Wrap Up

I started this process feeling pretty good about learning all the new things to better understand our patrons and what they were doing, but along the way things seemed to get tougher and more difficult. As one of the 7 1/2 habits -- had a hard time finding the time to do the sessions. It got to the point where I was doing it at home on my weekends. I did get frustrated and wanted to quit, but thanks to the great help of my fellow librarians here Hannah and Kim -- I got through it. I understand some of the things and others are still kind of cloudy. I will try to keep my Blog up to date -- just depends on what is all going on. I do feel the things we have learned and I have learned on here would benefit the library and our patrons. What we could do, how we could do it and who would do it -- would be the questions we would have to ask ourselves on doing any of this for the library. I am glad that I took the challenge and hope there would be new stuff we can learn and keep up to date on also. It was very interesting to see what others in my library had done with all of their blogs and I also learned from them on what they all had posted on their blogs. I can now say I am glad to be done with this and just do refresher courses to keep my knowledge fresh and glad that I did do it!! Thanks everyone!!

Wikis

This was kind of interesting to see the different examples that were provided. I can see how this would be beneficial to libraries to let patrons know about new things being offered at their library, new matierials and those have different classes that patrons can take. The one about the Rapid City flood was very interesting to know -- I didn't know they had a really bad flood way back then. I know personally how floods can affect a person and a community being from Browns Valley, MN. I had never done Wikis before and I think this was interesting.

Bookmarks

Wow there are a lot of sites people have bookmarked for their uses. I found one that many people had used and found it kind of interesting -- it was how to take your handwriting and make your own font on it that you can use. That would be kind of interesting to do, there would be so many different fonts out there to use.

google doc's

I hope I did this right -- here is the address for my document -- http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AgNxK3Ekl_sJdHEyUk03dERKN1cxMUY0ZVBWNVRhYWc&hl=en

I ended up making a spreadsheet -- that we could use for signing up the kids for our different programs. I tried to do numerous different scrapbook ones and for some reason none of my pics would download on the program. Not sure what was going wrong. If this works it works if not -- oh well.

MySpace and Facebook

I am a facebook and myspace fanatic -- I am on both of my sites at all times!! On facebook it started with a few friends and some of my family, after awhile it grew bigger to where I was adding old HS classmates, NSU classmates, Mt. Marty in Wtn classmates, co-workers from different jobs and then family -- from cousins to aunts to uncles to even my own mother!! I think I am up to over 130 friends now. I do many of the different games and quizzes that facebook provides, some of the quizzes are really funny and others have me thinking sometimes. I have 8 albums of pictures on there from my different concerts that I have gone to and some family photos also.

With myspace, I had a page set up years ago and didn't do anything with it until recently. I had a friend of mine that has myspace to help me with my page and get set up. It looks really nice now and still trying to work on adding some other things to it. I even met a new friend through myspace. I only have 5 people on that account as friends, probably not going to add anymore to that one.

These two programs can be very addicting!! I am proof of that!! :)

Podcast

http://www1.pacific.edu/~kcraig/country.xml

Since I love country music and that is all that I ever talk about I found a podcast country music chat where they speak with the singers about different things. Should be interesting.

YouTube video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3ZHPJT2Kp4

This is a YouTube video of Cookie Monster at the Library. I loved Sesame Street as a kid and all the characters. Cookie Monster, Snuffy and Oscar the Grouch were my favorites!

Frustrated

I am going to have to see if someone in my library can actually sit down one day and spend time with me to show me how to use these different things. I read the material at home, since I don't have the allowed time to do it at work, can somewhat understand it, but find it hard to do. Not sure about what to do anymore -- getting frustrated and don't like that feeling.

Trading Card

I was able to do a trading card thanks to Hannah's help!!! Thanks to her for helping me get caught up and understanding!

Flickr picture

Browns Valley, Minnesota
Originally uploaded by Frank A. Duck

This is where my library exprience all started way back when......my mom was the head director here and I would help out whenever. This is the Carnegie Public Library located in Browns Valley, MN. This is my home town. The building is no longer in use -- dangerous. The children's room was located in the basement. I spent numerous hours in the library. We ended up building a new library and I also worked there for my mom. I loved the library as a kid and still do.

It is sad to see a historical building sitting empty but what do you do with something that is unstable. It is still standing in town if ever want to see it.

Flicker

I have read everything for how to do Flicker, I understand it -- somehow I can't make it work for me. I went into Flicker and got an account and not sure how to post a picture from there that I found to my blog. This is starting to get harder and harder, not sure if want to continue with the course. Bad enough there isn't time at work to do this, that I have to do it at home during the weekend and it is frustrating!!! Not sure what I am going to do.....

RSS

I kind of like the idea of being able to get information when something new is posted versus always having to into an account to check for new updates/listings/postings. When going through the video and sites to look at how to do this one -- it got kind of confusing. I personally would only be using it for the blogs for this class, I won't set up for any other listings. I have so much going on now, don't need to add more I would never get anything done. I think it is a good and usual tool for the technology world and for those who like to keep up to the minute on many different sites.

Twitter

I have mixed feelings about Twittering -- to me it is just a way for people to tell everyone what they are doing and to me it is kind of boring. To be able to go in and read about someone doing their laundry, what they are eating, where they are shopping and so forth is pointless. I think it would benefit libraries to use it when it comes to new books, new movies or anything like that, patrons can express their opinions and feelings on the material so others know if it was good/bad/okay and if want to check it out or not. It would be interesting to see what the different patrons would put. I personally do not have a Twitter account and probably won't. With Twittering we get away from having the one on one contact with people. Sometimes there are people that take their Twittering a little too far and get really personal -- that is something some people don't need to know about. If people want to do it then it is fine with me, I am not criticizing it, just not interested in doing it.

7 1/2 habits

When going through the 7 1/2 habits there were some I feel are harder than others. We all should accept responsibility for our own learning, whether is is for work, home or anything else. I always seem to view problems as a challenge, sometimes for me that can be good or bad. I sometimes have a hard time dealing with some problems and I need to learn to better at how to handle them and the situations that arise. With having confidence in learning, I am terrible at that. I tend to have very low confidence in myself, I need to learn to be more confident. I am very hard on myself and not sure why. Technology today is changing so much, I remember with being in school computers were used to play Oregon Trail, that is what we had for a "computer class". High school we didn't have any computer classes, what I learned is from what I took in college. I would say I am technology challenged. I got an MP3 player for Christmas and I still haven't used it, I don't know how to use it or how to download anything on to it. Sometimes I laugh about it thinking the reason I don't know how to is because I am blond or old. Those are just funny excuses. I want to learn how to stay update on and with technology and then it will be easy to teach and mentor others on how to do it. But need more time to learn, there doesn't seem to be enough time in a day, week or even in a month to do things half the time. But we all need to learn to make the time!

My first blog! :) 7/6/09

This is my first time doing a blog and it wasn't that hard once I got help. I did have to ask questions. I can't believe how much technology has changed, I am not that old and I still don't understand some of the things. This will be a challenge for me and a great learning experience!! I am looking forward to learning all the new things evolving around technology.