Beyond Method #5

Within the last month or so one of the library book club members implemented a group on Goodreads for the club and invited members to join. I signed up then for Good reads and have been trying to keep track of what I have read and am reading. I've been interested in having a list of books I've read for a while now so Goodreads seemed to be a viable option. I had already looked at LibraryThing and Shelfari and while I find them interesting for me they aren't particularly useful. At this time our library is using NextReads for collection development and I find this tool to be particularly helpful. Most staff use it very successfully to find titles that patrons can just remember a few details about. It's also great for finding missing titles in series. While I am interested in becoming knowledgeable about the tools available for social tagging, I find that I am not that interested in being "social" about the things that I read. An interesting conundrum. That being said I was interested in BookLight and will explore that resource further when my registration is confirmed.

Beyond Method #4

Interesting segment on job searching which is something I have not had occasion to deal with much as I do not work reference very often. I hope that my reference staff are familiar with these resources and I know they have attended training on this subject. As a part of the strategic plan that we are developing we do have sections on job skills and are considering utilizing some of the suggestions in the video. Perhaps I will sign up for Linkedin. Who knows? Perhaps I will be looking for another job some day...

Lake House map - trying again

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Beyond Method #3

Well, I was finally able to embed my map on the blog. It wasn't the embedding that was difficult it was figuring out how to actually get the "embed" link to show up in google maps. I have to say, it looked much easier in the video than it actually was. I think that they are constantly making changes to google products so even when I look up Help! on the Internet some of the instructions seem to be out of date. Couple that with the face that the Internet at the library this afternoon is as slow as molasses and it hasn't been a fun day! I do think we should consider adding a location map to the library home page which was something that I hadn't even considered so perhaps that will be a next step. The tutorial was much more helpful.

Map of Friendswood Public Library

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Beyond Method #2

I am late to begin this so perhaps that is my problem but I had very little luck with igoogle. I can't even find an igoogle link on the google page or on my gmail or anywhere else. I can go to an igoogle page and it is defaulting to my information but it was fairly difficult to figure out how to customize the page further. I finally figured out how to delete but so far when I click on "Add stuff.." nothing happens. Maybe it's just a bad Internet day at work.

Because... I looked at the pages from the two libraries that are using netvibes and each page took so long to load that it was pretty much unusable.

I can see some small advantage in having a personalized home page for staff but not if it is so slow to load.

I will work on the igoogle page at home this evening to see if it goes more smoothly...

Method 7

Wow, I just realized that it's been almost nine months since I've been able to get back to this. It must have been a very busy year. I enjoyed the section on social networks and tagging but part of me felt like it was kind of old news. I think that I must have already seen the CommonCraft video and read the article. I will definitely look into setting up a delicious account because I very much like the idea of being able to access my bookmarks from anywhere. I think this would work very well for Christmas shopping! Mainly because I'm always spotting something at work or at home that I think would be a great gift for someone. I'm not sure at this time that I see any advantage for me in sharing bookmarks. The teacher example was great and I can see that it would be very useful for collaborative research.