Method 8

Method 8

When I saw the topic for method 8, I set up a page for my library. I had put it under my name, since I am the sole librarian. I posted a photo from a recent event. I tried to change the name to the school library, but that doesn't seem like it is going to work. I didn't know what else to put on it until watching David King's video. This presented a number of excellent ideas. I will need to watch it again after making my changes.

I would like to add a blog of what is new or what is going on each day. I would also like to link to a Googledoc of my schedule, so that teachers can see when the library is available. I also intend to create user guides for students to us when using different databases. The major problem is, the district blocks all Facebook pages. Once I get everything set, I will ask our technology department if they can unblock that page. If not, the students will have to use it off campus. Even that will be better than nothing because they will be receiving some library guidance.

I need to find out how to set up a fan page, but not yet because I don't have much to be a fan of.
I looked up the Library Guides in Facebook, but noticed that most of the libraries listed are university libraries. I couldn't very well add mine since it is under my name and I don't have any guides. I wish to investigate this further. Another item that was listed in the comments under 10 ways to promote your library, was Camtasia. What is this, and what is it used for?

I didn't even consider the consequences of setting up the library page. I did not realize that this would prevent me from having my own personal account. I tried to change the name after I started it, but no one from Facebook responded. I will probably just create another under the school name one I get everything the way that I want it. I personally wouldn't be interested in the account if I were no longer employed there, but I can see how that would be problematic. One of the librarians commented that they set up the account under the name of the founder. I hesitate to do that though. I did not see any way to switch from an individual account.

I looked at the Texas Tech pages. I prefer the Facebook pages. First, I was already familiar with Facebook, and so I knew what to expect on each tab. Secondly, I prefer Facebook because the tabs all had information about the library. With MySpace, when I clicked on the other tabs, they had nothing to do with the library. I tested this out with the Austin Public Library and Library of Congress sites and discovered the same thing happened. I would not set up a MySpace page for my library, because I wouldn't want students associating the content on those other tabs with the library.

The "peek" at Library of Congress Twitter page quickly turned into 30 minutes as I explored their blog on Photochroms. I'm bothered that a recent twit mentions that their feed had been hacked. I wouldn't have any idea how to fix this if it happened to me.

I read through the ”How Your Library May Not Be Using Twitter But Should“ article with interest. I was mentally checking off which ideas I might like to try. Then I read through the responses. This is, in my opinion, the most interesting part of our local newspaper. I send links to articles several times a week along with a note to "make sure that you read the comments." I loved andrew r's response to style 5; it was laugh out loud funny. Of course, we do that sort of thing in the library all the time when we pretend to be shelving books, but then step over, after eavesdropping, and say oh, "is this what you are looking for?"

The first article in step 8 is no longer available. I read the second article. I remember being attending an Internet safety training several years ago. The presenter was cautioning putting photos on the Internet. When I asked why, he couldn't come up with a good explanation. Several months later, I found where he had posted a video of one of his classes on YouTube. I think that it is pointless to avoid posting photos, because even if I don't post my photo, someone else might. On my page, you will see photos of two people who have no idea that they are there.
I had an incident a couple of years ago. The district published a group photo of the librarians in a local paper in celebration of National Library Week. A couple of days later, I received a harassing phone call from some nut who had seen my photo in the paper and decided to contact me. I've had other women tell me about their daughters receiving inappropriate calls from strangers following the publication of their quinceniera photos in the paper.

I think that it is good that Facebook doesn't allow users under 13, but I've seen plenty of things posted by people over 30 that make me cringe. I point out some of the things I see to my daughters, and ask them "If this person were applying for a job with you, would you hire him?" I point out that his video, photo, information, can be copied and come back to haunt him years from now. I have cautioned them not to upload any photos without my consent and not to chat with anyone other than their aunt or cousins. The girls are preteens. They have avatars instead of photos and I have not posted their photos online, yet. I took some last week that I would like to put up, but will probably put them on Flickr where only my sister can see them. I don't want their faces photo-shopped onto someone else's body.

While I am very careful about what I post on my page; I haven't been as careful about the chatting. Occasionally, I wonder if that is being saved somewhere. I think that it would be especially important to be careful about what is posted if it is by someone representing a business or organization. My personal life is pretty tame, so I wouldn't really care if people at work know where I go and what I do. It is my personal opinions that would get me into trouble. I try to treat everything I post as though it could be read by anyone, because in most cases it can.

