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May as well stay on the subject of television. The TVSquad blog is a great one for staying abreast of updates of shows, stars, and ratings. Sadly I see that my new favorite show, Studio 60, is not doing well. And I'm not in their small but affluent demographic either...
Just tell yourself that this is for reference reasons if you need to, but you may also find it useful. Christmas Movies Schedule is a handy guide for Christmas shows on TV. It ranges from made-for-TV films, to It's a Wonderful Life and best of all includes children's shows like Charlie Brown.
LibWorm is an RSS search engine specifically for library sites. They have over 1000 RSS feeds that they index. It is a really handy way to quickly look for a subject and find out if the biblioblogosphere has been discussing it. You can also browse by categories or specific subjects, handily each category and subject has its own feed. This means that you can subscribe to a subject like Library 2.0 and have all those posts delivered directly to you! Sweet!
A big thank you for including this blog in the feeds! However, I would like to see a way for those bloggers not included to easily submit their URL or RSS feed.
Quick Thumbnail is handy for bloggers or for those of us who are doing new websites where we hope to easily incorporate photographs and images. Choose your image, then you can choose to resize it in several different ways: by percentage, by fixed sizes in pixels, or by standard sizes. Slick and easy to use.
Wize is a site filled with information on a wide variety of products. The site ranks products in categories by taking both expert and users' reviews as well as the overall buzz about the product. You can browse by category or take a look at their top 100 products.
I appreciate their combination of social site ranking and expert input. The site is clean, clear and easy to navigate, making this a great place to research your next purchase.
I am sure that few people have a family filled with food sensitivities like mine is. But I do know that others struggle with food-based allergies as well as general allergies. In comes the free href="http://www.allergycards.com/">AllergyCards.com that allows users to create an allergy alert card to carry with them. It tells the severity of the allergy, the exact allergy, has extra space for more details, and then has an emergency contact for exposure.
As for my family, we could just make this a holiday craft and each fill out our very own!
Flickr is now offering a Camera Finder that lets you see what cameras are most popular on Flickr, but best of all also lets you browse shots taken with those cameras! You can see the quality of the photographs for yourself before you buy. That would have saved me making the mistake I did with our last home digital camera. Ah well, live and learn, and use this guide to help!
The Best Media in Life is Free is a site that links to the best in free online media from free audio book to e-books to music. All free and legal to use.
What I appreciate most about it is learning about new websites that offer free content to visitors. As a librarian, I am always looking for new options for online content that is legal for people to access. This is a treasure trove.
Assuming you aren't spending the day after Thanksgiving like I am (cooking another Thanksgiving meal) and you enjoy shopping in crowded stores, then this may be the site for you. Read the forums, browse the deals, and make your own personalized shopping list. This is the perfect site for all of you hardcore shoppers.
Tutorialicio.us is community site that lets you find and rank the best online tutorials for design, Photoshop and programming. There is a wide range of tutorials available on the site that cover many ability levels. This is the place to come to learn how to create effects on photos and websites.
Nielsen EDI - Box Office Charts is a handy way to find the real-time box office results for movies playing in the US and Canada for the weekend. The top ten is listed in millions of dollars, plus they also tell you the number of weeks on the chart and their cumulative earnings. Not a vital site, but one that will be appreciated by film buffs. Oh, and librarians doing DVD selection will find it handy as well.
We have all heard of Wikipedia, the open source encyclopedia, and now there is Wiktionary. I'll give you one guess what it is.
The interesting parts of Wicktionary are that it offers dictionaries in many languages, a word of the day, and can be browsed or searched. They currently have over 300,000 entries in 389 languages. And they are looking for volunteers.
SourceWatch is a project from the Center of Media and Democracy and the Sunlight Foundation that focuses on influence in public policy and public opinion from PR firms, lobbyists, and others. You will find up-to-date news, a
Congresspedia which is an collaborative encyclopedia on Congress, and the Spin of the Day.
Yesterday I posted about budget travel sites, but this beats all. CouchSurfing is a network of people around the world who are interested in finding a free place to stay when they travel. People open their homes to one another and host travelers. They have over 135,000 people signed up at the site, 38,000 people have reported success in couchsurfing, and 210 countries are represented by members!
retrievr simply has to be one of the most inventive, amazing and fun search engines ever! You search in one of two ways, by drawing a sketch online or by uploading a picture. The search engine then looks for other images that match yours most closely.
Now, I know that some of you will say that you can't draw, so you can't use it. Please, just enter a blue blob or a red circle or a green triangle and give it a whirl. It will come up with some amazing images, I promise!
