Eight weeks and mixed feelings

Well, I have finished the eight weeks and even though I will be going back into the blog, wiki and retrying some of the material presented to us I will say I am glad this is the end. Working on something by yourself is one thing, trying to find time during the week to do it is something else. I know in my blog posts I have been vocal on things I found frustrating, especially when I read the comments of others and they seem to not be having any problems. I think I have always been looking at it from the aspect, can I use it here in my library. Since some of the websites are blocked, then it seemed as if the whole week was not needed as I could not access it unless from home and the hospital has it so the two are very separate.
To answer the questions from this week before I finish my final wrap up, here it goes:
I actually looked into two mashups. One just for fun and the other for reference for work. The one for fun is called "Wheel of Food", where you put in the zip code of where you are, what meal you are looking for and it gives you four or five places to go to eat. Very interesting and alot of fun to play with. The second mashup is actually a wiki called " Librarian Chick". The site is for those of us with no money and yet we want to be able to explore, learn, and and educate ourselves as to what is out there on the Internet. It has free audio books, text books and eBooks. Also there is a Learning Center where there is free educational information, sites, games and software. It is updated frequently and all links are verified. I was so inspired with this site I emailed the link to friends of mine that are in the public library sector for use on some tough reference questions.
When I went onto exercise two on Rollyo I did not have a problem finding the librarian blogs searchroll and doing the search for privacy, but I was kind of surprised to the scarcasm they expressed. It seems that most think there isn't any privacy anymore, no matter how much on the different sites you are promised to be secure. Therefore, big brother is always watching and the only privacy is at night, in your bedroom with the curtains pulled. Now that is really scary that you must think that you are constantly being watched, but I can understand that when everything we do now is via computer and any of the administration can 'check in' to what we are doing. I guess the world has changed, but I am not always sure it is for the better.
All in all this has been a good experience, I love this blog and hope to get the wiki up and running more, delicious is just wonderful, Google.docs is a God send for those of us who cannot afford Microsoft, and photo sharing is very nice also. At least when someone talks about a blog, wiki or whatever I will not look completely dumbfounded.
Thank you to all of the instructors for their time and effort in putting this together, answering our questions and the support. With so many of us across the country it would not have been easy.
And with that I will end today, try to get my work out and work on this material to bring more polish to my blog and wiki as I will try to keep them up and utilize them to communicate to others in the future.

Week 7 and frustrations again....

Well, we are now at week 7 and I was wondering about YouTube and so I was excited to try it out. But as we were to go to Odeo and make an account, I was dissappointed as even though I finally got to find the "health" postings, I did not find anything I wanted to make an account to. There seemed to be a number of slow or 'page not founds' as I went into look around. I finally left Odeo and went onto YouTube. I did find a wonderful video about the NLM being used with rural communities as the doctors and nurses went on their rounds. The video was eleven minutes long and told of how they entered the symptoms and it helped in the diagnosis. Unfortunately when I went back to look for it again, I never found it. I would have been nice to have added it to this blog as I think others would have liked it. If I find it again, I might try it. Since YouTube cannot be accessed at work, it seems like so many of the items in this course cannot be, I am not sure of the significance to them. They are fine for entertainment and maybe for education, but the firewalls for medical facilities make them unavailable. Because of this I do not see that this service is of much help and usefulness to us.
I do get tired of having to put so many hours into these assignments on my own time, family time, because they are not accessible at work. I think that the assignments like this week and the third week with Facebook should be put down as extras and try to keep the assignments to items that we can do while at work.
I have enjoyed the variety of subjects we have been exposed to,but the time involved is alot more than that described in the beginning.

Week 6 Full week, but what a week

This week has started out very busy at work with getting ready for the CME presentation on Thursday, with a doctor that did not think he had to follow the OSMA rules, to a church board meeting, a presentation at Kent State on Wednesday, shopping for a new car, working the Siberian Husky Dog rally and dog show on Friday and Saturday, and then ending it all on this Sunday with church congregational meeting and afternoon concert. But I did have enough time to try this photo part of our course and I thought it would be very useful for having a flicker account to be able to keep your photos that you come across in one spot that you could get to on any computer. I am not sure about everyone elses jobs, but if I am not on campus, my computer is off limits to me. Therefore unless I can save things, privately, somewhere else, I have very little access to them and then must stay past my shift to work on anything not job related. I believe that learning about del.icio.us, Google.docs and flickr are three of the most important things we can explore beside having our blogs and wikis. I thank MLA for doing this for us. I did not put a picture on Facebook because I have such a hard time with Facebook closing down my computer and that is assuming I can get in. MySpace is easier, but with having yahoo, I really do not have a reason to use the two others.