I added myself as a fan so that you can see what I've done with my library page (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000546641824). I shouldn't have a problem keeping this page separate as I only use this email address for library work, trainings, etc. I will probably will disable it after this training, and start over as a business account under the libraries name. I do wonder what the school administration may think of this, but as I'm one of the few people who actually reads handbooks, I know that no one has updated our handbooks to include guidelines on the creation of personal pages. The district encourages us to use their website, but there are limitations to what can be added to it. I can have links to websites on my library homepage, but not to documents. There is a man in our district who is going to train me in using Moodle. That may be a better alternative.

I think that social networking sites provide opportunities for library outreach, but when I'm looking for information, I go directly to my library's official website. If the library has no alternative, these would be good, but I still prefer the regular webpage. I think that Facebook or MySpace should be seen as free advertising to point users to the library page, or to comment on items listed on the regular page.

Method 7

Method 7

1. I am glad that they finally got rid of those dots in the address. I set one up as part of a library training several years ago, but never used it after that mostly because the web address was too hard to remember.
Set up delicious account: http://delicious.com/TinaBillman (lucky to have an unusual name).

2. Found Thunder Bay's Delicious bookmarks and bookmarked their list. Also added one for Library Thing. In an offtask activity, added an RSS feed for one of Library Journals topics.

3. Watched it. Learned how to use Technorati to find top tags and blogs.

4. Selected a few libraries at random, and viewed their bookmarks.

5. Wow, 2893 have marked 23 things. It is on the list of the 5 most recent. The second most popular item was on Male grooming.

6. The most commonly used tags also seem to be the ones that people are most likely to use when searching for items. It is a positive thing that they are using natural language.

7. I can immediately see the advantage of using Delicious or a similar site for personal bookmarking.

I see potential for library use. I need to play around with it more. Right now, I have links for the sites that teachers and students use most frequently on the library homepage. I can see how the tagging would help them to locate the particular site that they need, so I will set up a delicious account specifically for my library where I can put in descriptions of the different links.

Oooh. I tried to click the Several Habits of Wildly Successful Delicious Users and got a "You don't have permission to access /2005/12/the_several_hab.html on this server." message.

505: Where the Red Fern Grows

505: Where the Red Fern Grows

Method 6

I visited the Library of Congress site. They have a number of videos of authors. If this can be accessed at school, I will need to share this site with my ELA teachers. New York public library has a number of videos aimed at teens, but again, I don't know if these can be accessed.

I love the Sail Away with Books video. I cringed at the part with the water lapping at the bottom of the shelves, though! I can see great potential in using video to create public service advertisements for the library. I'd love to develop my own, but in the meantime, I can link to others. Lily was a great tour guide. The voice even sounded like what I expected Lily to sound like.

Favorite thing about Lester Public Library -- the staff. I was surprised at how often that was mentioned. At my school it would be the computers, a place to hang out with my friends, the books.

I know that Vade Mecum (Go With Me) was imaginary, but she stayed in the first 1/8 of the book until nighttime. Then she skips a big chunk to jump 3/4 of the way through. That was the only change that I would make. I would have evenly spaced bookmarks so that it looks like she is progressing through the book.

Great Video Blogging at ACPL is a great way to let the community know what is going on at the library. I'm not sure what an announcement for a school library would look like. Other than our special events, the students are coming in with their teacher, and they usually don't let me know what is going on far enough in advance to put together a short clip like this.

The Get Caught Reading Video is another great example of library promotion. We did a Get Caught Reading event at my library a couple years ago. We took photos, printed them, and displayed them in the library window. Everyone wanted their photos up. Even the cafeteria ladies came in to read, so that we would take their photo.

Vancover Public Library at work: They must have many branches. The only time I ever get that many books is when my RIF order arrives. I should follow the book from the time it arrives until it is shelved. The secretary lets teachers know when books that they have ordered come in, and the teachers expect to be able to check them out from me the same day.

Weigle Info Commons Music Video: I couldn't get it to play.

Buffalo & Erie County Library: Nice. Slow enough that you can see what it is, fast enough that you aren't viewing something that you aren't interested in. The menu bar lets you stop on the slides that are of interest to you.

Middle County Public Library: Couldn't find the video, but they have a nice website.
The Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenbur County: Couldn't find the video here either.
Washington-Centerville Public Library: Nice slide show of new titles.
Gail Borden Public Library: Also has a slide show of Good Reads.
Harris County Public Library: Nice slideshow of resources available to different segments of the population.
Juneau Public Libraries: Found the podcasts.
Annapolis Valley Regional Library: Link no longer worked.

I selected a video and discovered that it was really easy to add to my blog. I discussed the reasons in a comment afterwards. I think that the use of student made book trailers would be an excellent way to increase the interest in reading. I see a steady decrease through 6th, 7th and 8th grades, and am looking for ways to draw them to reading.

