Thing 19

Podcasts are something I've wanted to try out for a while. A couple of years ago I began listening to NPR programs on my iPod, but lately I've reverted to just listening to the live audio stream from my computer. I'm now signed up to several podcast feeds through iTunes as well as Podcast.com and look forward to listening on a regular basis. One of the drawbacks for me is having to go to several different places to get my news and entertainment. Hopefully media will continue to converge so all our podcats, facebook socializing, tweating, emails, chating, etc will be in one central location, rather than scattered around the far-flung corners of the Internet. Remembering all of those passwords is giving me a headache!

I also downloaded audacity and will explore this more. It's not much use without a microphone, however, so I will attempt to borrow one from our Media Services. It would be fun to record and make available some of our special programming at Briggs Library, perhaps via iTunes U as well as own website.

Thing 18

Star Wars made quite an impression on me as a twelve-year-old. This YouTube video is one of my favorites.



Briggs Library is working with several UMM students to create a short library video that can be used for orientation. Once completed I'll post here!

Thing 17

I'm very familiar with the resources available through ELM. That will all change, of course, with the new additions to ELM just announced and taking effect this July. I was lucky enough to take part in the selection process and am awed by the wide array of databases that will be available to individuals in Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota. My lone lament is the sorry fact that many people including students and school teachers are unaware of ELM and what it can provide. Until we mandate that ALL schools have media specialists information literacy and education in general will continue to suffer.

The search alert function in many of the databases and I can see my faculty at UMM making use of it. I set one up myself in Academic Search Premier. The "Create Web Page" function is less useful in my opinion and seems to be a lot of work for little benefit. The "Note" function is interesting. I played around with it a bit. Since UMM has a site license to EndNote writing Notes in individual database items is unnecessary (and a bit cumbersome).

RSS feeds have always been a bit of a frustration for me. If they can be delivered as an email in a separate folder I am happy to receive them. Otherwise it's just one MORE place I have to go to retrieve information or communicate.

Thing 16

University of Minnesota, Morris has had Assignment Calculator on our Student Services webpage for over two years now, and we have been very pleased with it. I try to keep it current and list local resources whenever possible. I hadn't heard of the Research Project Calculator, but I was a bit disappointed in it. The information and resources listed were fairly sparse. Much worse, however, there was no Research Paper choice in the assignment drop-down menu. Are students at the high school no longer expected to do research or write papers?

Thing 15

The virtual world is quite fascinating and I'm quite excited to try out Puzzle Pirates, and especially SecondLife after watching the tour of InfoIsland. As always, time is a constraint, but I really want to immerse myself in these environments to get a better understanding of what they're about. The info on gaming was good, but a little one-sided. Evidently, there are no detrimental effects of gaming. If I hear one more gaming expert spout how great reading is in a virtual environment I will roll my 20-sided dice and hope fervently that I fumble. All in all, though, very cool! Oh, and GaiaOnline looks neat as well.

Thing 14

LibraryThing...I think I love you! I set up an account last year, but haven't used it a lot. This was a good excuse to play around with it again. Briggs Library also utilizes LibraryThing for our BestSeller collection. The random display is cool, but it doesn't allow much precision. I would think most libraries would rather utilize RSS or good ole' HTML to display newly added items to the collection. I've been trying to get a workable New Items List for UMM, but so far haven't been able to find a robust enough system that allows for the excluding of certain titles in Aleph.

Thing 13

It's been a while. I guess that's what buying a house does! I looked through many of the productivity tools. I already have a iGoogle page and a online calendar through UMM. Stickynotes and tada list sound promising and I've set up accounts. They both could help cut down on the multiple post-it notes that are taking over my office like tribbles! I'm really excited about the free PDF converter. Can't wait to try that out!