summary

i'm now so close to 2.0 graduation, i can taste it!

this is my very last blog, probably forever.

Though i enjoyed my experience with web 2.0, aside from one or 2 applications i'v gone thru, i probably won't use much of it. i enjoy the social networking to some degree, i dislike the rss feeds and i really despise twitter. even blogging to me became such a project. i guess i just don't have it in me to spend my entire life on my computer. what happened to the old fashioned diary? a nice little book to put your thoughts on paper. instead it's all online. i will probably never keep a blog, to me it seems self indulgent, that people want to read my thoughts on everything. and than that becomes my problem with twitter as well. like how aston kutcher makes the news becasue he is the first to have 1 million twitter followers. WHO CARES? who likes aston kutcher anyway and why does he have 1 million people following him?

thru facebook and myspace, however, i have become reaquainted with old, close friends and that is a nice thing. though i think these two technolgies can often make a person unhealthy: constantly checking your site, having to have the most 'friends', stalking others, and some friends i know judge who their friends are due to the fact of them commenting on their facebooks or not. and no matter how private it is or how private you make yourself, there is no privacy at all...

in conclusion, i realize that much of my blogging was negative regarding all these web 2.0 sites. i guess deep down, i'm just an old fashioned kind of girl who thinks technology has gotten somewhat out of hand. i long for the old days...when i used to walk up hill, in the snow to school...both ways.

the end.

craigslist

i use ebay a little bit but i've never used craigslist. i know a lot of people do but i never had any desire to. it's a good site for selling things or looking for an apartment or something. but i also think it's kind of dangerous. i'm a bit of an overly anxious person anyway but i dont think the personal parts of craigslist are a good idea, very dangerous. especially since that whole craigslist killer came around. craigslist shouldn't be used for personal ads and things of that nature. that kind of turns me off to everything on that website. even this link:

http://longisland.craigslist.org/rid/1124894883.html

it says:
going to Albany to see the dead. Have an extra ticket and empty passenger seat. Will return after the show. Or if you have an extra seat I'd like to ride along.

does this seem dangerous to anyone else? how is this differentwho would get in the car with a stranger! c'mon!

but for things like this:
http://longisland.craigslist.org/msg/1137031112.html

a free piano if you pick it up! that's great, but you'll probably have to get it worked on. so for things like this i think craigslist is good.

Google Docs

i have used googledocs before, mostly Excel, for the battle of the books in the summertime at my full time job. i think it's a great idea because i can access my spreadsheets from anywhere and any computer. i don't need to email it to myself or worry about which copy is the most up to date (the one on my computer, email, or flashdrive?) plus, sometimes a few librarians are working on the spreadsheet together and so it works out well.

i don't think googledocs will replace microsoft office, but it's nice to have in addition to it. i use it a little differently.

What’s a Wiki?

I went to the PALS wiki and it was very instructional. i clicked into a bunch of different links but i didn't find anything useful to me.

I did like SJCPL Subject guides. I found the information they had on their more useful to everyday people, not just librarians. For example, the differences between a biography, autobiograhy, memoir, and journal. I looked under the subject of cooking and I thought it was helpful that they linked into different magazines like vegetarian times and books about cooking careers.

Overall, i like Book Lovers Wiki. i don't feel like there's a lot of information in there. but i like the links to the different books and i enjoy reading people's reviews. i got a lot of ideas about books that i would like to read by browsing this site. i'll probably use it some more today to see what else is on it.

I think a library wiki is a good idea and gets the community more involved in an active way, than just using the library's website or facebook or myspace pages. maybe an application that allows patrons to discuss programs that we've had or programs that they would like to see at the library might bring in more people.

finding new feeds

i went to bloglines and searched 'susan boyle' since she's all over the news this past week. and i found a clip of her singing 'my heart will go on' on CNN's larry king live. i also saw a clip from jimmy fallon's show that was really funny. at first i didn't see what the difference is between this website and google so i did a 'susan boyle' search on google and i did come up with different hits. i didn't see the jimmy fallon one. it's a good idea to be able to search blogs, but i just would never search blogs. i don't read blogs, i don't write blogs (except this one) and so i'll probably just forget about this website.

