Monday, October 29, 2007

Yay for podcasts!

Here's my favorite new technology - podcasts! I was completely uninterested in these for the longest time until I got an ipod this past summer and started downloading songs from itunes. After suffering sticker shock (who'd have thought that that short list of songs in my shopping cart could add up to $40?!?) I discovered podcasts.

Who could say no to free audiobooks??

I know, they're not as good as audiobooks. And I still get my fill of those from the library. But in the meantime, when my holds are all still waaaay down in the queue, I can listed to podcasts. Here's my current list of favorites:

  • Amazon Music You Should Hear - 2 free [complete] songs that aren't being played by top 40 radio stations
  • Amazon Wire - brief but interesting interviews with the people who make movies, music, and books
  • Bon Appetit audio podcast - 15 minutes or so of new food trends, restaurants, or cooking tips & entertaining ideas
  • KEXP Song of the Day - similar to the amazon one, sometimes local artists too
  • NPR: Fresh Air - the radio show minus commercials, current events, notable people, and arts in great interviews
  • SModcast - Kevin Smith & his producer buddy Scott Mosier rambling about nothin' much and definitely nothing worthwhile... ;)

I'm sure most, if not all, of these are available to non-itunes users with a google search. Usually you can listen to them free directly from the websites. Have fun!

And so ends my 6-hour day trying to catch up on the past 3 weeks of 2.0-ing. Whew!

Week 4 & RSS

I think I'm one of many who had nooooo idea what RSS was before this. I'd seen that little orange square before but never took the time to figure it all out. It's actually kind of neat! I've already added a bunch of feeds onto my bloglines account. This would save me some time (I hope!) - that growing blogroll on the krl2.0 site was starting to overwhelm me - and I could never remember what the names were of the blogs I liked to read and check in on. Now, it's just like they've delivered any new posts into my bloglines account. Only thing is, I wish that the current ones would stay there ever after you've clicked on them (like email). As I discovered, once you've supposedly read the new posts, the link becomes inactive unless you change to search parameters to display older items. Oh well. I'm not really sure that I'll actually take the time to log onto bloglines and check these. Or even whether that would save me any of that precious free time in the long run... But it's good to know it's out there. And I like how now I can read Unshelved here and not have it clogging up my inbox!

Tagging

Tagging can be a little addicting, I will admit. I can think of a few ways in which I might find del.icio.us helpful for my own personal use. One of the links on the krl2pt0 page (I read so many that I can't remember which one anymore!) suggested that it would be a way to sort cooking links and recipes. Ping! My lightbulb turned on. I've always saved bookmarks for recipes and knitting patterns and other useless things into countless folders and then can never find them again. Being able to search for the one I want or create multiple tags (rather than having to categorize a webpage into one folder or another) seems to be really useful.

I didn't even realize it before that point, but I'd already been using tags to help sort some of my emails in my gmail account - like when I was a bridesmaid last summer and the bride kept sending us daily updates. I didn't want to save them all in my inbox but I was able to apply a tag to each email and then see them all quickly if I ever needed to from my saved folder. Pretty cool!

But, in my initial impressions, I'm not so sure how this would play into my work life at KRL. I think maybe reference queries might get some help from using del.icio.us to quickly sort through websites or articles on a topic, since they display a measure of "popularity". But at the circ desk?? I'm not sold yet as to how this would help. I suppose, as the video tutorial suggested, allowing patrons to create tags on our library catalog might help to find some of the items that are currently available using only library lingo (eg. "cookery" rather than "cookbooks"). But I'm not sure we're quite at that level yet.

Anyhoo - I've tagged a few random sites that I tend to visit most often, or that I would visit if I had some time to waste... Check them out - maybe you'll find a few to tag yourself!
http://del.icio.us/betsyc

PS - I'm not sure I really like del.icio.us itself. The site seems really hard to navigate and its visual style makes the links I'm searching for hard to find. Has anyone else encountered this? Or maybe I just haven't gotten used to it yet.

Monday, October 15, 2007

43 Things/20 Reasons thoughts...

At first, the article "43 Things I might want to do this year" seemed right up my alley. I am a lifelong list-maker, but I've never really tried applying that practice to my job or goals. After reading that article, though, I wasn't so impressed. It didn't really do much to convince me how learning new online techniques would help other than to enforce a practice of life-long learning. While I agree that this is a good thing to be, I'd rather pick more tangible things to learn, like a foreign language or to pick up a skill that could help me get away from the computer I stand behind 8 hours a day at work. Plus, there's just something about sharing my goals with thousands of strangers on an online forum that just makes me uncomfortable.

The "20 Reasons why learning emerging technologies is part of every librarian's job" went much further to win me over. It helped me to grasp some tangible reasons why this krl2.0 program might actually help. I think that being better able to help our patrons who are using these technologies is probably where it's at for me. I like the point the author makes of how experimenting with new programs (like Solitaire in early Windows) help you to become familiar with operations that might turn up in other programs. Also #19 - "Crowds are fickle". This is what I feel whenever I'm faced with downloading a new operating system or with friends begging me to sign up for myspace. I just wonder, how long will this be the fad before everyone moves on to the next big thing?? But I guess now at least I can say I'm familiar with last year's big thing and just try to keep up as best I can.

[I especially liked #13 - "So we can tell the IT dept what we want" - definitely a weak point for many of us library workers, I think!!]

Saturday, October 13, 2007

We are not alone

One thing that caught my attention was the link to the google map of other libraries which have gone through the 2.0 program (found on KRL's 2.0 homepage). Turns out the WWU library I used to work at participated in this over the summer. I had fun surfing around on their site and reading some of their comments about it.


Want to see a pic of my former co-workers at WWU library? Here's their URL: http://lib202.lib.wwu.edu/drupaled/ I have to say, KRL's 2.0 website is a lot more attractive looking in comparison. Kudos to our graphic designers and IT teams who worked on it!!


PS - I forgot to leave an explanation of my blog name on my first post! It translates to "My brain hurts" in Indonesian. ;)

Hello to all you 2.0-ers!

I have to agree with my fellow KRL bloggers that just trying to name my blog and write a bio turned out to be the hardest part!

I have to admit, I am feeling a bit reluctant to get going on this 2.0 project because it reminds me so much of homework! The courses I disliked the most in college were the ones that required me to visit the instructor's website, read a series of articles, and post my responses to online message boards... Regardless, I'm keeping an open mind. The "7 1/2 Habits of ... Lifelong Learners" podcast probably just what I need.

Well, I'll keep you all "posted" on how this goes. (Ha ha ha, sorry for the bad pun - I couldn't help myself.)