Posted Using Zoho

Zoho is easy to use, has all the features (and many more) that I would require in a word processor (including ), and allows sharing, publishing, emailing, exporting all with the click of a button.  AND it's free--how can that be?? 

Technology

I like being able to access all the information from any computer, for example, Bookmarks are computer-specific, Yahoo Bookmarks are portable, but del.icio.us is portable AND easy-to-use. Flickr is ever so much nicer to use for sharing photos--beats attaching photos to e-mail by a mile.

Future of Libraries

Read Rick Anderson's article about "icebergs" that he perceives are threatening libraries' future success. While I agree that more and more patrons want everything available on the internet, a significant number still want to be able to check out a book and I don't see that changing anytime soon. The challenge has always been to tailor a book collection to a specific local population's needs while staying within a budget and librarians will continue to meet that challenge and, to use his metaphor, sail around the icebergs into a happy future.

Wikis

I think the most helpful library wikis are those such as St. Joseph County Public Library's Subject Guides--they provide information that's extremely helpful to patrons in an easy-to-update format. Librarians have to go where the patrons are because more and more patrons are going directly to the computer and bypassing the reference desk. For example, the SJCPL's subject guide topic Biography includes such helps as Biography, Memoir, what's the difference? , as well as links to related topics which include keeping a journal, blogging, photoblogging and scrapbooking.

In Conclusion . . .

The items I most enjoyed learning about were Flickr, Library Thing, and online productivity tools. The items I appreciated being encouraged to re-discover include downloadable books [had never been too interested (beyond what I needed to know to help patrons) because we only have iPods but now that there's an MP3 player in my future--yipee!] and Web 2.0 awards--hadn't checked them out since last year. Also delighted to see how interactive most of the sites are--once you're in Blogger, so many other possibilities open up.

Thanks to our library system for encouraging our continuing education. I've learned so much and have in turn shared sites with interested friends and family members. Looking forward to see what's next . . .

Downloadable Books

Hadn't checked the Project Gutenburg page in quite a while and was interested to see what can now be downloaded (in addition to books):

Categories: Audio Book, computer-generated Audio Book, human-read Data Music, recorded Music, Sheet Other recordings Pictures, moving Pictures, still

The Data category includes the Human Genome Project as well as square roots of various numbers(!?).

Also of interest:

Languages with more than 50 books: Chinese Dutch English Finnish French German Italian Portuguese Spanish Tagalog
Languages with up to 50 books: Afrikaans Aleut Bulgarian Catalan Cebuano Czech Danish Esperanto Frisian Friulano Galician Gamilaraay Gascon Greek Hebrew Hungarian Icelandic Iloko Interlingua Irish Iroquoian Japanese Khasi Korean Latin Lithuanian Maori Mayan Languages Middle English Nahuatl Napoletano-Calabrese North American Indian Norwegian Old English Polish Romanian Russian Sanskrit Serbian Slovak Swedish Welsh Yiddish

Re Maryland's Digital eLibrary Consortium, didn't expect to see downloadable IMAX films! Also enjoyed browsing the Education and Study Aids category.

Podcasts

Firstly, I don't understand why podcast.net doesn't have any podcasts from 2007. Secondly, I found many podcasts concerning books and libraries, but the topics were all over the place and I didn't see one that consistently had entries that were of interest that I wanted to put on my Bloglines feeds list.

YAHOO podcasts did return search results that were up-to-date presented in a more appealing format.

BELLAGIO FOUNTAIN SHOW - CON TE PARTIRO TIME TO SAY GOODBYE

I chose this video because it's the fountain show that we saw when we were in Las Vegas last month.

Selected Web 2.0 Award Winners

upcoming.yahoo.com allows you to choose events according to type, date, location

www.backpackit.com--online organizational tool--keep lists, reminders, plans available no matter where you are

www.zillow.com Find out what the houses you’re interested in should cost and browse listings nationwide

colorblender.com free online tool for color matching and palette design

www.swivel.com Swivel's mission is to make data useful.
Explore and compare data, graphs and maps.
Share insights via email, blog or data downloads.
Upload the data you care about.
If you're curious about data, Swivel is the place for you

Posted Using Google Docs

Well, this is a revelation. Had no idea that this was possible--love the share and publish aspects. Spreadsheets also--what more could we want??