Week 9, Thing 21

I checked out all 3 podcast directories. I was surprised to see that Yahoo podcasts has an announcement that it is shutting down the site as of Oct. 31, 2007. I rather like this podcast directory as it also indexes YouTube. I searched for podcasts about birdwatching and found that Yahoo podcasts listed many more than Podcast.net. I added the show Ray Brown's talking birds as an RSS feed to my Bloglines account.

Week 9, Thing 20

YouTube is a very popular site, and I can see why. It is a great site for people to share homemade videos on all kinds of topics. I chose the video Marc Cataloging because it shows how much cataloging has changed over the years and that it is still relevant in today's online world. I also found many other library related videos. Some were demonstrations on how to use the library or how to use a particular tool. Another video I liked was about music cataloging, produced by a library grad student to fulfill a course requirement. Posting videos of past events on the library's website might be a good way to encourage participation in future events.

Week 8, Thing 19

I chose to explore the site Medstory. This site helps you search for health related topics. It's fairly easy to use. First step is to type in a topic. I tried Alzheimer's and it took me to a page with different categories to refine the search. Some of the categories were drugs, procedures, complimentary medicine, nutrition, clinical studies. There was also a tab for research articles if you want more technical information. It's also possible to find professional associations and blogs related to a topic.

This site would be useful for our Health Collection.

Week 8, Thing 18

Using Zoho Writer

I'm creating this document using Zoho Writer for my 23 Things, Thing 18. So far it seems easy to use and similar to other word processors that I have used. It has the usual fonts, spell check, etc. I like that I can create this document in Zoho Writer and send it directly to my blog.

Week 7, Thing 16, Thing 17

I find Wikipedia to be a very useful site if I need quick information about a topic or as a starting off point. I looked at several "wiki" sites. I liked the idea of a wiki set up for a convention. It is a way for people to post helpful information for all those attending the meetings. My department could set up a wiki as a place to post any changes or updates to our procedures. Many of us work part-time and are not always able to attend every meeting. It could be a good place to record and document any decisions.

I left a comment on the SI sandbox wiki created by Beth Tribe since there is a problem with the Maryland Libraries sandbox wiki.

Week 6, Thing 15

Library 2.0 - what does it mean to me? I started to think about my first job in a library and the technological changes and advances since that time. Libraries need to embrace new technologies that may help the customer, not just for the sake of technology. Library 2.0 is bringing about enormous changes in the world of library cataloging. Will my job as a cataloger in a public library even exist in 10 years? Yet there still is a great need for people to organize materials and create finding tools for information that exists - whether it is Web based information or books.

Week 6, Thing 13, Thing 14

I had a little trouble understanding the point of Del.icio.us at first. After looking it over for awhile I see that it could be useful. I added tags to a number of sites but I'm not sure that I will ever use it. Since tagging does not use a controlled vocabulary, people can use different terms for the same thing. This makes it more difficult to find what you want. Sometimes the tags can be too broad or too narrow.

Technorati

I did a keyword search in Blog posts on "Learning 2.0" and got 4,228 results. The same search in tags pulled in 677 hits and 679 hits in the Blog directory. Keyword searches always retrieve more hits many of them irrelevant.

It looks like many of the Top Favorited blogs have to do with technology, many of the top searches are on celebrity names and the top blogs are technology related or about politics. An interesting thing is that "Learning 2.0" is listed as one of the top searches at the moment.