I would like to film students doing booktalks. Last year, I had volunteers introduce books that they had recently read and give their presentation over the public address system following the morning announcements. We only kept it up for about 3 weeks. I think that it would be easier to tape them and put it on the library homepage, assuming that we have parent permission of course.

I like YouTube. My daughter and I have watched countless videos on here. Mostly of songs. I have cautioned her not to view anything there without me. I have made videos of her to submit for class projects. The students wanted her to post them on YouTube. She was in elementary at the time. I hope that her classmates were supervised while viewing that site. I was very happy to hear about Teacher Tube, because I see the educational possibilities, but there is just too much inappropriate content in YouTube.

Method 5

Watched YouTube video. It looks so easy.
Took Flickr Feature Tour, and signed up for a Flickr account. Liked notes in Community Guidelines about appropriate content, and not violating copyright laws.
Explored Flickr Popular tags. Typed in viola, and there was only one photo of the musical instrument on the first page!
When looking through Interesting photos from the last 7 days, I was surprised to see that The Whitehouse has a photo stream. I would expect it on their site, but didn't expect it on Flickr.
I looked through some of the library pages, and read discussions on whether or not libraries should direct patrons (specifically children) to Flickr. I also read through discussions of whether or not libraries should include photos of people without their consent.

On the discussion of whether or not libraries should use Flickr, I viewed Hennepin County Library's photostream. They must have had permission to publish that student art on the web.

Michael Stephen's blog post and the responses pretty much report what I had always heard about public places.
I tend to agree with the last poster's stance. Don't take photos of people who ask you not to, and remove photos upon request. Of course this was one person's experience, but she reports only one person asking to have their photo unposted. I have taken many photos of my library and events in it, but have only posted those with no people in them just to be on the safe side.

I work in a public school library. Among my duties is collecting a number of registration forms. One of these is a Consent to Photograph form. I haven't counted, but roughly 1 in 5 parents say NO, they do not want their child photographed or interviewed. I send a list out to the staff so that they know who to edit out of any photos. In some cases, the students want to fill out another form so that they can be in the photo. I take photos, but don't publish them on the web. I may eventually include students, but as for now, I will limit photos to displays and backs of people.

I dug out my camera from where it has been since last May, thinking, I've got the perfect photos for this. Unfortunately, the battery was dead, and the charger had not been stored with the camera. So, not having access to a camera or a library until Monday, I was wondering what to do when I remembered that about 2 weeks ago, the tech dept. gave us outside access to our library catalog. My catalog has a photo of my library that I took with no identifiable people in it. The problem is that is is quite small and I am unable to save it in the correct form. I found another cheapy camera and managed to upload a photo to Flickr. Since I have had a cold and runny nose all day for the last two days, I had to crop it so that my red nose & lips aren't visible. Now my blog has a profile photo. Now that I've seen how to do it, I can add photos of library events. We are scheduled to have a RIF distribution in 2 weeks. I'll try to add some of those photos.




I searched for a photo with a creative commons licence to make sure that I wouldn't be violating a law by using a copyrighted photo in my blog. I found a beautiful photo of a tiger looking so gentle that he looks like you could pet him.

I think that I am more likely to use this on a personal level, first. I want to learn how to link Flickr to facebook. What about photos my daughter takes? She's too young to have her own account; as her guardian, can I upload them on her behalf, giving her credit? What about people's vacation photos? Do you have any idea who that was that you handed your camera too and said "Can you take our photo?" The photos on facebook are including many people who may not know that they are there. My wall contains a photo of me, my brother and my sister. My brother has no clue that his photo is on there. I don't know if he would object or not. I chat with my sister all the time so she's seen it and not objected. I want to be really sure that I know what I am doing before anyone from work sees my work.

The whole idea of is it O.K. to post people's photos without their consent is a concern. For example, we had the author, Viola Canales, visit my school and speak with the kids about a month ago. I took photos, but by posing, was she granting permission to have them posted on the web? Is she enough of a celebrity that it doesn't matter? What about the photo of me and her together? I don't remember who took it. That person owns the copyright, so they should be the one to post it. It is difficult to make an interesting presentation of events in the library without including photos of real people.


I like the fact that I can find something in Flickr and have it show up in my blog without having to monkey around logging in, cutting & pasting and so forth. I see potential for promoting upcoming events at the library. I am hesitant to use people photos, but can create a link from the library homepage to show what is coming up. There are some photos that I could use as the library had a facelift this past year. It was given a fresh coat of paint, 30 computers, and new bookshelves. I could post photos of those. My windows are decorated with student artwork. What kind of permission would be needed to post those online?

