A Few Web 2.0 Definitions

RSS: "Really Simple Syndication" a clickable content delivery subscription service that sends blog posts and other web page content to the reader of your choice.

Widget: pieces of HTML and other code used to create small freestanding programs that can be easily embedded into your web page. Horoscopes, visitor counters, customized search engines, clocks and weather forecasts are common widget applications that you might use everyday.

Wiki: a collaborative web page created by user-generated content using WYSIWYG, a program that generates HTML tags for you as you type and click.

80 Online Resources for Book Lovers

Kevin Bondelli's blog is geared to young Deomcrats but he has some excellent Online Tools, such as the one below.
cut and paste this url:
http://www.kevinbondelli.com/2008/03/15/80-online-resources-for-book-lovers/

RefEx: the Credible Search Engine

"Reference Extract will take hundreds of thousands of librarian recommendations and use them in a full scale search engine."~Mike Eisenberg, dean emeritus and professor at the University of Washington L-School.

"The initial focus is on free web, but the point is to build a technical infrastructure and partnership model so it can cover library referenced resources regardless of type." ~ R. David Lankes, director of the Information Institute of Syracuse and associate professor at Syracuse University School of Information Studies.
Hotline, Nov. 17, 2008,

Visual Search Engines

Soovle.com
Perfect for those times when you just want a simple megasearch engine with an easy to read visual display, unlike some of the more elaborate interfaces (Kartoo) or the ones using a grid (InfoGrid) .
For more on the newest search engines go to:
Internet Tutorials: Search Engines
http://www.internettutorials.net/engines.html

Why Are We Doing This?

A few comments over the past 2 weeks have raised questions about the importance of learning about these new technologies. Now is good time to revisit that question. Thomas Frey, the Executive Director of the DaVinci Institute, has written a piece about how social trends will change the mission and purpose of libraries. The purpose of this project is to introduce some of the technology that is a result of those trends, to encourage you to engage in a process of change, and to consider the possibilities for libraries and how we interact with our communities.

The Future of Libraries: Beginning the Great Transformation
http://www.davinciinstitute.com/page.php?ID=120

Library Staff Post Comments Here

New technologies and developing social trends have changed and will continue to change the way people use libraries. Knowing that all of these changes are taking place, we can better understand how they will impact the deliver of library services to our communities.

This post explains how the project will work. There are 14 Web 2.0 tools in the project listed under "Learning 2.0 Things": blogs, wikis, tagging, RSS feed, YouTube, MySpace, podcasting, Facebook, LibraryThing, Del.icio.us, Flickr, Twitter, IM, and text messaging. There are also several other links about these tools that you might find useful and interesting. Only the 14 things listed here are part of the project.

The purpose of the project is to give staff the opportunity to learn about Web 2.0 tools, how they can be used to enhance library services, and acquire a functional knowledge of how they work in order to promote the Library's web based services. You can start at any point in the list, top, bottom, middle, it doesn't matter. When you have finished reading about each tool, post your comments and questions here, under this post. Answers to questions will be posted here too.

You may recall during a recent staff meeting Sherry Gomez announced that The Friends of the Library had generously donated a gift certificate for the lucky winner of the drawing at the completion of the project. Anyone who completes the project within the time period is eligible to enter the drawing. Completing the project means reading and commenting on each of the 14 social networking tools. Posts are chronological so this one will not always be at the top of the page, just scroll down until you see it.

The project will run from September 2 through November 15, 2008. You will need to have entered a comment on each of the 14 Web 2.0 tools by 6:00 pm Saturday November 15th to be eligible for the grand prize drawing.

Remember the Carrot and Have Fun!

free2

Free2 Your dreams, Our knowledge.
http://www.wearefree2.org/
Welcome to Free2, a new campaign designed to raise awareness of how libraries in the Bay Area are empowering our lives every day. Free2 celebrates how libraries help give us the freedom to explore, imagine, connect, create and succeed. Learn more and get more. For free.

What a good idea. I wish we had thought of that.
Thanks to David Meeks for the link.

LibrarianInBlack

The April 9, 2008 posts by Sarah Houghton-Jan, http://librarianinblack.typepad.com/, on Findability through tagging your website and successful digital marketing are, as always, well worth reading.

Do scroll further down the page for the April 8th post with reviews of topics from the recent Computers in Libraries Conference. Check out the discussions about IM, Facebook, Wikis, Podcasting and the inevitable rebuttal to all of the above.

Healia Communities

Not sponsored by drug companies, as WebMD.com, Healia is funded by the National Cancer Institute/NIH and Meredith Publishing, and is staffed byhealth professionals (all profiles of available on site). In a world where we are bombarded daily with information about health care products, much of which you can count on being refuted or discredited, Healia's editorial transparency and stated commitment to access to health information and support as a fundamental human right, is refreshing. Anyone coping with a health problem or faced with a decision about a medical procedure will probably find a support group at www.healia.com.
Check it out!

