Tammy's Library

Hello to All,

I have spent the past three months creating a new website that I hope my public librarian colleagues will find  useful and tell their patrons about.

Here is my first attempt at social media marketing for tammyslibrary.com

One's Self 

Intro to Tammy's Library

These short clips should pique your curiousity as to what Tammy's Library is all about.  Once you are at my homepage, there you will find the details explaining the purpose of my site.  I would most appreciate feedback from all you librarians.  Thanks for viewing.

Tammy

MOOC Massive Open Online Courses

Hello and Happy Spring!

Spring is a great time to air out and freshen up one's mind by learning a new skill or dusting off old skills with a refresher session on a topic you once knew well. I have been spending time these past few weeks taking online courses via Udemy.com . These courses offer lifetime access, so you can tap into learning anytime. I learned about 21st century leadership, social media and marketing,  SEO optimization, and Google Analytics. I may brush up on web design with CSS3 and HTML5 since they were not around when I took web design in library school.

Courses from Udemy vary in price. Many are free and others have a fee. Sometimes Udemy offers a discount for a few days. After I completed my first course, I received a coupon to purchase my next course at 50% off. When your instructors create a new course, as a former student, you are offered a steep discount to register.  Courses I have taken varied in length from one hour to fifteen hours.  Courses are available to you 24 hours a day. You simply read the handouts and watch videos when you have time.

I am also scheduled to begin a couple of Coursera courses in May.  Coursera courses are always free. CEU credits are available for a fee.  Coursera courses have a weekly schedule with assignments, but you can sign up for a course and be no more involved than simply perusing the videos and handouts for that course.

ed2go is another online source I will be working with later this year.

MOOCs - the title of my post -have been around and growing in popularity for a number of years. Here are a couple interesting articles on the subject:
New York Times July 17, 2012  "Top Universities Test the Online Appeal of Free"
Here is an article which gives many resources for free courses.

Code Academy is a free place to learn code. Another source is w3schools if you wish to learn web development. They also offer certification in each topic area for $95 per test. Tests must be proctored, and many public libraries are willing to assist you with that.

For more details, visit my MOOCs page in Tammy's Library.  Take care and happy learning!

Tammy

Thing Twenty-Three: Evaluate 23Things

I loved having to learn more about my own device in the beginning. Many of us simply never take the time to familiarize ourselves with how smart our phone really is. It's much more common to be shown a new trick or two by a friend, than to read and try out and read some more. This program caused me to learn more than I ever had before in the 9 months of owning a smartphone.

I read many other blogs in my first week of participating. It was good to see where other librarians stood in their tech savvy-ness.

My favorite things were getting to know my own device, working withCamMe and image altering apps, experimenting with Vine, and brainstorming about how I could use AudioBoo at work.

Participation in your program put me very far ahead of where I was in my knowledge of apps. You did an excellent job setting up each Thing. They included everything necessary for self-instruction. Thank you.

March 12 Update - Udemy.com is offering a $19 special on a course entitled Certificate of Social Media Marketing and Management. Coupon expires on March 14. I signed up for this online and asychronous course. It looks to be very in-depth on eight top SM sites! Use coupon TOP19

Thing Twenty-Two: Discovering Apps

I googled "best travel destination free apps"

CNN Travel has a great article, November 2013, which they continually update.They give screenshots and a couple paragraphs of details for each app.

Another great article is from Time Out Travel. They organize their apps according to topic: Plan, Navigate, Explore, Communicate, and Document.

Gadgets & Tech lists 10 best travel apps. There is overlap with the two previous articles, but serious travelers will appreciate knowing they haven't overlooked those apps which are most highly recommended.

USA Today has a reassuring article entitled, "Can destination apps take the place of guidebooks?" They simply caution tourists to bring their charger along each day, as using apps all day tends to drain the smartphone battery. :)

Thing Twenty-One: Free-for-All

The free apps I appreciate or use most are:

WebMD - I use the symptom checker and list of conditions most frequently. There is an alphabetized First Aid section, Just look up your incident (ankle fracture, broken nose, or ear pain from diving, etc.) You can read definitions of medical terms or read about specific medical tests and procedures before you go to your appointment. Finally, you can use your location to select a physician, hospital, or pharmacy.