Extra Credit.

The photos in Picasa seem to have a more professional look, probably because the more serious photographers would prefer this to Flickr. Flickr seems to be aimed more at the general public. I see it as more likely to be used by teens.
From the You Tube video, it looks like Picasa has many more features. This seems like it is more for someone
who wants to do serious photo editing or to create professional looking presentations. It seems to be much
more powerful, but much more complicated than Flickr.

Down By The Watering Hole

Down By The Watering Hole
Originally uploaded by *ian*

What a beautiful animal. He looks so peaceful lying next to the still water. Yet he is a ferocious killer.

Method 4

Method 4

Woohoo! I'm creating all this post using Google docs also I had created a folder on the desktop & was saving my info there, but this is even better -- especially since I am using a borrowed laptop and will need to remove my information & documents before returning it.

I was a little thrown by the list of popular items that were there when I logged in. I wasn't sure how to get rid of them. Also that was overlapping my scroll bar, so I couldn't navigate easily. Once I saw where to search and subscribe, I found several things of interest. Right away, I had to find out how to unsubscribe when I discovered that an item that I'd checked was not what I thought it would be. I set up folders and put feeds in them. I like the fact that it says that it is available offline. I just downloaded Google Chrome about 2 weeks ago (for gaming).

I still haven't mastered all of its features, but now I learned how to show the bookmarks toolbar, and I added a bookmark for the reader. I would like to see the names of the folders larger and/or darker than the change folders on manage subscriptions. I like the fact that I can rename the feeds to something that makes sense to me.

I had seen the RSS symbol on hundreds of sites and knew what it did, but had never bothered to actually use it.

The 1st one that I added was for the National Hurricane Center. I don't really need that now, but in the late summer/early fall, I am constantly checking their site.

Next, I selected a feed for FarmVille, my current addiction on Facebook. I also added feeds for Farm Town, Cafe World, and Country Life. I learned how to build a waterfall in Farm Town.

I thought that this would be a great opportunity to unsubscribe to the countless emails from some of my favorite online shopping sites.

I added Silhouettes. I couldn't find One Stop Plus using the search, so I went directly to the site. I notice that they have a link for Facebook and Twitter, but I couldn't find an RSS link. I couldn't find one for Cold Water Creek either. Both sites ask for email addresses. Interestingly, there were numerous RSS feeds for sites offering coupon codes for these and other online catalog sites.

I added a music feed from Library of Congress. I will definitely add more library feeds later. I was surprised to find that so many sites that I frequent do not have RSS feeds. It seems that I see them everywhere. My local library doesn't have one (http://www.mcallenlibrary.net/default.aspx), but a number of university libraries do. I was surprised at the low number of subcribers that most of them have.

Below is a list of the subscriptions that I added.

Select: All 7 subscriptions, None, Unassigned More actions... Add to folder... Classical music newsClothes ShoppingGamesWeatherRemove from folder...

Filter by name, folder, or URL

	Book Patrol	Rename		Add to a folder...
	http://www.bookpatrol.net/feeds/posts/default
	Cafe	Rename		Change folders... Games
	http://blogs.tech-recipes.com/shamanstears/feed/
	Farm Town	Rename		Change folders... Games
	http://www.farmtownhero.com/?feed=rss2
	Farmville	Rename		Change folders... Games
	http://farmvillefreak.com/?feed=rss2
	National Hurricane Center	Rename		Change folders... Weather
	http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/nhc_at1.xml
	Silhouettes Style	Rename		Change folders... Clothes Shopping
	http://blog.silhouettes.com/posts/feed
	The Library of Congress: Music and the Brain	Rename		Change folders... Classical music news

Method 3

Method 3 : Computing in the cloud.

I created this document using Google docs. After reading the first two articles, I could see immediate potentional for this.

Last week, I tried to open a Word document that I had created at work and emailed to myself to work on at home. I discovered what I always seem to forget since the computers were upgraded at work: Word 2007 documents can't be opened by Word 2000 documents unless saved in a special way. I thought that I could create documents in Google docs and then be able to open them or edit them from work and at home. The problem is that the district blocks Google docs.

I like the fact that it is set up much like Word. The symbols look familiar, making it easy for any user of Word to quickly adapt.

If they unblock this, I can see many possibilities.

I also explored Zoho. I couldn't figure out what information it wanted from my Google account, so I just reregistered. One thing that I thought would be very useful is the planner. I have multiple meetings, activities and reports. This is an excellent way for me to keep track of what needs to be done. My only concern is that the school district may have blocked this also. I like the note-taking feature. Sometimes administrators come through and see the schedule empty & wonder what I was doing. This would be a great place for me to be noting that "I cataloged 27 books" or "counted the 2734 books in the RIF order to make sure that they were all there," or "benchmark testing."