One question I always got from the public was how to book tickets online and get the best price. Everyone thinks it is an easy thing to do, but it can take some serious time to explore the options. So I am always looking for lists like 25 Best Value Travel Sites from reputable people like Kiplinger. Take a look and make a few bookmarks for your patrons.
Quotiki is yet another interesting social site that focuses on favorite quotations. You can sign up for an account and enter your own favorite quotes, rate other quotes, and tag quotes. The quotations can be searched by keyword, or you can browse either the top rated quotes or the most popular ones. Additionally, you can explore the tag cloud or browse the most recently added quotes.
FriendsAbroad is a very intriguing idea. Join this social community and it will help you learn another language. When you register for the site, you must say what language you speak and what language you are learning. Then you will be given a list of people who have registered at the site and speak the language you are trying to learn. Very clever.
Test your musical skills in 6 minutes by listening two pairs of music samples and seeing if they are the same or different. I come from a very musical family who will probably score 90% or better, but I got a very respectable 75% for someone who only carries dormant music genes.
Wisconsin Reference Klatch for Public Librarians is a brand new blog for reference librarians in Wisconsin. Read about whether reference is still the heart of the public library, learn about what the future may hold, and enjoy the conversation.
DailyMed is a site from the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health that offers information on drugs, including FDA approved package inserts and labeling. Users can search by drug name or browse by an alphabetical listing. You can also email yourself the label information or subscribe to their RSS feed for updates.
WashingtonWatch allows you to follow the bills before Congress. You can visit the site, subscribe via email, or subscribe to the RSS feed. Each bill is listed along with its cost per family in the United States. You can see the most popular bills and most recent, along with the ones that offer the greatest savings or will cost the most.
So often podcasts are seen as ways for techies to talk to other geeks, but PBS' travel guru Rick Steves is going to be podcasting starting this Friday. He is working with Lonely Planet travel guides, and the subjects range from general travel topics to exotic locales. Check out the topics on Rick Steves Interview Schedule.
The Gates Foundation has funded a 3-year project: The MaintainIT Project. It will help public libraries identify the best practices for technical support for their public access computers. The first phase of the project focuses on small and rural libraries. Right now they are collecting stories from public libraries that include practices and techniques that they recommend to other public libraries.
The project site offers recommended links and has its own blog to keep you informed.
Idio is a customizable, personalized online magazine that has just gone live. It has a focus on music and art. Part of the process of setting up an account is telling them what sort of music and art you like. You then have a personalized profile from which they build the magazine. This is an original and well-executed idea. I wonder what other customized magazines we will see coming out.
Sweet! This is a slick way to check out how your website looks in different browsers without having to install them all on your computer. The site does take a little while to load the screenshots, but it is a much faster and less computer intensive way of checking your site than installing. You can see your site on the biggies like Firefox and IE, but you can also take a look at it on Opera, Flock, Mozilla, Navigator, Phoenix, SeaMonkey, and others.
Razz lets you mix your own sounds for your website. You can use prerecorded words and phrases and combine them with your own recordings. Add a background track, and you have a personal sound for your blog, website or MySpace profile.
OK, I know that most of you are probably not gamers, but many of your teen patrons are. If you want to look cool as a librarian, recommend this site: Game Cheats. It is one of the best collections of cheats for video games available online. It covers all consoles, handhelds, PCs, and Macs. You can browse by game title, find the most popular cheats, or view the list of the top rated cheats on the site. Cool!
Zamzar is a handy website that will convert files to different formats without the need to download software. It takes your files, converts them to the specified file type and then emails them back to you. The formats to choose from are varied. You can convert images, documents, music, and video.
The Butterfly Site is a place to explore information about butterflies and caterpillars. They offer sections on biology, gardening for butterflies, butterfly houses, pictures, live releases, and activities.
Somehow I missed LISZEN - Library Zen Wiki, which features a list of over 500 library-related blogs. Because they are a wiki, you just sign up for a free account and add your own blog(s) to the list.
I do enjoy websites that are like curling up with a great photographic essay book, and Eyewitness captures that feeling. Offering originals from the National Archives, this online exhibit features text and photographs that offer first person accounts of history. Immerse yourself.
On to the second Jessamyn presentation!
The links to this presentation are at: http://www.librarian.net/talks/wla2/.
Libraries are becoming a place that the digital divide is most evident. We are "mission critical."
I'll have to check at my library to see if the card catalog is still being missed. I know that in the small library I directed, we got the comment at least once a week about wondering why they had to use computers and not the card catalog. Not that we are bringing it back!
She showed a fascinating slide that indicates that 1.9% of people said that their reason for not using the Internet recently was they had "never heard of" it! Yikes! Equally interesting was the 15% that said they didn't know how and another 15% that said they don't like computers. Best for libraries is that no equipment was the top reason cited.
