Saturday, January 31, 2009

Thing 17. ELM Productivity Tools

Not a lot of luck with this thing (videos just took me to QuickTime website, ELM search got hung up as well). However, don't think this means I'm unenthusiastic about ELM. While on Reference Desk, it has been very helpful in accessing a variety of information that we would not be able to with just the local library resources. Just a couple were a technical medical article on diabetes and wiring schematics for a vehicle we did not have any manuals for)

Let's hope the legislature keeps money in for this library service

Thing 16. Student 2.0 Tools

Hooray, a thing I can get enthusiastic about! Looking through both Research Project Calculator (RPC) and Assignment Calculator they both had what looked like useful features. While AC seemed distinctly more robust than RPC, it seems like either could be used to help get through paper/project assignments. I did like the various links in AC to access both primary sources (ie grammar usage) and finding aids (ie library catalogs).

For a hoot, I tried setting up an email alert on RPC. Am looking forward to receiving them just to see how they look and impact me. Also got me thinking that a potentially useful enhancement would be to provide for multiple email alerts (ie to teachers and/or parents)

Lets hope all students will soon have high speed internet access

Thing 15 Libraries and games

I watched the Second Life video and then tried accessing both Puzzle Pirates and Second Life but to no real success. Puzzle Pirates kept giving me error messages. Second Life, after an abortive attempt that failed when prompted for Pay Pal or cell phone, did let me download something but then that got lost somewhere on my PC (I hope I did not make more work for the Computer Center).

Anyway, I'm sure there is some appeal to gaming on the internet to a lot of people and it might be useful for a library to facilitate that. Since I always had some trouble with Pac Man, I would not include myself in that particular group of patrons.

Skateboarding on sand - how cool!