Monday, June 25, 2007

Exercise 13 Delicious

Here is my Delicious cloud:



I have used Delicious for quite some time and I really enjoy using it for research needs - just to get some ideas. I think I have posted about this before.

As for tagging, we spent some time with this topic when I attended library school. In fact, in my cataloging class, we did not even talk about MARC records - we only used Dublin Core. Thanks to some good training by my fellow library workers, I did learn about cataloging with MARC records. I have also done some research on using student tagged records in an academic library setting and while I wonder how the catalog would maintain its full integrity, I think using these types of tags would certainly provide some insight into word usage and why students often fail to find what they are seeking.

Library Cat

Friday, June 15, 2007

Exercise 11: Library Thing Revisited

Finally LibraryThing was repaired and back up for adding books. I am so glad, because I absolutely LOVE it. Rather than just add a post here about it, I added a list to my blog. The social functionality is particularly appealing to me. When I went to library school, we used to 'recommended" function in Amazon to think about classifications of books. This is the same type of application.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I am.
Cat

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Exercise 12: Rollyo

Here is my search - for cheats for XBox 360.


I must admit that I did not care for this product. I think that it might have some good applications, but not for me! One application I thought about would be for a teacher to create a search for students to use - limited to valid and appropriate sites.

Cat

Exercise 11: Library Thing

Unfortunately Library Thing has been down this week and therefore I have not had the opportunity to have a new experience with this play toy. I can tell you that people are quite passionate about it if the comments about the downtime are any indication - when last I checked there were over 200 comments and two songs posted about the situation.

Fortunately I have been to the site before and I know the basics. I think the social aspects of the site are phenomenal with reading groups and other online activities. Linking out to specific selling communities is also good. I am sure that there are many uses for this in a library setting but one that comes to mind is a reading list for a specific class. People could have the link to the list and comment on the readings. I think that would work as well as other things which people have tried to use for this purpose.

While waiting, I searched about and found this site Bookmooch, which looks like it would be perfect for a voracious reader who does not horde books or work in a library where books are readily available for tasting before purchase. At any rate, I am going to look around the house and see if there are any not-so-dear books that I can bear to part with and sign them up!

Anyway, I am going to move on to the next exercise but plan to keep checking library thing because it is the perfect nerd activity!

Waiting,
Cat

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Exercise 10: Generators continued



Others have talked about how much fun this exercise was and now I know why. While most of the templates seem to be geared toward children, I have seen some of the images created by other participants that look wonderful and are geared toward patrons. I had to fess up to my latest addiction - which is guitar hero. My husband, kids and I play this game quite a bit. I will try to put up some sort of crazy video later if I can manage it.

Now back to Image Chef to see what more I can create today. OK - this is not really work related, but I had to do it. Precious little kitten! Anyway, it could have said Food and Drinks Allowed...which is a sign that I would post on the door for our patrons.
So for now, I am done for the day (at least with generators).

Cat




Exercise 10: Generators



I was inspired by other magazine covers created by PLAN participants. So I was very excited to get to this Exercise. The photo is one of my favorites from Flickr and if there was a library there, I would go!

I think I will reserve comment on this particular generator until I try a few of the others listed.

Cat


Monday, June 4, 2007

Exercise 8 & 9: RSS and Bloglines

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Exercise 7: Technology

I know that it is coming up in another exercies, but I just wanted to say how much I love Delicious. I use it as a starting point for almost every personal knowledge question that I have. I mean, why should I go through a zillion Google articles when someone else has already done that and selected their top 5? And the next person has done the same. So, I know that I might miss out on that perfect article, but I really use Delicious mainly for a starting off point.

For example, I love to write in books - my personal ones of course. My favorite book to look back and read my notes from is:


I absolutely loved this book and have written in almost every margin - something I found humorous, astounding, or different from what I previously believed; or maybe just a little tidbit I wanted to hold close to mind. I spend a great deal of time on the internet and would love to have an electronic notebook that would serve somewhat the same purpose - a place to put notes on webpages I love (or hate), a reminder to check back for something, or even a what would so and so think. So thinking about this blog and what I might like to know about electronic folksonomies and beyond, I went to Delicious and here is the first article I looked at - voila! Exactly what I needed.

Seven apps for online note-taking : Mike Gunderloy reviews seven applications for posting notes etc in an online notebook. If you are interested, take a look. I for one am going with the Google notebook. Looks simple enough and I use Google for everything else, so why not?

Moral of this story: Between Google and Delicious you can find just about anything in the world.

Library Cat (off to take some notes)