She recommends that seniors purchase laptops and use the library wifi, so then they can be helped by their librarians. Plus they save on Internet access charges. Interesting...
I enjoyed her talking about library work as "clean work" with air conditioning in the summer. I think in the small libraries in our area, that holds true. If not for the director, then for the library staff.
22% of American adults have never used the Internet or email. 33% are the highly wired elite (me). And then there is everyone else.
It is no longer true that the longer you have been using the Internet, the more you know how to do. Now it is whether you have broadband or not. Those with broadband will be doing more advanced things online. Oh dear, my gopher practice will not stand me in good stead any longer...
Poverty and race factor into the digital divide in interesting ways. Menasha has a large Hispanic population, but they use the Internet at about the same rate as white people. Unfortunately, that is not the same for African Americans. They use the Internet about 13% less than Caucasians.
Age is a huge barrier as well for seniors. With only 26% of those over 65 using the Internet regularly.
As a library administrator, I applaud her for saying that the tech dilemma is a management issue. Do we see technology as a priority? Everything costs money, not just technology. Upkeep does take time, but if you have someone on staff who enjoys technology, they often embrace upkeep or at least don't complain as loudly as others. This applies to Jessamyn's final point that not everyone on staff has to learn about the nuts and bolts of technology. The library needs a transparent system to fix damaged/broken technology.
We are designing our website now with meeting after meeting. She encourages decisiveness in making a choice and moving the discussion forward. Everyone can problem solve and have input, but not endless debate. This is certainly something that I may have to consider...
The computers are not going away! Sounds so simple, but I know of librarians who just complain about computers and don't accept them as a permanent fixture.
Great idea about forming a Technology Advisory Panel... That may be a large part of our upcoming Technology Plan. Very interesting way to pull people from the community into the process and have support for changes.
I had thought about not attending this one because I am no longer running a small library, but I got lots of good ideas from it.
Woot! Jessamyn West speaks at WLA! I found my own spot in the back of the room with a power plug, and I am set to blog away.
Her presentation slides are online at http://www.librarian.net/talks/wla/.
Appealing to all of your patrons, including those who don't use technology and those like Jessamyn who are looking for things like wifi and higher-end technology is one of the tricks of modern librarianship.
Most people think they are bad with computers, but it is just a new way to think and new things to understand.
Library 2.0 = the library is no longer the box where the books are. Library websites are becoming more and more interactive.
"Only librarians like the search, everyone else likes the find." Great quote!
Email is a great way to interact with patrons. Ask yourself how accessible you want to be.
Create a generic trustee email address, generic director address, generic department address, and forward when you go away to someone else to handle it.
Offer email classes to patrons. Explain advertising banners to people!
Instant Messaging: patrons can chat with librarians, departments can chat with one another. Use Trillian to chat with all types of IM clients. Meebo for websites and to get around any blocks at libraries/schools against chatting.
RSSCalendar offers a script that pulls the top ten items from a calendar and puts them on a website. Sweet!
Wikipedia is very popular, but still controversial. Discussions about authority are important.
You can use Blogger to edit and maintain sites/blogs on other domains. Definitely something to explore!
Social software like MySpace carry concerns still, but it is also a place for networking among adults. Libraries are creating MySpace accounts. Yes! Social software is no longer the flavor of the month. Make sure that as a librarian you understand what social software is, and what DOPA legislation is threatening. It's not just MySpace, but may be your own library website if it contains any social elements.
Open source allows you access to the original code. Look for open source codes that help librarians. There are choices to be made with open source vs for-profit software. There are open source and free alternatives.
Mash-Ups are very useful. Use Google Maps on your website to provide local info. Will OPAC Mash-ups ever come? It would require ILS vendors to offer their databases to users.
Wifi can be offered in small libraries for $30 in 30 minutes. Yes! This has been done throughout our library system already. Splash screens can be very useful. Some libraries offer their access policy and then a choice of filtered or unfiltered. Consider lending laptops at a library as a way to minimize the digital divide.
Start playing with beta sites. You can try on new web sites like you are trying on hats.
Wonderful speaker with warmth and humor! Glad I get to cross the hall and hear more!
I am off at WLA right now, enjoying meeting up with colleagues, some of whom I only manage to see once a year at this state-wide conference. Tomorrow, we will be treated to a couple of presentations by Jessamyn West of librarian.net. I expect it to be the highlight of my conference this year.
I wasn't sure that we would have Internet access in our hotel, but we do and it is a wonderful wireless configuration that is free, seamless and easy. Wireless makes it so much easier than a data jack, because we always have more than one laptop along with us. We do travel prepared for data jack wrestling with our own small hub that lets us both still have access, but wireless is soooo much easier.