Thing #23- Reflection

Altogether, I had fun doing these exercises. I knew a bit about most of them, but ended up learning more. I found interesting tools and resources that I may be able to incorporate into my work in Special Collections or recommend to students, and I feel a bit more involved now in the current age of library work and professional activity. I probably won't start spending all my time browsing blogs and loading photos on Flickr, but I was glad to have an opportunity to learn how they work, at least. And it's nice to have these tools all listed together on one site for easier reference!

Thanks again for our wonderful Learning 2.0 Team for developing this program and supporting our library staff! ^__^

Thing #22- Web 2.0 Awards

These sites were pretty interesting- I saw several that we'd used for this exercise, as well as others that sounded promising. I rather liked Pandora for Music- it's fun to discover new artists, and they made some good suggestions. The travel sites were kind of cool, too.

All these new ideas and sites are innovative and interesting, and I'd love to have more time to explore them all completely. However, there are only so many hours in a day and so much energy left after a hectic day in the library *sigh* But they're good to know about!

Thing #21- Audio eBooks

I'd never looked into audio books before- I tend to read faster than the recorder of the audio book and don't have the patience to sit through an audio recording. With text, I can usually read a book *and* listen to music- my busy schedule necessitates as much efficiency as I can manage. But I enjoyed browsing these sites, esp. the Project Gutenberg one. Lots of interesting links, esp. the Librivox one. I can see how people would enjoy listening to books rather than reading them, esp. if they do other things like driving and working out that don't allow as much time to read text books. I found several titles that I might listen to later, for more practice in foreign language comprehension and listening- it was nice to hear actual voices reading a text, with normal inflections and emphases. The recordings that come with textbooks aren't as authentic sometimes. The iPod and Apple computer thing wasn't a big deal- I normally just use Windows computers. This would be an interesting idea to incorporate into a visiting class or an academic curriculum, as an alternative to reading tons of textual material.

Thing #20- Podcasts

This is something I've actually wanted to explore for a while. It seems similar to YouTube, but more productive, educational and helpful.

I searched each of the podcast search engines for the keywords "library" and "Japan". I wanted to see if there were any podcasts that would provide information on trends and practices in Japanese libraries today.

Podcast.net didn't turn up much. I did see our "UCSC Synergy Lecture Series " listed in the results, though.
The results from Podcastalley.com were much better. I found a nifty tour podcast about traveling through Japan and some general library podcasts. The other two didn't turn up anything relevant, either. I'll have to spend more time on this later and see what I can find, maybe refine or broaden my searches more.

Cataloging particulars

So I just finished a huge project that involved inventorying over 800 photos by Edward Weston. They were absolutely beautiful, so it was a fun job. I had to note down all the title, date and accession number information, exactly as it appeared on the print. This is a general cataloging practice as well as the best way to positively identify each print.

There was a small series of five that all had the title of “Wonderland of Rocks”. The parenthetical notes that followed the titles were as follows, though:

~~ Area later became Joshua Tree National Monument.
~~ Location now Joshua Tree National Monument.
~~ Later named Joshua Tree National Monument.
~~ Now, Joshua Tree National Monument.
~~ (none)

I was amused at the unnecessary albeit subtle diversity in these descriptive notes…. ^_^ They totally could have used one phrasing for all of them. But that’s my geeky cataloging side emerging, I guess.

Thing #19- YouTube

It's hard to believe YouTube has only been around for a year and a half- it seems like such an established part of modern popular culture these days.

I searched for "Japanese Calligraphy" on Yahoo!Video, MySpaceTV, MetaCafe, and Google Video, as well as YouTube. MetaCafe was disappointing- only two results, and one had nothing to do with shodo at all. Yahoo mainly contained more frivilous videos, rather than serious lessons or demonstrations. MySpace was surprisingly helpful- I found several good instructional videos there. Google and YouTube produced the best results, with mostly serious lessons on doing good Japanese Calligraphy.

The layouts for all the sites were pretty similar except Yahoo- the videos on that opened in a different window. MySpace had slightly "trendier" terms for rating videos, but for the most part, they all seemed to have the basic necessities.

I don't spend a lot of time looking at videos, but watching an occasional recommended one can be fun. And it's definitely a useful tool for talking about or sharing information on any topic!

Thing #18- Firefox Add-ons

Okay, adding the Cruzcat search engine was super easy. No problems there. I explored some other Firefox extensions and found a sort of interesting one called FoxLingo, a translating program that handles up to 60 different languages. So far, it works pretty well. This will come in handy when we're trying to catalog random things in Czech or Catalan or something!