Week 10, Post # 23 Summary

The 23 Things fit in my life plan of taking any training offered to broaden my knowledge base and to keep up with changes in the library field and beyond. My goal is to "keep up with the times." Fat chance, however before going through the 23 things, I had already created a blog, created a Del.icio.us account, had an RSS feed to a bloglines account and downloaded books from Overdrive to my MP3 player. I learned more about each of those things, as well as picking up new information for use at work and in my personal life.

Some of my favorites were blogging, Wikis (Book Lovers Wiki) and LibriVox. I blog about the book club that I moderate monthly at the library and I use many sources to select books for the group to read. I think the Book Lovers Wiki will be helpful in that regard. I plan to look closer at LibriVox to see if it is easier to use than Overdrive.

It would be very easy to waste a lot of time pretending to work when blogging, social networking, listening to podcasts and viewing videos on YouTube. I can also see where these type of activities can suck up a life. No wonder it is hard to attract people to the library for programs.

I am looking forward to more training, but I hope the next round is scheduled better. Three activities a week is too many when we have other work to do and desks to man (or woman). Someone mentioned once a month, but I think once a week would be OK as long as there was truly only one project that week. I wondered from the start how we were going to do 23 projects in only nine weeks.

Week 9, Post #22 Downloadable Media

I have used Overdrive several times since it was introduced to us through the HCPL website. I love having books on my MP3 player and not having to mess around with CDs and cassette tapes (although I still use those too since Overdrive doesn't have all of the books I am interested in).


LibriVox was a great sight. Not only was there a catalog 0f digital books, but Podcasts were also available. There was a volunteer link and a place to visit forums. You can volunteer to record entire books, or chapters of books.


The goal of LibriVox is to record all books in the public domain. I searched for Emma by Jane Austen and found that is was all recorded by one person, whereas Daisy Miller by Henry James had each chapter recorded by a different person. The books on Overdrive are not in the public domain and are read by the author or by a professional and Overdrive is not free.

WOWIO is based here in Houston. Here is information from their website:
"WOWIO opened on the World Wide Web in August 2006 endeavoring to dramatically expand access to important written works by eliminating the economic, geographic, and logistical barriers of readers while also ensuring that content owners are fairly compensated.WOWIO is today the only source where readers can legally download high-quality copyrighted ebooks from leading publishers for free. Readers have access to a wide range of offerings, including works of classic literature, college textbooks, comic books, and popular fiction and non-fiction titles.WOWIO is a privately owned company with headquarters in Houston, Texas. "
These are not digital audio books, but are e-books. They are not in the public domain, but are still free.

I have found the Overdrive has many of the titles that I am interested in listening to, including: Winesburg, Ohio by Anderson, Legacy of Ashes by Weiner, God in not Great by Hutchins and Pontoon by Keillor.

Week 9, Post #21 Podcasts

I looked at the podcast directories. However Podcast.net didn't work and I initially thought that I would have to download an aggregator when using Podcast Alley. Margaret pointed out that there was another place to click to subscribe to the podcast and add it to Bloglines. I first added Audio books with Annie, however when I listened to it, I realized that she was reading Anne of Green Gables, chapter by chapter. So I went looking for another podcast to subscribe to and found "Written Voice" which is book talks and author interviews hosted by Allan Hunkin. I listened to part of an interview with Alafair Burke.

Libraries could be in the podcast space, but it would take a lot of time, dedication, and writting skills, and imagination.

Week 9, Post #20 You Tube, etc.

I looked for a couple videos on You tube by category, holiday home tours and christmas decorations. On the Holiday Home tours I was really looking for Holiday Tour of Homes, fund raisers where people can tour rich people's homes and see how the other 1/4 of the people live. What I got was a tour of a holiday home in England - where a family rented a home for a vacation (holiday to them).

The video I chose to write about is "Show Me How - Christmas decorations sample." It gave instructions on how to make some tree decorations. I don't know why I chose this one, I am not the least bit crafty and I couldn't make a Christmas decoration to save my life. I was looking for houses decorated for Christmas and came across this craft video.

In honor of Veteran's Day, I viewed a video "Thank You Veterans." it was only 51 seconds long, but was moving nontheless.

I can see where You Tube could be useful in marketing the library as long as the videos were of professional quality, clever, fun, and interesting. It is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, and there is a lot of chaff.

Week 8, Post # 19 - Web Applications - Zoho

I can certainly can see the usefullness of web applications for documents and spreadsheets. Having documents available online for others in your group to look at and/or edit as needed could be very helpful. It also spares you the expense and computer memory needed to have the MS Office products loaded onto your computer. There's sure to be a way that someone makes money from this, or it won't get developed much further. I know people in the computer industry have been looking for ways to stick it to Microsoft for years.

Using Zoho Writer is as easy as using Office and many of the tool bar buttons look the same. Here are some of the advantages of using Zoho:
Documents can be saved online and so can be accessed from anywhere.
Can export this file as a Word or txt file document
It has an e-mail feature
Can publish document as a public file and also can export it as a .pdf or html.
Can publish document as a post on your blog.
(adapted from Helene Blowers)

It is free and no installation needed. I'm all for that.