i played around on technorati, and again i will never use this site again. aside from me never being able to remember the name of it, i just have no use for searching blogs. i even looked up the top 100 blogs and saw nothing that interests me. when i used the search tool and typed in 'susan boyle' for lack of having anything else to search for, i was getting hits in spanish. i wasn't looking for hits in spanish. shouldn't it just default to english since it's a .com? i looked thru the entertainment tab and didn't see anything featured that interests me. i'll just stick to msn's news and entertainment feature. i'll never forget how to spell msn as opposed to technowhatever.

i skipped google reader rss feeds because i found that site to be so user unfriendly.

i looked at syndic8 and it's homepage is so unappealing that i couldn't even look thru it. i tried clicking into things but honestly, nothing made sense or it took to long to go to the next page. when it finally went to the tab 'news' it had information on restaruant franchises and christian info. i mean, what do i need this for again? it seems i just have to keep clicking into things before i might find something useful. who has time for this?

yet another negative bloggie blog blog!

discovering feeds in catalog

i didn't like the rss feed from google reader but i like the one on the library's website. this i'm more likely to use. i found the other one so confusing and frustrating. but this is all there in front of me and that's what i'm interested in: new books available, new dvds available, some newssites, etc...one of the things parents ask for is new dvds for kids. and we never really had a list, but this makes it so easy. the feeds on the catalog are all the popular news sites so i think that's great for easy access. it did take me a longer time to find the rss feeds on the catalog though. i knew they were there i just forgot where to get them thru. i couldn't find a way on the homepage to access the catalog feeds and was surprised they weren't there under the rss feeds link, that was just the library related materials.

i think that younger patrons will like the feeds for the most part. but the older ones may not be so open to this newer technology. it really does get confusing. also, i have very specific websites that i go to, and so i'm more likely to just have it under my favorites or type it into the browser. going to the library's website is just an added step that seems unnecessary.

RSS feed

Since i have a google gmail account i started to put together my google reader. and i find it very confusing. i'm not really sure how to find newsites. i clicked on a bundle to subscribe to but didn't want the entire bundle so it took me a little while to figure out how to delete it. the look of google reader is pretty boring. i like going to my specific newsites, i know where i'm going once i'm on that newsite: entertainment, health, local news....i thought google reader would be something that i'd use. but i doubt it. i'll play around with it and hopefully my mind will change.

i noticed that you can stay connected with myspace but not facebook. that needs to change. most people are dropping their myspace accounts in favor of facebook.

also, since gmail often has 'technical' problems, google reader seems to be having some as well and it just gets stuck.

Suffolkwave

Thursday, i attempted to download "A Bear Called Paddington"by Michael Bond while i was working at Mastic. Everything was very simple and step-by-step, but i guess the computer station i was on didn't have the newest version of the media needed to download it. So i waited until I went home and did it on my own computer. It's very simple and a great way to get titles that may otherwise be checked out. I'm not big into listening to books anyway, due to a very short attention span and because i'm a visual person and need to see the words in front of me. So if i were do download books they'd have to be children's and very short. but i know a lot of people that would get great use of this.

Flickr

While exploring flickr, i found a link to photos of only dogs on roofs. while i can't help but think this is dangerous, it let me to a picture that i liked:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jhirsch/145290669/

i'm a sucker for anything animal related.

Flickr's interesting. i like the use of tag clouds to find similar photos.

YouTube

i love the sesame street, cookie monster at the library video. sometimes i feel like that exasperated puppet-librarian!



i do love youtube, i think it's great. i don't use it often because i just don't have the time. but often people will send me links of funny video's and i'll watch it and than i'll use the side where it says 'related links'. i'm a sucker for anything animal related. my favorite video to rewatch is 'christian the lion'. it's a real tearjerker. here's the link, but i'm sure most people have seen it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVNTdWbVBgc

another favorite is the ninja cat:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muLIPWjks_M

another favorite, sans animals is the aicha song. you can feel his heart breaking while he's singing on his minnie mouse sheets...and when he starts breaking out his dance moves...there's no stopping him:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPbJmLPhsmI

i like this site because it's easy to use and it recommends related videos. i can see youtube being useful to the library. i actually read an article about booktalking on video and posting it on youtube. i looked it up online and found that scholastic booktalks some books, like 'chasing vermeer'. this would be a great way to take advantage of this technology. librarians can booktalk and post it on the children's website and 'feature' a different book each week. i also know that patchogue library's ya librarian, brian, uses youtube to post silly videos of him talking about that week's programs. he did this last summer, so it might just be a summer thing. one of his video's had 101 views and another had 90-something. it could be brian just watching it over and over, but i doubt it.

