Week 10 Thing 21 (Podcasts)

I used the search tools in Discovery to explore some podcasts. I loved being able to hear scientists talk about various aspects of physics, the ones about nature science, and then I ran out of exploration time. You could get a constant education by listening to various ones, or simply be entertained. You could download a bunch to a portable device and listen while you worked but that seems very time consuming since in the main, each one is fairly short.

I don't know about usefulness. I'll have to think about it. I was fairly thrilled that my username and passwords work without incident. I'm still trying to take that in.

See my updated Bloglines for Scientific American podcast.

Week 10 Thing 20 (You Tube)

After spending a highly enjoyable half hour just scratching the surface of You Tube I selected one to include on my website. It's from Rub Goldberg site, very nature oriented and fun to watch. I could spend weeks doing this.



As for Library applications, the use for children seem endless. Use it to keep the children's website interesting to kids. Put storytime on it. Use it in special programs as background stimulation or illustration.

It would work just as well for adult programing or advertising CCPL programs on our website.

I'm sure there are more but I have to think about this awhile. Wish I had highspeed at home.

Amazed and Appreciative

Week 10 Thing 14 (Technorati)

I'm trying to work with what I'm seeing more in the way the young and the experienced seem to; sort of glide by and form impressions and zero in where my interest is caught. Sort of like speed reading, which I was never good at only complicated by the fact that most of what I read is sprinkled with words which are not in my personal lexicon and often, even usually not in the dictionary. So it's sort of like trying to find one's way around a foreign city where you do not speak the language.

One thing I've learned is how my life and my interests have sidelined me from the popular culture.

I was not surprised that top blogs and searches were mostly in areas of pop culture and technology, both of which change very rapidly. I assume that most people using Technorati are people who would need it to keep up with rapidly changing fields and trends. What astounded me was how out of my depth I was. Is Castro missing? I didn't know. Boing Boing? What? Epidemicologists getting ideas from video a game called World of Warcraft of how pandemic infectious disease creates problems researchers might not have thought of? Oh my God!

At the time I am doing this search Technorati was having technical problems that made it a bit harder to navigate. I can't tell you how grateful I was for that.
Amazed and Boggled

Week 10 Thing 13 (Del.icio.us)

I understand that Del.icio.us is a social networking tool something like an online and shareable list of selected sites around a certain concept or subject. Sort of like a shareable My Favorites with an agenda.

For the person engaged in research it could lead to some valuable data. It would be like asking a dozen strangers who shared your interest what they knew about 'X' without actually having to go find those strangers or call them.

There is a sort of implied 'use at your own risk' as far as authenticating what you find. There is a kind of wildness to it I like. But I get the impression that to really use this tool for serious research you would want to devote forever to playing around with the never-ending findings. Personally, like most internet related stuff, it makes my head spin. But it could be interesting to use this for a variety of reasons if time were heavy on your hands. Or so it seems to
Amazed.

Week 10, Thing 12 (Rollyo)

This selected group of websites could come in very handy for helping patrons find the infomation they need regarding health issues. I am pleased to see some vehicle for putting together a cluster of websites.

I chose medical sites. The rollup saves me searching for odds and ends of information stored in several places while the poor, possibly sick, patron takes notes in front of the desk. This patron ask for information about dypepsia. Probably for her husband.

Amazed

http://rollyo.com/swolf/health_info/

Week 10, Thing 11 (Library Thing)

I discovered Library Thing through a friend earlier this spring. I have been keeping a Reading Log for about 6 years with the fantasy that it would help me with Reader's Advisory.

Fascinating as it was to look back over all those titles, which would otherwise have dropped irrevocably through some misfiring synapse, I found it increasingly unusable for spur of the moment advice to patrons because the information couldn't be sorted, there was no nice picture to help me with recall and the pages were starting to stick together.

I've so far entered only 133 titles which covers reading in 2002 but I plan on keeping up with this program. Time will tell if the electronic data is more accessable in a crunch, but I anticipate that it will be.

Amazed and Charmed

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/swolff

Week 10, Thing 10 (Images We'd Like To See Generated)

I played with several image generators. Some do not work well with dial up, which is what I'm using today. 'Letter James' produced the text customized photo. Driving at the rate of four miles per hour back from the beach I was generating mental images such as the one above.