Summary

This was a great exercise. I wish I would have caught up earlier --but I learned so much and came across several things that I think I will continue to use -like bloglines and I also really enjoy rollyo.
The hardest part of this assignment was just putting up higher on my to do list. It would have been better to have a partner. When I got stuck and fell behind, I fell so far behind that when I asked people for help, they were so far past where I was. The collaborative part was a great idea --but didn't end up working out for me, although I really wanted it to. I could have used someone to keep me on track. But all failings were mine, I'm glad I went back and finished this project.

Overdrive

This would have been very useful if I had actually done this assignment a year ago...but alas I didn't. So now that I've been helping people do this for a long time...I'm pretty much good to go. Plus we recently added ebooks so I've reviewed it since then.
Again, not for me, --I just like the physical feel of books -- but good to know how to use for those who want it!

Podcasts

This was pretty fun -I'm not much of an audio person, but like everything else --there is so much out there. I came across the podcast for Mt. Kisco public library which is in upper Westchester. I'm a bit familiar with the town -I used to nanny for a family which had a summer house in the area and Mt. Kisco was one of the nearby towns. But that was a long long time ago...Anyway... their podcasts are fun and funny. They interview authors about their new books. Sounds like a fun thing to do --it's like listening in on two librarians talking about books and authors -what's not to like. That's the one I added to my bloglines.

Youtube

So much time to be wasted here --and I mean this in the best way possible. Although there is so so so much to do here, I actually found something that was library related! Well at least storytime related. A few weeks ago, I was doing a storytime on food and came across Eric Carle's "Today is Monday." There was music in the back, but since I don't read music, I couldn't figure out the tune. So I looked online and there was a video on Youtube of someone all dressed up and performing it at a preschool. so useful!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oqOGGpmsQY

web 2.0

So I cheated a bit. Several of the sites listed on the awards list are ones that I'm already familiar with --such as Rollyo, youtube, zillow, community walk So I tried something that was more beneficial from a personal point of view --and that was the travel sites Kayak and Farecast. Kayak was great. I also liked being able to use the flexible dates option -although that one you actually have to create a user name/ account to be able to use.
I also did look at the niche social networking site called Mothersclick but was less than impressed by the content, layout and ease of use. Really the most important useful aspect of this was just knowing that this awards list existed and that you can point customers to it for a variety of their needs.

Online Productivity

So I tried 2 --Solodex in which I simply uploaded a word document dealing with some planning issues for SR. Although the document that I used was very very simple --I can see how Solodex would be so useful. I just finished working on a task force regarding TAL --and there were so many emails back and forth. I wonder if some of these things would have been easier to do on Solodex --especially when compiling all the responses that we got from our test texts.
I can also see the usefulness of this for customers --especially those who don't usually burn to cds or have thumbdrives. This is something we can point them to to save their documents.

I also tried out 30 boxes. My initial use was to use it for personal planning for childcare issues. After playing around with it for awhile, I realized that I can color code it and so I decided to change the focus to a more work related purpose. What I didn't like about it is that I could edit, but I couldn't actually delete an entry. Or if I could, the how to was not intuitive and wasn't answered on the FAQ. But again, I can see how this would be helpful especially in SR planning since it can be shared and color coded.

Wikis

Well of course I know about wikipedia --who doesn't? But as huge as that is, I also know about the problems inherent when you let anyone and everyone post stuff. So I was all excited to check out the book lovers wiki --but unfortunately it hasn't been updated in awhile -bummer. But there were others that were of interest --I guess I can see how this would be helpful for a very specific group or event. But some of the ones that I saw --such as the Bull Run library wiki --it made me think that they would meet more of their audience if they did the same thing on facebook