Assignment Two

I’ve been working on understanding Wordpress for a few days now and I thought I would report my experiences with it. I haven’t found this process to be as easy as creating a blog using google blogger but I would imagine that that is because you can do so much more with this tool. Experimenting with the theme was easy and one of the most intuitive things about the site. I like the theme we’ve picked and believe that it shows our content to its best advantage. Creating a bio page was easy since we used Microsoft word to type it up and copied and pasted it into Wordpress. I didn’t find creating a hyperlink to be that intuitive or easy but eventually I managed it and I think our bio pages look great and we did all manage to create our first hyperlinks.

First, I activated the blogroll widget which was easy and which I think really adds something to our website. Next, I activated the Hello Dolly plugin because I love Louis Armstrong and this was one of the easiest plugins to activate and see immediately. Then I activated the plugin that I chose for Dr. Oguz to install for us and spent the better part of the rest of the day trying to find it anywhere on the website. This was the most frustrating part of the assignment because I thought I must of have done something wrong. Finally, it occurred to me to look at the bottom of the administrative view of pages and posts and there it was! I picked the Blubrry plugin because I love the idea of being able to publish podcasts and that is what it allows our team to do. For a description of this plugin and what it can do for your website, visit http://www.blubrry.com/powerpress/. While learning about this particular plugin, I came across a wonderful resource for arts and literature podcasts at http://www.blubrry.com/programs/?CatID=33.

I added the category “Experiences” for us to use to categorize our posts on working with Wordpress, widgets, and plugins for the first time. Finally, I took a final look around the website, noticed that we had two calendars on our home page, deleted the extra one and posted a message to let my fellow website builders know how much I enjoyed working with them on this project. You can view our website at http://www.valdosta.edu/~foguz/mlis7505/team1/ . You can view my bio page at http://www.valdosta.edu/~foguz/mlis7505/team1/?page_id=97.

Big

I went to the Big conference at the University of West Georgia yesterday. Today I'm going to try to catch up with the readings for module 3 and finalize the second assignment.

http://sites.google.com/site/atlantaareabig/

CMS and plugins

I spent a good portion of the day trying to find a plugin that Dr. Oguz installed for me on wordpress on the page itself. Finally, after a lot of wrangling I found it at the bottom of the page activated just like it said it was! I find wordpress to be challenging and a little frustrating at times because some of it doesn't seem that intuitive but it is a great tool to learn and once I have learned a bit more I'm sure it will take significantly less time to navigate and add to.
I found a great resource for podcasts today at http://www.blubrry.com/programs/?CatID=33.
The concert last night was excellent. If you want to check out The National, the band I went to see, you should click on this http://www.myspace.com/thenational or this http://www.americanmary.com/music/.

Creating a bio page using a CMS

I just finished creating my bio page in wordpress and it was a total pain in the, well, you know... Mostly, it was difficult because I had trouble figuring out how to create a hyperlink and once I figured that out I kept accidentally making my bio page a new one instead of putting it under the heading of the biographies page. Wow! Talk about a learning curve. I have finally figured it out and the bio is up and in the correct place and using a CMS isn't as hard as I thought it might be. Once I get really proficient, it might even be fun. Now I'm off for a well deserved night at the Tabernacle, listening to a great band called The National, and I think, a well-deserved beer.

Corrie Marsh

I just finished asking Corrie Marsh questions about RFID technology in class. One of the most interesting potential uses for this technology as it relates to libraries is in its ability to streamline and greatly reduce the amount of time library staff would need to do inventories. I also found its potential to create a universal system whereby libraries could have a world wide interlibrary loan system to be an amazing and inspiring idea. I'm tired and so I'm going quit with school work tonight but tomorrow I'm going to work on my bio page for assignment two.

