Twitter CPL 2.0

Twitter is a great way for libraries to communicate. Having looked at some CPL twitter accounts, I 've found that it is mostly used to promote library programs and library materials. For the Village Square Twitter account I try to update it every time I am at work. Often I will tweet about a program that is taking place that evening or provide a link to some interesting tidbit of info. Twitter has potential when it comes to communicating messages to our customers and followers. Hopefully we can get more and more followers and begin some facinating dialogues with them. It is a great tool for libraries!

LibraryThing CPL 2.0

Like Facebook for book lovers, LibraryThing is a great social networking site with a theme.

With LibraryThing you can keep track of the books you've read, and it's great for Readers' Advisory for work. I started using this site a short time ago, but not very much. After looking at it today I can see that it will be a very useful application, with loads of possibilities for diving into book discussions, figuring out what to read next, and for remembering what I've read previously (because lately I tend to forget what I read last week!).

I think too that I might recommend this to my book club ladies. We have been together for nearly six years now, and I think LibraryThing is something they might be interested in for all the wonderful things it holds.

Google Docs Rock! CPL 2.0

I have looked at Google Docs and I am very impressed. With these totally online, web based, documents you can create documents, presentations, spreadsheets and you can upload documents you have already created in most formats. Google Docs looks incredibly EASY and I think that is what will ultimately matter in the end. You can make a presentation similar to PowerPoint. Or use the spreadsheets which are similar to Excel.

Google Docs allow the same functionality, but are free and easy. When all this "software" is free and so easy to access, the question is obvious! Will it take over from Microsoft? It may drive the price down. I think eventually more and more people will start using Google Docs. Why not? What is there to lose?

CPL 2.0 Pictures and Movies

YouTube and Flickr...

YouTube is great for seeing something you missed... "just look it up on YouTube", is becoming a common expression, not too different from "just Google it", only instead of a website you get a video. YouTube is very user friendly. Posting a video on your Facebook or Blog is super simple, as is emailing it to someone. Awhile ago, I remember seeing on the news a thing about this lady singer named Susan Boyle who was on Britain's Got Talent. She was singing a I Dreamed a Dream by Le Miserable, which I love. I looked it up on YouTube and emailed it to some friends. Today that clip has been views a gazillion times! (actually 92,166,727 views) YouTube had a role in her instant worldwide "success".

As for Flickr, it is fairly new to me. For my own photos I use Picassa, which is a similar product that Google has, and I like it for how it organized all the photos on my computer by date. I mostly use Flickr for its Creative Commons when I'm making a display or poster. Having looked further into Flickr with this assignment, I found it very user friendly and I also discovered some new things: making cards out of your photos, for instance.

Charlie bit my finger - again !

CPL 2.0 RSS

Voltaire said, "The multitude of books is making us ignorant." I think if he were alive today he would say the multitude of RSS information is making us crazy! I think RSS has its uses for sure. From what I've see so far, if you are subsided to some pretty specific fees you will get lots of information that may be appropriate to you.... but I also think it will be easy to get overwhelmed with information and heretofore go crazy!

Google products CPL Web 2.0

Maui sunset 2007 (taken by me) Maui daytime 2007

Picassa is the perfect Google product for all your photos. Here you can find, edit and share all your digital photos. What's great about this product is how it will go into your PC and find all your photos, collect them and put them all together by date. Wow! I had way too many pictures and it was difficult to locate all of them from the different files I had them in. Secondly, with Picassa you can edit your pics, taking away all those red eyes for instance. Finally you can publish them into web albums so you can retrieve your photos from any computer in the world. And share your pictures via email or to other members of picassa.

Another Google product I recently started using is gmail. It is really great. I started it because I want to be able to manage my email from other computers and I can't retrieve my telus email once it is downloaded onto my home PC. Anyway, so far so good with gmail.

Facebook CPL 2.0

I've been on Facebook for a while now. Sometimes I use it a lot; other times I don't really go on it at all. In a lot of ways, I think Facebook is very much like going back to High School-- and I didn't love high school. Well, I did like the socializing part. I think Facebook is popular because it is the new way to 'hang out', and some people take it very seriously. They think that it's actually important to report what little things they do to fill their days.

I think people are learning to socialize in a totally different way these days, and that is due in part to social networking sites like this one. I wonder if people are truly satisfied with socializing over the Net and how much face to face contact is actually going on. Though I like communicating with people over this site, I would still much rather meet someone in person for coffee to chat.

My next door neighbour is also one of my 'friends' on Facebook, and one day we both were on Facebook at the same time and started chatting with each other. Eventually she ended up just coming over-- we both laughed and thought it was a little absurd that we would be chatting over the Internet instead of her just popping round. But then that is what people might have thought about the telephone when it was a new medium for communication.

Another component of Facebook that I think is great is when you reconnect with someone you have lost touch with. I recently found a friend who I went to elementary school with and we got together and reminisced when she was visiting Calgary last year--- that was great. I like Facebook for staying in touch and for posting pictures. I think it can be a very useful way to communicate. But like when I was in high school, I sometimes think "why do some people have way more friends than me?"

CPL 2.0 Wicked Wikipedia!

This assignment forced me to reconsider my opinions about Wikipedia! I used to really frown on it, assuming it was all rubbish and in no way comparable to our reputable E-Library resources that are fact-checked, well-written and true. But in the time I had to explore Wikipedia looking for mistakes, I haven't yet found any. I was trying to look up some obscure things, too, like one of my favourite authors, Ray Coleman, who wrote a great bio about John Lennon. The info. on him was actually pretty good. I also searched out one of my favourite books, Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell, and was pleasantly surprised at the amount of interesting information available. I think I will re-visit this website a little more often now.

Del.icio.us is Yummy CPL 2.0

I love our best websites. I am constantly showing them to customers. I think it is a fabulous way to organise and store favourite links. If you think about it there is such a wide variety of subject matter to cover in terms of websites. Google is not always effective in searching out sites that we know are fact-checked, well-written, reputable and appropriate for what a customer needs. Once familiar with del.icio.us, it is fairly straightforward and easy to access. The tags are useful as well. I commonly use delicious when referring customers to our resources for becoming a Canadian Citizen.... and I really like the Search Tools tag bundles. There are amazing search engines available that are more specialized than Google and can find more accurate results. One of my faves is http://www.intute.ac.uk/

What do I find most intriguing about 2.0.:
Wow! Who would have thought that I could publish my own thoughts and essentially a website so easily. This is great. I think it is only the beginning. What else can I blog about? Let me see...

"A librarian's life is the life for me
For there's nothing at all to do, you see,
But to sit at a desk and read new books,
And admire yourself, and think of your looks.
To questioning souls one can tartly say:
'I can't be bothered with you today,
For I haven't finished this novel. See?
A librarian's life is the life for me."
--William Fitch Smyth, "A Librarian's Life" (1910)

What is in a Blog? CPL2.0

Today I was able to seek out a few Blogs and here is what I found. There is a sort of interesting one about all things library. It is called Blog/Big, located at http://blog-bib-liblogs.blogspot.com/ So I've discovered that reading through this is a long, long process. But if you are looking for purely professional information on any topic relating to libraries you'll likely find it here.
For example, http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net/ talks about some interesting and engaging ways that libraries are using blogs! Maybe they should look at CPL 2.0

Aside from the library stuff though, I have found a really great BLOG that I must share with you.... to be continued...

CPL 2.0

I am still working on this blog. Looking up some interesting blogs and will get back to you....