Trip Advisor - type in your location or destination and browse hotels, restaurants, local attractions, flights, vacation rentals, forums, or reviews. You can also add your own review after a trip. It also has a link to travel tools such as Seat Guru, a neat app which shows where you seat # is located on the plane.

Kayak - When searching for flights, I do a daily check to see price fluctuation. You can also get price alerts. Search for hotels, car rentals, and track flights. There's also a place to plan your trip agenda.

Thing Twenty: Games

This topic is challenging for me. I spend very little of my time on games. I really like the website Sporcle because it's educational games. If I were to play a game, it would be with family as a form of socializing. I wouldn't really even find it relaxing to play a game by myself on my phone. Yes, they are most definitely addicting and there would be some I would like. My downtime, clear-my-head time is spent reading or passively watching movies.

I chose the Draw Quest app. There is some excellent artwork on that app. The more you play, you earn coins to buy more color options, etc. --so I can see that some people have been doing a LOT of gaming. I eeked out a squiggly smile on a face as my first accomplishment and the app wanted me to post it on FB! Seriously?!

The app for checking out game ratings, ESRB, is more my speed. Ahhhh, now I'm back in my comfort zone.

Thing Nineteen: Hobbies

Hey, RoadNinja, where have you been all my life? Oh, that's right, I haven't even owned a smartphone for a full year yet. :) I can't wait to use this app when I'm the Navigator. I wish to familiarize myself with this app before I try it on the fly as a sole driver. I like that you can text or email info on an upcoming gas station or restaurant. This will be great for caravans.

I'm steering clear of the garden app as I had no time for one last year and the near future looks unpromising as well. One day.....

Thing Eighteen: Education

I am set up with DuoLingo to have 5 minutes of Spanish lessons per day. They make it fun. Near the end of  each lesson, you speak phrases into the mike and they print the translation on the screen to see if you passed. The word for "woman" mujer seems to have a funny roll of the tongue or something that my Scandinavian-ness is having trouble with.

Next on the agenda, I downloaded iTranslate. We have a very large local population of Hispanics and many know little English, certainly not enough to talk library lingo (checkout, checkin, interlibrary loan, MnLink) :) This one is real difficult: "You returned an empty DVD case. Check your player for the DVD." Try explaining that one over the phone. This will be great when there is no one around to translate for the two of us.

You can bookmark phrases or sentences, so I began typing in commonly used sentences. The Spanish woman who speaks the translation says the word Minnesota kind of like a Minnesotan. :)

Curiousity got me to get the Ted Talk app. I had heard of them while reading Sheryl Sandberg's book, and now I can check out a variety of talks whenever I want. This seems like a good activity when travelling and I am not the driver. Or to go to sleep to. TED has a great list of tags, making it easy to identify what I really want to hear.

Great job, 23Things, on selecting a variety of educational apps to try!

Thing Seventeen: Connecting to Community

Now I will be using the MN 511 app to monitor road conditions and construction. I can easily see areas where other family members commute too. Here's a few more I discovered:

MinnMix is a good free one for the metro area....news, weather, and sports.

Drivers Ed Minnesota is free....manuals, practice tests, and more.

KSTP Channel 5 has a free app.

Thing Sixteen: Audio

I plan to use AudioBoo to interview local or visiting authors and interview patrons about books they just read. We have a young man who lives across the street from the library who self-published a book recently. I will ask him to share a few thoughts and post it to FB.On a personal note, I plan to make Boos and tweet my personal adventures exploring the Bay area shores and Padre Island once I move.

Thing Fifteen: Infographics

Visualize Free is also only for the iPad so that left me out. I downloaded info.graphics -- navigation is very slow. Several times it closed by itself. I also noticed they spelled "developed" wrong on the footer. Hmmmmm. I will try it several different days to see if functionality improves before I decide if it gets prime real estate permanently on my home screen.

