Thing 20: Books 2.0

Could this thing be any longer or am I just being too much of a perfectionist? (My husband would call it anal.)

Books On Your Phone
*BooksinMyPhone - First off I do not have a cell phone nor do I want one. As a driver watching other drivers pay more attention to their cell phones than the road, I hazard to guess what will happen when cell phone users are reading books as they are commuting to work. Multi-tasking is one thing but taking focus away from the primary task at hand can be hazardous to many people.

txt2ph requires an Internet-enabled phone (see above)

*DailyLit I actually liked this because of the RSS format (now that I know what that is). I also liked the variability of the installments and the fact that it can also come in the e-mail. The list of books that are free are not bad. However, paying to read a book that is totally electronic is not as tactile as having the book in one's own hands.

*Twitterlit -Seeing the first line of a book, without the author's name or book title, but with a link to Amazon so readers can see what book the line is from is fun. On top of that it is a hell of an advertising ploy.

Readers' Advisory
*ReadingTrails - At the trail intersections, you wander from trail to trail but it gets too confusing and often you can't find your way back to the beginning. I am a good navigator underwater and in the air but get me on the ground at night and forget about it. I know, I know get a GPS or Loran---I would rather keep it simple.

*BookLamp -Although in beta testing has a nice premise however they will need a great deal more books than just 300 to analyze.

*What Should I Read Next? This is another great advertising ploy for Amazon purchases. Our library database is What do I read next -it includes genre and assists us for patrons. I like it better.
What's Next? Which Book? Neither one of these were particularly helpful. I really prefer the following websites:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/ This has a database of 20,000 authors. You type in their name and it comes up with complete lists of their works -grouped by series.
For juvenile series I have found the following website to be beneficial.
http://www.mcpl.lib.mo.us/ You input the name Nancy Drew for example and you will get a listing of the various series with the different books in the series. I use this frequently for the children's room.

*BookStumpers -This was not bad but I have no desire to pay for it.
Book Calendar - I like some of the synopsis but I was not exactly excited to get another feed.

Online Book Communities
*Overbooked - I enjoyed their categories including the section on adult books for teens (often an overlooked area). They also have good book reviews.

Readerville -This fascinated me merely because they mentioned a program from Knopf of a poem a day via RSS feeds. I do like poetry.

BookGlutton -This was interesting . I signed up for their newsletter. Now if I can only remember what website it goes to.

Book Group Resources
LitLovers- I believe this would be an exceptional site for homeschoolers or those individuals that need help starting book clubs. I liked the LitKids section and some of their book recommendations.

Reading Group Choices- Useful but not my cup of tea. WOW! am I already getting into the 2.0 mode.

*Booksprouts -Although in beta testing, this could be a good resource for book clubs.

Wired for Books- I first thought "Oh God not another gadget" but the number of authors, reading their own works, on this site is impressive and is a unique way of preserving them.

BooksVideos.tv see above.

Audio Books

*Librivox - Their goals are rather lofty but it what concerns me is the quality of the reading. Some people have a talent with their voice others it is like fingernails on a chalkboard. I wish them luck.

Podiobooks -This is like at the beginning where you can read books on your cell phone. Now you can listen to them on the computer.

Book Reviews
Metacritic .
The Complete Review
*BookBrowse
One Minute Critic
I agree with Neflin on this. BookBrowse does appear to have better critiques and they show a consensus of reviews. Although, I would much rather form my own opinion based on my own experience. It has been said that critics tend to be frustrated writers, but that can be a good thing because they know what is good they just can't emulate it.

Book Rental

BookSwim
BooksFree
Both of these seemed to be fairly interesting. I thought BookSwim was curious because of the textbooks that were made available. With the high cost of books this is a viable alternative for college students.

Book Swaps (Optional)
BookMooch
Paperback Swap
*SwapTree
*BookCrossing
I checked out all of these. BookMooch was actually recommended by our supervisor. First off, those books that I buy I usually want to keep. They are old friends who I love to visit with whether it is a chapter at a time or a page or two, or sometimes the whole book. Others that I have accumulated I give to the Library. If they do not need or want to add to the collection, I give them to the friends. The money they make all comes back to the library. So for me this is a better solution.

