Family Central

Yesterday the YS department of SWC went to visit Family Central in WPB. It was really cool. It's a pretty small location but they manage to have a lot of great materials including puppets, story time kits, professional books, cds, and toys. The best part is it's funded by the government so it's totally free to the community. YAY! We all signed up for memberships and borrowed some materials. The staff is super nice too. The only issue is that it's in WPB. :(

It will just become a special treat for me. :D I got a few books for baby story time - crafts and activities. Yes, I said crafts. We are SO doing keepsakes this session! I'm excited.

Here's the Family Central page so you can check out all that they offer. There are also locations in Broward and Miami/Dade counties.

My Learning Experience...

I loved learning about wikis and zoho. I think I will be using youtube more for fun flaky vids to put in my blogs. There are a lot of cool things on there. I have learned about things I was interested in but never had the time to discover like flickr and RSS feeds. I'm going to try subscribing to a podcast to learn Japanese. That should be fun.

I was actually surprised by how much fun I had completing this program. I would love to do something like this again. It was a lot of fun to play and discover new applications on the web. Even if I don't use them myself, I can now teach others about the opportunities of web apps!

Audio Books

The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific
by J. Maarten Troost

At age twenty-six, Maarten Troost decided to pack up his flip-flops and move to a remote South Pacific island. The idea of dropping everything and moving to the ends of the earth was irresistibly romantic. He should have known better.
This book tells the hilarious story of what happens when he discovers that the island is not the paradise he dreamed of. Falling into one amusing misadventure after another, Troost struggles with stifling heat, deadly bacteria, and polluted seas in a country where the only music to be heard is "La Macarena." He and his girlfriend, Sylvia, contend with incompetent officials, alarmingly large critters, a paucity of food options (including the Great Beer Crisis), and bizarre local characters, including "Half-Dead Fred" and the so-called Poet Laureate of Tarawa, a British drunkard who's never written a poem in his life.

This book sounds SO funny. It is presented in a rather dry style with an British narrator. I can't WAIT to listen to the whole thing. *fan-girl squee* Also, I here tell that you can now use your iPod for these audio books. I'll be trying that out later, too.

Podcasts

I had a difficult time trying to find a podcast that would work and that wasn't annoying. Unfortunately, some of these podcasts remind me of talk radio, which I can't stand. This one looks interesting http://www.japanesepod101.com/feed.xml but it wouldn't work on the work computer where I'm doing this so I'll have to check it out later.

I'm also going to have to retry bloglines when I get home. Our computers weren't loading the page today. :(

For some reason the computers are also freezing when patrons try to get on myspace. I don't know what's up with myspace this week, but I sure am tired of logging back into the computers 20 times a day. *sigh*

You Tube

YouTube is easy to navigate and search. The advanced search even gives you an option to search by duration of video. Neato. Just this Sunday one of my coworkers found a hula video she wanted to show in her storytime to teach the kids a hula dance. It was a great video, unfortunately, she was out sick for the program. D: But it would've been awesome. ;)


I chose this video because it has a sort of library-esque theme (what with dancing books and all) and I absolutely LOVE stop animation.








In fact, some of my peers may remember the Mtv stop motion intros they used to have in the 90s. One of my favorite performers, Voltaire, made them. :O I never knew that until like, last year. Who would've thought that an artist I discovered in high school created some of the cool and interesting things from my childhood. Weee. Oh btw, he's also very handsome. Icing on the cake and all. :D

Web 2.0 Tools

Etsy

Etsy is an awesome site for artists. All goods are handmade for sale by the craftsman. Craftsmen can easily open shop by simply creating an account. The search functions are a bit organic. Buyers can search for goods by category or by color. Recent creations are displayed in large thumbnails so browsers can view items easily.

There is even a sections called Alchemy where buyers can turn their ideas into reality. Buyers post requests for custom handmade items, and then sellers bid on the opportunity to make the goods.

There are also forums, chat, online workshops, blogs and articles to help craftsmen with their creations and help answer questions from buyers.

I don't really see a direct use for libraries since it's mainly buying and selling art/goods. Librarians could gather inspiration for art programs from the site.

Test Doc

Dear Internet,

I am SO excited to learn about Zoho Writer! I suspect I will end up using almost all of the features for budgeting spreadsheets, presentations, and hopefully to create my own wiki!

I'm going to add a little research section just to explore the formatting tools. I hope you enjoy it.

Love Always,

Jess

Giraffa camelopardalis

Common name: Giraffe

Giraffes are one of the world's tallest mammals. They are well known for their long necks, long legs, and spotted patterns. Giraffes have small "horns" or knobs on top of their heads that grow to be about five inches long. These knobs are used to protect the head in fights. Male giraffes are larger than females. Males weigh between 2,400 and 3,000 pounds and stand up to 19 feet tall! Female giraffes weigh between 1,600 and 2,600 pounds and grow to be 16 feet tall.

Healthy giraffes live about 25 years in the wild. Giraffes can be found in central, eastern and southern Africa. Their long necks help giraffes eat leaves from tall trees, typically acacia trees. If they need to, giraffes can go for several days without water. Instead of drinking, giraffes stay hydrated by the moisture from leaves. Giraffes are hunted for their meat, coat and tails. The tail is prized for good luck bracelets, fly whisks and string for sewing beads. The coat is used for shield coverings. Habitat destruction and fragmentation are also threats to giraffe populations.

