Week 9 Digital Media Collection

I searched for Fahrenheit 451 as instructed and checked out a copy. I listened to part one. I also placed a hold on five titles that are currently checked out by other patrons. In the future, I will be listening to Judge & Jury by
James Patterson, One in a Million by Kimberla Lawson Roby, A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle and The Choice by Nicholas Sparks.



The Choice

Description

Travis Parker has everything a man could want: a good job, loyal friends, even a waterfront home in small-town North Carolina. In full pursuit of the good life-- boating, swimming, and regular barbecues with his good-natured buddies--he holds the vague conviction that a serious relationship with a woman would only cramp his style. That is, until Gabby Holland moves in next door.

Despite his attempts to be neighborly, the appealing redhead seems to have a chip on her shoulder about him...and the presence of her longtime boyfriend doesn't help. Despite himself, Travis can't stop trying to ingratiate himself with his new neighbor, and his persistent efforts lead them both to the doorstep of a journey that neither could have foreseen.

Spanning the eventful years of young love, marriage and family, THE CHOICE ultimately confronts us with the most heartwrenching question of all: how far would you go to keep the hope of love alive?

Week 9 The End? and winner of the MP3 player ;-)

Wow!!!

What an interesting nine weeks is has been!! I am glad that I participated in this discovery program. I found it very time consuming, but very necessary for my lifelong learning. We were often given an hour of project time each day to work on 23things. However, at our Branch we have been so busy with the extra Patrons from the Okeechobee Branch it was not possible to get project time everyday to work on 23things. I am glad that I was introduced to so many new websites. Some I had heard about for example blogging, You Tube, Podcasts and Wikipedia, but, I hadn't taken time to explore them.


What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

I enjoyed everything that I discovered during the nine weeks, because, I realized that I need to make it a priority to discover new things on the Internet that could help our patrons with lifelong learning. My favorite week was Week 5 11th thing which was when I discovered LibraryThing. I love the idea of having an electronic list of books that I have read and books that I plan to read in the future. It is also interesting to see what my friends are reading. I think that we should do a story in the Happenings newsletter about LibraryThing because patrons often ask me it there is a list of books that they have read in the past. For patrons who have the Internet it would be great. For patrons who don't have the Internet, maybe a friend or family member could keep the list for them. I am sure that a patron's child living in another state could easily help their parent keep an electronic list.


How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

This program has given me tools that I can go to help me stay up to date with things that other libraries are doing that we may be able to use in our library. Also, with blogging I may be able to find some answers to problems that I come across that will help me do my job better and help me assist patrons better. I have created a favorites folder on my computer with all of the websites that I have been introduced to. I plan to schedule an hour each day to continue my lifelong learning with the websites.

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

I was surprised that some of my co-workers didn't participate in the program. I offered to stay after work to help a co-worker work on her exercises when our 23things consultant was on vacation, but she did not want to do it. I was also surprised that I had to work on my week 9 exercises at home last weekend because I was determined to finish by the July 15th deadline.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

I think the format was great! Some weeks I felt that the exercises were too much, but then I realized that I needed to work on my time management. I realize now that I could have scheduled 30 minutes or an hour before we opened each day to work on my exercises and then I might have not felt so overwhelmed with each exercise task.

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?

I would definitely participate in another discovery program. Since I earned my library science degree from Florida State University on the Internet in 2002, I am often searching on Google for free library related online classes. 23things was a class that I have been wishing for. I look forward to taking a Fall class.

Week 9 Finding podcasts

This week I discovered and have a better understanding about Podcasts. I was asked to look at one or two of the Podcasts directories and find something that I find interesting. I followed the link in our instructions and found 609,000 in Google. I found an interesting Podcasts from Fairfax County Public Library in Virginia called BookCast http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/LIBRARY/bookcast/ where there are interviews with several authors. I listened to one about Ellen Crosby.
http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/library/bookcast/crosby.htm

I also looked and listened to NPR Podcast Directories and Library of Congress Podcasts. NPR had Summer book review and recommendations. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91364064
The Library of Congress had Podcasts from the 2007 Book Festival that is held in Washington, DC every September. I listened to Shelia P. Moses discuss the disappearance of family traditions in the home. She read from her newest book, "The Baptism" (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2007). This book is in PBCLS Young Adult fiction section.

