More Testing

This is to see if I can do this!!

Thursday, December 10, 2009

I have got more google alerts today. What fun!

File Converters

This was a fun exercise to do. I liked the smiley face!! File converters will be great for patrons who find time is running out on their computer session. They can upload their documents and then find them again easily when next they log in at any other computer elsewhere. As the blurb says on Google Docs you can access your documents even 'if your hard drive collapses because they are saved to their secure servers'. Fantastic. I uploaded one of my assignments and hey presto there it was. It looked different though, no margins and font size didn't seem the same. But all that can be easily edited so there is no problem there. In the exercise questions I couldn't find anything different with the bullets but the table was 'squashed' and elongated. Probably because the font size had changed? However it doesn't entirely matter how the document looks as long as it is all there! As I said earlier you can play around with size, shape and even content!

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Evaluating websites

I have to say,however, that this module and topic will be very helpful ,I am sure, as I continue my studies through the Open Polytechnic. So thank you NSL training team!

Evaluating Websites

Ops. Made a honey boo boo! I have gone back to one of the websites I used in Topic 1. It is called Bookseer.BookSeer is a 'literacy web project by Apt Labs'.
The latest blog on it is dated 21.10.09 so it is fairly recent. The site also has a list of its clients which include HarperCollins and Random House publishing companies. I think this goes some way in verifying its authenticity. BookSeer has a Twitter site for all those who feel so inclinded to contribute suggestions for books or for a good old moan! The latest Tweet is early Nov 2009 so is not used that regularly. There is a medium sized portfolio listed the contents of which mean not a lot to me! The expertise section of Apt Labs is impressive with the establishment of well known author websites.
'What should I read next' looks like it is part of Amazon Uk And USA.
Daily Lit has staff recommendations and forums and free excerpts for a month from latest books.
Evaluation of websites one uses is rather a personal thing. You either like a website maybe for its ease of use or comprehensiveness or you don't! Evaluating websites for books is not really about 'content you can trust' as it's up to you whether or not you read a particular book and thus form your own opinion of it. You can obtain guidelines as to which direction your reading will take but ultimately it's your own decision.
I have had a good look around at all these websites and have found them interesting to peruse. There are a lot of 'sites for readers and booklovers'. It is just a matter of choosing your favourite!

Evaluating Websites

Evaluating Websites

Evaluating Websites

Monday, December 7, 2009

An Authors Perspective

I forgot also this time to mention that BookBrowse had a link to the author's website which I found useful.

An Author's perspective

One of my favourite authors is Alexander McCall Smith. I tried all the sites listed on the module page and only two featured this author. One was BookBrowse and the other was Google authors@google which led to talks@google. BookBrowse only had a written interview though which i didn't bother to trail through as i have done enough reading today! The google one was a You Tube interview and there were many of them. The one I chose to listen and watch was about the author's life in Botswana and Scotland and how he uses the lives of the people in these countries to form the basis of the characters of his books. The video was extremely interesting and it was great to obtain first hand background knowledge concerning the writing of Smith's books. I loved it.
I think this site would be really useful for patrons to know about as I have 'often' tried to encourage them to read the "Ladies Detective' stories and haven't had a great response. Some patrons think they are too 'simple' and wouldn't be very enjoyable. I believe visiting sites such as authors@google would persuade them otherwise!

Module 3 Topic 2

I forgot to mention that I have only the original Proquest alert on 'reindeers' which I received in the first instance. I have had no more alerts from Proquest but have had a Google alert everyday. Maybe the subject' reindeers' does not elicit much information or news!

Module 3 Topic 2

Hooray I got another google alert today. This is fun. My topic is about christmas traditions and today's alert was all about how to determine whether your live christmas tree is fresh or not! Great tips for those people who buy their trees off the roadside. I myself like to go to a christmas tree farm and choose and cut it down myself. Or rather the owner cuts it down. I have to be careful to choose the right size though. Like the man who wrote the article in my 'alert' I chose a tree that turned out to be too big for my lounge. It went right up to the ceiling and was on a 'lean-to' for the whole christmas period!!

Specialist Search Engines

Module 4 Topic 2.Back again. I have tried out the blinx site and the You Tube one. I chose the topic 'climate change'. While I liked the thumb nail pictures on the blinx site where there were numerous ones to choose from I preferred the You Tube ones on the same subject. I found You Tube much more comprehensive and easier to use. I also liked the fact that the duration of the videos were there upfront on the preview picture. I didn't have to search for it.
It took me awhile to realise that Life magazine is actually part of Time! I think searching magazines this way is great. I had a patron ask me the other day about books on child rearing. I found an article just now in one of the Life magazines about the 'middle age child 6-12.' This would have been useful to show that patron.
I have now searched the topic 'family films' (meaning films suitable for families) in all issues of Life and the results were 'films' about families. I will have to refine my search. I entered 'films suitable for families' and I found an issue of Life dated 1949. Fantastic. I think I'll use this site all the time(no pun intended!) if I notice, while I am shelving, an article in a magazine that I want to read. I won't have to take out the whole magazine! Great.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Google web searches

Phew. I am totally exhausted. How on earth can people assimilate so much information at one time??? Do people really have time to go backwards and forwards between search engines? Hence the advantage of Dogpile and Metacrawler I guess but I didn't find them as detailed and fun to use as the others. I liked the Google wonderline and timeline the best. They were great. Wish i'd known about them before I did my assignments!! I found all options easy to use. The results , I felt, didn't differ too much between search engines. All relevant information was there and differed only in that they were obtained from various sources.
oh everything has disappeared!! What a pain.

Module 3 Topic 2

I still only have one alert that I received last night. I think I would only use this service if I was really interested in getting up to date information about something that I was concerned about at this present time. However right at this moment I don't have time. I did used to get alerts from my bank about interest rates etc. but I got sick of that cluttering up my email so i cancelled it!! I suppose that is the sort of thing a patron would like but I am not sure really when alerts would be useful for them.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Readers and Booklovers

I have skipped exercises here. This exercise was a fun one to play around with. I entered my all time favourite book To Kill a Mocking Bird into various online book suggestion resources and interestingly they came up with different suggestions as to what to read next. The Book Seer was the one I found most valuable in terms of similar genre to To Kill a Mocking Bird. A lot of their suggestions I have read but there were a few new ones that I will be keen to try. I didn't think the Reading Trails site was very good. A lot of the books were focussed on 'birds'! What should I read next site was ok. I didn't think though that the books recommended were in a similar vein to my chosen book. One of the recommendations was 'Pride and Prejudice' which didn't quite compute in my reckoning. The other sites were ones you had to register with and I'm afraid I couldn't bring myself to belong to any more!
Yay I have received my first alert! Re Christmas traditions. All the links look really interesting. It is a pity it has got so late now as I would have liked to read them all!! However there is always tomorrow!

Module 3 Topic 2

Well, I couldn't get very far with the Proquest exercise so I gave up on it. I didn't know how to change or delete the shorelibraries bit in the URL. However I have started on topic 2 and hopefully I will soon get some alerts. I did read about a site that I would be interested to follow but do you think I can remember what it is????? No! I knew I should have written the site down when I read it. Bother.