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.