Task 12 - NoveList - CHECK!

First of all, I'm so happy I made an easy $25! I'm easy to motivate. So NoveList. I used the Series search for "Shadow Children", the first of which I read as the Science Fiction selection for a YA class. It was pretty good, actually. But they were all listed there in order as the second result, so it worked as predicted. Always good. For the Read-a-Like, I searched for Joyce Carol Oates. If you haven't read her, you should. The categories were "Literary Fiction" and "Psychological Suspense." If We Were the Mulvaneys doesn't do anything for you, you may not have a soul. ::Shrugs:: The suggested authors were Margaret Atwood, Don DeLillo, Ruth Rendell, Barbara Vine, Chris Bohjalian, and Doris Lessing. Of them, I've read Margaret Atwood--I get the comparison but wasn't a fan, and Chris Bohjalian, who I tremendously enjoy and eagerly recommend, but don't entirely see the comparison. He's not nearly as dark. I use the Recommended Books all the time! Example--a patron came in who had just been diagnosed with something serious and was otherwise struggling with the illness and requested just funny books. To help her get through the rough patch. NoveList to the rescue. I printed out some from the "Humor" category, which was non-fiction, and then the "Fiction A-Z" had a "Just For Laughs" category. She said it was exactly what she needed. Laughter is the best medicine. Extremely helpful in that scenario. I personally use the "Award Winners" the most for my own reading purposes, mostly "Literary" or "Notable Books." Very handy. I check out their Reading Guides for Kiva. Overall, I like the product--I think it's easy to browse but clunky to search. I agree that patron's reactions are usually positive, and once you get them started browsing, it's intuitive and easy for them to use. Their book display ideas are helpful and cool. Mostly for series info I avoid this because I'm not a fan of their search, and I think a lot of the free websites we link to on our For Readers page are much easier to navigate, but thats just a personal preference.

::Day dreaming about what to buy from Best Buy::

Task 11 -- Book Reporter -- CHECK!

For a moment there, I had fallen off the Webolution bandwagon--I'm back on it now though. Wahoo. Okay, so Book Reporter. These were what I put in my notes--yes, I take notes for these webolution tasks. I wrote "Cluttered/messy/disorganized/unhelpful/commercial." I believe that sums it up mostly for me. Reading Group Guides I was familiar with and find them phenomenally helpful. I access them frequently and they help with Kiva and I like them. Those portions of their efforts I appreciate. Everything else could never have hit the world wide web and I would be the happier for it. Authors on the web was for authors, not about them, and it was confusing in it's service/purpose. Then I went to the "Author Yellowpages" and looked for Richard Russo--it very unimpressively linked to the Publisher which unimpressively linked to "Page not found." Why do I have the feeling Google would suffice better in each of these instances. Book reporter I found messy and awful, and also provided no information on Richard Russo. The Biographical Resource Center was much better. Unfortunately he doesn't seem to be a very quirky guy, so no really fun inside info...but he has a Ph. D., which I didn't know, and lives in Maine. His novels are really cool small town life stuggle scences, but comic and captivating and insightful. Empire Falls won a Pulitzer, and was made a movie? or HBO series or both. Anyway. Check him out if you haven't already, definitely worth it. Book Reporter though, definitely NOT worth anything. Yuck. I suppose the creators of the task had better luck and thus sent us on this venture.

Task #10--Research Tools--CHECK!

Cruising right along to Task 10. This is one of the tasks that came most naturally to me, so thats the good news. Me and Ebsco are pals. I really like what they've dones with their search interface recently--it is more intuitive, user friendly, and easy to use. Of all of them, I probably use Master File the most, to search most of all for...drum roll...Consumer Reports, so. Its a handy thing to know--people are always looking for those things. Most recent search request was for mattresses, I believe. It's very handy, because Consumer Reports does have a site, but it's subscription only, so letting people know they don't have to pay is fun. Biography Resource Center is pretty darn magical. I used it to look up Wassily Kansinsky, the artist, who pretty much blew color and abstract art out of the water. He was pretty fundamental in multiple movements, all described well in the articles. There were 4 "biographies"--more in depth than I expected--2 "brief biographies" and 11 "magazine and news articles." The database is clean and super simple to use. I thought it was interesting that he had an entry in Contemporary Authors, because I don't think of him as an author, although of course he was. A delightful work of his art...that I doubt is in CC, but don't sue me. I am giving him full credit. The following is a work by WASSILY KANDINSKY.

Task 9--Web Design--CHECK!

