I have a link on the side bar to the photos I found but it didn't make an image. I am not quite sure why.
I will write more about this later.
Later (edited 4/3/08).....I went to Big Huge Lab --the mosaic link and then brought up the html from the previously constructed sidebar element which had the flickr url locations of the photos I wanted to use. I set up a 3 x 3 grid and then pasted the urls into the 9 locations. This, still, just gave me a list of links to each individual photo in the side bar.
I looked some more and there was a prompt to save the mosaic (as a jpeg). After some experimentation, I realized I had to save this to my computer. When I did this, I deleted the old sidebar element and added a new one which was a picture rather than an html and voila, got the mosaic!!!
Efolio:
I use efolio to author the library only website, http://library.project.mnscu.edu
Thank goodness for efolio! Site hosting and updating is problematic in our organization and I can always get into efolio and make updates and edits to the library website and don't have to depend on anyone else or any other software!!! It has been a totally wonderful thing to have access to this for the library website.
I also previously looked at the other tools such as the slideshows but each of them had some drawbacks. In some of the teaching I do, anything that I can use that would not require students to have to have particular software to see the images is a good tool.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Non linear accomplishment of things: Thing 14 (LibraryThing)
LibraryThing is not new to me. Over a year ago, I set up an account...but I'll be darned if I can remember what the username or password were! Luckily, my recollection is that I didn't put a lot of books into it!
Over the past weekend, I spent a great deal of time on LibraryThing for a personal blog I have started as a result of 23 Things.
I learned then that, contrary to another online universe that I have been spending time with, LibraryThing considers 2-word phrases as whole tags (that other place considers each word separated by a space as a separate tag). LibraryThing notices the end of a tag (when there are several) by the insertion of a comma when you are tagging. I learned this the hard way since I put a random books (book covers) widget into my personal blog and had to edit most of the tags on the close to 40 books I had put in to get the subset of the ones I wanted to show up.
How would we use LibraryThing here in the library? Well, we could put the covers up of our newest books. Right now we have a New Books list that we publish on the website quarterly after we receive it from OCLC. It would be additional work to add these items to LibraryThing and a certain number of them won't have covers already in LibraryThing. For the 5 books I put in, two of them have covers that are images I grabbed from the publisher's website.
At this point, I didn't put the link in the random covers to link to "my LibraryThing" since there are only 5 books in it.
I am just not sure whether this is something that would be good for us or not? Maybe rather than linking such a display to our blog, it would make sense to insert it into our web site. I don't know how many patrons will look at the blog as opposed to the website?
I must admit, however, that I really do like the covers feature of LibraryThing as it appeals to visual people.
Over the past weekend, I spent a great deal of time on LibraryThing for a personal blog I have started as a result of 23 Things.
I learned then that, contrary to another online universe that I have been spending time with, LibraryThing considers 2-word phrases as whole tags (that other place considers each word separated by a space as a separate tag). LibraryThing notices the end of a tag (when there are several) by the insertion of a comma when you are tagging. I learned this the hard way since I put a random books (book covers) widget into my personal blog and had to edit most of the tags on the close to 40 books I had put in to get the subset of the ones I wanted to show up.
How would we use LibraryThing here in the library? Well, we could put the covers up of our newest books. Right now we have a New Books list that we publish on the website quarterly after we receive it from OCLC. It would be additional work to add these items to LibraryThing and a certain number of them won't have covers already in LibraryThing. For the 5 books I put in, two of them have covers that are images I grabbed from the publisher's website.
At this point, I didn't put the link in the random covers to link to "my LibraryThing" since there are only 5 books in it.
I am just not sure whether this is something that would be good for us or not? Maybe rather than linking such a display to our blog, it would make sense to insert it into our web site. I don't know how many patrons will look at the blog as opposed to the website?
I must admit, however, that I really do like the covers feature of LibraryThing as it appeals to visual people.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Thing 7: Web Communication Tools
Newish, newerish, newest - or maybe old, medium, and right now? That's how I think about some of these communication tools.
Today I attended a very good presentation by John O'Brien, VP of Academic Affairs at Century College who reiterated that today's 19 year old college students don't email so much as they IM or text message. I have seen this in people related to me.
Here's the dilemma we keep confronting over and over when thinking about these tools in regard to our own library. ....the percent of typical 19 year old college students who use us is only one segment. We have very technology savvy students and many non traditional students (some of whom have no computer skills) who cover a wide age range. What percent of our core users are using these tools????
Our use of email: we are so dependent upon it that we have almost stopped talking with each other, a hazard.
Our use of IM: it has been used as an intergroup communication tool, rather than one that we have opened to the public. It is the only way we often can get a response from one of our group members who is outstate, and this is not a millenial! If we ever set up an IM type "Ask Us" Meebo would be good since it could enable anyone from different IM products to interact with us.
Text messaging: who would pay for this? We don't have cell phones in the library. I don't do text messaging on a personal level either due to the cost. Yes, yes, we know that the newest research says that the thing that people of a certain age could not live without would be their cell phones, above their computers. The video demonstration of a student texting a librarian (is this in a library) puzzles. Is there some reason a face to face question is bad?
Webinars: wonderful! We "attend" them all the time for training. Time saver and money saver. Almost as good as sliced bread.
Twitter. I watched the videos. I understand that if you are at a giant conference with many venues like ALA it could be good if a bunch of people all have texting or iPhones or Blackberries and could use it to set up meeting after sessions for dinner. Otherwise, I don't get it nor its extensions. I am trying to figure out why anyone would use it.
Again, feeling overwhelmed by all the technology possibilities in Web 2.0. It is up to us all to pick and choose wisely given that there is only so much that can be monitored at once and also for us to produce quality accurate work.
Today I attended a very good presentation by John O'Brien, VP of Academic Affairs at Century College who reiterated that today's 19 year old college students don't email so much as they IM or text message. I have seen this in people related to me.
Here's the dilemma we keep confronting over and over when thinking about these tools in regard to our own library. ....the percent of typical 19 year old college students who use us is only one segment. We have very technology savvy students and many non traditional students (some of whom have no computer skills) who cover a wide age range. What percent of our core users are using these tools????
Our use of email: we are so dependent upon it that we have almost stopped talking with each other, a hazard.
Our use of IM: it has been used as an intergroup communication tool, rather than one that we have opened to the public. It is the only way we often can get a response from one of our group members who is outstate, and this is not a millenial! If we ever set up an IM type "Ask Us" Meebo would be good since it could enable anyone from different IM products to interact with us.
Text messaging: who would pay for this? We don't have cell phones in the library. I don't do text messaging on a personal level either due to the cost. Yes, yes, we know that the newest research says that the thing that people of a certain age could not live without would be their cell phones, above their computers. The video demonstration of a student texting a librarian (is this in a library) puzzles. Is there some reason a face to face question is bad?
Webinars: wonderful! We "attend" them all the time for training. Time saver and money saver. Almost as good as sliced bread.
Twitter. I watched the videos. I understand that if you are at a giant conference with many venues like ALA it could be good if a bunch of people all have texting or iPhones or Blackberries and could use it to set up meeting after sessions for dinner. Otherwise, I don't get it nor its extensions. I am trying to figure out why anyone would use it.
Again, feeling overwhelmed by all the technology possibilities in Web 2.0. It is up to us all to pick and choose wisely given that there is only so much that can be monitored at once and also for us to produce quality accurate work.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
