Week 10 - No. 23 The End

At the end of the iHCPL experience, I will say that my favorite discoveries are the Zoho products, especially ZohoWriter. This will be a great resource for home use--and a way for library customers to save their work quickly if they want to continue editing, for example, at school the next day. I was surprised and pleased with the ability to make mashups. I liked Wowio for its ease of use for audios and for the way it lists other products of interest based on your search. This will be a great adjunt to reader's advisory services we provide at the libraries.

Week 9 - No. 22 Downloadable Media

I explored the OverDrive materials. The home page gives a good variety of titles, both adult and juvenile,to choose from. Each title is available for a 14 day loan period. Titles include summaries and some include viewable excerpts. In addition to using the search box, you can also search by topics on the left-hand side of the screen, exs. eAudio, new eAudio. In terms of classics of literature, I did not find the poems of Emily Dickinson on this site, but I did find Moby Dick. I noted one title that will be of help to parents that I have worked with: Spanish on the Move for Kids. When I explored the free sites, I liked Wowio best. It has an attractive home page that draws your interest to new releases. Also, each book brings up a list of related titles that may be of interest. You can also search by category. Brave New World is included as a new title. LibriVox is less attractive from the homepage and on into the site. I did find the poems of Emily Dickinson and the classic, Moby Dick.

Week 9 - N0. 21 Podcasts

I looked at podcast.net. This yielded an interesting result that would be useful for libraries: Audio Literature Odyssey. This included professional readings of many well known authors and poets, including my favorite, Emily Dickinson.
Then I went onto Podcast Alley: it seemed more "hip," but required more steps that I was willing to do.
In contrast, Yahoo! Audio was VERY easy to use!! I found audio recordings of author/poet Richard Brautigan. These recordings were transferred over from LP records, so you can even hear the skips and hisses in the background--sounds of my youth!
When I looked at library uses of podcasts, I saw that one featured an exhibit and another introduced a new librarian. These are both interesting uses of this new technology.
Last, I added the Yahoo Audio feed for "Brautigan podcasts" to my bloglines rss feed list.

Week 9 - No. 20 YouTube

I explored YouTube today. I watched the example videos on iHCPL. Youtube can be used in such a variety of ways!!! I searched for videos on my favorite author, Richard Brautigan. I found several, including a few that used recordings of his voice, reading his poems.
Library uses for YouTube and similar technologies are numerous. If an author gave permission, he could be videoed as he presented for us. That way those that could not attend would still be able to see and hear him.

Week 8 - No. 19 Web-Based Applications

This afternoon, I created a Zoho account. I created two test documents. I learned the HARD way NOT to include puctuation or special characters in file names--doing this locked up my computer on the second document!!

Week 8 - No. 18 Social Networking

I watched the videos, took the Facebook tour and looked at numerous social networking sites. It is good to see that there are SO many social networking opportunities! Linkedin.com looks like it would be the best for social networking with other librarians. I was impressed with the various layers of personal security provided by Facebook. Looking at these websites helps me to understand the overwhelming popularity of MySpace !!