Week 6, #14, Technorati

I have been playing around with Technorati searching as suggested in the assignment. When I searched for "library 2.0" under keyword search, exact phrase, I found 1,034 hits for the search. When I did a tag search for the same phrase, I found 484 hits. The blog directory search yielded only 145 hits. Obviously, the keyword search results in the most information being found, as would be expected. There are many posts which have the phrase somewhere in the article, but it is not used as the tag or blog name.



Under the popular search, I could see that it is possible to search for the most popular music, videos, games, DVDs, news, or blogs. This option yields some interesting results, especially in the news section. It looks like this would be a very quick and easy way to zero in on the most important news stories of the day

Week 6, #13, Del.icio.us

I have been looking around on the del.icio.us site today, and can see a lot of potential for reference use. I added an entry for www.preciousmoments.com, using "collectibles" and "gifts" for tags. Since there is no category for this, the tags are still at the bottom of the list under unbundled tags at the moment. We will create a category for this later. One of the librarians told me that she really likes being able to access her delicious account when she works at another branch. Since I am not usually doing reference, I won't use this as much, but it is nice to know it is there. I can see why it is a valuable tool for sharing bookmarks with everyone in the system.

Week 5, Library Elf

My Library Elf account has been created. I'm not sure I need this, since our system does a good job, and I usually keep up with things pretty well. However, it is nice to know it is available, and the information appears to be displayed on a nicer format than Horizon. It is amazing what we can do on the internet these days. Hurray! I've caught up with what I missed on vacation last week, and finished this week's assignments, too! I wasn't sure I would make it!

Week 5, Library Thing

I have now completed the registration for Library Thing, and added 8 books to the list. This looks like it will be a pretty nice way to keep track of books I have read. It was very easy to use. I haven't tried to use the tags yet, but I think dividing up the listings by series or subject will make it easier to keep track of things. I didn't know that anything like this was available.

Week 5, AVATAR

I went into Yahoo Avatars and created my "Library Lady" avatar. She has been posted on my blog, in an appropriate library setting. I like her outfit, but I would NEVER work in those shoes. OUCH!

Week 4, Tasks 8 & 9, Part 2, RSS Feeds

I think I have finally finished with the activities for this week's assignments. I have been looking for library paraprofessional blogs on the search engines, but have not yet found any valuable links. I don't think there is much available in this field that I hadn't already found. I will work on this again as time permits. I like the functioning of Feedster and Topix better than Syndic8. Technorati is also nice to use, but did not produce as many hits as the first two.

Week 4, Posts #8 and #9 RSS Feeds on Bloglines

After being on vacation last week, I am finally trying to catch up with the program. On Saturday I created my Bloglines account and loaded 11 feeds from the list on the site. It will be fun to have explore some of these when I have more time. Today (Thursday) I added feeds for 6 library blogs that I like to read sometimes. I have had these sites written down on a slip of paper, which stays on the computer at the circulation desk. It will be nice to be able to access these through Bloglines, so the paper copy is no longer necessary.