Christmas at the beach

Had a great Christmas Day

I had a great day with family on the ferry, seeing dolphins and at the beach

Week 10 Summary

This has been a challening and enlightening project for me. Overall, the things we learned from this should be helpful if a customer ever wants to know about them. I am one of the technically challenged at HCPL. It has been a huge learning curve for me and I would not have made it without the support of my fellow staff members who were patient with me.

Although most of our customers 40 years old and younger are very comfortable with computers, ipods, mp3 players etc. there is still a very large portion of our society that do not own a computer and are not willing to learn to use them until forced to do so to fill out a job application or sign up for Medicade D. These are the customers that we need to find a way to help. The free computer classes are wonderful but need to continue to advertise them and encourage computer shy customers to sign up. Classes on how to use our public catalog and databases are also very important steps in helping people get over their fear of computers.

Freeman has done some demonstrations over the past year on use of websites and databases and will have at least one more program with a special speaker from the National Network of LIbraries of Medicine to show us medical websites for consumers.

Hopefully we can use what we have learned to help our customers overcome their fear of computers or lack of desire to learn new technology.


Here are a few of my thoughts on the specific projects:

Sitting up a blog was a good experience for me, allowing me to experience and understand what my family has already done. I have plans to work on my photo albums and make a put together a family video with some of them to share with family in other states.

The RSS & Newsreaders are my favorite. It brought many of my informational sites together so I can see them quickly and easily.

Playweek was the easiest for me. Librarything is a work in progress and one I plan on sharing with friends. Library Elf would be useful if I had to keep track of cards other than my own. I find all the e-mail annoying so will probably let it go in the future.

Tagging & Technorati was intresting but not as much fun as Librarything. The tagging does make it easy for people to make their information easily available to everyone.

Wikis are interesting and there are so many ways to use them that every group should be able to find something to fit their need.

Social Networking and Avitars is great for those who like it but I prefer my conversations and discussions on a personal level where I choose who is listening and who isn't. I know it can be done but too often, words, thoughts and conversations put into e-mails or posted on websites end up in places you would never have thought they would go. It was good to learn how to do the avitars but it is really not my idea of fun.

As we meet the future I will try to remain flexable enough to learn the next generation of technology.

Week 9 #21 Downloadable Media

I have downloaded books and videos from HCPL's digital media site. I downloaded a video to my laptop and was able to connect it to my television so we saw it on a larger screen which was nice.

Librivox has several authors that would be intresting to listen to but I would prefer to search their site by genre as well as author and title.

Wowio is a site that will be useful to me personally and a place to tell customers to look when some of our classic titles such as The Hound of the Baskervilles are all checked out. It does allow genere searching as well as author, title searching. Go to http://www.wowio.com/index.asp to find a title.

Week 9 #21 Podcasts

After looking at itunes, yahoo and podcast.com I decided that I really like podcast.com the best. Deciding what to add to my bloglines wasn't too hard. NPR has "Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac" and NPR's "All Things Considered". These are podcasts I might stop and listen to. Learning about podcasting let me share information and help my husband improve his podcast. I really think podcasting is becoming so common that everyone will be able to hear whatever they want whenever they want.

Week 9 #20 video Beach at Surfside TX

I watched the videos and will try to make one of my own when I have access to the photos I want to use. I browsed Google and YouTube and found many interesting videos, especially the beach and other outdoor scenes.



If you cannot view the video, click here .

Week 8 #19 Web based apps

I have been using Google for a year or so now. I use it for many things; my favorite is the calendar because it reminds me about appointments and events on my schedule each day. I also use the documents, the spreadsheets and Picasa photos. My current project is scanning in old family photos like the one in an earlier post to preserve them since the photographs will not last forever and some have already deteriorated.

I tried to set up a social net work but the group I was working with couldn't seem to get the hang of it. I think they were uncomfortable with registering online. I would like to set up one with my family and will try one day.

The main reason I use Google is that it is a web based application and I am not as likely to lose my work (photos and spreadsheets) as I would be if things were only on my hard drive or disc. As we know natural disasters do happen and we are in a place where they often happen.

Week 8 # 12 Social Networking

Both of the videos were good. The board demo was very informational and explains social networks very well. The animal video was very descriptive and cute.