Shelia P. Moses who is a poet, author, playwright and producer. She is the ninth of 10 children. Moses writes about family life in a North Carolina rural town. She is a Coretta Scott King Honor winner and a National Book Award finalist. Her books have been nominated as the American Library Association's Best Books for Young Adults.

I also listened to Sanja Gupta discuss his new book, "Chasing Life: New Discoveries in the Search for Immortality to Help You Age Less Today (Warner Wellnesss, 2007). This book is in PBCLS Adult non-fiction section.

Sanjay Gupta is a practicing neurosurgeon. He is associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital and assistant professor at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. The Emmy award-winning chief medical correspondent at CNN covers important health news and hosts the weekend show "House Call with Dr. Sanjay Gupta."

On my bloglines I subscribed to the Library of Congress RSS feed on what's new on the website.

I think podcasts are a great way to keep informed on authors and their new books. It's also a great place to hear book reviews. There are so many subjects to find podcasts about. Maybe a story on our website about podcast would be interesting for our patrons. I wonder if the Youth Services department could havepodcasts of popular books on our website for patrons of children who are unable to come to our weekly storytimes because theier patrons have to work. I could see where podcasts could also be valuable to elderly or homebound patrons who may not be able to come to the library. Podcasts are an excellent way to keep informed about the book world.

Week 9 YouTube

This is a great video that appeared at this year's American Library Association (ALA)conference. It is a great summary of why libraries are still important. I have often gotten videos in my emails from friends and family and I have heard about YouTube videos in the news. I haven't really spent time searching for videos until now. I think it would be great to have a video on our website that shows what the library has to offer. It would be great to have a video that shows that we have meeting rooms to be used and have information on what types of meetings can be held in our meeting rooms. Also, it would be great to have an online registration with instant notification of approval to use the meeting room.

I think that the library should use the best technology available to keep our patrons well informed and also give information to new patrons who are thinking about joining. There is a generation of people out there that is constantly seeking information from the internet.

Week 8 Web 2.0 award list

Several of the award list winners have been discovered in previous weeks such as Del.icio.us, Flickr and Pbwiki. It was interesting to see other websites that are similar to the ones that we have been introduced to during this project. I like that they are arranged by category. When I need to recommend websites to patrons I will definitely have this in my favorites.

Week 8 Online productivity

The 2008 Essence Music Festival happens in New Orleans, Louisiana on

Friday, July 4 - Sunday, July 6. Some of the artist scheduled to appear.

 

Friday, July 4	Saturday, July 5	Sunday, July 6
Rihanna	LL Cool J	Morris Day and the Time
Chris Brown	Patti Labelle	Keyshia Cole
Kanye West	Jill Scott	Mary J. Blige

 

http://www.essencemusicfestival.com

 

    

 

 

 

I like Zoho writer. I would definitely recommend this to patrons who don't have Microsoft Word on their home computer. This document writer has alot of features that are in Microsoft Office. I like that you can be creative.

Week 7 PBCLS wiki

PBCLS wiki is a great place to find out information from other librarians. I added my blogspot url and I add a favorite website. I will be sure to bookmark our wiki so I can find out new information that my coworkers are sharing. This would be a great place for patrons share their favorites also.

Week 7 wiki

I discovered wikipedia about a year ago because of a patron who frequently calls the Reference Desk with interesting questions about famous people. He wanted to know what religion Arnold Palmer practices. I was excited to find some information that might suggest what religion he believes in. I think wikipedia is helpful as long as the information added can be verified. I often hesitate to offer information from wikipedia because I worry about how accurate the information is. I do find it very helpful when I can't find biography information on the Biography Reference Center database.

