Week 12 Youtube

Here's the video I chose. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM Another day at the water hole. If you like shows about animals, you'll like this.

I've seen this video before, but I didn't have the url for it. I did a search on buffalo and battle and it popped right up. So I like the search capabilities. I also like the related videos feature, although it can get addicting.

As far as using Youtube for the library goes, it might be useful for providing instruction/classes although the video quality isn't that great.

Week 12 flicker

Here's a picture of a dog that looks just like my Choo Choo. It's a Japanese Chin. http://www.flickr.com/photos/bekah/136110532/

Photo posted by Bekah.

Week 11 thoughts

My simple search was "resveratrol and aging" I was impressed with ClusterMed. The clusters allowed me to zero in on topics within the search that I was interested in and/or point me to topics I hadn't thought about before. ReleMed was also useful for quickly finding some relevant articles. I will probably use these tools now and then in my searching.

Week 10 thoughts

I can see how vodcasting might be useful for library patrons. It would be another way to teach a class, for example. Not sure about podcasting, since so much of what we do ideally involves sight as well as sound.

Week 8 thoughts

I tried several of the social opacs. Overall, I found them easy to use. I especially like the user comments, which I use a lot already at sites like amazon.com and epinions.com.

Now I know how the Harry Potter series ends, without having to read the books :)

Week 7 thoughts

So I can see how this would be useful for research. It's an easy way to find stuff on the web that other people have found useful enough to bookmark. You can also easily see how popular something is by how many others have bookmarked it.

One thing that threw me a little bit. If you click on a tag with a number of entries like "mashup," for example, you'll see

<> page 1 of 3

at the top and bottom of the page. I'm used to seeing

previous next

or something like that on web pages I frequent. It's a minor point, but I had to think about it for a second. I understand why they word it that way though.

Week 6 thoughts

I used Google docs to create my document. It reminds me of MS Word very much, and I found it easy to figure out the basics. My biggest problem with these online tools is privacy/security. Will some hacker gain access to all my files someday? Will the government? I'd be leery of providing personal or sensitive information to these tools.

Week 5 thoughts part 2

Editing the wiki page was fairly straightforward. Technology usually becomes easier to use over time. Remember DOS on the early PC's? Things have come a long way since then. If wiki's and all the other parts of Web 2.0 are going to have mass-market appeal then ease-of-use must be a high priority.

Week 5 thoughts

The wiki's I looked at were interesting. This wiki, http://instructionwiki.org/Library_2.0_in_15_minutes_a_day which is the first one I looked at, could use some graphics and images. I suppose that's because I'm used to using Wikipedia.

Is a wiki a wiki because it uses special wiki software? To me UpToDate is very much like a wiki. It's a collaborative effort by a number of medical experts. It looks and feels like a wiki to me. Does that make it a wiki, even though I'm sure it uses it's own proprietary non-wiki software? The same can be said for many online reference books.

As time goes by there will be more of this blurring between what's a wiki, what's a book, and whatever else.

Week 4 thoughts

It seems to me that adding RSS capabilities to the My Library Home Page feature of our home page would be very useful. Patrons could add their own feeds and whatever else they want. In addition to providing them with a one-stop shopping experience for all their job related information needs, it would also increase the visibility of the library since we are the providers of this service.

If the library doesn't do this I bet somebody at Mayo does it sooner or later. I envision a My Mayo page, that has all the stuff at Mayo and beyond that I need to do my job.

My thoughts on week one.

When I first read about having patrons modify the OPAC, I wasn't sure what that meant or whether it would be a good thing. But having read the articles from the first week, I see that it mostly implies patrons adding their own keywords, or reviews of materials. I see this as very useful, since I'm always reading reviews at Amazon.com, epinions.com, etc. and it helps in making a purchasing decision. I can see the med and allied health students taking to this strongly.