Week 8 Mashups

1. I looked at FrekFly. It is a sight I would find very helpful when traveling as it appears to help with all the possible questions that could come up. I also took a look at Twitter Answers. I put many different questions to it and found that the answers were on target. The last one I looked at was Daily Mashup which has poplular photos, links, and news. I added it to my google reader.
2. librarain.net was giving tips about “simple steps to make your computer and computer users safe and happy.”
fred Stutzman was warning that if you had google toolbar on public computers there could be a privacy leak. The Annoyed Librarian was doing a whole essay on the importance of annonymous communication.
3. It took me a few days but I was able to figure out how to do a rollyo on patient safety. I have placed it on my bog in the blog roll section. It is called Patient Safety.

This class has been great. I have enjoyed the hands on parts the most. Thank you.

Week 7: Podcasting and Online Hosted Video

I wanted to see what YouTube had to offer. I kept thinking it would have only crazy, popular items and probably nothing of educational use. To my surprise, I found some very interesting materials. There were many categories to explore. I do have an interest in patient safety so I found myself looking to that area. In fact, I have placed two of them on my blog. I believe these materials could be used in the library. On hospital library intranet sites you could put important information in this format. It could be used as an alerting service. Also, I can see how it could be used in giving directions on the use of resources as well as directions as to where the library is located and directions within the library itself. Podcasting could be used in the same way as video casting. I think as librarians that we have to remember that each person learns in a different way such as some are visual learners, some do better listening, etc. If we want to reach all of are users we need to keep this in mind and use all the resources available to do the job.

Another Patient Safety YouTube Download

YouTube download on Patient Safety

Week 6 Online Photo Sharing

I used flickr for the first time this week. I uploaded my picture and 4 pictures from a trip. I also added trip pictures to my blog. I did have difficulty getting the pictures into wordpress where my blog is. I had to go to the help information for wordpress to figure out how to do it. I have enjoyed this week. I will be using photo sharing a lot in the future.

Week 5 Web Office Tools

No I do not think this is the future of all software products. I think it will be a way but not the only way. I doubt companies will want to do this. They will want to secure the documents through their own IS department. It is defintely a handy way to do it if you are not at work. If you travel for business I could see where this would be helpful or if you owned your own small business. Also, if you don’t have the funds to own your own software this woudl be a way to keep up. It may help to equalize our society so all have access.
I did have problems trying to post a googledoc into my blog. I could only link a document to it.

4th Week Social Bookmarking

I no longer see social bookmarking as just a place for your bookmarks. I had used it alittle previous to the class but I wasn’t using the tagging correctly. I now see after doing all the readings and checking out the different library sites that it is possible to incorporate it into the day to day workings of a library. It could be used in all sorts of ways: for easy reference for the librarians, for project information, for alerting systems, for classes, for journal clubs, etc. I will need to keep working with it to get use to the pieces of it.

Difference between Blogs & Wikis

Blogs appear to be great as a news alerting service. For the librarian it is a way to do current awareness for the users. Also a way to share what is happening in the library such as new resources, changes in location of items, etc. I think of a blog as a collection of posts that can genrerate discussions. 
A wiki is an interactive site where everyone can participate. It is a great way to do library instruction. It is also a way to share and manage reference desk information. It can be used to create a guide. For me it would be a great place to have patient safety information. 

Class assignment

1. RSS feeds could be used in many ways in my library. I think doing PubMed searches as a way of keeping current is a great idea and would be helpful to the clinicians. I also think that the feeds could be used by the librarian as a way to alert patrons on important topics. It helps to keep the librarian current. It will be a good way to keep learning. I don’t think as a librarian that we can keep current without these assisting devices. There is way too much information coming at us. We  can’t always leave the library to go to classes but RSS could help us in this area.
2. The patrons of the library need to use the RSS feeds for the same reasons that the librarians need to. They need to stay current in their areas of expertise, they need to keep learning, and they need these new devices because there is no other way at this time to do all this.

New to blogging

This is my first attempt at blogging. It is a result of my involvement in a class about Web 2.0 that has pushed me to try blogging