Week 12: Staying Current

If one does not have an awareness of technology---the Internet, computers and their software, and the myriad personal electronics such as cell phones--- one probably has just left from the island with Robinson Crusoe. Knowing how to use that technology is another matter. As a well known English playwright once had Hamlet say, "There's the rub."

I, for instance, have recently run into the term "cloud computing." The "cloud" is the Internet; the "computing" part seems to mean using the Internet to develop and use computer technology. The authors of articles that I have read about it seem to be be entranced with the idea. The "normal" library patron has probably not heard of it...used it possibly but still not heard of the term. When a senior citizen tells you that Interlibrary Loans take too long and she'll go on Amazon and order the book, you come to realize that people will find ways to use whatever technology if the desire is there.

Nicholas Carr made waves with his article in the July/August 2008 issue of The Atlantic entitled "Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains." His premise is that the Internet has caused mankind to lose some of its ability to concentrate and, therefore, to think. Interesting idea! Yet, I seem to remember that something of the same was said about television. I do wonder if the medieval monks had something of the same idea about that press that Gutenberg created?

The following list is from Daily Cup of Tech:

Social Media Sites
Digg
Gmail
Uservoice
Xing
Yahoo
Yotify
12seconds
Behance
Blogger
Brightkite
Colourlovers
Corkd
Dailymotion
Delicious
Diigo
Disqus
Ebay
Etsy
Favtape
Ffffound
Flickr
Friendfeed
Funnyordie
Hellotxt
Hexday
Identica
Ilike
ILikeTotallyLoveIt
Imageshack
Isfingawesome
Jaiku
Koornk
Kwippy
Lastfm
Linkedin
Livejournal
Magnolia
Meemi
Mixx
Multiply
Myspace
Odeo
Pandora
Picasa
Plurk
Posterous
Pownce
Rejaw
Smugmug
Soundcloud
Steam
Stumbleupon
Technorati
Tinyurl
Tipd
Tipjoy
Tumblr
Twitter
Typepad
Ustream
Vimeo
Virb
Visualizeus
Vox
Wakoopa
Wordpress
Youtube
Zooomr

I have not visited them all nor have an inclination to do so, but I'm like my senior lady---if I find a need to, I shall.

Week 11: Florida Electronic Library

The Florida Electronic Library has become well known for its marvelous digital collections. Now its seems to have added popular magazines and journals. Of course, my favorites are the "Especially for : Kids, Students, & Families" and "Especially for: Teachers. "

The Florida Electronic Library has placed on Flickr Commons the State Archives of Florida's Photostream. There it resides with the likes of the Library of Congress, the National Media Museum, the National Galleries of Scotland, and the Smithsonian.

I took a look at the Assignment Calculator and the Research Project Calculator. The former seems to understand that university students really need help in breaking down an assignment into manageable chunks. The latter is supposed to be an enhanced version of the former.

I would, in addition, recommend that anyone who is dealing with research and students take a look at NoodleTools. Noodle Bib has note-taking software which also has a bibliography composer (MLA, APA, and Chicago/Turabian styles). Although it is subscription, you can obtain one or two quick citations for free.





If you have been reading Doonesbury, you've already seen this comment on tweets. If you haven't, you might enjoy it. It's found at http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20090314.
In fact, the previous strips are all about Roland's tweets.

Week 11 Library Things

I found several libraries which make use of LibraryThing. Seattle Public was the first that I found. Then came Edwards Public Library in Southampton, Massachusetts, followed by Danbury Public. These seemed to have added Library

Thing widgets to their OPACs to create links between related books.

Week 10 Social Networking

Social Networking Haiku

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Social Networking

My Space, Facebook, YouTube, and

"You're my friend, right?"

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I found that websites other than libraries are using social networking to communicate with their viewers. For instance, the state of Virginia offers the following ways to stay connected: Live Chat, RSS Feeds, Podcasts, Virginia YouTube and Get and Share. Get and Share is a Virginia widget that can be added to web pages, blogs, or social profiles. On California's website one can subscribe to podcasts, RSS, Text/E-mail, Accelerators, and Bookmarks (Digg, MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo Buzz, Delicious, and many more including Yardbarker). Vermont's website has RSS, Twitter, Linked In, Digg, Delicious, Facebook, StumbleUpon, and Google.
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Universities are also using social networking. The University of North Dakota offers Facebook, a Flickr album, ITunes UND, UND RSS feeds, and YouTube-Updated. The University of Oxford has RSS, science blogs, a Facebook group (OxSciBlog), and is heavily into video and audio articles.

Week 9 Podcasts and Video

Scientific American has 60-Second Podcasts. It
is located at http://www.sciam.com/podcast/.
Episode 623 for February 23, 2009, is entitled
"Earths Common as Dirt."
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Other Earths Haiku
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Let me count the earths
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7...
Oh my, infinite!

Week 8 - Online Applications and Tools

Libraries Haiku

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Bewildering sites

Gutenberg's offspring beside

Space age equipment.

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According to the February 15, 2009, issue of Library Journal, Cambridge Information Group acquired a minority stake in LibraryThing in January. Tim Spalding, LibraryThing founder, will retain majority ownership. Cambridge Information Group's Bowker will become the exclusive distributor of the LibraryThing for Libraries. The article pointed out that LibraryThing for Libraries has already been added to over 100 library catalogs.

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In the same issue of Library Journal is an announcement that LibLime has brought an open source approach to cataloging by launching Biblios, which is an open source, web-based metadata tool and Biblios.net, a hosted version of Biblios with social cataloging features. Because it hopes to build one web page for every book which has ever been published, its reliance on everyone having publishing rights, a sort of Wikipedia approach to maintenance, should make the upkeep of the database easier.

Week 7: Collaboration

There are all kinds of wikis, sites which allow others to edit the content of the sites. An example is Foodista.com, an encyclopedia of culinary information. Probably the best known of the wikis is Wikipedia.

I found a site, last updated in 2005, by Darlene Fichter of the University of Saskatchewan which explored wikis and libraries. One of its links was to Writely. Google purchased Writely in the spring of 2006 and renamed it Google Documents (Google Docs.) Today, this site allows one to create, share, and collaborate online.