You talked about Kindle earlier and I wanted to comment. It is another way to obtain printed matter whether it is a newspaper, a magazine or a book. For physically impaired individuals, it is easier to hold than a book and the newer models add voice to the printed matter. It is a great way to deliver the daily newspaper so we can save a great many resources such as trees for paper. However, nothing beats the feel of a book as you turn pages and for me there is nothing more satisfying then reading the last line of a book and closing the back cover. I realize I am old school but for me reading a book affects and usually pleases all my senses (except taste-unless I am reading a cookbook).

Thing 19: Other Social Networks

Web Junction is one of my social communities, providing that means I get the newsletter and read it. I also get FLYP newsletter and read that. Ning although visually appealing did not particularly interest me. I did enjoy some of the different lists of sites that you provided. College 2.0 was fun . I wished that was around when I went to college. However when I was in college I was learning FORTRAN, a computer language, and the computer filled a room the size of the Dunnellon Library. We had key punch cards to run the program. The equivalent these days of that computer would fit in a laptop.
Bake Space was fun but you can still get the recipes without joining. I realize this defeats the purpose of socializing but I never have been a social butterfly. The movie site was even more fun because my husband and I collect movies. We have all sorts of genre various series and quite a number of actors. Yes, I have it sorted and categorized in a database on my computer at home and the movies are labeled and shelved in a special area of my house. This is necessary since we have 2500 + movies (some VHS, some dvd, some copies and some originals).
I liked Fuzzster, but everyone seems to think that their pet is the brightest, cutest, funniest or whatever. I don't dare put my dogs on that site. They will just put all those other animals to shame. I already subscribe to GoodReads but I tried Shelfari on Forest Fomentation's recommendation.

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

I enjoyed this one. It is sort of like shelving books. Yesssss I do enjoy shelving, I like putting things in order. I can see this network as a source for opinions on books when I have yet to read the book.

Thing 18: Facebook and MySpace

Facebook me!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1616301577&ref=profile#/home.php?ref=home

Yikes 3 days and I am so far behind!!!!
No! No! I did not skip 17. 17 is between 16 and 16 revisited. Anyway getting back to facebook, I found that going through the tutorial videos to be very helpful. I went through more than just the one. ( I just wish I had done it before going to Facebook) It really helps to read the full lesson before starting. I joined a couple of groups and found 1 friend from the library program and discovered a number of old high school chums just by having my high school listed. I also wrote on the wall and sent a couple of messages to melloves23things. The last time I wrote on a wall and floor I was three and a half years old, wrote Zorro all over and my mother decided I was ready for school.
I also visited MySpace. I liked some of the library sites because of how they were really geared for teens and tweens. This is so important to maintain their reading and participation in library activities and I can see how this may help to re-popularize the library. I was not impressed with some of the individual accounts, however. I am not sure if this is because of some preconceived ideas of this website or because I had difficulty navigating the site and the tour video did not want to download.
At any rate I had a bit more preference for the ease of use on Facebook. I also liked the fact that you had to get permission from an individual to list them as a friend. This allows a network of your own design. When I googled Facebook vs MySpace, I came up with 7,330,300 hits or something like that. Then when I went to one article it had had 12 comments within the last hour. Everyone enjoys voicing their opinion about this question so why should I be the exception. Not that long ago there was a news story about sexual predation and Facebook vs MySpace. Both websites were very aware of these issues and working hard to try and develop programming to root out the predators and have a safer site. Although MySpace seemed to be more accessible to the child predators, it was found that Facebook was beginning to get more. In a library we have to be aware of this especially if we are having unsupervised children and young adults utilizing these websites.
I believe that Facebook is growing because of the networking phenomena. In college in frats and sororities, these were our social networking and acquaintances that we utilized for jobs or other services. Although Facebook is fun and can be recreational, I see it more as a professional network site. Whereas MySpace is more for music and basic friendship and socializing. Of course, I could be wrong.

Thing 16: You Tube Revisited

I found this web site called SandFantasy.com. They had these videos of doing sand art set to music. It was rather incredible! Although it took awhile to download, it was worth the wait.

Thing 17: Podcasts

http://podcast.com/show/95955/Discovery-News-%28Video%29/
Well, well, well! This particular thing basically is giving voice and/or video to blogs. I searched through podcast.com and checked out podcastalley. I watched and listened to Discovery News and watched a chimpanzee invent a brush tool, I listened to CNN news but it just made me realize that the chimps are more intelligent than most humans in the news. I listened to authors on Tour and listened to various comedy routines. I started to listen to Stuff You Should Know only to find out aphrodisiacs do not exist. All I know is chocolate does wonders for me. The Education Podcast Network was interesting and it is a good way to catch up on some courses until I realized that anyone and their dog can teach. With some, their dogs have a great deal more to say. Podcast and podcast alley were the easiest and fairly speedy to download but then it was at a definite quite time on the net. I did subscribe to SirsiDynix merely because of their involvement with libraries. The only problem is they have not updated their "pod" in some time. I guess that can be a problem.
If I were to do a podcast, I would have to make the commitment to continually update and come up with something new to say. That can be very difficult because sometimes I sit and think and sometimes I just sit.

