thing 19--podcasts

I've listened to individual podcasts in the past on specific topics in which I was interested as they came to my attention, but I've never really gone looking for them before. I looked at some of the podcasts from Minitex and MPR, and at a couple of the directories. I can't see myself using the directories, because I can't see myself going looking specifically for a podcast on any topic. I'm happy to listen to them if I run across them in an information search, but the idea that I would start with the idea that there might be a podcast on a topic I'm researching, and then go to one of the directories to find one, seems unlikely. I did add the podcast for skits from The Morning Show to my Google Reader account, and tried to add NPR's podcast of Daniel Pinkwater's reviews of children's books from Weekend Edition, but it seems not to be currently produced. It showed up in my Google list with podcasts about sports with Frank Deford. So I unsubscribed. Besides, there's already too many blog postings in both my Bloglines and my Google Reader accounts to keep up with, so I don't want to add too many podcasts there that would sit there guilting me out.
I'm up to 20!!! Yeah!!!

Thing 18--Youtube

Stop me! Stop me now before I watch another Obama Girl video. I have a feeling, I could really get sucked into this one. This is by far the most fun of the things. I watched A LOT of video, and had to stop myself from watching more. It also best shows the dichotomy of the web. Lots of really creative stuff with no real value other than simple amusement--like the Obama Girl series--although I suppose there is value in simple amusement. And then there's lots of interesting and valuable historical footage--like the Minneapolis bridge collapse, and a short excerpt from a history of television comedy from the early 60's narrated by Ernie Kovacs. And then there's stuff like this really creative introduction to a local library in Nebraska. I think it's really clever.





I'll probably explore YouTube more on my own, but I'm seriously concerned that I'll spend way too much time at it, so I'll have to be careful.

On to 19 and podcasts.

Thing 17 completed

Well, not entirely, but completed enough to move ahead with 18. I tried the Ebsco page composer and got it mostly, but I couldn't get the photo into the web page. I know that playing around some more would help, but I didn't have the time. I did the Proquest web page and that worked slick. I can see using that to share articles with patrons as well as with colleagues. The ability to send whole search strategies and results as one web page rather than as a bunch of individual emails is actually really cool.

I've got an account at NetLibrary and have used it for both ebooks and downloadable audiobooks. I haven't used the notes feature, and with the way I use it, am not sure I would ever need to, but it's nice to be able to mention in my working with patrons using it.

Thing 17--not done yet

But I had to write about where I am so far on it. I set up a search alert on Ebsco Megafile last Thursday evening (I'm writing this on Sunday) and had the results sent to my Google Reader account. I picked a topic that I thought there would be some results but not an overwhelming amount--rfid and public libraries. Imagine my shock when I logged into my Reader account this afternoon, and saw that there were 108 messages from Ebsco. Since Thursday!! I have to say, I had visions of thousands of articles piling up over time, but it turns out that the 108 were the initial search results going back to 2006. I hopeful that, now that I've eliminated those results, I'll only get the several/week that I originally envisioned. We'll see.
This week I hope to have a chance to investigate the other features of the ELM databases listed as part of Thing 17.