Oops - forgot something

Well, I've learned something new again. I was sure I published my book review and posted to my blog. Discovered that I had only published and set up my blog site settings - but did not published to my blog. It was a good learning experience, and I also learned how to edit my blog along the way. I can see that much is to be learned yet, and only time and lots of different experiences with help with that.

The url for my Google Docs book report is: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgc5fvhj_1g374jcd5

I did manage to post my report on the blog as well. See below.

Christmas With Paula Deen

Just finished this little cookbook/short stories by the bigger than life Southern belle. It was a quick little read that certainly puts you in the mood for the Christmas Season. She includes many of her family's favourite receipes along with cute antedotes connected to them. By the time I finished, not only did I have some ideas for new things I would like to try with my family over the Christmas Season, but I could also envision Paula with her family sitting around their tree.

This would be a good book to recommend to your customer if they have time to read during the Christmas season, or perhaps earlier on to help them get in the mood and plan for what lies ahead.

Summary

Hard to believe it's over. Time to summarize.

1. I think the most important thing that I learned was that I can do it. Sometimes you just have to try again, and other times, check with your friends. I also learned what I'm interested in, and what does appeal to me.

2. I found the RSS section the most difficult or challenging. For some reason, it just didn't register what I was trying to do. I think I was expecting it to appear all at once so I could understand it in it's entirety.

3. As staff using something like Library Thing will definitely help us deliver service better. Using tools like Library Thing, Productivity Tools, and RSS helps us to have the resources literally at our fingers at all times. The more we use them, hopefully the better we'll be at delivering for our customers.

4. The self directed learning model was good. For me, when I "got" something, I wanted to continue on and keep going. If I had been in a room with other people, and had to learn at other's pace, it may have been more frustrating at times. It also helped to be able to talk with collegues as we were going through this. I will definitely continue to work through these different elements even though I'm "officially"finished. In order to really hone these skills I need to keep working at it, and that only comes at my own pace sometimes.

I found this exercise to be very enlightening, very helpful to me both for my work and personal purposes. Thanks for all the hard work that went into this, great tasks and helps to get me through.

Facebook

Okay, I've done Facebook now. Excellent place to catch up with people you haven't seen in a while. I think it might take some getting used to (is my age showing). It feels a little voyeuristic, but perhaps that's because there are other people living in this house that would rather I not be on Facebook - that's okay, I understand. I will keeping trying with this as well.

LibraryThing

I really liked using LibraryThing. I have been trying to maintain a list of what I read for many years now, and not been very successful. This will be great - it won't matter where I am when I finish my book, I can record it and not forget it.

Here is the link to my catalogue: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Cherisingbeil

The picture will help to jog my memory about the book, as well as the tags that I enter as I go.

At the library we could probably use librarything to do books reports as department without actually having to meet. This could be a tool we use with the bookclubs that meet through us as well. For the participants that are web savy they could have a discussion/review without having to use our building, especially when we have so many people wanting to be in a book club, but not enough staff to facilitate all the time.

Tagging

Just tried Del.icio.us for the first time. I can see how it would be helpful especially if you are using many computers - at work, at home. It's easier to remember to log in and access your favourites, instead of having to remember all the web addresses. I think I will persevere and keep at this to see if this would be helpful for me.

Wiki's

Well, my idea was to stop @ Starbuck's. That always helps me - nice little treat.

I think Wiki's could be helpful for situations at work when you need input from people, but don't have time to wait for all the emailing to take place. I'll have to think about this some more and look at more to see how it can practically help me. This was helpful.