Final Blog Questions

My favorite exercises for this assignment have been the ones that I saw a particular library or reference application and of course ones that just interested me personally. Among these would be the audiobooks, downloadable music, and wikis.
I don't think this program affected my lifelong learning goals. I did enjoy being exposed to the new technology our patrons might ask about and might be reflected in the library.
One exercise that surprised me (but probably shouldn't have) was learning about the web based word processing that is available now.
One difficulty I had with the program were the times that involved an audio-visual presentation. I'm sure I could have rectified this if I'd wanted to pursue it but usually found myself straining to hear and watch the lesson on my computer. And some lessons assumed a pretty big leap in expertise that I didn't have and didn't want to ask yet one more time the staff person who could have provided assistance.
I'm sure I would be interested in participating in another discovery program if it was offered in the future.
Thanks!

LibriVox

The podcasts portion I wasn't that interested in so haven't blogged about that. Plus I couldn't figure out how to add an RSS feed of a podcast to my blog. The LibriVox audiobooks, however, I can see having a great potential as a resource that the library may offer. Audiobooks are extremely popular and one more option to access them is a benefit. Plus you can do it from the comfort of your home. And after reading the FAQ portion of the LibriVox site I'm even more impressed by their goals and vision. The only thing that gave me pause was the quality of the reading from volunteers who might not have a particular talent for this kind of thing. But kudos to those making the honest effort.

Downloadable Music

I listened to some jazz on the computer at my desk. I really liked the selections I listened to. I can't speak to the quality listening from home but I imagine if you had the right set up that would be something to enjoy. It certainly seems to access types of music such as different ethnic music that might be difficult to have access to otherwise. And its availability for homework assigments would be a real plus. Unlike some of the other technology we've investigated for this exercise, to me personally this appears to have a definite application for most people.

Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

Hmm. I checked out a number of sites listed in the short list and they didn't do much for me. I suppose I'd have to find a topic that really interested me, which I was unable to do here. I'm sure there would be a library application for these if you were into the right subject area. On to #20!

Wikis

Haven't been able to keep up with my blog lately - too much to do. This is a topic I'm probably more familiar with than the others for this learning exercise because of the reference work I do. I'm still a little leery though of the results from a source which anyone can contribute to. I've never spotted an inaccuracy myself, however. Because of this authority issue we're discouraged from using this source for health or legal research. However, for some topics this resource seems to work all right. I just can't get away from the fact that someone, even unintentionally, would submit inaccurate information, a fact that seems much less likely with reviewed print sources.

Technorati

Carrying on. After reading up on technorati I don't think I'm interested in making my blog findable by using tags from technorati. I think I'll just reside quietly here.

del.icio.us

Well, we've been looking at del.icio.us this last assignment. As a means of identifying common research tags I can see a use for this in reference. I appreciated the extra week to study this as sometimes it takes a bit of time to digest the material.