0 is a passing fad, but I do think it might be a while before we really see what it can do. Maybe in 5 or 10 years we’ll see a big movement in this direction but right now I think we’re really just looking at the tip of the 2.0 iceberg.



Attack of the Pod People
August 26, 2008, 11:51 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized

No, no. Just PodCASTING people. Just wanted to drop a quick note on my blog to report I’d done the podcast assignment. Actually, I’ve already been up to my eyebrows on podcasts as I’ve been working with varying degrees of success on the Library’s online Storytime podcasts.



Ning Social Networking
August 13, 2008, 5:52 pm
Filed under: Web 2.0 Assignments

Weeeeelllll…I did the Ning assignment, and thought it might be useful for our library in a couple of ways. One idea I had was to make a network of YSL’s Programming. Instead of a wiki, people could enter programs they’d just had, reviews, and comment on future programs. A wiki seems like it would be more static, while a network might be more active. Maybe I’m the only one who would find this helpful. (*crickets*)

Idea #2: We could have a Hercules Community Network. People who had events coming up, or promotions, or anything of interest locally could join up. Not just the library, but maybe city departments, local businesses, the Lions, etc.

Other ideas: Teen/Children’s crafts, Summer Reading Program network, Storytime/Lapsit/ToddlerTime network, OR, we could do a Hercules Libray Network. Although, not sure what we would post since we see each other a ton anyway. (or maybe subs could read it, visitors, etc.)

Interesting assignment, thanks Web 2.0 trainers!



Bloglines, great success!
August 5, 2008, 9:29 pm
Filed under: Web 2.0 Assignments

1) One of the library features I subscribed to was the current library program feed. I was able to receive all the programs scheduled for HER for the Fall.

2) Yes! It helped me understand RSS feeds better. (Actually, I’ve been using RSS feeds already in my private life, to much success, but I didn’t know you could subscribe to lists of new library materials in your feeds, I’ll make sure to recommend this feature to my tech savvy customers)

3) I did have some difficulty with figuring out how Bloglines wanted you to add a new blog listing. It was a little confusing, but after making some mistakes I got it all figured out & I think I’ll keep using Bloglines for library field related feeds.

:)