Del.ici.ous

See under Twitter.

Twitter

I played with this a while. But I just want to stop here. People can twitter away; I just don't care. It's too much for me. I don't want to spend my life on the computer.

The Virtual Library and TPPL Web Page

This was a pretty easy exercise for me. I was already familiar with our databases -- although I admit this was probably the first time I have read all their descriptions. I wasn't successful with the Heritage Quest quest though; I tried three relatives that I know were living in the US in 1930, but none of them came up. I also want to thank Glenn for pointing out the "Books Coming Soon" section of the TPPL Web Page. I update that listing quite frequently and I hope people are aware of it and find it useful.

Podcasts, IM and Downloadable Audiobooks

Well, I took Jennifer Lowe's advice and signed up for the 100 Objects in History. The first one I listened to was about China -- almost always of interest to me. Unfortunately it was also about Confucius who is seldom of interest to me. I think I might like it though.

IM to me is a waste of time -- unless you are just doing it for fun. My daughter used to love it, but, alas, her love has died. We decided it's rather like last year's texting. I find the phone is so much easier. We tried IM at the Adult Services Desk last year. It was pretty much a failure. Very few people used it. And it just took so long to answer simple questions, which is annoying when there are several people standing in a line in front of you waiting to ask their questions -- questions they were willing to come to the library to ask.

I tried listening to one of Louisa May Alcott's more lurid tales on LibriVox. It was narrated by a woman with a very thick German accent so it was a little difficult. I like audiobooks though -- CDs and downloadables. I hope we are successful in joining Overdrive this summer. We tried a NetLibrary/Recorded Books version of downloadables a few years ago. There wasn't much interest then and it was very cumbersome to use. It seems much more user friendly these days.

Wikis and Google Docs

I have always thought Wikipedia was surprisingly good. After listening to Jimmy Wales, I still think it's quite good, but I am not so surprised. Google Docs seems quite cool too -- sort of like our TPPL drives, but I could assess docs from home too. I played around with a couple of other things in Google, but didn't have time to explore a lot. Liked Google Books and Google World.

Face Book et al

Okay, so I finally did it -- I joined Face Book. I honestly don't know whether I will ever do anything with it though. I still don't really see the point -- or is it that I just don't want to be bothered? It feels like another obligation. I did like the TPPL page though. It's come a long way in a very short time. Congratulations Susan and all.

Flickr

I found this quite confusing. I always find it difficult to follow directions posted on a computer that call for me to do things on another site or window or tab or whatever. I usually make a paper copy of the instructions to follow, but then, of course, the links don't work. I never really knew where I was. I wound up posting quite a number of copies of the same picture of my daughter.

Having said that I do think this is quite a cool thing (and will be for me, once I figure out how to use it). And I can see a lot of use for it on the library website, online newsletter and Face Book.