When I explored the suggested wikis on the Discovery exercises, I was excited to find a wiki about the ALA 2008 conference going on from June 26-July 2. I have always dreamed about attending an ALA conference. I plan to attend one hopefully when I celebrate my 10th year anniversary with PBCLS. I know that the budget will not pay for my way to go, but, I think that it is one of my personal long range career goals. I am not a member of ALA yet, and I keep saying that I am going to join, I haven't done it yet. I must put this on my short term goals and try and join by the end of the year. I enjoyed looking at the Flikr pictures from the conference and the Technorati from the conference. There are so many pictures uploaded that I plan to spend more time looking at the information that is available there.

I also looked at the Bull Run Public Library wiki which is the a public library in Prince William County, VA. There I searched for books by two of my favorite fiction authors and 2 non-fiction subjects. I was able to see how many and where in the system they can be found. I suppose a wiki would lead people to our website, but I think going to our website is the best thing. It's nice to see what other libraries have to offer. For more information on Prince William County check out the wiki.
http://www.pwcgov.org/default.aspx?topic=010010001090002560

Also, I found of interest under the project management subject a strategic plan from the Durham County Library. See wiki link for more information.
http://dclstrategicplan.pbwiki.

I would love for PBCLS to have a Circulation wiki and a Reference wiki where we can share information. Maybe on our website we could offer weblinks where authors talk about upcoming books that they have written or maybe talk about how they got their first book published. I think with technology we need to keep up with what's out there and share it with our patrons. Lots of people still don't know how much we have to offer on our website now. I enjoy wikis and I will explore them whenever time permits.

Week 6 Web 2.0

My thing was to read two of the five perspectives. I read all five. I found the perspective from Michael Stephens, Blogger interesting. I think library employees should have time to play and learn. Sometimes our jobs can be very stressful. With the economy, it seems that more and more patrons are coming to the library for internet access. It seems to me that sometimes I think that we need a branch that has only internet access. I find that most of our internet patrons have never checked out any material. Dr. Wendy Schultz was the other perspective that I read. I agree that we should continue to examine our services that work and improve the services that don't. We have customer surveys throughout the year, but, I think it would be nice to have roundtable discussions with patrons and ask them for input on the things that the libary is doing well and what things the library needs to improve on. Web 2.0 is a place to go to keep up with the latest trends in technology and what other libraries are doing.

Week 6 Technorati

Technorati is an interesting site. It is a great way of getting access to useful blogs. When I followed directions I did not find any results in the advanced search. However, when I typed pbclibrary.org I found an image generator of our home page and 77 blog. I also found Bob Davidson's blogspot about E-Goverment. A Web 2.0 search for blogs brought me over 6,000 results. Related tags were ajax, firefox and technology. Since the results were so high, I decided to do a new search and add libraries to my Web 2.0 search. Ah!! only 43 blogs. I clicked on an interesting blog link entitled "What I learned today" from web2learning.net.

Week 6 Del.icio.us

This week I discovered Del.icio.us. One of our things was to learn more about tagging by using this website. By using the library's login and password, I found 74 tags on many different subjects. I found a tag for Ning's from HRR. I also found links to some of our library useful web links such as music and movies. I can see how using this website with tags can be helpful when you are looking for information from other librarians and information gurus. I was interested in opening up my own account and I created my own tags.

Here is a link to my tags. http://del.icio.us/stanfieldk23things

This is a great website for sharing information in a fun interactive way. I plan to continue using this site after our project is over.

Week 5

This week was definitely a fun week. There are so many interesting image generator subjects. It was hard for me to choose just one. So I choose two for now. I found a fun image generator from generator blog that I would like to share. Acme License Maker lets you create your own license plate. I have always wanted a personal license plate, but I have never wanted to pay extra money for one. Also, with a personalized plate, I think that it can cause problems for my safety.

http://www.acme.com/licensemaker/


I created my own Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor and I named it something cool. Maybe I will see it in my grocery freezer soon. If you are an ice cream lover like me, then check out the link below.

http://www.benjerry.com/scoop_shops/dousaflavor/flavor_generator.cfm

script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="http://www.librarything.com/jswidget.php?reporton=stanfieldk23things&show=random&header=1&num=5&covers=small&text=none&tag=alltags&css=1&style=5&version=1">


