Waterfall Vanity

These are pictures from before the glass broke on the vanity and a picture of the piece that broke off.

RSS Feeds

I created a Google Reader account and signed up for the aol lead stories feed. This is all of the news that pops up when you open aol. I love it because it is a mix of world and national news as well as entertainment news. In my feed I found out that there were many people who were supposed to be on the air france flight that went missing. That article is @ http://news.aol.com/article/air-france-crash/515205.
I also checked out some of the mastic and shirley blogs that were recommended but found that the masticshirley one hasn't been updated since October 2008. I know that people think our town is boring but really, nothing to say since October? Boring blog if you ask me.

Suffolk Wave

I had recently used Suffolk Wave to download an audio file of The Reader. I wanted to be able to have it on a personal device so that way I didn't have to sit in front of my computer for 4 hours. Downloading it was easy but the file was not able to be transferred to an apple device. I had to go an borrow my moms generic mp3. I found this frustrating because I own a Mac, an ipod and an iphone so I was annoyed that now i have to have even another device to be able to listen to this book. Also, I realized that I wanted to check out this book while I was at work and once you begin the process you only have a limited amount of time to get the file onto your device otherwise if other people have that item on hold it goes to the next person. I was nervous being that I never used the software before that I would not be able to have it done in that amount of time. Luckily I was able to. Once I was able to get the file onto the mp3 it was really easy to use. It sounded just like a cd-book. It was great to be able to fast forward and rewind and pause till the next time I could listen to it. Then I was able to listen on my breaks, in the car, and when I was doing laundry. Also I found that the file stays on your device until the next time that you sync it to the computer. This made it easier for me so that way if I was not able to finish it in the time before it was checked back in, I still had more time and while it was checked out to the next person. Overall I thought that it was cool. I wish that they had more materials available like better music and I wish that each material came in more formats like mac and pc.

Flickr

This is a photo of a Thanksgiving Display that I made when I first started as a librarian trainee in CPSD. I made a native american scarecrow and a pilgrim scarecrow. I learned after taking my Native American class that this display is not politically correct and could actually be extremely offensive to native americans because it is very stereotypical.

I found that Flickr was pretty easy to use and I think that I will use it now that I made an account. I think that it is a great way to back up your personal photos. God forbid you ever had a fire in your house or your computer crashed and you nid not back it up all of your photos would be lost. This is a great way to make sure that they are protected. The only downfall is if flickr ever shut down.

You Tube

You Tube is an interesting site, I mostly use it for entertainment purposes. I also use it for a link to the past. It is really great to be able to see old commercials, shows and movies. This Christmas I was looking for an old cartoon I used to watch when I was little and it was only available on You Tube. I never thought to look up how to do things. i think taht is really cool. I am such a visual learner but knitting and crocheting books always confused me. Now I can finally figure it out.

The only thing that I do not like about the site is that anyone can post. Also I feel that it has become a universe for hams. Everyone wants to be a star and now they have the means to do so.

I think that libraries can use you tube as a way to connect to patrons while they are home. We can show things that happen here like large events. We could also put up a sample storytime or program so that new patrons that are unsure about coming could see that it is not intimidating. I think taht one feature that we libraries could use is the box that says related videos. We already have that now in our catalog but it makes finding similiar items much easier. It also links you to other items that you may never have been able to link to through just subject headings or author searches. It could also be cool for us to be able to search most searched books or items or most checked out.

I linked to a cool video of a magic trick (don't have any idea who put it up ;). I just think this video is great because it makes smart people feel so dumb. The smarter you are the more difficult it is to figure out and the more crazy it makes you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkfdN3QfQIY

Library Thing

I have had a Library Thing account for a while now. I love it (when I remember to use it). I typically use it to remember all of the books that I use for read-alouds. I also love that you can use it to tag books with subjects that you would not find in the catalog, for example books that use metaphors. This is helpful for when teachers come in looking for these items and you just can't think of any off the top of your head.

Tag clouds I have known a little about. I did not know however that the reason some words are bigger than others is because they are searched more. That makes so much sense. I think that tag clouds are great because sometimes you just can't find the right search terms to find similar books and this will help.