Outline for Kent State School of Library and Information Science Panel of Special Libraries

The outline that has just been posted to the blog is the one I am planning to use as I am part of a panel for Kent State's library class on April 16,2008. I wanted to see if docs, spreadsheets, and presentations could be sent to blogs so I could let others know they are here to see. I find Google Docs very helpful and it also keeps you from spending alot of money to just do basic office duties as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. I thank MLA for showing us this.

Small Hospital Librarians:

Being a Jack-of-all-Trades with Determination

1. Deciding on what area you would like to work in as a librarian and then sticking to that dream.

· Possible part-time positions

a- get your ‘foot in the door’

b- experience

· Work on this job as if it is the ‘perfect’ job for you.

a- show them what you can do, build your reputation

· Patience – Determination

a- can take years

b- go on interviews for other positions - experience

c- do not get ‘stuck’ thinking there is only one position

2. Finding Euclid

· Job description

· Catalog: hand-typed, card

a- Title, Author, Subject, Union

b- Shelf list

c- Journal cards

· Electronic Catalog – becoming a Webmaster

a- Catalog up

b- Adding websites

c- Adding online full text journals and books

· Ordering books for hospital

· Copying articles

a- volunteers as staff

· Interlibrary loans

· Research for articles

· Bibliographies

3. CME – Continuing Medical Education

(Grand Rounds, Clinical Conferences)

· Committee – secretary

· Initial contact, by doctor – then it is all in your hands

· Activity Checklist

· Inspections (OSMA)

4. Programs – you as speaker to physicians and on floors to nurses

5. AV Person

6. Notary – optional, but a possibility at any place

Week 5 and Hanging in There

This has not been one of my best weeks, personally or professionally. Just alot of "Murphy Law" days, but I did love learning about Google Docs. I have uploaded a document, spreadsheet and a PowerPoint presentation that I have used, or going to use and put it there. Being on Google I can get it anywhere and work on it. This is wonderful as I do not have the funds to buy Outlook by Microsoft for my Word, Excel and PowerPoint features. Now I can work on something at work or home and then send it wherever it needs to be. I looked at Zoho and WEbex, but not being a free site completely and Google being one, well it does not take a genius to figure where I put my vote. This week has been as useful as last week and I am very glad I continued in this course, especially after all the talk about not finishing that have been on the listserv etc. Thank you again for all the good information as I will be using it this fall when I present the Grand Rounds Continiuing Medical Education for the physicians and staff. But I forgot to answer the question from the homework: Yes I see this being the way of the future. I see us working via computers and sending messages back and forth, possibly never seeing members of a committee as they may be worldwide instead of just down the hall or across in the next building. It is a little scary to think you may just be at work in a cubicle or maybe just at home and doing all your work from there, depending on your job. Those of us remembering the times when you got 'real' people when you called a business instead of a computer voice will feel sad that those personal days are gone. Yet when you think of the convience of leaving voice messages instead of calling back a dozen times to find the person 'in', it seems to save alot of time and frustration. Times change, I am not always sure if it is for the better or worse, maybe I will never know.

Glorious week 4, what a great thing to learn.

After all the trials of week 3 and hitting firewalls everwhere....needless to say Facebook and I are on the outs forever, well, now we go to week 4. Had a little trouble with doing the buttons, but finally figured it out and from then on it was clear sailing. Can see where I will be adding to my bookmarks as I continue working.
The potential here is great as I can now access my favorites from anywhere and not just from the computer where I originally am at. This will be helpful when I present not only to the Kent State School of Library and Information Science Special Library class later this month, but also to the staff who look for articles and other research articles and then have to go home or elsewhere. They can now 'take with them' their research and continue anywhere...on vacation if they wish or at a conference.
I do believe this weeks assignment is much more helpful than trying to be a social butterfly of week 3. Thank you for showing us this tool.