This information was edited from http://www.kidsplanet.org/factsheets/giraffe.html

Defenders of Wildlife
1130 17th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Tel: 1-800-385-9712

defenders@mail.defenders.org

Web Apps

Zoho is SUPER GREAT. I'm sure I will enjoy hours of fun playing with all the features. I even posted my test document in my last post. YAY! It's cool that zoho has it's own wiki and chat features.

I usually use Google Docs for organizing event planning and personal notes. So far my wedding is half planned on google docs. Now I just have to get engaged. Har har har.

I've also used an app called Open Office in the past. It's basically an MS Office-esque app that you download from openoffice.org. VERY similar in all aspects to Word. Eerily similar. Like, to the extend that I think MS shut it down... let me check. No, it looks like they are still running. It's obviously not as pretty as Word, but it gets the job done. The only downside is that you have to dl it. :(

Sandbox

Playing in the pbwiki "sandbox" was fun. The wiki is very simple to edit. It was also fun to see other people's additions.

A wiki like this would be useful to share library programs. I would love to share info on planning special events and read the feedback/recap from other branches that do similar programs. I think Youth Services should definitely start our own wiki to share across the county and perhaps the nation! :O I know we do some really awesome stuff here at SWC what with the lock-in and hip hop classes and such. It's very inspiring to get to see what other libraries are doing too.

Wikis

I can see wikis being used by the library for readers advisory and book dicussion groups. It seems like wikis would be good for groups or communities that can't meet regularly in person. Instead of each person having their own blog they have a giant group blog on a wiki.

I do like the idea of having a wiki for an event. I think it would be cool to create a wiki for our SRP lock-in in August. That would give the teens a chance to recap their favorite parts of the night and view (or post) pictures from the event.

Web 2.0 Prospects

I believe digital research is the future for libraries and related institutions (ie. schools, research facilities, etc). FAU had a decently sized collection of articles and texts as digital copies which we could use for our reports. It was most helpful to be able to access such information from home rather than having to deal with traffic and parking on campus. PBC is building a collection of audio books on our webpage, which I think is fabulous.

In "Away From Icebergs", Rick Anderson discusses the obsolete "Just-In-Case" collection. I completely agree that libraries should not be trying to build collections wastefully, anticipating user needs where none exist. I constantly see libraries not weeding "classic" books that have not been checked out (or clearly have not been moved at all) in the past 10 years just in case someone wants to read this book published 30 years ago. Why not archive them?! Then we could use the space in our libraries for contemporary popular literature.

With the limits of physical space with regards to building new libraries or expanding current locations it makes sense to try to build as large a ditital archive as possible. There will be no more lagging behind in reading school required texts. Simply access it from home (or library) until you can get a hard copy to read at school.

Technorati

When searching for pbclibrary.org I found 75 entries through technorati, including e-government search and some web 2.0 participants discussing what they've found on technorati.

The site kept crashing when I tried to look up web 2.0 tags. I'll try it again later and see what I come up with.

I'm not that into reading a lot of blogs so I can't really see myself needing a blog search engine to find more blogs to explore.

Del.icio.us is a pretty cool site. I like the idea of sharing websites with your friends and colleagues through an organized system. I think it's a great tool for both research and recreation. I don't always have my own computer to use, so I really like that I can bookmark anything and am able to access it again with ease from any computer.

I am also enjoying the web comic Unshelved which I found on our list of sites.

Let's create another library!

So I joined librarything.com. I suppose it could be a useful site if I ever had time to actually read the suggested titles.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/jdoyle84

WebFeat

WebFeat looks pretty cool. I bet it will help us a lot over in YS to find info for science fair projects and other school reports.

I found this from kids infobits:

Boca Raton
Boca Raton, city (1990 pop. 61,492), Palm Beach co., SE Fla., on the Atlantic; inc. 1925. Boca Raton is a popular resort and retirement community that experienced significant industrial development in the 1970s and 80s. Its diverse manufactures include computers, plastics, electrical and electronic equipment, furniture, jewelry, paint, and air-cushion vehicles. Florida Atlantic Univ., Marymount College, and the International Museum of Cartoon Art are there.

Source Citation: "Boca Raton." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Columbia University Press, 2000. Reproduced in Kids InfoBits. Detroit: Gale, 2008. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/KidsInfoBits
Document Number: BX3201102829

Cool Text

cooltext90486774
Originally uploaded by doylej23things

I made this text box at cooltext.com under the logos section. They have a variety of themes and color schemes for all your textual needs.
Flickr is really bothering me with this whole not posting the text I include with my picture. I'm not sure how to fix this issue. Last time I just changed the text color and it worked fine. Now it's not working at all. :(

RSS Feeds are very convenient. I subscribed to some knitting ones too so hopefully that will inspire me to take up my knitting projects again.

http://www.bloglines.com/blog/jdoyle84

swc-branch1

swc-branch1
Originally uploaded by doylej23things

Ah, lovely SWC. This is a picture of my branch!

Flickr is not as user friendly as I would prefer. I think the instructions for adding a blog to flickr are a little confusing. But I managed to do it and could also add my other blogs. Huzzah. Now I just have upload more pics!

EDIT: When I posted this from flickr the text wouldn't show up at first in blogger. Some of the links were also invisible, like the comment tool and such. Strange.

YAAAAYYY!

I am officially NOT SPAM!!!

numba TWO

Now it's asking me if I posted at least 2 posts on my blog. *le sigh*

Now I don't have to lie. Tee Hee

MY FIRST POST

WEEEEEE!! This is my first post on blogger. Welcome, Me. Hiya!

This blog is for use in my web 2.0 training. There will probably be lots of boring mandatory activities created here. I will try to liven things up here and there.


Cheers!