Here is a link to my Library Thing catalog: http://www.librarything.com/home/sseminera

Delicious

For this activity I tagged the Jester Jim Show website. I feel that this site is a good way to keep webites in order. I would mostly use it as a cataloging tool for myself to keep all of my useful sites handy. In that way it would be a helpful reference tool for when a patron is looking for "good" sites on a specific topic I can tell them ones that I have I tried out myself without having to start from scratch and remember all of the lesson plan sites that were actually useful.

I find that delicious could be helpful with research because if you find something that is helpful then the tags could help you use other search terms to find similar items that you may not have thought of. I also like that you can access this site anywhere because if you are working on a project for school and find sites that are perfect, you can bookmark them to the site and save them for later instead of having to print out all of the info.

Although I never really look at or use our tag cloud it is helpful sometimes when the catalogs subject headings are just not finding what you are looking for. The tags can give you some other options to finding similar items.

Overall a cool site!

Myspace and Facebook

Facebook


Mastics has 131 fans on the facebook page.


Other libraries that have a presence on Facebook are Hampton Bays Public Library, Patchogue Medford Library, South Country Library Children's Department and more.


There is nothing that I feel we are missing from our page that I can think of. I think that we are featuring all of the important aspects of our library. That is until the new page setup takes over and all of the hard work gets put into tabs.

Myspace

The main library myspace page has 16 friends and the teen page has 12 friends.

Two interesting elements on the site are the Ask the Librarian and the Shelfari features. I also like the calendar option but it was never working when I looked at the page.

Experience

I have had a pretty good amount of experience with both myspace and facebook. The two pages are similar because they are both social networking sites that allow you to meet new people and to keep in touch with old and new friends.

They are different because Facebook started out as a networking site for kids that went to college. You had to belong to a school in order to sign up. That is why myspace became so popular so fast, anyone could use it. The other difference is that even though myspace asks for your full name hardly anyone gives it. They all use screenname type names. On facebook you have to use your real name or you have to come up with a name that sounds like a first and last name and then other friends have to be able to find you. Also on myspace you can see a little more about a person before you befriend them. You can see a larger size of their image and hopefully you can figure out who the person is. On facebook you can only see a super small picture and find out what friends they have, then maybe you can make a connection to them.

Although I have been mostly using facebook, I like myspace better. I find that myspace is more user friendly for non-techy. It is a much easier point and click interface. Facebook I mostly use now because everyone has shifted from myspace to facebook and they are not signing into myspace as much anymore. I have found that facebook is so difficult to make your page unique. I liked seeing everyones personality show in their myspace pages and now facebook kinda took that away. Plus I really would rather hide behind a screenname in todays society. There are so many carzy people out there and now they know my full name and any other info I share. On myspace they had to do a little digging. Also I find that the facebook gods change their minds like underwear. Can they just settle on what they want their site to look like and leave it be. Instead they keep moving things all around and causing problems for all of the applications that people spend time creating. I just don't get it!

I think that social networking is so hot right now because it gives us away to keep in touch with people without having to bug them, call them, or even meet them. I know it is great to be able to keep in touch with my long distance family. I get to see pictures of friends weddings without having to ask. Its great! I think that it is a great tool for libraries because people can check out what is going on without having to stop in. Hopefully they see great things and that makes them want to stop in. Also if they are not able to come to the library we can still be a part of their lives. It makes our patrons ahve a "friend" connection to use.

Twitter

I honestly never knew what Twitter was about. I am not the hugest news person, I keep up to date with the news when I check my aol mail. I think that they have the most interesting news that I am interested in. Not sure if I would really use Twitter. At first I thought that it would be a cool way to be kept up on news and current events but then when I started reading the posts, it is more like reading the news scrolls on the bottom of CNN and News 12. I think I like aol news better. I did post a book recommendation though.

Twitter Post - "I recommend the Queen of Babble series by Meg Cabot. Loved it!!!"

The MMSCL 2.0 So Far

This is more difficult than I thought that it would be. I kept going in circles creating a Google account and then a blogger account then logging in and out of I think the same account. Hopefully this was just rough because I am not a blogger at all. I hope that some of the interfaces that I am used to using will be easier to navigate.