Week 13, Learn about tagging and discover a Del icio.us

Del icio.us and tagging: for this module, I had to read a book titled Social Software in Libraries to clarify their importance in our marketing and research purpose. Here, I classify every organization as a business. Normally, I finish each module without referring to any other resourses than the specific website. I still have a confusing feeling about the value of the popularity of tags and uniqueness of tags. If any organization wants to have an effective presence on the IOnternet, it needs to have a specialist in this field. I am not ready to insert any of Linkrolls, Tagrolls, Network Badges and Blog Posting in my webpage. The reason I developed a web page is simply for fun, not marketing or building a community.

I am glad that I could sign in with Yahoo's login and password. I am tired to create so many sign ups for this assignment. Our lives are controlled by login NAME and PASSWORD. Before we open the door to public we log on to several computers to boot up and open several applications on each computers. Throughout a day we log on and log off to many sites.

Week 12, Roll my own search tool with Rollyo.

This is one of the confusing items on the 23 things. I believe that it is too easy (?) to create, so that some of our staff thought it was not working and some of them thought it was easy and made a link to their own creation on their blog. Here is my Rollyo. I was not successful to insert/introduce this Rollyo search tool to my webpage on iGoogle. Did anyone, among MCPL staff, make such an item that does not look so rudimentary like mine?

Week 11, Take a look at LibraryThings and catalog some of your favorite books.

Okay, this is a nice one since we had the exact assignment a couple of years ago. Does my account still exist? Yes. I also remembered my Login and Password. WOW!!! Last time I accessed my account was in March 2008. At the time, I was creating my catalog on this website. My whole purpose was to finish the assignment. So without asking permission of leaders of of MCPL, I used their trademark. Sorry!!! I did not expect this catalog to stay on the web this long. Do you want me to remove the Readers' Cafe's trademark?

So, lets add some titles to my collection. I learned some more nitty gritty of how to manage my collection on this site.

Among us, librarians, talk about how our blogs are in the public eyes. They aren't.. Some of them put in so much effort and are disappointed with the response. I am afraid that I am adding more clatter to the Internet. It is very hard to find the exact information when we need to find it. It is crowded with lots of junk to satisfy tons of personal and business purposes.

Week 10, Play around with an online image generator.

I have no comment on this lesson.
About using an online image generator, for an old school fogy like me, creative people have already done all the complecated processes. In this Internet Age, everybody's work becomes average, good enough. This experience reminded me about a Talking Point sheet. Every occasion when our administrations feel they are not sure of us, frontline employees, they send us a Talking Point sheet to follow the script. I understand why they send a sheet each time MCPL makes a change in our service or policy. It is very nice of them, but we don't need to think or be creative. This week's blog got a little derailed.

Week 9, Locate a few useful library related blogs and/or news feeds.

First, I must pick our own by MCPL, then, as library related-blogs. Each blog should tie into news or season of their collection/service of a specific area. I found they are interesting to read by themselves. I can see how they worked to built eye catching, atractive blogs but clicking on so many links within a blog is too much for just fun. Should we expect research leads from the blogs?

News feeds; naturally, I pick monthly Book Newsletters and Online Book Clubs by MCPL and PLA News. Then, because of its geographical location, I choose .
Here, I introduce My Page. I created it for fun, not as news feed.

Week 4, Register your blog and track your progress to journey into Learning 2.0 together

Maryland Libraries Learning 2.0, what is it? It is, to me, a credit earning assignment. Hopefully, on the way into Learning 2.0, I will find something interesting to draw me into it. I am tired of "I" centered blog but I have not come up a good third person presentation system on this blog, yet. I believe this assignment does have much learning of technology. It is learning how to express and present our learning process. It requires an artistic and literary talents which I don't have.

Week 8, Learn about RSS feeds and setup your own Bloglines newsreader account.

I have registered my blog in 2009 to MCPL Staff Development and posted several blogs. When I REALIZED THAT I HAVE TO REGISTER TO SEVRAL SERVICES to complete this assignment, I was not very happy and stopped. I am one of those who are paranoid about putting my personal information on the Internet, good or bad. RSS clatters my email accounts more than I want to spend to keep up on major news. Is this a bad artitude as a public library librarian? I know many librarians have been using these functions to enhance their profession.

Bloglines is very much of a disappointment. I felt this site started with big funfair, but once there were many similar resources/alternatives available on the Internet, its popularity decreased. Without those feeds to read, we, librarians, sit in front of a PC for several hours a day.