In the spirit of this week's exercise, today I have been so productive that I not only made it to the Council Staff Xmas Gathering at Frog's Hollow, shelved, did tea relief, emptied the dishwasher, did a spot of weeding and answered a very tricky reference question regarding a vaguely recollected line of a poem (thanks to Google, my Dad and a somewhat unorthodox use of search terms) but I also made it through 3 whole exercises (- just don't test me on them next week).
I have just spent 10 minutes 'pimping' (and then 'depimping') my Google page. I think I will just end up removing the 8 widgets (am I using this term correctly? - or are they applications or something else?). It all seems a bit distracting (a bit like Pimped Japanese Trucks - http://damncoolpics.blogspot.com/2006/12/pimped-japanese-trucks.html) but so very easy to use. I have also taken my own advice (which was no doubt someone else's advice) and done the exercise in FireFox.
And what have I learned? That the next time I need to convert a document I can try Zamzar (I usually try one of a number of free online tools depending on the day of the week) and that I could recommend it to people trying to view attachments sent to them via email that are docx (until we upgrade). That everytime I open up FireFox I can read all the Learning 2.0 blogs (as I've subscribed to them all and now Google Reader has added them to my browser page). That after doing 8 exercises I'm still unsure what to call things, and finally, that it is now time for me to go home and rest my noggin in order to get through the next 2 weeks activities.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Week 7: Tagging, Technorati and del.icio.us
I have to admit I kind of raced through this one (maybe spent 45 minutes). As someone who did their degree in the last 10 years, I am quite familiar with the concept of tagging and metadata etc. I can understand it's uses and actually think the library catalogue receiving feeds from LibraryThing is quite a good development (from a Readers Advisory perspective). Yes, AquaBrowser (and other products/resources) might be more spectacular, but I find the ability to let library patrons do their own 'if you liked this, try this' quite helpful (and they usually think it's pretty good too) - most especially because it's only linking off to other items in the library catalogue (I think our collection is big enough to do this - smaller libraries and library services might not be well-served by this).
I could go on with del.icio.us but I've never found it personally helpful and really struggled with my browser over this (n.b. I will try the next weeks activities with FireFox - like I think I should've already been doing). I'm also not one for tagging (but I'll try to tag this) - possibly pretty shameful for a librarian/information manager but I'm being honest. I also struggled with Technorati but only because it seemed pretty unspectacular to me (and when I have a reaction like that I always wonder if it's because I failed to grasp/see the concept). This is why it would've been good to participate in Learning 2.0 as a group, rather than as a lone librarian on a friday afternoon (when I think I should be out weeding the 920's), but it just didn't work out that way. Maybe for Learning 4.12...
I could go on with del.icio.us but I've never found it personally helpful and really struggled with my browser over this (n.b. I will try the next weeks activities with FireFox - like I think I should've already been doing). I'm also not one for tagging (but I'll try to tag this) - possibly pretty shameful for a librarian/information manager but I'm being honest. I also struggled with Technorati but only because it seemed pretty unspectacular to me (and when I have a reaction like that I always wonder if it's because I failed to grasp/see the concept). This is why it would've been good to participate in Learning 2.0 as a group, rather than as a lone librarian on a friday afternoon (when I think I should be out weeding the 920's), but it just didn't work out that way. Maybe for Learning 4.12...
Week 6: Fun Stuff
Wow - I finally have some time to finish week 6 (I think this is my 3rd week of week 6 - but it's a lot more fun than my 3rd year of 3rd year of Uni but that's another story).
I know I had all these intelligent things to say after spending a wonderful 15 minutes stumbling upon random web pages (and they were random - I think that I ticked that I was interested in just about everything). One of the pages was an incredible find (for me) as it allows you to upload an image and divide it into smaller ones for printing - something of great use for the library and our current printing resources (http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1yWuJy/www.blockposters.com/). I was quite happy to find something on the Internet that kept me interested for longer than 5 minutes. I don't think that I'm easily bored - I think that I often limit myself to various sites on the Internet rather than taking the time to explore (perhaps this is a bit like going to the library and only looking at the DVD's and perhaps going home empty handed because you've already seen the ones you want to see).
I keep finding that Learning 2.0 is making me interact with websites that I knew about but didn't bother (for whatever reason - though I've probably gone into why in various previous ramblings/posts.) Again, I'm having trouble viewing some of the pages/resources due to IT shortcomings but I think the basic idea is to interact with what you can and possibly keep the others in mind for when some very distant relative leaves me a fortune and I finally buy a computer (by which time of course, the Internet will have moved on - Web 67.5 anyone?). I can't say that I can totally understand what Rollyo is doing - at the moment I'm wondering if it is to help you create directories and then search them (yes, I know that there is a description but I need to understand this in my own way) - I think I may have a look through other blogs and see whether anyone else has had anything to say about it.
I know I had all these intelligent things to say after spending a wonderful 15 minutes stumbling upon random web pages (and they were random - I think that I ticked that I was interested in just about everything). One of the pages was an incredible find (for me) as it allows you to upload an image and divide it into smaller ones for printing - something of great use for the library and our current printing resources (http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1yWuJy/www.blockposters.com/). I was quite happy to find something on the Internet that kept me interested for longer than 5 minutes. I don't think that I'm easily bored - I think that I often limit myself to various sites on the Internet rather than taking the time to explore (perhaps this is a bit like going to the library and only looking at the DVD's and perhaps going home empty handed because you've already seen the ones you want to see).
I keep finding that Learning 2.0 is making me interact with websites that I knew about but didn't bother (for whatever reason - though I've probably gone into why in various previous ramblings/posts.) Again, I'm having trouble viewing some of the pages/resources due to IT shortcomings but I think the basic idea is to interact with what you can and possibly keep the others in mind for when some very distant relative leaves me a fortune and I finally buy a computer (by which time of course, the Internet will have moved on - Web 67.5 anyone?). I can't say that I can totally understand what Rollyo is doing - at the moment I'm wondering if it is to help you create directories and then search them (yes, I know that there is a description but I need to understand this in my own way) - I think I may have a look through other blogs and see whether anyone else has had anything to say about it.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)