The Web 2.0 Journey

"Mrs. Hill, may I please by excused? My head is full."

23 Things has indeed been an interesting and very S-T-R-E-T-C-H-I-N-G experience. Although I don't count this as a mastery of all the things we learned, it was a valuable exposure to the Web 2.0 world. As information specialists/librarians it is important for us to keep abreast of the current technology and this project has helped us out in that respect.

Downloadable Audiobooks

Our collection of downloadable audiobooks contains 352 fiction titles and 234 nonfiction titles. These books can be downloaded to a computer and then transfered to a portable device. It is unfortunate that iPods and Macs cannot be used, as these are the most popular of the portable devices.

Podcasts

Podcasts are audio files that can be downloaded from a computer to an IPOD.

Of the three podcast directories that were given in our discovery exercise, I liked the Library of Congress directory the best, no doubt because I am a librarian! I was fascinated to find out that you could listen to famous authors who had presented at the National Book Festival. Also, there was an impressive variety of RSS feeds and email subscriptions available through this site.

For our assignment, I subscribed to a podcast from Podcast Alley called "Open Stacks" which is one librarian's perspective on things of interest to the Library & Information Science profession.

YouTube

For my discovery exercise I searched for videos having to do with libraries.

The results were indeed interesting. Most of the videos seemed to be of entertainment value only, such as pranks done in libraries. Yet there were others that did serve a greater purpose.
I noticed videos used for welcoming patrons, library tours, library orientation and videos of teen programs at the library. It is a great way to take a virtual tour of libraries around the world that you might not otherwise visit.

YouTube is also good for demos. I've seen a few cooking videos. Overall though, I think YouTube is primarily for entertainment. It is another creative outlet for techie people.

Web 2.0 Award Winners

What an incredible variety of interactive sites. I had no idea there were so many of these Web 2.0 sites! I visited several including Lulu, Craigslist, Im Cooked, Zango, Yelp, Farecast, ColorBlender and Yourminis. The common themes among these are cyberspace community, interaction and collaboration.

My favorite site was Farecast. This travel search engine searches fares from major travel sites, helping you to find the most affordable flight in the least amount of time. Very useful for people who travel.

The library might make it's own "Award-winning" websites page.

Zoho Applications

Zoho has a very impressive collection of online applications and tools. It's like having Microsoft Office online, complete with all the bells and whistles. I could see how this would be very conducive to collaborating with other people on producing a document.

While exploring Zoho writer, I was intrigued by the 50 different templates that are available to use, and all of this without cost. It makes me rather suspicious; so what's the catch? For one thing, you're giving up privacy. Supposedly the documents you create are stored safely online, but whenever you release something into cyberspace, you've got to realize that there is nothing private about that.

Playing in the Sandbox-pbclswiki

For the discovery and exploration activity, I made two entries in the pbclswiki.
One was my favorite vacation spot which is Torch Lake, Michigan, and the other was my favorite restaurant which is Sweet Tomatoes.