Thing #8 -Share Your Creations

How do you like the Carousel I made with Picture Trail below? It was easy and fun ....so many choices to choose from. As usual, there a wealth of ideas amongst all of these tools to use on a library website.

I have not used any of the other tools and look forward to having some time to try them all. There are just so many and so little time....you could literally spend hours and hours learning and playing with each of them.

Carousel Picture Trail

Thing #7 - Communication - Web 2.0 tools

We have used email at our library for many years. I think using email to communicate with staff and co-workers that are not in my building is great. It is also usally more reliable than phone messages when trying to conduct other library business. I do, however, think it is used way too much to conduct communication with co-workers or staff that are 4 feet away from my cubicle. It becomes too easy to email and too hard to just walk 4 feet and talk to a person eye to eye. People say things in an email they would not dare say to your face.

I think using some of the Web 2.0 tools to conduct online reference would be great if you had enough staff to handle it and it you had set up parameters for its use. I can, however, see several of the reference staff from my library not being comfortable with it.

I currently do not use IM or SMS - never had the desire or the need for it, so far. I'm much more prefer the face to face or at least voice to voice communication. I'm sure that once I started using it, I would, however, find it as easy as email.

I took a look at an Opal program called Virtual Worlds for Kids, Tweens and Teens. I listened to about 10 minutes of the program. It included an audio presentation with slide presentations. The program was 60 minutes long. I don't know if I could have sat in front of my computer for 60 minutes just listening to someone talk without seeing an actual person. I think this type of web conferencing is great for extended learning (just want to know a little bit more about something). I've taken several computer training sessions via web conferencing and found them to be lacking to a live person.

Thing 6 - Online Image Generators

Yes, you certainly could spend a lot of time with each and every one of these image generators. The trading card ideas was cool, however, it took me a bit to upload an image. I tried several and found it would only take jpegs. Like all of these fun tools, time seems to be the big element. One has to decide if they have the time to use any of these image generators and if that time spent is worthwhile to what you are trying to achieve.



I would make sure that I had a clear cut goal or outcome for using any of these great tools. Don't just use them to use them...but have a purpose in mind.

Hope you like my Warholizer too!

I'm sure teens would especially love these

online image generators.

Thing #5 - More Flickr Fun

Boy, too much Flickr fun! I spent well over an hour playing with just two of the mashups. You see my Flickr puzzle to the left and my Spell with Flickr phrase just below my Avatar.

This really is addicting. Once you get the hang of it, it's not to hard. But if I don't do it on a regular basis - don't know how much I'll remember.

I could see lots of uses for many of these mashups (and where does the term mashups come from - or did I miss it in the article). However, I would have to think that it is really going to be worthwhile for my library, because it can be quite time consuming (or at least until you get the hang of it).

Thing #4 - Photosharing with Flickr

I have used Flickr at work and post photos for my library, so I am familiar with it. We use it to post photos from each of our libraries. The public can access the pictures from our webpage and it gives them an idea of all the things that are happening at our libraries. Sometimes the local newspapers don't always publish all the pictures we send them, and this is a good way to publicize the library.

I do not personally use a photo hosting service. I still perfer to have the photo in my hand. I may, perhaps start using one in the future so I have a "backup" copy in case I should lose the originals.

I decided to do option A since I have already uploaded photos at work, tagged and grouped them. Flickr is fun and simple to use.

Thing #3-RSS

I was totatlly unware that RSS even existed, let alone what it was. If you are someone that visits lots of web pages everyday to see what has just been posted on your favorite sites, this is a great way to save time. Instead of having to visit all the websites, you can simply add them to your Google Reader, Bloglines, etc. and have one stopping viewing at your finger tips.

If your library has a blog, a reader's advisory page, etc., that gets updated on a regular basis, this would be an excellent way of reaching the public and telling them what is going on at your library. The trick would be to teach your patrons about RSS and to make your library blog, etc. something they would want to subscribe to.

I found it diificult to find the correct blog address to add to my account. I could find blog names but not the url's I needed to add to my RSS account.

RSS is certainly a time-saving tool and fairly easy to use.