Semester 2

Hola!

Well I had to do a little "work" to remember how to log into by blog here! Not that THAT reflects in any way on how much I have been using my blog over our break. :)

So anyway, for the IM assignment: IM'ing is fun! I can see why people sit in our library every day for hours on end doing so. I remember my daughter saying [a few years back] that it was so much better than using the telephone to call her friends and talk. Of course since then, she got her cell phone...then calling was cool again...and now text messaging via the phone is just so much better than talking... :)

I think that using IM between staff both in and outside of the building could be very useful. My office is away from our REF DESK, and it might be helpful to be able to IM staff at that desk, or the supervisors in their offices. I'm not sure how the other people would feel about it. But we do have a few people from our library in this class, so I'll see if we can get it started and see how it works!

Maria

A wiki to the rescue?

At our library we just sponsored our second (annual?) event where we recognize and thank all the people and organizations that make our community a great place to live. This year finding the best times when most of the planning committee could meet seemed to be especially challenging. I'm thinking that using a wiki might help! Ideas could be added to the wiki, people could suggest "tweaks" to those ideas, and for those members who are unable to attend a particular meeting there would be an interactive place to still add input and see what was accomplished at the meeting.

Editing my edit!

O.k. so I was bragging to one of my kids about editing Wikipedia, and she informs me that links within a Wikipedia article are only supposed to link to another Wikipedia article. Oops! Back to the drawing board, and another edit. Well now, who's going to start that entry for our library???

Wikipedia edit

I checked out my community on Wikipedia and although our library had a link in the list at the end of the article, in the "Social" paragraph it was only mentioned as "a library." After many, many previews of my "edits" I took the plunge and saved my first contribution to Wikipedia! I added a link to our website and our proper name in place of the "a library" as well as adding the details of "conveniently located downtown and offers adult and children's programs." Check it out here!

Bundles of tags

I picked three interests and made three bundles of tags: Tea Time, Orchids, and Terrariums. They are all pretty new interests I've acquired and I'm a definite newbie in all three areas, but I like the idea of keeping websites that I find helpful and encouraging in tagged bundles for easy referral. Here's they are: http://del.icio.us/madler54

Yeh Tags!

I like the idea of social bookmarking. I think it is a great way for people in general, to label sites in meaningful ways, and a great way for libraries in particular to then collect those websites with tags and share them with their patrons through del.icio.us. I like the differnt way the tags were bundled by the various libraries. I think I like the alphabetical by topic style the best. On the webpage for teens, the use of the tag cloud was very cool!