08.25.08
Posted in Montana Library 2.0 Challenge at 10:02 am by rioghail
I really enjoyed participating in this program. I’ve used or at least heard of many of the of the topics we covered in the challenge; however participating gave me a much more in depth understanding of how things work and different ways that one might be able to use some of these technologies.
I realize we have limited time to get all of this done and we can’t do everything, but one thing that I would have liked to have learned along the way was how to set up some of these things in addition to using them. For example the use of our blog posts was an excellent way to actually apply what we are learning in the challenge. I’d like to learn more about actually creating/maintaining a wiki, or producing a video to add to UTube , or creating the RSS feed that we push out to our users, etc.
I would be very interested in participating in future discovery programs like this. In addition I will do my part to encourage my fellow co-workers to participate as well. Even if we do not directly have any impact on what technologies are used in our libraries, understanding what is available and how it works is beneficial.
Many thanks to those who made this program possible.
Tags: Montana.Library 2.0, challenge,
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Posted in Montana Library 2.0 Challenge at 9:49 am by rioghail
I think Wikis can be a great tool for collaborative work or for providing community information. I realize that there is always a chance that someone will ad/change information that is false or derogatory etc. But I think the advantages of having multiple authors and a broader knowledge base adding to the content outweigh the risks. Particularly since you can place some restrictions that will help contain some of that. For example you can limit the nmber of people who can actually make changes to the wiki or you can remove people’s memberships etc if they don’t play nice and contribute quality information.
Wikis are great for collaborative projects. However I have to admit that I have often been frustrated with the limitations of the editors available. Many times I have not been able to get the formatting the way I want and have just ended up bypassing the editor and typing in the html code from the backside. Perhaps that is because I was using a free wiki service and sometimes your really do get what you pay for. Other than the creative design limitations that I personally find annoying I really think wikis are a great and useful concept. Our library uses them for subject guides and for keeping track of useful information to have handy at the reference desk so everyone who works the desk has a central location to find updated information.
Tags: Montana, Library 2.0, challenge, wikki
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08.04.08
Posted in Montana Library 2.0 Challenge at 10:27 am by rioghail
I just love delicious! I have to admit I was slow to jump on the bandwagon. I was (and still am) a fan of the Foxmarks extension for Firefox that allows easy synchronization of bookmarks between multiple computers. At first I saw no real reason to sign up. But now that I’ve used it for awhile I am glad I have.
I have not spent much time exploring the social aspects of delicious yet but as far as personal use and organization of bookmarks it has been very useful. I found it a great help when I was doing a presentation. I had a few sites that I wanted to use as examples, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to bring my own computer along with me. I set up a set of tags so that all my presentation sites were easy to find in one place and it worked really slick (as long as you have an internet connection that is). I’ve seen other presenters do this before so that’s where I got the idea.
I can see the benefit of creating a network of other people who have similar interests . If you are working on a particular research project you can see what things other people are finding and saving on the same topic. I will have to explore this a bit more. The one thing I find a bit frustrating with delicious is that I can’t search for a particular person unless I know their username. At least I haven’t been successful at this, anyway. If I know John Smith has an account on delicious and I’d like to see what kinds of things he has bookmarked I can’t do it without his username, or unless I happen upon him by browsing tags.
One more think I really like about delicious and the way it interacts with my internet browser (I’m currently using Flock) is that with one click I can open up a sidebar that will show both my local favorites from the computer’s hard drive as well as a list of my tags for my online favorites which have been bookmarked on delicious. I can very easily search my bookmarks by either browsing my tag list or doing an actual search query.
And lastly. If I’m not feeling particularly social at the time delicious does allow you to keep your bookmarked pages private if you wish.
I think I’ll end this post as it’s starting to sound like an advertisement.
Tags: Montana, Library 2.0, Challenge, tagging, social bookmarking, del.ic.io.us
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07.31.08
Posted in Montana Library 2.0 Challenge at 11:59 am by rioghail
While spending some time playing (I’m beginning to think that this is no longer the most difficult habit of highly effective learners for me) around with Pandora I discovered (THANKS LESLIE!) that they have a widget you can put in your blog (or on your web page) that will share your favorite songs and/or artists and/or the radio stations you have created. How cool is that? Another way to make my blog even snazzier.
So I copied the code that Pandora generated for me and went about trying to figure out where in my blog template to paste it. After some trial and error (and more help from Leslie) I found a widget for adding text or html. Pasted my code in there and bingo. I had a Pandora list in my blog side bar. Unfortunately everything else in my sidebar was gone and the formatting created by Pandora looked terrible in my blog. Sigh. 45 minutes later I had found and reinstated all the missing information in my sidebar. Phew!
Now all I had to do was figure out a way to make the Pandora widget look like it fit in with my blog template. The first attempt was to just strip out the Pandora CSS information. Well that worked sort of but now it looked like unformatted text and it was all squashed along the left edge of my sidebar. Better than before but still not pretty. Sigh! So the next attempt was to copy the Pandora CSS file save it to the server where my blog lives and then try altering it until it looked liked it matched my blog template; but retained the parts of the original formatting from Pandora that I liked.
If anyone was reading my blog while I was messing about with all this formatting I’m sure they were wondering if I was on drugs or what. Because of course I made the display much worse before I managed to make it better. Eventually, however I stumbled upon the right combination of code and now I’m pretty pleased with the way it turned out. Someone who is well versed in html and css could have done in 5 minutes what it took me slightly longer than an hour to complete; but it sure is nice to know I accomplished something almost all on my own (I’m sure it would have take 2 or 3 hours without the help from Leslie)
In any case I thought it would be fun to share with you all my frustrations and my success story. If for no other reason than to let you know that while it helps, you don’t have to be a computer programmer to be able to tweak your blogs and widgets to make them more personalized.
