My thoughts...

Honestly, I thought this was all a bit too time consuming. Speaking on behalf of my generation, many of us are already aware of and have used most of these applications. I feel that the older generations, who aren't as familiar with computers or what is available to them on here would benefit the most from doing these exercizes. I am a pretty private person so I still don't think I would ever sit there and blog, I don't even write in a diary. I have a facebook and those who are my friends know what is going on in my life, without having to tell them too much.

I think that alot of people here are going to have a hard time finishing this project because there hasn't been any "mentors" walking around, asking people if they need help. The mentors aren't even really named on here so we know who to go to if we do need help. I had a question the first day and asked 2 deparmtent heads, and they weren't even sure what the answer was. I feel bad for anyone who isn't perhaps as tech savvy as I may be. But I wish them luck in completing this project.

Craigslist

http://longisland.craigslist.org/mcy/1032547451.html

I had NO problem using Craiglist because I use it all of the time. I have been trying to sell my motorcycle on here for months now, but I tend to get a lot of of creeps on here inquiring that I do not trust. I also found my dog Tara through Craigslist and it was the best thing ever. She is a pure bred Papillion and by using this site, I adopted her at 6 months old for only 100 bucks!!!! (you can't even get a mutt in the pound for that little). I highly recommend using Craigslist to anyone when looking for apartments, pets, etc. Just be careful, as with any other website.

Google Docs

Google docs is pretty easy and I like the idea of how I can make a document and send it out to others for people to add, share, or edit what I have written. I was already familiar with this tool because this is how we prepare for our weekly meetings in the teen department. Lorraine sends all of us a google doc with topics that she would like to discuss at our Friday meetings, and then we are encouraged to add anything else we would like to talk about to the document. By Friday morning, everyones additions are added, we simply hit print and then everyone has a copy of what we want to discuss. Two very enthusiatic thumbs up!

Wikis

Let's see. I am not sure how Wikis would be helpful to staff as far as libraries are concerned ???????? We all know that sources such as Wikipedia are not always very reliable since anyone can edit and change information, and the information could be untrue. A lot of the teens use it when doing research because that is usually the first site that comes up when they google a topic. As a librarian, we are told to tell them that those sites aren't very reliable, and they should try and use more academic sources such as academic databases and BOOKS :) I think Wikipedia is fun, but I wouldn't count on it.

I looked at the PALS wiki which Emily Clasper had also shown us here in the Web 2.0 demonstration a few months back. As I was looking over it, it seemed to be more on the technical end of the library field, much of which I don't really have a part of (at least here as a teen librarian).

Finding New Feeds

http://feeds.technorati.com/search/buffalo+plane+crash?language=n

I tried to use syndic8 first, but it wouldn't connect, so then I tried techorati. I guess it all seems pretty redundant to me from the last previous two tasks, so I didn't really find using this difficult at all. I decided to find feeds on the recent headlines about the plane crash in buffalo because they are just starting to reveal who the victims were and how they were all heroes.

Discovering feeds on our catalogs

http://www.communitylibrary.org/dev6/RSS/jnewgame.aspx


It took me a while to figure out this one. That could either be because I am still trying to get to the new website in general, or because I really had no idea what I was doing (I would like to believe the first possibility).

I believe I learned about this also at the training that was here at the library a few months ago. Once again, I am not sure how many of our patrons will actually use this feature. Perhaps a good idea might be to even hold a program here in the library for staff for them to learn about these kinds of services that are available for them and how to use it.

RSS

http://www.google.com/reader/view/#stream/feed%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.howstuffworks.com%2FDailyStuff

I just started typing in different things I am interested in, and a lot of links popped up. I subsribed to the reader "How Things Work", "ESPN-MLB" and "The Weather Channel". I see the usefulness in one site being able to show me everything I am interested in. However, this would take some getting used to. I actually enjoy going through all of my news sites, etc to browse articles. But for someone who is on the go and just wants to touch base with what is going on, this would be a useful source.