OCLC RSS Feeds and Podcasts

Here is a page that lists many podcasts and feeds from OCLC. I am going to subscribe to see if its easier to keep up with OCLC developments. Of course I have to remember to go into Bloglines and read!

#12 Rollyo

I must admit that at first I didn't like Rollyo much -- didn't see the point, blah, blah. But after working with it more, I have changed my mind.

I liked that I could add SearchRolls to the Firefox browser search toolbar. This will allow me to search SearchRolls without needing to go to the Rollyo website.

I created a SearchRoll with my favorite travel sites, so that when I search for travel information I can search only the sites that I like, and do this with one search rather than going to each one individually. You can try it below; just select the search engine My Travel (I must Thank Lyn Brown for the travel idea!)

Select Search Engine...My TravelSearch The Web

Powered by Rollyo

#11 Library Thing

Library Thing is great. I have only had an account for about a week, but I can already see several ways that I would like to use it. First, I would use it to list the books that I have read or would like to read. I am always forgetting the titles of books that I want to recommend to friends. And friends recommend books and authors to me sometimes, but I often forget the name/title before I can get to the library. I think it would be nice if I could someday use my cell phone to send a book title to LibraryThing (you can probably do that now, I just don't know it)

I am also experimenting with some of the Library Thing tools. I put a widget that shows "books I'm currently reading" in the blog sidebar. I also used the import tool to import a list of books generated from our library book vendor. This I will experiment with more. I want to be able to send lists of books newly acquired by the library to faculty.

Web 2.0 is Everywhere

If anyone in libraries still needs a reason to get to know 2.0, here's another one:

The OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center (EJC) now includes bookmarking tools (such as del.icio.us, etc.) on every abstract page. Here's the OhioLINK blog announcement (oh yeah, they blog too!)

#10 Using an Image Generator

These sketches were created using the sketch image generator. For the one on the left, I started out with a digital photo that I had saved in Picasa Web Albums, cropped out my friend with the online photo tool Preloadr (a Flickr third-party mashup) and then used the sketch generator to make it into a sketch.

A useful thing in Flickr that I like is the size options -- when you click the "All Sizes" link above any of your photos, it gives you the option of choosing a square, thumbnail, small, medium or large sized photo. And on top of that, you can choose to either download it to your computer, grab the URL to use with a blog or send in email, or grab the HTML to post on a web page.

#9 Finding Feeds

I tried some of the suggestions in the Learning 2.0 Finding Feeds exercise, with mixed but fruitful results:

• Searching through Feedster, Topix.net and Syndic8 just seemed too time-consuming to me, and I didn't find a lot of things I cared about enough to set up a feed for.
  
• I liked Technorati because it featured blogs, music and other stuff I was interested in. Also the website is fairly simple and easy-to-use, and the popular page shows the items that were top-rated by Technorati users, which saves me from having to slog through a bunch of junk to find the good stuff.
• The Bloglines Search Tool was OK because it was basically like using a web search engine (I suspect it was actually) so I would use it if I was already logged into Bloglines and wanted to browse for more feeds.
• I really just prefer to look for the news feed icons when I am already at a site I like. Something really useful that I learned from Athens (Ohio) Woman is that if you are using the Firefox browser, you can just go to the URL address bar and click the RSS icon.
  

#8 Lernen 2.0 im Deutschland

I just accidentally discovered something as I created a Bloglines account. One of the feeds I subscribed to was Helene Blowers' blog (yes, the same Helene Blowers who created the first Learning 2.0). She writes a blog called Library Bytes, and it turns out that she was just last week in Germany doing presentations about Learning 2.0! It's such a coincidence, because I was just thinking about emailing some of the people I recently met there to tell them about our adventure into 2.0. It looks like there are plans in the works to translate Learning 2.0 into German.

As far as Bloglines and other newsreaders, I think that they will be useful to me once I figure out exactly what feeds I'm really interested in. I am also trying Google Reader since I already have a Google account. I think I would use a newsreader at work for cataloging and technology topics, and then maybe at home for other interests. Its convenient to be able to read everything in one place, but I think it will take awhile to get into the habit of using it.

#7 About Technology

Above image made with the Web 2.0 Logo Generator

Just some general things to say about Web 2.0 technology:

1. I like it. Much of it is sort of fun, but also useful.
   
2. It takes awhile to get signed up (or not) with a particular tool and oriented to how it works. But I'm finding that even though it takes more time than I thought for this step, just knowing more about what these things are is worth it.
   
3. I really enjoy the community aspect of most Web 2.0 tools. Flickr users seem very community-oriented. Blogging in a small community such as our library (as opposed to the whole WWW community) is actually humanizing -- its getting to know each other just a wee bit more, and is that really so bad? I also think the comments feature is a big part of what makes blogs and Web 2.0 "work" -- it brings people with similar interests together and talking. However I still like commenting more in a small community where I know everyone than in the bigger contexts.
   
4. Another benefit is that I am learning a lot about technology from my peers by reading their blog posts -- picking up little bits here and there really adds up.