RFID

Today I figured out what RFID means. It's radio frequency identification tags. I wasn't able to watch the presentation on them, possibly because I'm using Emory's wifi system and am not at home but I hope to be able to watch it before class tomorrow. I did, however, have time to read the sections of the report on RFID's in libraries that Dr. Oguz wanted us to get read before class. I have to say that some of the more technical parts of the report made little sense to me but I think I got the gist of how RFID technology could be important to libraries. I'm still not sure whether I think that this new technology is that much more beneficial than bar coding but I'm sure our guest speaker tomorrow will convince me otherwise.

Module 2

Today we start working on Module 2. At this point I don't even know what some of the terms used in the module description mean but I'm looking forward to delving into the material and finding out. I'm working today but I think it will be slow so hopefully I'll be able to get quite a lot of reading done. I'll post more later if I've learned anything really exciting.

Quinoa recipe

Here is the quinoa recipe I made up after eating something similar in Scotland a couple of weeks ago. Hope you guys enjoy it.

1 large onion, diced
1 tablespoon olive oil
5 mushrooms sliced
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup or more diced zucchini
12 ounces italian soysage crumbles or 1 pound ground turkey
3 cups fresh spinach
2 teaspoons dried sage
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 1/2 cups vegetable or chicken broth
1 cup quinoa, rinsed
1/4 cup fresh parsley
6 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Saute onion in olive oil on medium high heat for 3 minutes or until translucent.
3. Add mushrooms, zuchinni, and garlic and cook for 3 minutes.
4. Add soysage and cook 3 to 4 minutes.
5. Add spinach, sage, salt, pepper, stock, and quinoa and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes.
6. Transfer ingredients to an 11 by 7 casserole dish.
7. Mix in parsley and 3 ounces cheese.
8. Sprinkle remaining 3 ounces cheese on top of casserole.
9. Bake in oven for 35 minutes.

Makes about 6 servings.

Assignment One

Part One

The first part of the assignment was not hard because I've created email accounts many times before. I created a gmail account. My gmail account is bookgirl66@gmail.com.

Next I used google blogger to create my very first blog! This was a daunting prospect for me because I have little technological experience. I didn't realize the software would be so user friendly. I really enjoyed creating this blog and believe that I will continue blogging after this class is over. I found some gadgets to add to the blog and linked to one of my friends blogs. The url for my blog is http://kimberlyboyd.blogspot.com/ . The rss feed for my blog is http://kimberlyboyd.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

Part Two

Creating a stand alone RSS feed still doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I did not find this application to be as easy to use as googleblogger. I didn't see a lot in the way of directions and I think I may be missing the point. http://feeds.rapidfeeds.com/23496/.

Part Three

Next I started using Google Reader. I did this by clicking on reader on my gmail page. This is my favorite application I've used in this class so far! I like the idea of consolidating a bunch of sites that I look at everyday onto one page. I subscribed to a few of my classmates blogs, to some feeds listed in course content, some of my friends blogs, and to my public library's feed. I also subscribed to the MLIS feed and Odum Libary and to some news feeds which is the way that I get all of my news these days. All of this made a somewhat messy page so I organized by creating some folders. I will definitely continue using this after this class is over. Unfortunately, I'm not able to post a link because you would need my password.