I'm not sure that I'm entirely ready for complete computing in the cloud, but have been doing some for years. It seems that my email account at work is limited in the amount that I'm allowed to store. Yahoo doesn't limit the email amount (or if they do, I've never reached that limit.) So, whenever I have an email that I may want to reference in the future, I forward it to my Yahoo account. The only drawback so far is that the district also blocks Yahoo mail. This means that I must look up the item at home and forward it back to my school account if I want to access it at work.

I'm not comfortable storing my photos only on the web. I like the security of having them burned on CD. My banking is still done on paper. A friend of mine says that paper checks will be obsolete in three years, and everyone will do electronic transfers. I hope not. I get paper statements from my credit cards also, though they have repeatedly encouraged me to switch to electronic statements. My insurance company is also encouraging me to switch to web-only statements. The utility companies could save a bundle if they had a way to issue bills electronically.

I know that the day is coming when I will be forced to switch over. My mother is executer for my great-aunt's estate. The company that is handling the accounts for the underage recipients informed her that they would be charging $25 per month per account unless she went paperless. Making the switch was a major ordeal for her. It took repeated phone calls and attempts for her to set up the accounts electronically.

I read the commments after article 3 and went to the article Emerging Tech Talk: Cloud Computing" by Lauren Pressley.

I read about Dropbox and Evernoteand both of these sound like things that I would like to explore further.

The fouth article pretty well summarized some of my misgivings. I do see possibilities for libraries and librarians using the cloud.

I would like to post my signup schedule using something like Googledocs so that all teachers could see which periods are open and sign up themselves. I need to experiment though to ensure that they can't delete someone else's sign up.

I can also create pages of notes to share with my ELA teachers. Each grade level is assigned a novel to read each six weeks.

This would be a great place for us to share notes and add links to go with those novels. Now, we are doing it by email and everyone is creating their own notes using links and other information. We could all edit a master document via Googledocs, and all of us could have access to it at any time.

Our library catalog (Destiny) and Accelerated Reader Program are already in the cloud. The data is stored "out there" somewhere. I love being able to access from home. This allows me to do many of my reports from home.

Step 2 -- Grab a blog.

The web2.0 tool that I use is instant messaging. Twenty years ago, I spent 1 to 2 hours a week on the phone with my sister who had moved 1500 miles away. We wrote lengthy letters to each other, and talked on the phone. Even after I got a computer, I used it primarily as a word processor because she didn’t have one. Once she got hers, we used email almost exclusively. Our snail mail was limited to once or twice a year. Then, as we moved from dial up to DSL, we started using instant messaging. She teases me because I continue to write everything in complete sentences and use proper grammar, spelling and punctuation. We email each other about once a week, but chat almost daily. I can’t remember the last time I called her.
I’m excited about learning about and introducing her to new things. I’ve heard of or even lightly used some of these tools, but I would like them to become as second nature to me as the instant messaging.
I was amused by his comment about reflecting. When I first started my career, I used to hate that. Just give me the facts and move on. It seemed like a waste of time. Now that I’m older and more experienced, I appreciate that time for reflecting more. I have developed an understanding of its value.
The second video (The Machine is Us/ing Us) made several important notes on the way that digital text has transformed the way we communicate. The evolution of code has made it so fast and easy to post to the Internet that almost anyone can do it. It has made it simple for the masses to communicate their messages to anyone who wants to view them. That this video spread so fast demonstrates just what I think he was attempting to explain. I found it so interesting that I clicked on and watched An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube.
What do these things mean to me? I fondly remember my librarians from school. Ms. Ritchie was the one who inspired me to be a librarian. Up until then, I’d wanted to be a teacher. I remember snatches of conversations that I had with her many years ago when I was in sixth grade. I have conversations with students daily on an individual basis that I hope are having a positive impact on them. I see many of these tools as an opportunity to have those conversations with many more people: chances to share a reaction to a book I read, chances to share videos I found or articles I read, or discoveries that I’ve made, chances available to me that Ms. Ritchie didn’t have. Web 2.0 provides opportunities to explain things that I don’t always think of when the students are physically here in the library. Rather than report to the library, do their research and leave, they could refer to a website to see other information that was discovered by others at a later time, react to information that they found, view it from a different perspective. These tools allow teachers and students to engage in that critical reflection. I found this website. How accurate is this information? Is this a reliable site? Why or why not? Students can help each other understand why they shouldn’t accept everything that they see online as completely true.

Step 2

Can't open the document with my comments.