8n08 is Complete!

I knew a little bit about wikis from the OLC Chapter Conference I attended, but I confess I haven't been using them much. I really didn't like the uncyclopedia -- my time is too valuable to waste it with misinformation (or maybe I just don't have a sense of humor anymore?). I really did enjoy wikihow and need to remember to check it out more often.

Another aspect of wikis that our exercise didn't cover is that they can be helpful when planning a group project. For instance we could create a collection wiki for Buckeye that anyone could update when they are working on an area of the collection -- weeding or moving things and everyone can contribute. Although in our case just posting a paper works, but for projects in multiple buildings it might make sense.

http://www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Main_Page is a great library wiki.

Exercise 8 was for social networking and I do have a (very boring) myspace I created ages ago primarily to see what my kids' friends had on their pages. I also have a Facebook and when I started it I would check it daily. Now I'm lucky if I look at it once a week. I would rather curl up with a good book! I joined linkedin awhile ago and my husband has used it for years to stay in touch with people as he has changed jobs frequently. I have had my shelfari account for about 6 months and love it! In fact, I just realized that I need to go and add my most recent read....

Keep on Truckin' 2008

To view photos of this event from my flickr account please visit: http://tinyurl.com/Keepontruckin08


Keep on Truckin' 2008 was held Saturday, September 27, 2008 at the Buckeye Branch Library of the Medina County District Library System. What a wildly successful event this is with over 400 people in attendance! This was the 6th year for this program and the largest by far. Keep on Truckin' is truly a family event that really brings out the entire family with lots of dads in attendance. It is such a joy to watch the expressions on the faces of the little ones and the families go home with tons of pictures and memories that will last a lifetime.We had a total of 19 vehicles on display from 16 different businesses or organizations. The participants this year included: American Red Cross, Elm Farm Dairy, Erhart Fire Department, First Energy, Gunkelman Farms, Life Support Team, Mack Industries, Medina County Sheriff's Department, Medina Supply, Midway Vendors, Ohio National Guard, Ruhlin Company, Schneider National Carriers, Valley City Fire Department, World Truck Towing & Recovery and the MCDL Bookmobile.A huge thank you goes out to everyone who helped with this program -- from the 30 participant drivers and volunteers, the 4 staff members and 2 library volunteers who worked the event, the Community Relations Office for all of the great advertising to all employees who offered suggestions for participants and promoted the program to library visitors!!!One of the really exciting changes this year was how many of the participants had handouts and goodies for the children. We had plastic fire helmets from Erhart Fire Department, frisbees from World Truck and Towing, pencils from the Sheriff's Department, candy from the American Red Cross, bracelets from Elm Farm Dairy as well as crafts and coloring sheets from the Bookmobile and I hope I didn't miss any of the others. This has become a friendly competition among the participants to see who can bring the most exciting and biggest vehicles and be the crowd pleaser.Be sure to look for Keep on Truckin' 2009 coming next September!

Ann's Fun Photos

I'm sure I'm missing something simple here to get them to just show up, but for the life of me I'm not sure what...
Please click on the box below to see my fun pics.

It Has Been Far too Long!

The summer flew by as they tend to and we are now a couple weeks into the new fall schedule for the bookmobile which has a new look for the Monday stops. One of the interesting things I realized when updating my Bookmobile Stop mashup map is that because it lives on the web any changes I make occur instantly. If I had wanted to keep the old summer schedule for posterity I would have had to start from scratch to create the new fall schedule which just didn't seem logical. I simply went in and tweaked a few things to add the Monday stops and through the mysterious magic of the web the link on our website automatically reflected the changes I had made!

I have been enjoying the 8N08 exercises 5 & 6 and have found them to be quite useful. The first RSS feed I tried was a bizarre British serial graphic entitled "The Night Bookmobile" (by the author of The Time Traveler's Wife). After that I started looking for some Reader's Advisory websites and blogs for the WOW strategic plan and was able to add a few more.