I have seen Facebook, My Space and feel that these are too public for my comfort. I prefer a quieter type of place for myself when I want to post.

I have been registered at http://www.naznet.com/ since about 1996. This is a family friendly site with several areas including a teen forum and a women's forum along with the general forums. Here you can find discussions on theology, sports, politics, family trips and support when problems arise in your life. I am a "lurker' rather than a poster but feel that I know many of the people that post as well or better than I know my next door neighbors. I know about their children and grandchildren as well as where they went on vacation last year. Since my husband posts here they know all these things about me and my family as well.

Week 7 #17 Technology and the real world

The Reference Librarian workshop 10/26/07 - "Consumer Health Information at Your Library" was excellent. It is also my idea of technology at at its best. We looked at MedlinePlus http://medlineplus.gov/ as well as several other websites. Many of these sites have audio, video, as well as text so people of all levels of education are able to use them.

There are amazing amounts of reliable medical and legal information if our customers knew where to find it. As librarians and paraprofessionals at HCPL we are working to make our customers more aware of this type of information.

Week 7 #16 Wiki fun

Creating the wiki account was easy enough and I added my favorite move to the Movie wiki. In a perfect world my family members who live far away would cooperate with me using a wiki and other technology.

Week 6 #15 Libray and Web 2.0

As we as a library community try to move forward the links are at iHCPL are very helpful and encouraging. The idea that people will no longer come to the library has proven false. It seems that more people are coming in to access the free internet, find a place to work or study or just hang out.

I admit that along with many people who come to my library, I am one of the those who long for the Library 4.0, the neo-library where we can find a quiet place to read, write and relax instead of listen to cell phone conversations, people carrying on conversations or discussing work, class assignments etc.

Week 6 #14 Technorati

Technorati is interesting. It is a different way of finding information on various subjects. If you want to be published on the WWW this is the way to go.

Week 6 #13 del.icio.us/tagging

The video was very cute. It presented tagging in a very simple form. I looked at the HCPL del.icio.us site and found it intresting, especially the free classic audio download link. I am going to work on turning my personal account into a family recipe file if I can get my family to cooperate.

Week 5 #10 Imgage generator two

With a little time here it is.

Do you agree that this is a "safe way for people to experiment being other than themselves"? I read somewhere that they thought the above statement was true.

magic mirror

Week 5 #10 Image Generators

I'm still looking at them and trying to decide what I want to do. This will be more time consuming so will look at what everyone else has done and try to come up with my own.

Week 5 #12 Library Elf

It was so easy to put my 3 System library cards on. We need to make sure all of our customers know how to do this one. Especially those who use every card for every family member to the maximum. Since I seldom check out books from other systems and I do not have children's cards to be responsible for this will not do much for me. I will recommend it for my family and grandchildren.

Week 5 #11 Library Thing

This is a fun and useful site. Of course I love "cataloging" my personal library. I currently have 15 items consisting of two series from two authors. Jan Karon's "Mitford" series and Sally Laity's "Freedom's Holy Light" series that starts with an English visitor who comes to Boston as the American Revolution is just heating up. I have several Agatha Christie mysteries that I will be adding soon.

Does anyone know of any authors similar to Karon that are not listed in Novelist? I am also looking for more fictional American Revolution series to read.

Week 4-Finding Feeds

I found doing this set much easier than flickr.

Loved the video -

In this world of instant information I find myself being overwhelmed with news as well as information about things I don't even want to know about. Maybe the Bloglines is a good way to filter what I actually see and hear.

I found that topix was the easiest site for me to work with. I signed up for Reuters: top news, New Urban Legends (to know which e-mails to delete immediately), a local news news site for my town, a local news site for my family's town, and weather.com one of my favorite sites.

I also added one blog from hcpl and will probably add others soon.

1914 Postcard

After the fireworks

After the fireworks, originally uploaded by grandmatx16.

This is my first blog photo. I had help or I would never have gotten here.

Today Oct. 3rd I changed the text color and the label

Having Fun

In some ways I'm behind but I have already set up my "LibraryThing" account, cataloged and tagged a little of my personal library. I will try to work on using the "flicker" very soon.

Still working on this

I am still working on understanding and updating how the Blog works.

First Blog

This will be the place I review books and share ideas.