I enjoyed librarything, it is similar to a another website that I joined called Good reads. I think that this website will be very useful to our patrons who have access to the internet at home. However, even if a patron does not have the internet at home, they could come to the library and set up an account and keep track of what they read and what they would like to read. Librarians could definitely use this website to share books.

http://www.goodreads.com


I explored WebFeat. I like the fact that I can recommend this to patrons who need articles and books for projects. It's nice to have a place to go to access more of what you need and it saves time. I did a search on my hometown, Burlington, NC and found 69 articles in InfoTrac OneFile. The most recent article dated April 29, 2008 and the oldest article was December 11, 1991. My hometown was and still is a very important location for textiles. Several articles came from a magazine entitled Home Textiles Today.

This article brought much excitement to my hometown.

BURLINGTON, NC -- Jet engine manufacturer Honda Aero Inc. has broken ground on a new $27 million headquarters and engine assembly plant near the Burlington-Alamance County regional airport in North Carolina.

The 102,400-square-foot facility will include 36,000 square feet of offi ce space, a 58,400-square-foot production plant, and an 8,000-square-foot engine test cell. Honda Aero will employ approximately 70 engineers and machinists when the plant reaches its initial annual capacity of 200 GE Honda HF 120 engines, within a one year of ramping up production in 2010.

The GE Honda HF120 has been chosen to power two of the new aircraft entering the new very-light-jet market--the Freedom jet, manufactured by Spectrum Aeronautical (Carlsbad, CA), and Honda's own HondaJet, which will be produced in neighboring Greensboro, NC.

Source citation: Assembly 51.1 (Jan 2008): 12(1). General OneFile. Gale. Palm Beach County Library System. 18 June 2008

Week 4 RSS & Newsreaders

This week I learned what RSS stands for and what blog lines are. I found that the sign up process was very easy. I subscribed to 12 newsreader feeds which included People.com, USA TODAY and The Shifted Librarian. I don't really think that I will use blog lines after this project is over. I already have a habit of going into the different websites that I depend on for news and entertainment. I suppose if there are blog lines that are library specific then they would be helpful to be in one place. But, for me I am always on the Internet and I enjoy going to the different websites.

PBCLSW2-New technology

During a recent trip to Epcot Center in Disney World Orlando, I discovered new technology for the home. I took a 15-minute tour of a Smart Home. This home was set up with a home automation system where things in the home are controlled by voice. There was one remote control that controls the temperature in each room of the house, the flat screen TV and a section in the living room where family pictures could be displayed as a slideshow on the TV. Also, the refrigerator had a computer in the door that would make a grocery shopping lists that could be printed out from your computer to take with you to the grocery store. The refrigerator computer could also be programmed to let you know when items you frequently buy need to be bought. The remote control had a shower that was motion controlled and could be programmed to have the specific water temperature for every member of your family. The sink and toilet were also motion controlled. Another feature that was interesting was that when someone rings the front door bell, their picture is displayed on your TV and if you recognize the person you can tell the home automation system to open the door without you having to get up and unlock the door.

Here are 2 websites more information on home automation systems
http://www.automatedliving.com/products_hal2000.shtml

http://www.onev.com/videos/mccoverview.wmv

Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, NV

Venetian Hotel
Originally uploaded by Darrins

This is where I am going on vacation in August.

Week 2 blog

After, I read the 7 1/2 habits, I realized that Habit number 3 is the most important habit for me. Sometimes, when I am faced with an unsatisfied patron, I don't view the problem as a challenge. I need to find ways to handle angry patrons without out getting myself upset. To be able to handle angry patrons is a skill that I believe will make my job better. I have set up my blog account and I am looking forward to sharing ideas with my coworkers across the library system. I think it is great that Library Administration found something for everyone to communicate with. It's hard to keep up with what's going on with coworkers at other locations when you don't get a chance to see them often.

11:45 AM, Tues., May 13

1st timer

Hi, I just created my account. I am wondering how this blog is going to add some fun into my day. Ever since Dec. 21, 2007, I feel that my fun went away. Hopefully, I can find something that will heal my broken heart. So, I am not sure what to say today, but as time goes by I guess I will figure it out.