Friday, October 17, 2008

Thing #20

I joined Facebook, made many friends, joined a quilting group, took a "Breakfast Club" test, wrote on Carol's wall, and logged out so that I could log back in and check my account. Technically, I have completed Thing 20. Of course, it doesn't stop there. I can see that I'll have to log in every couple of hours and post what I'm doing, see if there are any new tests to take or fun applications to download.
Can't wait to get home so I can add a photo.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Thing #17

ELM Productivity Tools
1. Create a search alert
I did not manage to add a search alert to my Google Reader RSS thing. Apparently, I'm not the first person to have a problem with this. I can create a search alert and set it up for e-mail. I can also direct a patron to the very nice "help" page on EBSCO for creating and saving search alerts.
2. EBSCO Page Composer
Did it. Why? Why not just e-mail the results to myself? Would be much easier.
3. ProQuest
Did it -- except for the part about downloading it to my flash drive. I don't have a flash drive yet. Isn't the flash drive supposed to be the END product of all this work? Am getting a little testy about the way these 23 things are set up...
4. NetLibrary
Did the creating a note on eContent thing. I'm already pretty familiar with NetLibrary on the downloadable audio side. Biggest problem I ran into was that I couldn't remember my login.

I really did not enjoy Thing #17, but practicing with some of these tools will help when working with patrons who want to save search results.

Monday, October 6, 2008

Thing #15

Puzzle Pirates -- couldn't download it on work computer

Second Life -- laaaame! Watch a video of some alien rollerskating around, while I'm sitting here eating a Tootsie Pop. I'm the one who needs to be out rollerskating. Pay real money to buy pretend land and hang out with a bunch of cartoons? Maybe I'm just having a bad day, but this seems like a real waste of time.

Friday, October 3, 2008

Thing #16 (yes, before thing #15!)

Where were these project calculators when I was in school? And do they truly work for the hardcore procrastinator?
Next time a student asks me to help them choose an assignment topic, I'll point them to one of these calculators.

Thing #14

Here is the link to my LibraryThing library.

Easy to use. Useful for finding related titles -- but didn't seem any more useful than Amazon's recommended titles for the topic I was searching. This would be a good tool for keeping track of titles while creating bibliographies over a period of time.