You Tube makes me sleepy......

not really me, but this puppy!




I chose this video, because, well, watch it! Golden retrievers are my favorite dog breed, and sleepy puppies are one of the cutest things in the world. And so darn cute, that I don't think shoes are necessary for this post.

But back to library related things......

You Tube has many options when it comes to libraries. We could use it to post instructions about how to use our self-check outs, give tours of main library, show snippets of programs as teaser advertisements, booktalks for the teen site, allow teens to create and post their own videos.......the possibilites are endless.

Podcasts

To be honest, I will probably never get into podcasts, no offense, they just don't appeal to me. However, I do see many uses for libraries. I found several libraries that are already doing regular podcasts, and the MSU libraries has a podcasts titled "This Week @ Your Library", which would obviously be a great way to advertise programs, the celebration of learning, SRC, and our oh-so-well attended community meetings. There were also podcasts that offered foreign language instruction. Who knows how helpful these podcasts are, but the idea is a good one. Another idea would be to do booktalks as podcasts, as a way of outreach programming and as readers advisory. They could be linked onto our teen page. For something I'm not that interested in I sure was able to come up with ideas.

Here is a picture of something I am interested in............shoes!

Google Docs

Well this is an easy one to see how it works in a library setting. For all those folks who don't have disks, or flash drives, setting up an account is another way to save and transfer documents. It will also help me work on stuff at the info desk. I can save my personal work documents there and have access to them at a task-oriented PC. And it will help me with my own dreaded homework assignments that I email to myself to transfer from home to work. I will probably create an account for the HHC, that way if a student needs to save something and doesn't have a disk, flash drive, or email address, I can save it to the Google documents.

Plus there were all these neat templates. I can create a runner's log, or print off a blank calendar.


And then I went on flickr and found these neat shoes.

Web 2.0 tools

So I decided to check out the Upcoming events website. On this site you are able to pick a city or area and search for events going on. There is an easy to use calendar where you pick the date. You can narrow the results by event type. You can also add your own event to the list, and create an account to keep track of events you want to attend. I see this having a dual function in libraries. It gives me a place to start when a customer asks about either a particular event, or when they are looking for something free to do with their families. I have gotten several questions in the past about church festivals, and this is another place to look. I also will show this to customers who are traveling. My mom is always looking for festivals or farmers markets in the places we travel to, and since this is a nationwide site it can be used for a current list of things to do. Bonus=there were tons of Obama events listed for Columbus!

Here are some shoes that probably wouldn't be good to travel in, but are pretty fabulous nonetheless.

Power Tools

I have FireFox at home and that's what I use. I like it much better than Safari or IE. IE sucks. But I'm a Mac girl. Anywho, since I was already familiar with most of the "tools" on this page, I looked at Digg. This site reminded me of delicious. People linking sites that they find interesting. A difference is that people can "digg" a link, so you can see how popular the site is with users. Here though, I found stuff I actually wanted to look at, like a youtube video of cats doing cute things. I have used the World Cat site for school alot, and for ILL. And I love it! Great catalog, great interface, great refinement tools on the side.