Wow! Funnest task yet! (Yes--funnest.) I have poked around these before, and used Google sites for some class assignments, which was a pretty good experience. I hadn't ever previously been subjected to the caveman painful coding web design, so I'm thankful to have escaped that. So I started originally on Google sites but I wasn't in love at all. With all my web savviness, I couldn't magically intuitively grasp how to accomplish some pretty simple tasks--like making a new page--so I moved on to Weebly. Which I liked much, much better. There was more variety to choose from as far as templates, layout options, and the drag and drop elements were much more user friendly. Formatting was sometimes kind of clunky--(I couldn't get two pictures right next to each other, which was 3 minutes of battiness before I gave up)--but for the most part, I think it was incredibly easy and actually very enjoyable. I took the Webolution opportunity to fashion a wesbite showing off my cake skills. Yay! I bet you money it'll make you at least a little bit hungry. Anyway, thanks to liberrycop for the great idea of using the experiment for something real. Adds to the fun. See it here: http://www.cakesbybetsey.weebly.com/.

Task #8 -- Creative Commons -- CHECK!

Creative Commons is a very interesting concept. Yes, I see how it can be helpful or interesting to some people. "Creative" types, I suppose. But honestly, if the created item is or could be worth anything...or is truthfully widely respectable in any way...particularly with scholarly information...it would have to be covered by copyright and thus not be represented there. So. I'm not entirely sure who it helps. I watched some of the video clips that try to claim our access to the past is restricted and off limits due to copyright law and I'm just not sure what big parts of history "they" think we're missing out on. They seem to think too much of themselves or their "mission." I just think that there are plenty of ways to use, share, send, store information and respectfully credit the creators, originators etc. within copyright. I guess my skeptical viewpoint is due mostly to my few searches. All the stuff that turned up was kind of junky and meaningless and hardly even related to the keywords. (I used the keyword "dada" to search for images on flickr--it's an anti-art movement, mostly German--and the pictures were mostly a bunch of fools dressed up as the Joker and his crew.) I understand how if you are the creator, and you're trying to get your stuff viewed or noticed, this might be a good avenue. But if you are an artist or creator--why would you want other people to manipulate your stuff? This is about 12% cool/interesting about about 88% so-so/not worthy of much attention. In my opinion. And yes, if you use any portion of this post, you must contact me for approval and credit it accordingly! :-P (Yay emoticons!)

Task 7--Social Readers Advisory--CHECK!

This was a great task! I had known about all of these sites and had previously done a project on Readers Advisory 2.0 sites for a class a while ago--and unloaded all I knew/learned on Nancy T to supplement our For Readers page of our website. Which is where you can find most (if not all?) of these. And while I do read like a crazy person, again...I don't feel the need to "social network" about what I read. I do like suggestions/recommendations though, so they're very interesting to browse. Boulder's Good Reads page seemed to me kind of bland and not very active, so I wasn't a big fan of that. Library Thing seemed clean, easy and appealing, if only a smidge "cataloging/tagging" heavy. Shelfari seemed equally simple with many of the same features. Good Reads maybe didn't seem as user friendly as the others, a smidge clunkier, but the discussions were interesting, and I like that you can explore most/all of the site before or without registering. I picked Shelfari, and it's fun to play with, but I think unless you have a pre-established group to hang out with on these sites, it gets boring fast. My favorite was LitLovers though. If I had seen it before, I forgot about it. I LOVED the quick recommendations with 3 different styles--that's really handy. Recipes and discussion Ice Breakers are very, very cool. The courses seem awesome. Thought provoking and easy, and gets you to read new things. For those of us that like free, literary challenges, I guess. I enjoyed this site the most. I don't know about an MCPLD Good Reads account. I'm a fan of our blog for that purpose for now. ::Shrugs::

Task #6 - Library Orientation/Customer Service Tutorials--CHECK!

I have so much webolving to do. Got a little behind since I was on vacation for a week. Must catch up.

I thought that these sites were extremely well done and would be really helpful for any brand new library staff member. In the OLC website, I appreciated that it provided basic underlying principles and I thought that the quizzes following each section were great review. Some were a smidge shelving heavy. I thought some of the material also seemed a little online user or technology heavy, but for the most part, it explains things well. I liked the question that was "who would you see or talk to in your library if...there was a computer problem, etc." Often just figuring out who to direct someone to or who to ask is a big hurdle. I also flipped through the Ref overview, ORE, which was helpful in mostly the same way. It gave the trainee good understanding of what to ask, what to try, how to handle that transaction.

Since I'm so far behind! the Customer Service link had changed. It took me a little Googling to find it, but it still exists and has only been moved. Also very helpful! I think few people before they start in libraries probably imagine how public service heavy all of our positions are. And something I liked about both sites was how they emphasised that everyone's mission/goal is public service, no matter your department, etc. Generally I strongly dislike using the term "Customers". I think it's very ill fitting. But at any rate. Their sections on handling difficult situations or challenging people were good strong reminders on how to stay professional and level headed. I really think that we truly provide some of the most outstanding service imaginable--in some nasty conflicts I've had or witnessed, I honestly can't imagine any employee anywhere reacting better than we do. I think we've got that part right.

I think that suffices for task Number 6. Yippee!