Life Long Learning

The Hollywood Librarian looks really good. I tried to buy the DVD but they aren't selling them for the time being until the spring. Once it is released again, I say OCLS shows it to the staff. Maybe at Staff Day?...

At first glance, LifeHacker is junky and unorganized. There's too much to look at in a short amount of time. You would definitely have to have an extreme amount of time on your hands to sift through all the posts to find something you'd actually thought was cool and wanted to do. At second glance, LifeHacker is STILL junky and unorganized. Even after making the website display only DIY posts, it's still a lot to look at. If I ever decided to go to this site outside of this Learn 2.1 module, I'd have to know exactly what I was looking for, and put it in a search.

The Personal Growth websites were all amazing in their own right. I was pleasantly surprised with Berklee Music Lessons and Instructables. My favorite site was HowStuffWorks. There are many topics to review and they are broken down in an easily accessible way without having to sift through a lot of information you weren't looking for. This is also a website I can use as another resource when helping out patrons.

Web 2.0 and OCLS.

The Wii video was pretty neat. I was surprised to find that it was one of ours. Whoever made it did a great job!

Orlando Memory is a great way to share experiences with other people from Orlando. Though, I think the only people who are using it are employees from OCLS, I hope that it spreads to the rest of Orlando. Reference Clerks are wearing pins while working to try to get the patrons interested in what Orlando Memory has to offer. Making sure that OCLS offers a place where people can come together online, as well as in person, is what makes Orlando Memory so great.


I've already expressed my views on Orange Seed already, so I won't repeat my thoughts. The wiki is a nice way for the employees to express their ideas.

2.0 Continued...

The Big Brother video is hilarious. Once google started adding street view to their maps I was kind of iffy about it, but essentially it's a good idea, especially for people like me who know their way around by the sites rather than the street signs.

I checked out the book winners of the SEOmoz's 2008 Web 2.0 awards and clicked LULU. I have seen the site before, a friend of mine self-published a book from the site, but I had totally forgotten about LULU. I think it is amazing that you can self-publish your own book and have it available to purchase. Now I need to write something!

I was so excited to see that Threadless.com was chosen as the number one site for retail. I have participated and shopped from that site for years now and it's really starting to get the recognition it deserves. Though I haven't designed a shirt to display on the site, I actively participate in the scoring of other entries. I find it hard not to purchase a shirt from the site at least once a month. Eek!

"The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order." - Whitehead

First off, the video we watched for this lesson, Has Higher Education Changed?, was wonderful. As someone who just graduated last May, I can definitely relate to the message, as I'm sure most of us can.

When Radiohead's In Rainbows was released for downloading, I was one of the many who took the opportunity to download a full album from a favorite band for cheap. I think I ended up paying $5 for it because I felt bad about not supporting a good band. Though, I am a pirate when it comes to music, movies, and TV (and in many other aspects of life). Don't tell the cops.

I read our mission statement again and I do particularly like this part:
"The Library connects our changing community to the evolving world of ideas, information and technology."
I feel that this sentence is exactly what OCLS is and what we continually strive to be.

I read most of the DaVinci library article. The part I found to be interesting was the 'Recommendations for Libraries' section. OCLS does, or attempts, these ideas already.
1) We have patrons evaluate the library with the online survey and the 'Evaluate your Library Experience' paper survey.
2) We attempt to introduce new technology for the staff and for the patrons. With the subtopics of that suggestion, we already have a technology committee and we have guest lecturers that integrate technology and the future of libraries in their speeches. This is the exact topic our guest speaker will talk about on Staff Day.
3) OCLS is involved with Orlando Memory and also has a committee to help come up with ideas on how to get the patrons more involved.
4) The main library, especially, has creative spaces. The one that really comes to mind is Club Central on the first floor. This area is designated for teens only and it's a great place for them to work and play.

Open Source

Open source isn't new to me. I've known about wikis and Yahoo!Answers for a while now, but it's still a very interesting topic to read about. There are so many things we can do with open source information. At the library, we could use wikis to share information with each other. Not just from department to department, but from branch to branch as well. A great idea would be to turn Orange Seed into a wiki so that anyone could post an idea and see what kind of reaction it would get. That would definitely show which ideas people would be open to compared to the ones are now shown on Orange Seed.

Instead of posting a question on each of the answer websites, I typed in a topic, "Philip K. Dick" to see what sort of questions and answers there are about this author. Yahoo!Answers had the best topics. The one question I choose to explore was "Why was Philip K. Dick heralded as a great science fiction writer?" Answerbag had this question "What do you guys think of Philip K. Dick?" and askville didn't seem to have to many serious questions concerning the author beyond "What is your favorite Philip K. Dick story?" Yahoo!Answers seems to be a bit more intellectual with the questions, as well as the answers that are given compared to Answerbag. In fact, the question I stated coming from Answerbag was the only one having to do with the author, the other questions that came up were a bit inappropriate. I did not find this on Yahoo!Answers, there were pages and pages of questions that were relevant to Dick. If Answerbag wants to become more popular that Yahoo!, they've got some work to do. Primarily with weeding out the inappropriate material.

I have googled my name before and have never found anything remotely close having to do with me. I googled again, and sure enough, absolutely nothing. And man, does that make me happy.

Health, Wellness, and Technology... oh, my!

This weeks lesson was great. It gave a lot of wonderful information. I know that for me, exercising is not labeled as 'fun' and I usually get bored (but mostly lazy) when it comes to exercising. This week's blog gave me some ideas on how to make it more interesting. Wii is definitely awesome, but I never considered the games as exercise. They do have a new 'game' out called Wii Fit that I have been wanting, but just like the console, it's impossible to find. I have also been intrigued with the Nike/iPod connection since it came out. Unfortunately, I'm not much of a runner, so I highly doubt I'll put the concept into use.

I haven't yet, but when I get home I'll probably check out the MP3 based workouts and see if any would work for me.

Until next time...

Learn 2.1

Well here we are again. I'm excited to get Learn 2.1 rolling. I enjoyed learning Learn 2.0 last year and I'm hoping that Learn 2.1 will have the same, if not more, to offer.

I'm not much of a blogger, but I do like to explore other blogs from time to time. The video that Tom put up, "Blogging in Plain English," was neat-o and it helped to iterate what I like best about blogging. That being, it is a community where bloggers go to each others' blogs and read them, comment them, and even link back to those entries on their own blogs.

I downloaded Google Chrome and am already intrigued. It gives you a visual list of your most visited sites.

I suppose that's it for this week. Now I need to go and try to get these blogging songs out of my head.