My Feelings About BiblioCommons

Experimenting with BiblioCommons has been an awesome experience. I have always wished that searching the library catalog was more like searching using Amazon.com, and now my wish has come true.

What was the coolest feature?
The coolest feature to me, thus far, has been the "For Later" feature because it allows me to save the books that I would like to read in the future here. Like others, I always stumble upon new titles in the stacks that I wish I could read at this very moment, but I have no time to read them just yet or I have a lot of titles checked out at the moment. This allows me to save them for another day, when I am pondering what to read next after finishing many titles. I also like the ratings feature, where you are able to rate book titles, as well as the community activity feature, which allows for comments about book titles.

What could use improvement?

One thing that could use improvement is the limiters list when performing an advanced search. I miss the limiter that allows one to narrow one's search to a specific area of the collection (e.g. Easy Fiction or a specific genre) that we have with our SirsiDynix catalog. This limiter has been especially helpful when helping locate children's books on a specific subject for a specific age group or limiting book searches to find titles within a specific genre (e.g. Science Fiction).

What questions did you encounter?
One question that I have pertains to my previous comment about what could use improvement. Is it possible to add the collection limiter to our BiblioCommons advanced search layout?

3 Library RSS Feeds that I Subscribed To

Awful Library Books: http://awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com/

Librarians in Black-Blog: http://librarianinblack.net/librarianinblack/

Information Wants to Be Free: http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/

Im Cooked Website

For this portion of our Web 2.0 training, we were asked to explore a website from SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards. Since I have food on the brain with the holidays coming up and am interested in expanding my culinary abilities, I decided to check out the site Im Cooked. Im Cooked is a website similar to YouTube that allows users to search, share, and upload recipes in a video format. Since I am visual learner, especially with cooking related tasks, it is nice to see recipes being performed so that the user can see how the item is supposed to look at every stage of the process. It is almost like watching the Food Network, except that you can search for recipes that you desire and watch videos of those particular items, instead of what the chef on the Food Network would like to share on their particular show.

A Reward for Finishing Grad School

Now that I am about finished with grad school, (in fact I will be graduating three weeks from today) I have decided to reward myself! Since I passed my exams, I am booking a trip to visit one of my best friends in Naples, Florida for a week at the end of December. I am so excited to see her. It has been three years since we have seen each other, but we talk on the phone at least 2-3 times a week. It will be great to rest, relax, and enjoy the Florida sunshine with one of my best friends!

7 1/2 Lifelong Learning Habits

After reviewing the 7 1/2 Lifelong Learning Habits, I have to say that the easiest habit for me is to #1 Begin with the End in Mind. I have never had problems setting goals and setting plans in motion to achieve those goals. In regards to the most difficult of the 71/2 Lifelong Learning Habits, I have to say that it #3 View problems as challenges. When a problem comes up, I do not typically think of it as a challenge that I have the opportunity to learn from. Maybe, as a result of viewing this tutorial, I will begin to view problems as challenges, as well as incorporate each habit into my daily life to be a successful lifelong learner.

Lindsey's First Blog Post

Today, I created my very first blog for my job at the Columbia Public Library. It was easier to create than I thought it would be. I am glad that we were giving the opportunity to gain experience with Web 2.0 tools. I have learned a lot about a variety of Web 2.0 tools through my experience as a graduate student in library science at Mizzou, but I had never taken the time to create my own blog. Now, I have my own blog to post reflections about my work experience and overall experience with DBRL! Yea for Web 2.0 technologies that allow us to virtually communicate our thoughts and ideas with each other!