Zillow

For the latest exercise we were asked to explore one of the sites on the Web 2.0 awards list. I chose to explore Zillow. I am familiar with Realtor.com and this is a similar site, however it offers street, aerial and hybrid views of the properties listed. I had a feeling that Realtor.com has more listings than Zillow, so I did a quick comparison search. On both sites I did a search for properties with my zip code and price spans of $150K - $200K. Zillow had 157 results and Realtor.com had 240. I didn't take the time to see if any properties were listed on both sites. As for library applications for this, I guess if a patron was in the market for a new home, I would recommend searching both sites.

Zoho Blog

Learning About Zoho Writer

Today I'm learning about Zoho Writer and I must admit I like the "friendly toolbar."

It's easy to see how to change fonts and highlight,bold and italicize,underline and so on.

Using this tool to generate shared documents can eliminate the problems caused when various readers have different versions of word processing software. It's also a great way to format blog posts.

Our Favorite Things

I just successfully added my blog to our wiki. I was confused about giving the link text a name, but I figured it out. My favorite animals are already on the list of animal favorites, so I added a few words anyway.

Send In The Clowns

I just explored Wikis for the exercise this week. I visited Library Success: a best practices wiki and found a link to an EZ Program Search database. I decided to explore the database by searching for program ideas relating to my upcoming story times. One of the schools I'm visiting this summer has asked me to read stories about clowns (I know you either love them or hate them!) . This particular database search has drop down menus, I selected "clowns" for the topic, "preschool" for the audience, and "story hour" for the program type. My search yielded four results. I added this site as one of my favorites so that I may re-visit it later this summer as I put the finishing touches on my clown stories programs.

This Too, Shall Not Pass

I just browsed through five perspectives on Library 2.0, and one by Dr. Wendy Schultz caught my attention immediately, for hers opened with the words "This too shall pass." When we first began our 23 Things study, I must admit, I was reluctant to invest much time on it. After all, I believed anything related to new technologies is quickly replaced by newer technologies and made obsolete. What I often forget, however, is that technologies of today are the basis for those coming next. I can apply what I learn today to the next generations. Dr. Schultz stated that Library 4.0 will not replace 1.0, 2.0 or 3.0, it will absorb them. I'm at the 15th thing now, so I vow to soldier on until I reach the 23rd. I wonder how many "things" we'll need to learn about Library 3.0?!

Technorati Floppy Bear

This week I'm exploring Technorati. It seems the task of making the contents of millions of blogs accessible by keyword searching is an overwhelming task. I did a few quick searches for things such as "story times" "children's books" and "summer reading programs." Many of the blogs I found were not useful at all, however my "summer reading programs" search retrieved our PBCLS video for this year's summer reading programs. Indeed, the third video my search yielded features Floppy Bear and other PBCLS staff members.

A Timely Lesson

This week we're exploring Del.icio.us and I can easily see the value of it for both research assistance and especially for creating bookmarks that can be accessed anywhere. The computer I use at work is about to be re-built for a third time this year. Each time my computer has gone in for service, my "favorites" have gone away with it. I'm eager to set up a Del.icio.us account so that I can access the most useful sites from any computer while mine is back in the shop.

An article in the April 2008 issue of American Libraries describes the ways some libraries have used Del.icio.us in order to keep site links up to date. One library even organized the tags into various subject areas in order to make searching easier for their patrons.

A co-worker and I were discussing Del.icio.us and one concern we have regards the lack of uniform subject tracings. If I want to find sites pertaining to gardening, I need to search for "garden" "gardens" "gardening" etc. There is no standard that dictates use of tags. Overall, I do think this is still a great way to take my favorites with me from computer to computer.