I ended up on all kinds of tangents with the downloading and podcasting exercise and have determined that I'm going to replace my ipod (which my daughter has confiscated anyway after an unfortunate water accident with hers) with a different MP3 player that is more audiobook friendly. While it is great that Clevenet now has books that will play on ipod the choices are still so limited! That ended up leading to research on various MP3 players and I was leaning toward a Zen of some sort until I discovered that they don't work with Macs which is where all of my music resides at home. Then I discovered a shareware that does allow some Zen models to work with Macs, but the model I liked best hasn't been confirmed as one that works yet so I guess I'll be doing more research... If anyone has a great recomendation for an MP3 they like please let me know!

As for podcasts -- they are an interesting concept, but I am too addicted to audiobooks to add one more thing to listen to. If only there were more hours in the day!!!

Summer Has Begun

The bookmobile is off an running on the new summer schedule. Every year we do a little bit of tweaking and try to add some additional runs earlier in the day since the kiddos are out of school for the summer. This year we have added stops at the Cloverleaf Middle School (it is a public stop, but will alsso service the elementary summer school program), Westfield Center on the Circle on Wednesday mornings and on Thursdays we have added Arlyne Lane, Honeystone Circle in the Cobblestone Development, Union Square and Heritage Elementary. We are providing numerous Take-n-Makes and gearing up for story times to start the week of June 23rd.

Since the demise of Annzbooks I have added my shelfari list to my blog. One of these days I'm going to be really in tune with the Web 2.0 world -- there is just way to much to explore!

It Has Been a Long Time. . .

I haven't posted to this site in far too long! Eee gads -- it is getting stale. Actually I went off on a tangent since I was having fun with this and created Annzbooks to keep track of what I've been reading. However, I recently discovered the joy of shelfari.com (here is a link to my shelf http://www.shelfari.com/o1518125774) and decided it was much easier to keep track there. I especially love the feature that allows you to create a shelf for what you want to read. I'm sure my shelves will be filling up soon, but right now they are rather bare since I am a newbie.

I have completed all of the 8N08 assignments so far and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience! I already had been a user of Pandora, I'm still not real sure I totally get the rollyo stuff. I did create one based on wine bars in Ohio. The image generators are fun, but I'm not nearly as addicted as Kym. Checkout the tombstone for my book blog :) I have also played in webjunction a bit and have found some helpful information, but it seems rather slow (could be the time of day) and difficult to manipulate.

Lastly, my staff has a busy week ahead since we are off the road the week of Memorial Day so we can pull everything off the shelves, do a major cleaning and reload with fresh materials. One new high tech task I managed to accomplish yesterday was to update the Bookmobile Google Map to show our Summer Schedule. We always add a few additional stops earlier in the day. This year our extra stops include: Westfield Center on the Circle, Cloverleaf Middle School, Montville Lakes, Honeystone Circle, Union Square and Heritage School. It is hard to believe it is almost Summer Reading Celebration time already and there is always so much to do to get ready. On that note, I'd better get back to work!

Central OLC Conference

I went to the OLC Conference in Columbus since I couldn't fit the ones closer to Medina in my crazy schedule and I was able to combine it with a trip home to visit my sister and father. A couple of the sessions were really good. In particular I enjoyed the "Things That Go Bump in the Night" (which I didn't realize was a double entendre). The presenters Cathy Allen & Monica Baughman booktalked oodles of creepy vampire/werewolf/zombie etc. kinds of things that I normally wouldn't read, but they did such a great job that I think I might just have to read a couple they recommended. I'll try to get a copy of their Booklists out on the I-Drive for all the staff. I also really enjoyed the "No Techie Translator Needed -- Web 2.0 101" which tied in very nicely to these 8n08 assignments. The presenter, Tracey Jipson, said she would put her power point out on slideshare.net under OLC, but it isn't there yet.

Also, the tech department was able to add a link to the googlemap of the bookmobile to the website!!! Now I'm in the process of updating and creating a new map for our summer runs. Never a dull moment. . .