Podcasts, Video & Downloadable Audio 20. Discover YouTube and a few sites that allow users to upload and share videos

Thing #19. Explore any site from the Web 2.0 awards list, play with it and write a blog post about your findings.

I choose Marketing and the name of the application is iContact which would be a great tool to Market Queens Library and it would be great to get this tool for it represents the future of communication. It is easy to create, publish, and track email newsletters, surveys, blogs, autoresponders, and RSS feeds. iContact make it easy to create permission-based email marketing campaigns with high deliverability. They have a lot of clients with many members. I downloaded the free 15 day free trail and it is user friendly which is required by entry-level users. Icontact simplify communication because in the My Contacts column you can create My Lists, Add Contacts, Search My Contacts and My Segments. In the Create column you have My Messages, My Surveys, My Surveys and Image Library. In the Send column I can Sent Saved Messages, Send Saved Surveys, Enable Autoresponders, and View Messages Pending Delivery. The last column is Track where I can Track My Last Message, Track My Sent Messages, Track My Survey Results and Track My Autoresponders. With the free trial version I can send 1,500 messages to up to 250 subscribers. I can use any feature of the software, and free technical support is provided.

#18 Let's Collaborate and Have a Good Time

I like Google Docs application because it is a free web based application that has a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation offered by a good company called Google. It has a user friendly toolbar with New column having the applications. It is also easy to upload. You can do the same work that you can do from Microsoft Office like create and edit documents except it is online which is real time with users. Anything that is free has a limitation and there is a limit on how much I can store on my account. It is hard to share multiple documents. When documents have been modified you do not get an alert message. Google Docs is not a secure site so don’t put personal document on it.

Thing #17-1/2. Explore Facebook.

Facebook is a hot tool in the World Wide Web that can offer customers a popular book application called Books IRead. It provides a personal, yet it is virtual service that can link librarians and library customers. You can list, rate and write reviews about the books you are reading or have read in the past. You can check what other IReaders are reading and what they have to say about book that you are interested in. You can look for recommend books from IReaders who have similar reading interest. This would be a great tool also to promote the library catalog.

#17 Playing Around With Wikis

First I had to sign in and then I could edit the wiki called Sligo. I just clicked on the edit link and it brought up the wikipedia editor which is very easy to use. I could edit any section from Sligo because all the pages are unprotected and what ever I write was saved immediately. When I finished with my edit I wrote a short description in the edit summary which I described the changes I had made. I clicked this is a minor edit and now that I was satisfied with what I wrote I clicked Save page button and my changes were immediately visible to all users.

# 16 Wiki Me This

Wiki is a great source of information that is inputted by the community and can be great way to develop subject guides that has interest for the user. Customers and staff can add to the collection of useful resources and that would get rid of the many dead links that are in the subject guides.
Wiki is also great for the catalog because users can post synopses and reviews for books they’ve already read. The reading experiences of customers would help other customers to pick books.
Wikis can be used by staff for a project. Everyone can make changes to the wiki and that saves time by reading and responding to emails and updating the many word documents.

Thing #15. Read a few perspectives on Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and the future of libraries and blog your thoughts.

I liked the topic “The Cart Before the Horse” I thought there would be a big demand for all the new tools like blogs, wikis etc that customers would jump on the cart and use it. I think a survey should be done to find out if there is a need for the new tools like blogs, wikis, etc. how many customers would subscribe and use these useful tools. It would be great to have a blog for adult and teens patrons so they can see the latest news, upcoming events, and new book list but will the customers jump on the cart and use it or are we stuck with all the maintenance involved to keep it going and nobody using it. I like that public libraries are at a crossroads with Web 2.0 and can be used within the library community both in technology-driven services and in non-technology based services. The key principle “not just about access to books and information it is innovation, people, community building, enabled through the participation that social computing brings. Web 2 is important because it encouraging users to share ideas through writing, rating, and commenting against everything in the library's collection and that is how we can improve.

Thing #14. Explore Technorati and learn how tags work with blog posts.

I did the search and found a huge network of topics related to my search Learning 2.0 which included post, blogs, Video and photos and related tags. I liked the popular blog searches because it gave current information and great video and photos. The searches were different because I found blogs dedicated to learning 2.0 or just one single post about learning 2.0 that could come from any type of blog. I did my own search for Sligo in the Technorati search and found great videos and lots of photos that were very interesting. When I put Sligo in popular search I found blogs of current topics and the related tags gave me information about the other counties beside Sligo. .

Thing #13. Learn about tagging and discover a Del.icio.us (a social bookmarking site)

I watched the Del.icio.us tutorial and I liked how this tool works. I clicked on several bookmarks that others had used and thought that some of the information would be useful for research and other information could not be used.
I can see that this tool could be very useful for a research assistance because it seems to be a very easy to create bookmarks that can be accessed from virtually anywhere there's a computer handy.
I would make del.icio.us my default search engine for all my research because I like that I can add my favorite Websites, any single web page, article or piece of content and because I can tag the content it makes it easy to find and if I link my account to other people it becomes online social network. It is an easy tool to use and easy to search for other bookmarked resources and it is free. The content that is tagged is what people have flagged. When you are doing research on a topic you can see a website or article that someone has tagged and you can see how many people flagged that article.

12. Roll your own search tool with Rollyo.

Rollyo is a powerful search engine. Once I created an account with Rollyo, I used the checkboxes to choose which custom Searchrolls to display on my personalized search page. I added three search engines, Irish Search Engine, UK & Ireland Libraries and Irish property. When I did a search I found that there were too many hits from other sites that I did not do a search for. It did not do a good job at narrowing my search. It was simple to put the Rollyo Searchbox on my site. I just cut and paste the HTML code that was available on the site and pasted into my blog so visitors could do a search with my searchrolls.

link to Rollyo

Select Search Engine...IrelandIrish Search EngineIrish PropertyUK & Ireland LibrariesSearch The Web

Powered by Rollyo

#11 Thing This: LibraryThing

I like the LibraryThing blog widget because it tells people what I am reading and I also like the search feature you can locate many good books on any topic. LibraryThing is a great Web application that can let me catalog all my books on my own and use tags to organize my collection. It was easy to add book titles by entering a title and viewing search results from the Library of Congress or Amazon.
I like the fact that I can merge information from Amazon.com and the Library of Congress and easy inputting books and you can get comments from other users. It is easy to add books by title or ISBN and adding tags is easy. The interface is simple, practical, and user friendly. It is a great web application for bloggers to use in their blog.

It is great for book community people to connect who have similar tastes.

widgets

10. Play around with an online image generator.

I had great fun with the Defacer Generator taking a picture of a Leprechaun and defaced away at it by adding different nasty bites, growths, wounds, different eyes balls, ears, teeth, scars, and beards at the end I was scared of it. I could not email or embed the code or print or download to my pc. So I then wanted to set my site on fire so I picked Fire Text Generator a great text generator. I just had to enter my text, got to pick a text style, rotate the text, and style, text color and border color.

Ireland

www.fancygens.com