LibraryThing

ok, so i started a librarything page about 2 years ago and am surprised i remembered my username and password. i remember thinking, 2 years ago, that i would soooo keep this up. i mean, it's a great way to keep a list of everything you read, right? right! well, it's just too much work to keep an online record of everything i read. i have since started a shelfari and goodreads and those, if they were literal bookshelves, are all gathering dust as well.

i'm a simple girl and not into much online blogging or anything of this nature. i keep a notebook with a list of every book i read and a separate notebook with all the children's and ya books i read. so when i'm at work and get asked a reader's advisory question or something of that nature, i take out my notebooks and carry it into the stacks with me to help a person. this has worked for me for 3 years. what i can't do, is take my computer into the stacks and look up librarything when i want to remember a book i read in the past to recommend to someone.

i guess you could use it to keep up with what everyone else is reading, but i just am not really interested. if someone tells me they read a great book, i'll write it on another list of books to read. maybe i have too many lists, but it works for me. i need to see something in front of me, something tangible. i also wouldn't use the tag cloud to find other books or similar books. as a librarian, constantly reading reviews or cataloging, i come across so many books and that is usually how i pick my next read.

delicious

ok, i read a few other blogs and i can't tell how the majority of people feel yet about delicious. I went thru it and had a really difficult time figuring it out. i tried to leave a tag, but couldn't. though i was able to make a comment (i think it was a comment) regarding one of the bookmarks for the website etsy. i'm not sure if we were supposed to even do this, i just couldn't figure out what else to do on the site. i was the one who commented that it's a great site to buy unique jewelry. lots of one-of-a-kind, handmade items in there.

after reviewing delicious, i don't know when i would ever use it or why. i can't see how it would help me being a librarian and i don't know of anyone that uses so no one is going to convince me to use it. actually, after furthor thought, i can see how it might be useful, though i probably won't use it. i am a part time librarian at mastic while i work full time at another library and bookmarking the sites that i use the most is kind of cool. i often forget some good sites and i'm always using different computer stations between the 2 jobs.

i'm glad that i played around on it because now i know of another form of communication that i won't be able to keep up with, but i might try.

myspace & facebook

Trying to keep up with today's technology, i already i have a myspace and facebook profile. I started my myspace in 2005 and succumbed to facebook this past fall. i never use myspace anymore, it's so in the past. There aren't as many users on myspace and i have found more friends from my past on facebook. it seems that facebook is also an older crowd of users and it seems that there are less shady people you have to watch out for.



The library has 118 fans on facebook. it has a lot of helpful info on the site for the fans of the library page.

the library myspace page also has helful info on its site. 2 interesting elements are the shelfari and the ask a librarian link.

though i'm considering canceling my myspace account because i go on it once every few months, it has reaquainted me with a few friends, one from high school in particular who became a good friend again. I'm glad i had a myspace but it's time to probably say goodbye. I'm a fan of facebook. i have also become reaquainted with good friends from the past thru it so i'm glad i joined, though i was reluctant for awhile. there are more people on facebook. it seems more people friendly. these social networking sites really allow you to connect with people, some that you may have forgotten about from your past, or just stay connected with more people that you just don't have time to call or email often.

Twitter? Twhat's the point?

I just opened a twitter account and i just don't see any reason to have one. It was very confusing and i don't have too many friends on there. So i'm only 'following' 5 people. and it doesn't seem as though they use it either. some of their last updates were in august.

I just don't see myself ever using twitter to go there to update my status. why does everyone have to know what i'm doing all the time anyway? Do my friends really need to know I'm sitting at the reference desk? or that i'm tired...again. We have no privacy anymore as it is and i've decided to keep my exhaustion and hunger pangs private.

I'll get off my soapbox now.

Firsts

This is my first blog ever. Remember the date, Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 1:11pm. Make a wish. A wish that i keep up with this blog.