It's my Thing and I did what I wanted to Do

I always thought that if I won a great deal of money. I would love to own "Starry Night" by VanGogh. This is one of my all time favorites. Since that will never happen, I will sit back and admire copies.

Thing 16: You Tube

Well here is my video. Personally this was not particularly hard, however I'm not sure I like this one. I see children come into the library every day and get on You Tube, FaceBook, My Space, etc. There are a couple of kids that watch some of the jazz greats from old video or they watch some educational products. This is the good side of this website. Unfortunately, some un-parentally-monitored children will watch brutal martial arts fighting, WWF (fake) wrestling and a number of other inappropriate videos. Children are finding out the hard way as to what is inappropriate behavior and unfortunately these websites are poor substitutes for the necessary adult supervision. If the library has a reponsibility about the appropriate book content, do we also have a responsibility as to what is brought into the library via the web? These ethical issues remain with the community and parents of those children.
As to why I chose the underwater video, if anyone has read my blogs they would know my love of the underwater realm and since the octopus is one of my favorite creatures it stands to follow that this would be a favorite.

Thing 15.5 : Rollyo

This gives a whole new meaning to "Roll Your Own". There is a big potential for use in the library for this. This way you have a listing of those websites that are favorites and you have a new source for other suggestions. I like it!!!!

Thing 15: Rollyo

Select...Spear23nightsQuick QuotesMy Books+AuthorsReference SearchYA Library SpacesTop NewsReferenceTech NewsBooks+AuthorsNY TimesSearch The Web

Another Part of Thing 14: Online Productivity Tools

Created by OnePlusYou

Thing 14: Online Productivity Tools

WOW! First off I chose iGoogle just to keep things simple. I can log in to get my gmail and I can have my personalized home page along with it. I have my calendar that reminds me of appointments and anything else of importance going on in my life. I thought is was nice and simple and then you guys come along and show me: Ta da list, Remember the Milk, Backpack (I liked this for work for listing commonly used forms) , StickyNotes, 30 Boxes, MyTicklerFile, Zoho Projects,MyStickies, Del.icio.us, Bloglines, Gliffy..ad infinitum. And yessss I did check them all out. I even signed in on a couple, however with MyStickies it was not compatible with Internet Explorer. These are wonderful tools. Some are beneficial for teachers, for students, for sport coaches, for librarians, for parents, for homeschoolers, for book clubs, etc. Since everyone of us could fall into more than one category, it is important to find a resource that could be general when needed and solve specific needs for major projects. Often this would need more than one website. The article on Top 25 Web 2.0 Apps was excellent. This list is an excellent resource. My husband taught me to use the right tool for the right job. This list of sites (tools) is a good place to find the right tool.
For doing group projects that require much more in depth research, graphs, slide show, file sharing, tasks, subtasks, status reports my vote goes to Zoho Projects. It has a highly organization quality that satisfies my appreciation of order. : ))

Part of Thing 14: Productivity Tools

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Created by OnePlusYou

Thing 13: Library Thing

This was truly a great deal of fun. I listed the books that I started reading in Dec. 2008. I do like to read series- in order and mostly fiction. I do read non-fiction, but it is mostly political issues which according to some is also fiction. It was interesting to learn that there were many other readers out there that enjoyed some of the same books. I enjoyed reading the comments from other library workers about book lists and how they are incorporating them into their websites. This is an ideal forum for listing the new books that have been added to the catalogue. Another comment that struck a chord was an idea for very rural libraries to utilize individual's personal libraries as a source for ILLs. When your own library is limited on funds and space, it does seem a viable way to enhance the catalogue. In finding local events, I found our area to be wanting. This again would involve a better P.R. and dedication to inputting the information into the necessary websites. With government cutting back and establishing hiring freezes, it is becoming most difficult to do more with fewer employees. But, this is an idea for future IT techies, who could provide a necessary service to all libraries.




Here are some of my books that I posted.