Diigo

Annotated web page

I highlighted and added a sticky note to our library website. Diigo could be a great tool to save ideas about improving our website as well as taking notes and commenting on content.

Twitter

I’ve been using Twitter for a little more than two years (@amberhlibrarian). Emily’s use of Twitter finally convinced me that I should create an account to better keep up with the happenings of the library profession. For the most part, I tweet in a professional capacity. I tweet about library happening, events, conferences, etc.

For now, I’ve found Twitter to be a helpful way to keep up with people in the library profession and vendors that may provide updates regarding new features and outages. I’ve occasionally used Twitter to get help from library vendors. I try not to do it regularly, but if I’m being ignored by going through regular customer service, Twitter often speeds along getting a response. Recently, I’ve especially enjoyed reading tweets during the election debates and superstorm Sandy.

In my capacity as a teaching librarian, I talked about Twitter use when meeting with students in our World Studies program, but there is often so much else to cover, that Twitter doesn’t come up in bibliographic instruction. Given the way so much information has been shared around the world during revolutions, natural disaster and more, it could become an important source information for some. It will be interesting to see how the Library of Congress Twitter archive moves forward. It could be a significant primary source in the future. Instead of publishing a book of letters, maybe we’ll see publication of tweet collections.

 

RSS

Of the tools we’ve been asked to explore, RSS is probably the one I’ve used the most consistently over the last several years. I used Bloglines as my preferred RSS reader for several years and then in 2010, Bloglines was slated to shut down so I switched over my feeds to Google Reader and have been using that ever since. After the work of switching to Google Reader, it was then announced that Bloglines would continue under new ownership. Ugh! Well, even though I really like Bloglines, I never switched back and have been generally happy with Google Reader.

Through Google Reader, I stay updated on blogs, library job lists, some of our library’s vendors/business contacts, new journal content, and a few key Twitter feeds I don’t want to miss. I have my feeds organized into a few simple categories: Food, Library stuff, and Vermont. And then there are a few that aren’t in a category, but taking a look at them now they are primarily blogs from friends and family, many of which are rarely updated.

I like that by using an RSS reader I am able to easily see when new content is available on sites I care about and can read it when I have time. I think the biggest advantage for library staff using RSS in their work is to keep up what is happening in their field or with vendors. I certainly don’t read everything that comes up on my feed, but it helps me make sure that I’m not missing things that I think are important. It’s a really nice way to organize information and saves me time.

Dropbox

I’ve had a Dropbox account for a few years now. Looking through my folders, I see that I haven’t used it much recently. About two years ago now, I used it to share images with Emily as we prepared for a presentation at the Dartmouth October conference and to gather audio files for my submission to the college’s unofficial secret DJ CD swap. A year ago I used it save some data we received from Marcive for some authority work Sharon was tackling. Other than that, I’ve used it to back-up some important personal documents and images that I don’t want to lose.

Dropbox is helpful for files that are too big to email and/or need to be accessible outside of the campus networked drives. I’ve suggested it to seniors as an option for getting the electronic copy of their Plan to us if the files are too big to email. I think one student used it and several others have used Google Docs for the same purpose. In fact, since we started using Google Docs/Drive more extensively in the last few years, I think I’m less likely to use Dropbox. This is especially true now that Google Docs/Drive has become part of regular staff & faculty communication.

Barcode scanning apps

I was excited to see a list of barcode apps to try! I was also excited to see that through my own research, I’d also found these apps. Since one of the hats I wear is system librarian, I am particularly interested in figuring out ways that we can use our mobile devices to make regular ILS tasks easier and more efficient. If we could quickly scan our library barcodes with our devices and then use that list to modify their location, item type or anything else, it would be most excellent.

I’ve now tried ZBar, RedLaser, ScanLife and another app called Bar-Code. Unfortunately, I was unable to successfully scan a library barcode. I did a bit more research and, thanks to Sharon, discovered that there are many different types of barcodes and the library barcodes uses Code 39 encoding. Now I know to check if barcode apps can read Code 39.

In addition to needing an app that reads Code 39, I also have a hunch that the quality of the camera in our iPod Touches may be limiting my barcode scanning ability. Even when I tried Universal Scanner, which is supposed to read Code 39, it was unable to recognize library barcodes even though it could recognize other barcodes.

Since I don’t want the library to invest in CLZ Barry just to learn it doesn’t work, I’ve emailed their customer support to see if CLZ Barry can read Code 39 barcodes on an iPod Touch. Whew! Now that is a sentence I never thought I’d write!

iPod Touch & Apps

Gestures:

Most of the gestures looked familiar. The one I experimented with the most was the touch and hold. Highlighting things has been a challenge for me so far on my device, but I’m learning a lot more about how to touch and hold to highlight and copy smaller or larger sections of text. I think this process is much like learning how to use a mouse for a first time. It feels awkward, but the more I try, the better I get. I was surprised to see that the gesture page did not have explanations for what each gesture does.

Screenshot experience:

It was really easy to make a screen shot once I learned how to do it. Uploading the screenshot took a bit more time. I logged in to wordpress on my iPod touch via Safari thinking it would easiest to upload something that way, but I trouble was a drop-down menu that would not allow me to switch the post from the Learning 2.0 Sandbox to my own blog. I think I probably need to download the wordpress.com app to make it easier to access on my mobile device (Update: downloaded wordpress app, looks great, but will probably not use it to actually write posts since I am uber slow at typing on the iPod Touch). So, I instead emailed the screenshot to myself and then uploaded it from my computer. That part was easy as I was already familiar with uploading photos from my experience with the library blog.

Folder experimentation

Thoughts on blogging

The hardest part about blogging for me is the writing. I write so many emails everyday, but for some reason when I sit down to blog, I often end of staring at the screen for several minutes before writing something. And then I delete it and start over.

Setting up this blog was really easy. Since the wordpress.org blog we use for the library is almost exactly the same, it was a really familiar interface. I love that to set up a blog that looks pretty darn classy takes little time. Quite some time ago, I had a blog on blogspot where I would write about my experiences, but it was really short-lived. Given my past experience with short-lived blogs, I likely won’t continue blogging here when this is finished, but I will keep blogging on the library’s blog.

For me, blogs are a way to keep-up with friends, family and my profession. I follow several different blogs from one my parents write when they are traveling to others that keep me up-to-date on changes in library electronic resources. Here are some of my favorites:

Greetings from the Pipeline: blog about the experience of living in an area of PA where fracking has starting in the last few years.

Farm Weather: A fun Tumblr site a local goat farm called Big Picture Farm.

Library Babel Fish: Librarian Barbara Fister’s blog

Gluten Free Girl and the Chef: An excellent blog I follow for gluten free food inspiration.

Hello colleagues

Here it is, my first blog entry. I’m Amber, a librarian here at Marlboro College. I’m really looking forward to the next several weeks of Learning 2.0 awesomeness set-up by a fantastic group of library school students in a class at San Jose State University.