Exalead challenges Google

Phil Bradley and others are excited about Exalead, "the search engine lover's search engine." Read his 10 reasons for preferring Exalead at http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2008/03/10-reasons-why.html

In a nutshell, the user has more choices in search terms, geographic location, file types, languages, media, timeframe, site section, personalized shortcuts, and more transparency in advertising while keeping the ads to a minimum. If that's not reason enough consider the Scottish government has chosen Exalead as the search engine to access its online documents.

Stargazing 2.0

Google Sky is now available through your browser:
http://www.google.com/sky/

A nice feature is the Earth & Sky daily podcasts. Click on See Sky in Google Earth for a short video.

Marathon County Library News

The read more about the Marathon County PL Director and Board of Trustees decision to eliminate MLS positions and demote current MLS staff because "librarians just aren't doing much professional work anymore" see The Annoyed Librarian's post of yesterday, 3/5/08: http://annoyedlibrarian.blogspot.com/

Teen Tech Week Feature: Squidoo

ALA has created a List for Teen Tech Week about social networking: 50 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Technology IQ, thanks to Nila for suggesting the site: http://www.ala.org/ala/yalsa/teentechweek/TTW50Things.pdf

Squidoo is free, fun, informative, and generates donations to charities . What a perfect combination for libraries!
http://www.squidoo.com/

The Annoyed Librarian Shares Her Blogging Secrets

AL gives expert advice in How To Library Blog: http://annoyedlibrarian.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-to-library-blog.html

Ask.com

Fun, quick and accurate, Ask.com displays results without the usual clutter of aggregated sites. You don't even have to type in the entire phrase, suggested searches pop up with each word. The web results are front and center, more search options on the left, images, videos, and in the case of musicians "Popular Tracks" playing excerpts of their hits, on the right. Try out the Binocular option, hold the cursor over the binocular image to the left of the web title to see a thumbnail of the page.

digg labs: Stack

I'm fascinated with the way information is being transformed into visual data. The digg labs news aggreagator Stack displays news stories submitted to them in real time.

http://labs.digg.com/stack/

10x10 News

Take a look at the interesting presentation format on this site.
10x10
http://tenbyten.org/10x10.html
Every hour, 10x10 scans the RSS feeds of several leading international news sources, and performs an elaborate process of weighted linguistic analysis on the text contained in their top news stories. After this process, conclusions are automatically drawn about the hour's most important words. The top 100 words are chosen, along with 100 corresponding images, culled from the source news stories. At the end of each day, month, and year, 10x10 looks back through its archives to conclude the top 100 words for the given time period. In this way, a constantly evolving record of our world is formed, based on prominent world events, without any human input.

Giving to charity while searching the Internet

The GoodSearch http://www.goodsearch.com/
(scroll down to link at bottom of screen)
Powered by Yahoo, GoodSearch is a search engine which donates 50-percent of its revenue to the charities and schools designated by its users. Click on "Participating Nonprofits," choose your charity and you are ready to begin your Internet search and contribute to a worthy cause.

Silobreaker search engine

Take a look at this great new search engine, Silobreaker http://www.silobreaker.com/
for news and current events. The front page tracks international news stories from many sources including blogs, and you can search for news hot spots with geo-mapping. Great homework helper and for news junkies.

New to this blog

I'm just giving this a test to see what happens. I have created a Facebook page for the Ridgecrest Branch and have included a few photos. Check it out and give me your comments!

Revisiting Reference Services in the Social Environment

Scroll down to this entry on David Lankes blog:

Scapes: Reference and Social Networking
http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/blog/?p=459

click on Video to get both visual and audio. I found the slides slightly out of focus, but you can review the slideshow presentation later if you need to, I found the audio explanatory enough.

Essence of Library 2.0

Excellent article about 2.0 tools and library services by Meredith Farkas, scroll down to 2nd article on page, Jan. 24.

Essence Library 2.0
http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/index.php/

Rollyo search engine

Rollyo is a very handy search engine that allows you to choose the sites you want to search. For example, from their list of categories I chose Reference and typed in "affect effect." The sites retrieved were for dictionaries and grammar explaining the definitions and proper use of each word. In another search I checked Tech News, typed in 'Yahoo layoffs" and got the latest wire service and industry news. Fun, quick and accurate, give it a try.

Thanks to Iva Nunez-Martinez at the California City Branch for the tip.

Howdy!

Greetings from Kern County Library, Hurricane UT Extension...

Open invitation

Hi all,
I hope you will find this blog useful for discussions about Learning 2.0 exercises and any issues related to the use of social networking tools in the library. At this time posting is restricted to registered members, however, you can publish a comment to a post. Please send suggestions for post topics to Kern Electronic Resources.