ALA Library Worm


Friday, May 28, 2010

Assignment #3

Got in touch with Mikey Bensen at the Hoover Public Library. He developed their CMS website for them. He wants to do a phone interview. I am to call him on Tuesday, June 1st.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Assignment #2: WordPress Experience

This assignment was a new experience for me. I have used Frontpage before to do a website, but had never used a content management system. I began this journey by going through several of the tutorials. Once I felt comfortable with the terminology, I went to the site and began tinkering.

The first thing that I did was to change the theme. Then I changed some widgets. I must have forgotten to add the meta widget because my team members could not sign in. Then another team member did it to me later. Good thing Dr. Oguz had given me an alternate url.

My team members and I had several conversations about the site, such as what we did, what we added, what we were going to do. It was good to have someone else trying out different things so we could talk about what worked and what didn't. I added a lot of posts to my team members as I worked my way through the site and asked a lot of questions for help.

I had problems with loading images, but my team member did not. So she sent me directions. I still had problems. Later we discovered it wasn't the site but the connection since other people in the class had problems also.

After I felt more comfortable, I went down the list on the left side of the page and opened and tinkered with every single item. I opened each item and made changes. I added categories for us to post under; links to O'Reilly's Radar and Ogeechee Tech's homepage, and added a profile page.

I tried each of the themes that we were given, but ended up using the Arjuna because it gave us more widgets. I quickly learned that when you change the theme, then you have to go to the widgets to add them. Each theme places them differently. I liked the Arjuna theme because I was able to add my Twitter page.

To me the hardest part was the plugins. I activated two of them: Akismet and Vkontakte. I understood what they did, but it was a process to activate them. I am still not satisfied with the Vkontakte button because I want to edit it, but I did not understand the website.

In the comments you can see the replies to your blogs. You can decide to
unapprove, reply, edit, spam or trash them. I think if you had a public site that this would be an important feature.

This experience had been a learning journey. I have enjoyed tinkering with WordPress. I can see the value in the use of content management systems to help you get all your documents, videos, pictures, blogs, links, and many other items in one area.



Permalink: http://www.valdosta.edu/~foguz/7505/team2/?page_id=25

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Feeling Okay about Word Press

I feel better about Word Press after last night's class and playing last night and today. I went through each section and read each item and just played. I call it tinkering. I still want to learn more about the Vkontakte Share Button. I didn't exactly understand what it did.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Ready for Tonight's Class

Can't wait until tonight's class to learn more about WordPress. I am going to try to do some of the tutorials today.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

WordPress

I am on to WordPress. I was confused at first about how to login. The login is at the bottom of the page. It sends your password to your email and you have to retrieve it before you login. The password is a "doosy." You will want to copy and paste it. Then go to the profile section at the bottom to change it to something you'll remember.
When you go in you'll be on the dashboard page. This is where you can make changes. To view the changes you have to go to the site. Kind like this blog does where you go to customize to change things and then view blog to see your changes.
I haven't figured out everything but am working on it a little at a time.
So much to learn, so little time!

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Module 2

Moving on to Module 2 today. We are learning about content management systems. The two main ones we are studying are Drupal and WordPress. I think people also use AdobePlus. It will be interesting to add the different components into one application. I hope to try to load some video this time.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Contest Ideas

Dianne Chamberlain sent me 8 copies of her new book. Any ideas for a library contest?

Working on Assignment 1

I finished the 5 parts to assignment 1. Now thinking about my reflection statement for the drop box assignment. I'll definitely have to edit it. I did more than 100 words worth!

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Rapid Feeds Information

I wanted to find out if my rapid feeds was working and updating. When we set up our rapidfeeds account, we put in our blogspot url. I went to the blogspot and added a new post. Then I went to my rapid feeds to see if it was up dating. I went to the mysite tab. At my blogspot feed, I clicked cache. When I clicked on the title of my blogspot, it gave a list of the posts (news!). It had updated it to include the one I had just created! That let me know that it was working. You can also do this in Google Reader but I was trying to figure out rapid feeds. It is finally coming together.

Check on my rss feed

I am trying out something with the rapidfeeds cache. I'll let you know what I find out.

RSS Feeds

I better understand the purpose of RSS Feeds now but still am fuzzy in building them. Can anyone help with this?

The RSS feed that we did in rapid feeds is a stand alone feed like the one that the MLIS program has. You would find that little icon on a webpage and it would allow you to subscribe to that feed. The feed would send you updates from that organization. But when I go to rapid feeds I am not exactly sure how to update my information or exactly what I am updating. When you go to add a new one, it asks you for a url. I put in my blogspot url when I created it, so when I update my blog, it should update this RSS feed. Is that correct? Should I also (which I did initially) add some of the RSS feeds that I am following? So my site has my blogsplot plus one from ALA and NPR.

Does that make sense?

Working on Part V

I have to listen to the archive of the class last night. I was with my daughter on a college visit to Troy U and we did not get home until 9pm. I am going to work on discussing the Part V about the differences and similarities between a stand alone RSS feed and RSS feed generated by our blogs and the advantages and disadvantages. Hopefully, by tomorrow I'll feel comfortable enough to begin formulating my 100 words for the assignment. I just hope I don't overlook anything.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Wiki

I developed a wiki for my college library using wetpaint. I went to the WikiMatrix and compared the different wikis. I used the guide and answered questions to find the best one for my library. I narrowed it down to 19. Then down to 2. I was looking for ones that indicated they were for education. Wetpaint said it had ad-free for education and unlimited storage so I chose to use it.
The main characteristics of my library are:
1. We are a technical library and my collection is based on the 120 programs provided by the college.
2. We presently have 2500 students, but are looking to increase to 3000 for Fall. Our students' ages range from 16-65 with the majority being in the 20-25 age range. The younger students are ones that are dual-enrolled through their high-schools. Most of these students are in construction or agribusiness area.
3. We are a mid-sized college when compared to the other technical colleges in Georgia.
4. My budget is $65,000 per year. Most of that money is spent for online resources, GALILEO, Britannica, ProQuest for Agriculture, NetLibrary, EBSCO online Periodicals, etc.
5. The library daily usage has grown from 300 per week to over 1200 patrons per week since I started two years ago. We have a lot of students using the library computer labs and study areas.
6. The library was moved from its original location to this one which was a machine metal shop classroom. We still have the large rolling doors. It houses 38 computers for student use.

The goal of my wiki is to get feedback from the patrons about the library and its services. The wiki is also a way to inform them about events sponsored by the library.

The library requirements for the wiki were a page history, WYSIWYG (many of my users are not tech saavy), subscribe to a hosted service. We didn't need commercial support (my IT department and CIS instructors are pretty saavy), interface language, or corporate branding. We were looking for a wiki that would allow use to create, collect, and organize content for our library events and opinions from our patrons.

The wiki address is:
http://otclibrarymusings.wetpaint.com

Southern Authors

The reason I have listed those southern authors is they have visited or will be visiting Ogeechee Technical College this year. Those that have previously visited did a great job of speaking to our students about writing and editing.

Add blogs

I am working on class assignments. I am trying to learn more about editing this blog. I keep adding gadgets. Today I added some of the blogs that I am following. How are you doing with this assignment?

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Polls

I hope some of you will participate in my polls.

Web 2.0 Level of Knowledge

I hope to learn a lot about Web 2.0 technologies. Some of them I am familiar with, such as blogs, wikis, social networking, podcasts. Others I don't have a clue, such as drupal, cloud computing, mashups. I have used some of the technologies. I have a personal facebook page and one for my library. I did one podcasts several years ago with a high school class. I love all the new Google Apps and use a lot of them and share them with technical students.