Quest 10 - Son of TechTrek Playhouse

I explored ArtPad, but found it was harder than I expected. I thought this might be just a more advanced version of something like the Paint program, but Paint is much easier for me to use.

Here's the snowman that I made using the Paint program.

I've also found a great site for creating word puzzles, mazes and more: http://puzzlemaker.school.discovery.com

Quest 9 - Wiki - Not Wookie

WIKI - What I Know Is....



I have been concerned about the apparently increasing reliance on Wikipedia over other resources. It certainly is convenient, but my concerns are over who is accountable for the information and what authority do they have on the subject. Depending upon who posted the information, they could be a world-renowned expert on the topic, or someone with an agenda to further.

As long as users clearly understand the source of the information in a wiki, I believe that they can be useful resource, although I would prefer that they be consulted AFTER having checked other known authoritative sources first.

Using a wiki for posting library subject guides, successful practices, etc. is an interesting and promising concept. There is an advantage in being able to quickly share something that worked well for a library, so that others can make use of it. I did notice that the Library Success : a best practices wiki had added a requirement for email confirmation because of vandalism problems. It's sad that this problem would appear at this site, but the email confirmation seems a reasonable way to address it.

Quest 8 - Social Networking

I can certainly see why teens like these social networking sites. MySpace is a popular site and I see it frequently in use on computers at the library. Kids don't seem to have any problems setting up their profiles and adding pictures, etc.

I especially liked the basic safety information provided on Bebo. It was interesting, amusing and very effective at showing just who could be in the network, and how once something is posted, it is out there. Unlike a physical bulletin board where you can just take a picture down, the online world provides a fast way for anyone else to have your pictures, etc.

For libraries, using MySpace to reach out to young adults could be an effective way to make libraries more appealing.

Quest 7 - PhotoSharing - My Name in Pictures

Well, you've probably heard "You ought to be in pictures" - at least my name can be!

Quest 7 - PhotoSharing - Flickr

I created a free Flickr account to explore after I looked at the Magical Feature Tour. I appreciated the security alert, letting unsuspecting users know that there are phishing scams out there.

I uploaded some digital pictures to my new account. I think one of the pictures was too large (very high resolution) and it was unable to load on the first two tries.

This is one of the pix that I uploaded to Flickr (taken right after the new sign was installed at the branch)

This could very useful in sharing pix with family and friends, and could also be a good way to archive pix in the event of various natural disasters - many people have lost their family photographs in fires and floods.

Quest 6 - Part 2 - Technorati

Searching "library 2.0" in the suggested ways yielded results that were not surprising.

Keyword - searched using AND operator and yielded 4,734 results.
Exact phrase - 1,068 results
At least one of the words - 289,934 (the OR operator expands the search, but results not really useful)
NONE - why? No reason to search for NONE of the words in this case

Tag search yielded 495 posts and a list of related topics
Blog search - 449 posts (with authority indicating # of blogs linking to a website within the last 6 months)

The different results confirm that how you search for something still matters.

Quest 6 - Part 1 - Del.icio.us

I viewed both videos. The YouTube presentation by Liz Davis was much better and gave an excellent overview of Del.icio.us. I liked the explanation of the advantages of using this. Being able to have favorites available from any computer you happen to be using is a real plus. I know there are times when I've been at the Reference Desk and I know I have a favorite on my computer, but I can't remember the web site.

Being able to build a shared reading list also has lots of possibilities. I could imagine a committee working on a project using this to post links so that everyone on the committee would be able to access them.

I looked at Online Reference - Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki and explored some of the links for who had saved this link, and found another CCPL staff member among those listed.