Finished

I had a lot of misgivings when I started. Would I figure out the MP3 connection? Would these "Library 2.0" sites turn me off? Well, I'm glad we were encouraged to do this because I learned technical things and found a lot of interesting ideas. My daughter is one of the new generation of library students who have used this stuff before they even got to library school. Now I understand some of her class assignments!

SC public library websites

I looked at the home pages of the county library systems in South Carolina. Most of them had a white background and contrasting bold text and graphics - the whole effect was too bright. Our color scheme is much easier on the eyes, allowing an old fogey like me to concentrate better. Many of home pages were cluttered with several lists of links, paragraphs of information, and busy icons in competing colors. Maybe the younger generation likes this!

However, I really enjoyed seeing the photos or drawings of their library buildings. In my mind, that gave the libraries personality and kindled my interest in visiting them. The homepages without those pictures seemed more impersonal. I also appreciate a library system putting an address and phone number(even if just for the main branch) on the home page. It looks business-like. Several libraries (Dorchester and Newberry) included a tiny map of SC, highlighting their county. That would be very helpful to web browsers unfamiliar with this area.

I really like our big G icon with the book - simple, pleasing, and effective in conveying what we are. The other one I really like is the icon for the Harvin Clarendon County Library - not only the graphic but the mission statement underneath: "Key to the Past Guide to the Present Window to the Future."

My Yahoo, MovieFlix, and Blinkxx

Customizing the MY YAHOO page was fun. The Titanium background is easy on the eyes because it hides some of the box outlines. My husband customized our our home Yahoo account, so that we can see the weather where our daughters live, etc. However, I would rather skip the My Yahoo page and go immediately into the email page. I wish we could add the weather and calendar boxes to our email pages, but I was able to change the color settings on the email page.

I looked at the lists of movies and commercials available on MOVIE FLIX and registered with the site. Most of them seemed like old, rather minor movies. But Windows Media Player wouldn't play them, and I didn't want to download a special media player just to try out this site.

BLINXX seems like a smaller, more focused search engine than Yahoo or Google. You select a category, and it lists websites without all the graphics or extra advertising and popups that Yahoo has. But it also doesn't provide any extra information about sites the way Yahoo and Google do.

Podcast sites

Podcasts sounded rather marginal at first - like a fad for people with a lot of spare time. But organizations like NPR and CNN find them really useful. "NPR has used the podcasting format to test out programming ideas which may not have found a home within the limited schedules of ... public radion stations in the U.S." CNN "sees how podcasts are changing the way we digest news on a daily basis." I guess podcasts are another way to use the information it gets from its 1400 reporters.

After the recent tornado hits in Florida, I tried searching the term "tornadoes" on the Podscope site, but came up with links to general weather programs. Disappointing. Clicking on the "book reviews" led to an interesting New York Public Radio program during which Brian Lehrer interviewed John Updike about his new novel TERRORIST.

To find other podcast search sites, I searched Yahoo under "podcast search." The first listing was for "Yahoo! Podcasts" (it figures). It's a great-looking site that includes: "what the heck is a podcast?", "what we like this week" - new and noteworthy and staff picks, "what other people like", and "explore on your own" - main categories and popular tags.

Then I went to podcast.com. The "rooty podcasts (audio)" list has a SciFi category that included "MuggleCast - Muggle Net's harry Potter podcast". You can link to 74 episodes and get transcripts also. Podcast.com doesn't have many video podcasts but says that their popularity is rising due to video cellphones and digital video cameras.

I went to PodcastAlley.com and found a link to a program called "Amateur Traveler"; one episode featured a book collection of travel stories by young backpacker travelers. On the Podzinger.com site, I linked to a Handbell podcast. (I play them in a church choir.) I can't remember where I linked to the Iditarod podcast site, but it was really interesting - a way to broadcast the entire race and to promote interest in the race beforehand.

Wikipedia

I'm glad that Wikipedia was included in this assignment. I've seen lots of patrons using this site on the Reference computers - probably because it comes up near the top of the list in many Yahoo and Google searches. As reference librarians, we advise them that it is not an authoritative, verified source like a regular encyclopedia. However, this open and collaborative site seems really useful because users can add lots of interesting extra information and links that regular encyclopedias don't include.

I read several formatting instructions on the editing page. They seemed pretty complicated, so I went to the "Sandbox", where you can practice editing for fun and that worked.

I was very curious about the Wikipedia "Reference Desk." I wonder if some professional reference people helped Wikipedia write its guidelines:
Be as specific as possible.
Do not submit an entire homework question.
Do not ask for medical or legal advice.
Be patient because the responders are volunteers.

I went into the Science section and found topic #6 on February 1st: "the top 10 engineering projects with the most fatalities." Five people responded. Sometimes their answers included links to Wikipedia articles, so I clicked on the link to Magnetogorsk (a huge steel factory built in the 1930s in the USSR). That article had a bibliography and external links, including a research paper by a student at my college. That was fun!

Firefox and Bookmarklets

I downloaded Firefox and played around with its feature which lets you place Bookmarks on the opening screen toolbar. It's one less click to get to your favorite sites. I can't really tell if Firefox works any faster than Internet Explorer. But my daughter in library school loves Firefox. She figured out how to change its icon to a horse which starts running as you open a site. I think someone may have done that on the Children's Desk computer also.

Bookmarklets are an interesting concept. It's neat that you can just highlight a phrase anywhere on a web site and click on a Bookmarklet to search for more information. But I agree with other GCL bloggers that I might not use them much. I did download the "More Info About" bookmarklet in my Firefox Bookmarks section. The long list of other Bookmarklets gave me ideas of other places to search for information when we get challenging questions at the Reference Desk.