Part Four

The fourth part of this assignment was the most confusing and most difficult for me. I've not worked in a library before, I'm only in my second semester of library school, and I'm not at all technologically savvy. Further, I couldn't decide whether I was supposed to be creating a real wiki or imagining a wiki that I thought would be useful for a library. I'm glad I finally got an answer to this question. Since I haven't worked in a library before, I decided to focus on creating a wiki for my public library that is fun, useful, and dynamic for patrons rather than for employees. Decatur Public Library is the main branch for Dekalb County Libraries. It has a home page (http://www.dekalblibrary.org/branches/decatur.html) and a blog (http://dcplive.dekalblibrary.org/). The web page and the blog are nice and informative but are not overly interactive. The purpose of the wiki I imagine is to allow a space for library patrons to discuss books, both recent and older releases with one another. It is also a forum for patrons to interact with Librarians, making collection requests, etc. It is a place where librarians can post activities occuring in the library and provide rss feeds to recent arrivals. As I've said, I am not terribly technologically literate so I used wiki choice wizard to narrow down my choices in wikis. A page history would definitely be needed in case a page needed to be restored after being spammed. WYSIWYG is important so that patrons without extensive knowledge of technology will be able to write on pages easily. I also looked for a wiki with ACL (http://www.wikimatrix.org/wiki/feature:ACL). I looked for a wiki with host blocking so that Libarian's could block repeated spammers. I believe in radical trust but I also believe that sometimes people just feel freer to misbehave online than in the real world. The wiki should also have rss feeds, capability to attach images, and have a calender for posting library events. After using the wiki choice wizard, I narrowed my search to 64 wikis. This is the url for that search http://www.wikimatrix.org/wizard.php?d%5Bflag%5D=0&d%5Blanguage%5D=&d%5Bsupport%5D=&d%5Bwysiwyg%5D=yes&d%5Bhistory%5D=yes&d%5Bgo%5D=1&x=35&y=9. After comparing some of these wikis I settled on Dekiwiki because it was tagged as a wiki that anyone could use. This the url for the description of the wiki I choose http://www.wikimatrix.org/show/DekiWiki. Additional reasons that I choose this wiki are its free software, ability to edit sections, it's plugins for blogs, and it's unlimited revisions capabilities.

Part Five

For the last part of the assignment I used Google Docs to make this blog post and then used the share button to post it to my blog.

Imagining a wiki

Well, I attended class last night and finally figured out that I don't have to actually create a wiki but can just imagine one and pick the correct application to use to make it. I have a lot of ideas about what types of things would be interesting from a patrons standpoint to see on a library wiki so I think I'm going to imagine a public library's wiki for patron use. We'll see how that works out for me.
In other news, I cooked quinoa for the first time last night and it turned out really well. I'm going to post the recipe if I can remember what I did, later for any of you who want to try a gluton free alternative to rice or other starches.

Cliff Landis

I just finished with Cliff Landis' presentation on library 2.0. Of particular interest to me were the ways that he discussed making OPAC resemble Amazon's cataloging system. I've been thinking about how much more user friendly and user centered their system is for a long while now and wondering about the difficulties of finding some way to integrate some of their ideas into a library's system.
As well as attending Cliff's lecture today, I also managed to post my overview and discussion of SNSs, their definition, history, and the research that has been done on them to the class discussion thread. We'll see what other students think of my questions tomorrow...

Moderation

Today I'm going to work on posting a discussion for social networking sites, history and research. I've never moderated a discussion before so wish me luck!

Confusion and a little accomplishment

Okay, I've figured out the stand alone rss feed and the other rss feed and the blog apparently. Now, I've just got to figure out what Dr. Oguz means when he says create a wiki. Sounds way over my head. Maybe other students will know what to do?

Mlis 7505

Okay, so I've made a blog and attempted to create a stand alone rss feed. I don't understand what the point of the rss feed is or what I'm supposed to do with it but maybe I'll get it someday. I also started using google reader which is really cool and I'm glad to have found out about it.

My first blog

Well, I have a feeling that I'm behind the curve in terms of knowledge of technology coming into this class. I'm also starting with a bad head-cold and am frankly, wondering if I wouldn't be smarter to drop this class and attempt to take it another semester after I've done some independent study of technology and don't have a sinus headache and raging cough every day.

What do I know about technology? I know how to use the internet and check email. I even subscribe to a blog or two, although I've always had them deliver content to my email address and didn't even know what an RSS aggregator was until I started this class. I have a facebook profile. I have absolutely no knowledge of code, writing or reading. I had never heard of web 2.o or library 2.0 until I started doing the readings and listening to the podcasts for this class. I have started having some library 2.0 thoughts though. I've been thinking for a long while now that OPACS would be so much more user friendly if they modelled them after amazon's search engine.

Having said all of that, I have found the two classes I've attended now to be extremely interesting, if not also, a little confusing. So, I've decided to give it a shot, for now at the least. If I can stick it out, I think it's going to be really illuminating.