STAR SHIP TRAVELINGTEACUPS: Undiscovered Countries

Well Traveling Teacups has made it thru the Undiscovered Countries of Blogging and various emerging or already emerged technology.

At times I didn't know whether or not the aliens ( various technology and or exercises) would get the better of me. But, I muddled thru with the kind help of some of a more advanced race - the techies. The Techies know their world quite well and helped me maneuver thru and around some of the pitfalls I had run into.

Don't get me wrong I had some fun along the way and discovered some alien places that I would visit again - like ZOHO WRITER . Once you enter that world there were a lot of hidden stuff that you could carry into your own time and space. FLICKR was fun to play with, especially merging two or more images together to make another. And ONLINE TOOLS was a cool place, it had all kinds of neat prepared tools that could be used in various application to help you get thru your various daily routines.

This program has taught me never to say no to trying something new, because you never know you just might find the one tool you were looking for to help in accomplishing a project in a more timely manner. Its all in knowing where to look - its thinking outside the bowl as the F.I.S.H. people would say. The surprise to me was that I had fun doing most of the exercise and gave myself a shout of joy when I worked my way thru on my own and saw that it did what it was to suppose to do. There are 2 things I see doing different: one is maybe a shorter number of weeks. I know some people will finish anything in a short amount of time. The other is to offer it in another type of format for those hourly people who really spend 99.9% of their time on the desk. We want all our people well trained and knowledgeable, but sometimes it does and can put a burden on staff in a smaller or extremely busy branch to do this. I do think I would try another discovery program since I have been somewhat technorized and can go where no teacup has gone before.

To describe my learning experience - frustrated, anxious, happy, exhilarated, fearful and amazing discoveries - some worthwhile, other not so. Also built to a degree some team work because some of us had to ask for help from our fellow team members whether they were in your own branch or some other place in the HCPL system.

Star Ship Travelingteacups with Carrottop at the helm is glad they ventured outside the dock and accepted the challenge to go where no teacup has gone before, to learn new and wonderous things offered by the various sites and techies.

So, Carrottop signing off - live long and blog

Can you listen to me now?

Number 22 was to learn about audiobooks and where you can find them. Listened to the tutorial about Netlibrary. The instruction were quite simple and you were walked through all the steps, also let you know how long you could keep the audiobook and if you could renew it and how. And were given other ways to download if you didn't have the required equipment. Even gave instruction if you had dial up.
Then checked out the "Project Gutenberg" site. It had a table of contents which had listings for such things as "site map', "about the project", and "different types of contents contained within the books"

Thought it was neat that there was a listings for books of different languages and how many books were in those languages. There were 2 catagories - "up to 50 books" and "more then 50 books". Some of the languages were: Chinese, Dutch, Esperanto, Sanskrit, Yiddish, Gamilaraay and Cebuano - and yes I did spell them correctly.

Had a "Top 100" listing were titles were ranked by how many times the title or file was downloaded. The number 1 title listed on the Top 100 is (as of 7/3/07) "The Manual of Surgery" downloaded 637 times. Number 100 was Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass" downloaded 65 times. I tried out number 37 which was "Andersen's Fairy Tales" by Hans Christian Andersen which had 131 downloads. When you went to download there appeared a page with the chapters and how long they were. This book was live read in other words read by a person, not computer read.

It was interesting the range and extend of titles, and the number of times those titles have been used. When I had a ways to travel to work I got in the habit of listening to audiobooks, which sometimes were better then reading the book. You could get hooked on a certain reader - some had better voices and used more changes of voices for the different characters, and the music and sound effects added to the story. I have two versions of the Left Behind series on audio. One were the story is just read and the other is called the "dramatized", which was much better because it had background music, sound effects and more then one person doing the reading - really enjoyed that version.


http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top

21 in a podcast

Looked at a couple catagories - Comedy and Radio. Radio had everything from news on radio to some of the old radio serial programs.
I wanted something else, so went to the search box and typed in "library" and got 222 hits. Found the "Library Channel" which is recorded and broadcast from Arizona State University. It was interesting because it gave tips and resources about various "research resources" for students and those working in libraries or who need to use the library but not able to physically get to one. There were 3 speakers providing the information, some of the resources were free and others needed payment. It was explained how to use other links/rsources to tap into some of the free resources. There was listed 47 topics or episodes that could be listed to or watched. They covered a variety of topics such as - interviews with various library world persons, last minute research resources, copywrite laws, and libraries without borders.



http://podcasts.yahoo.com/series?s=6b896c4cc2e011e1999f2ef2ae236b30

20 YOUTUBE

This puppy was a interesting wiggle. It had just about everything from A to Z and then some. You could be nice, very nice, naughty and then very naughty depending on your taste.
I picked a video to add, .

Some of the things I liked about the site were: the stills with titles, when it was added, the length of the video, ratings where it showed that anywhere from one person to thousands have rated the different videos, that it gave a choice of category topics. Disliked that you didn't know what some of them actual were until you clicked on it and the inappropriate vaguely related content of some.

I looked at two sites - Travel and People and Blogs. Travel had clips of places to go and things to do. People and Blogs had clips of movies, pieces about artist and happenings in the news I selected Travel because it had a video on there about a YOU TUBE convention on 7/7/7 and how you could visit New York City for a $100. The site had a sidebar with other options about NYC that could be looked at. The narrator gave some good tips and even took you to the New York Library were for free you could listen to tapes and view videos about various subjects.

LuLu of a time at #19

I ventured into the BOOK site. You know I am surrounded by books all the time, so why not more book info. Books can be such fascinating creatures.

The name of this particular site caught my eye - "LuLu" - because I liked the "Little LuLu" comics as a youngster - which I still am.

This site was about publishing your own - book, cd, dvd, audiobook or other forms of media. Gave me some idea of what I might possibly attempt in the future. And I blame all the bubbling permutation of the brain on the bald geek and bookchickjen.

What I liked most about the site was:

- that it was rated

-had a link

- gave options about what you could do within the site

- could do a tour before deciding to sign up

- use of drop down menu

- walked you through the various options within the product

- let you know the costs involved up front

The useful features included

- variety of formats

- program would make adjustments as needed if not sure of size etc.

- the process of how to publish was in several formats

- listed FAQ in a side bar on each page of the different formats

http://www.lulu.com/

In a library setting it could possibly be used to have some of those items you can't get because they are out of print, but we still have a demand for, printed

FISH Meeting at Thing 18

Girl, did I have fun in thing #18. Tried out Zoho Writer and typed up an agenda for the branch circulation meeting and had it PUBLISHED to the blog. Was that cool or what. This had so many other options then regular word programs. It allowed me to go back and make some changes and republish. It could be shared with someone else, insertion of web link. Most of these were at the click of the mouse. It was easy to create an account or I was getting better at it. If I had wanted to it would insert pictures from my desktop or disk into the document. That certainly could liven up an agenda. Heres to creative and innovative ways of doing the dull and humdrum writing we must do at times.

July 25, 2007

11 a.m.

Called by: Christy Dixon

Timekeeper: Jennifer Meadows

Notetaker: Tyler Peterson

Discussion topics

Second self check out

SRP

Sunday Schedules

Upcoming Holiday leave

Progress on Goals

Progress on Learning 2.0

#17

I went to the sandbox, added a few grains of sand for others to play with.

Sharing what I like is cool. Its neat to know that others worldwide have the same or similar interest.

Well, me and Fang havea few more paths (6) to travel before we reach the end of this road.

So far its has been an interesting journey.

Well, here's blogging to you