CPL 2.0 Twitter

Interesting to take a look, but this one is not for me. Yes, it is instant, and news can flash around the world, but for the vast majority of tweeters it is not about world events. Let me think; people are texting, facebooking, and tweeting many times every day. Do they really have so much going on in their lives that they can produce endless fascinating script or are they just self absorbed? I find it all a bit sad.

CPL 2.0 Wild (Library) Thing; I Think I Love You

It scares me that I didn't know about LibraryThing. You (I) would think that working at a library would automatically, magically, connect me with All Things Library. Alas, it is not the case.

Do I see any practical applications for LibraryThing either at home or at work? Will I start using this site? Yes, yes, and ooohhh yes!

I really loved this site. There are so many times that I want to access book reviews either for my own use or that of library customers, and this site made them very easy to look up.

But the favourite feature that I found was that of Recommendations. Once you had brought up the title of a book, you could click on recommendations, and you were then offered a list of 20 suggested titles related to the book you had entered before asking for recommendations. Oh my goodness! So simple and straight forward! This is a wonderful tool to use for Readers' Advisory. I only experimented with it with various adult fiction titles, and have not attempted non-fiction or children's fiction, but I will use this site without question when asked by customers for title suggestions. Fabulous!

CPL 2.0 Online Productivity Tools

I decided to have a look around Google Docs. This is something I was unaware of and found very straight forward, to the extent that I explored.

Do I see myself using these tools or will I stick to more traditional methods?

Personally, this is something I may not have a great deal of use for, but I was very happy to find out about the Templates offered at Google Docs because this is something that library customers do ask about. Some examples:

Resumes and Cover Letters,
Family Budget Planners,
Monthly Household Budgets,
Simple Budget Planner ( with suggested dollar amounts once you enter your income amount ),
General Purpose Invoice,
Custom Invoice for Small Business,
Calendars,
To Do Lists, ( who doesn't love ticking items off a to do list? )
Research Paper

It was easy to find, and I will now refer customers to these templates. Thanks, guys.

CPL 2.0 Comment on the quality, entertainment value, or usefulness of the content on Flickr and YouTube

Let me think now. Do I find Flickr and You Tube entertaining? You betcha! If something can draw me in and entice me to check things out and then just have a quick look at one more thing, and then just one more thing, I am being entertained. It can be mindless and a time waster, but I love the chance to see the funny bit I missed on Letterman that everyone is talking about. Or I hear about a breed of dog I've never seen ( Havanese ) or a semi-precious stone I can't visualize (Labradorite ) and Flickr presents me with enough images to satisfy my curiosity. It's fun, and that's enough to qualify it as entertainment for me.

CPL 2.0 RSS R US

So, something new this week. I had no awareness of Really Simple Syndication, and was a bit curious to try it out. Setting up a Bloglines account and a few feeds from there suggestions was pretty quick and straight forward. Adding a feed of my own choosing met with a small snag. My first choice was CBC Calgary, but I could not get it to go through. When I tried adding another feed, a blog I sometimes follow, it went through and was added to my list without any problem.

I think using an RSS reader could be very useful for someone wanting to check in on several blogs and websites on a daily basis. You could read any new posts from various sources at one site. For me personally, I do not check a lots of sites on a daily basis. I check a couple, I list them all under Favorites, and I go into each individually, when I'm in the mood. Not the most efficient method, but so far it's working O.K. for me.

CPL 2.0 Google: What's not to love?

Although I had used Google Maps for information, I had never played around with the "zooming in and looking at the houses" feature. So it was really fun to take some time with that as part of this week's assignment. It really 'googles' the mind when you think about it. Talk about tripping down memory lane. Google took me back to a childhood home and stood me on the street outside. A place I hadn't thought about in a very long time, and there it was.

I do love google. It seems user friendly to me, and I have used it with customers needing help with various things; opening an e-mail account, as one example. Lots there to still explore and learn, though. And it's so cute how Google makes it's name into fun pictures for special days of the year.

CPL 2.0 Is Facebook useful or a time-waster?

Is Facebook, for me, useful or a time-waster? Well, let's see. I am on Facebook so infrequently that whether or not I'm "wasting" time really doesn't matter too much one way or the other. Since the reason I have a Facebook page is primarily to be able to view my children's and my nieces' holiday photos, I would have to say that Facebook serves a useful purpose for me. However, sometimes it's a few months before I see a message some one has sent me. It can be a bit awkward responding so late! It is a social network, yet using it the way I do leaves me feeling that I've been a little anti-social, somehow.

CPL 2.0 How easy or difficult was it to find articles that needed editing? Were the errors you found factual or grammar/spelling?

It is a bit humbling to search Wikipedia for a hole; a missing piece of knowledge that no one else has bothered to record. After a couple of tries in pet subjects of mine with no luck, I had to pause and calculate where in my past experiences I might have some slight advantage over the average Josephine. I settled on my time in the Yukon, and began poking around on different pages that referred to the Yukon in the 1970's and 80's. It was not so much an error I found, but rather a factual omission in the description of a mine at which I had worked. It was with a little pleasure that I added my tid-bit of information. Ta-Da!

CPL 2.0 What are the advantages of storing, sharing, and tagging web content this way? What are the disadvantages?

CPL 2.0 - What are the advantages and disadvantages of organizing web information with a system like our BEST WEBSITES on Delicious? Well let's see. I was glad to find Best Websites again on our new CPL homepage; it was something I was used to using and actually missed it while helping customers, until I located it in our E- library. The advantage for me is that rather that begin searching the web cold each time, there is a list of useful sites organized under broad headings or TAGS. By using these same resources over and over, one develops a familiarity and ease which helps with finding things quickly. The main disadvantage for me is that other, newer sites may not be found this way. A fresh independent web search does generate fresh info, but it can be very time consuming.
My pet peeve with BEST WEBSITES right now is not understanding why there is a tag bundle for a subject such as GEOLOGY, and no tag for MUSIC? ( There used to be one for music, and I used it all the time! ) AArrgghhh!

Week One

I've created a BLOG, apparently, so will post something to see if all systems are a go.

I am looking forward to being walked through some 2.0 "stuff" with the weekly exercises. Although I follow a couple of blogs, I have never thought of setting one up for myself. So I hope to learn about that by doing! All for now.