Tags: Montana, Library 2.0, Challenge, blogs, templates, CSS, widgets
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07.29.08
Posted in Montana Library 2.0 Challenge at 11:51 am by rioghail
In our class so far we’ve talked about RSS, and podcasts. I just discovered there are slidecasts also. While reading one of the blogs to which I now have an RSS feed that keeps me updated I was refered to this slide presentation on metadata. It’s a great, nontechnical explanation of metadata, by the way, so if your interested in that sort of thing it’s only 30 minutes long.
Slideshare is a place where people can share Powerpoint presentations. They can be shared either publicly or privately. You can search for slide shows on a particular topic or you can browse the most popular downloads etc. They have slidecasts you can subscribe to; widgets to add to your blog and communities of people interested in similar things that can be joined. There’s a group for “web 2.0 tools for effective teaching” which might be useful for us library 2.0 types.
Even though this is kinda off topic I thought it was cool enough to share.
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07.25.08
Posted in Montana Library 2.0 Challenge at 6:00 pm by rioghail
I really enjoyed listening to the additional information on podcasts. It’s one thing to learn how to access them and listen to them; but something else to actually learn how to create them for our patrons.
Just to see if I could figure it out I decided to create a very short audio file and see if I could create the podcast and link to it on my blog. Of course I’m not creating an actual podcast because as Greg Schwartz mentioned in his program a single audio file is not a podcast since it is not a recurring event. I figured since I was just exploring the technology for learning purposes I could ask for forgiveness for my indiscretion later.
The first step in creating my podcast episode was pretty straightforward. I downloaded audacity and the lame mp3 encoder and installed it on my computer. Then I recorded a short audio clip and saved it as an mp3 file. So far so good. Then I went out looking for the plugin for Wordpress so I could actually create my link - Well I found it and downloaded it and even managed to use ftp to put it on the server that hosts my personal web page and blog. According to the instructions all I had to do was then go to the plugin manager and activate it. Well it never appeared in the manager. Hmmmm. So after about an hour of searching for clues on the internet I discovered that podcasting is seamlessly supported as of Wordpress 1.5. According to the announcement all I have to do is link to an audio file in one of my posts and WordPress will automatically add the necessary enclosure tag to my RSS2 feed to make it useable as a podcast.
Sigh! I could have saved all sorts of time if I had read this first. So goes the challenge of the learning process 
So here it is. If it worked correctly you all should be able to hear my very short experimental audio clip.
Tags: Montana, Library 2.0, Challenge, Podcasts
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Posted in Montana Library 2.0 Challenge at 11:37 am by rioghail
Like RSS feeds podcasts are awesome! I really like the idea of having the information I’m interested in automatically downloaded to my computer so I don’t have to go out looking for it. Also like the RSS feeds I can see how easy it is to get information overload with podcasts. There is just way too many interesting things to learn out there and just not enough time.
I checked out a couple of podcast aggregators but didn’t download any. I chose to just use iTunes since it was already on my computer.
I did some searching through iTunes and Podcastalley and found all sorts of interesting things out there. There are a ton of different podcasts out there for learning a variety of languages. I thought I might have to try that sometime in the future. I found a podcast for the discovery channel and got all excited since that’s the channel I miss the most when we canceled our satellite service. Unfortunately the programs where just short trailers and introductions to the episodes so that just left me wanting more. The good thing about that is I now know how to unsubscribe from a podcast too. I found a podcast about dog training that I couldn’t resist subscribing to and then since I’m doing this on my work computer I thought I should find some library related podcasts to try. One that might be of particular interest to the participants in this class is “Cool Tools for Library 2.0″. The other ones I subscribed to are “The Library Channel” ; “Library Geeks“; “Library Luminary Lectures“; and “Uncontrolled Vocabulary“.
Tags: Montana, Library 2.0, Challenge, Podcasts
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07.22.08
Posted in Montana Library 2.0 Challenge at 10:45 am by rioghail
This morning I was catching up on reading my RSS feeds and I read an interesting post post by Jeremiah Owyang about using social media (The article was referenced on Stephen Abram’s blog Stephen’s Lighthouse ) That combined with the recent post of 2 Point Oh Yeah! about what’s so special about 2.0 got me thinking. What is so special about all of this? Many times throughout this class I have thought wow this is fun technology and isn’t it cool that I can turn a picture into a puzzle, or create a sign, or chat with a Facebook contact etc. But I also wonder just how much of it could be used to promote the library and the services we offer. Some things are obvious create RSS feeds that will keep your patrons notified of new materials or activities happening in the library, plunk a Worldcat (or better yet a library specific) search widget on the library’s Facebook page so people can search for materials right from there. We are just catching up on how to use much of this; but for many many people 2.0 isn’t special it’s just the way things work. They expect to be able to do all these things and they expect the rest of the world to be up to speed and offering similar services. If nothing else having library related services out there actively using 2.0 can be a great way of marketing ourselves. Yes we are up to date and trendy and look what we can do for you. Better yet with so much emphasis on the social aspect of 2.0 we can be gaining timely feedback from our patrons about how we can improve our services.
Tags: Montana, Library 2.0, Challenge, social media, marketing, library
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