I envision creating infographics at the library using Color Splurge to spice up photos we take. Here's one I just made from my avatar and posted on library's page.

Thing Fourteen: Videos

I used Vine to make a pitch for a book I just read. People are quite creative imagining ways to fill up six seconds of video. I will be doing lots of experimenting at the library.

Thing Thirteen: Presentations

I am a new and future faithful user of Deck Slideshow Presentation. I am completely sold. I created a 7-slide show for my son's upcoming birthday. I am videoing the presentation so I can share it here. This is a surprise for him, so do not tell him.

Thing Twelve: Books.....

YALSA Teen Book Finder app.....oh yes! Just what I needed. This will be great to assist patrons who ask for recommendations for youth readers. Searching by Booklist will really help in such instances. Lists such as:

Fabulous Films
Graphic Novels
Outstanding Books for the College Bound
Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers
and many more

Searching by Genre gives six options and this will be great for readers' advisory as well.

IStorybooks is in my future as well. Grandkids will be coming any year now. Readers can listen to the very animated reader in the app or an adult can read it to a child. This will be great with an iPad, a perfect-size device for young children.

Thing Eleven: Library & Reference

ELM is a great site. It's a good idea to click around on the site occasionally to remind ourselves as librarians what's available. For instance, I selected "Alternative Health Watch" to access an article entitled "Teflon's Hidden Dangers: making the EPA's charges stick" about the dangers of non-stick coating and what DuPont knew in the 1980s.

I also looked at the libraries who have an app. Great concept and hopefully this will become widespread throughout the state. I'd like to know how much it costs to set up and maintain. This is exactly what every public library needs as people are expecting this level of "keeping up" from libraries. I see some apps had comments about the app being very slow or not functioning after an upgrade. The only thing worse than no app is one that really disappoints. Tweeking should be done ASAP to eliminate patron frustration.

My library has Zinio and OverDrive apps. We've had patrons who have had difficulty with both. We have instructional handouts, but even then, with individual devices one sometimes hit a roadblock. The OverDrive site is so good about support. They even have a list of specific devices/ models that do not yet work with OD. (or never will due to their age)

Full-steam ahead with tech advances....libraries can no longer ignore the digital world.

Thing Ten: Sharing Photos

I downloaded Instagram. I love the sample library sites you offered and will gain future inspiration from their ideas for our library. I also printed the lists of ideas on how libraries can use Instagram. Pictures help to bring small nooks or areas of the library to life. It's a great idea to ask patrons attending events to upload their own instagram photos because then we don't have to worry about permission to publish.

Thing 9: Taking & Editing Photos

 Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll be brief! For this party photo, I first uploaded it into Color Splurge. I greyed out the photo, then brought the color back on the gift. I saved it, then uploaded that photo into LINE Camera to add the text.

Sibling love at it's best!

For the library photo, I used Color Splurge to add color to our faces and my moccasins.

I also installed the CamMe app. Just what I needed to take photos with the people I'm with and not have to ask a stranger to assist.

Thing Eight: Social Media Management

Well, it was time I got on Twitter anyway. I didn't let it access my contacts because I want to clean house first. :) I'm following two people so far: Joel Osteen and my brother. Our library posts to FB and Twitter simultaneously, so I selected Tweetcaster to download to my iPhone. Seems pretty handy. It was instantly populated with lots of tweets from J.O. I see they have messaging, like everyone seems to these days.

Thing Seven: Content Saving & Sharing

I already have a Pinterest account. It's a great place to enjoy the scenery of all the beautiful pictures. When my son got married, his fiancee posted many pictures of items they would be using or creating for the wedding. Instead of sending pictures to all interested family members, she gave out her Pinterest information so anyone could log in and look at what's new. I think Pinterest works well for finding recipes, because I'm one that likes to see a photo of the food.

I also have a Delicious account since they were around long before Pinterest.

Social bookmarking is great for acquiring new ideas and sources from lots of other people.

Thing Six: Creating and Editing Docs

I used CloudOn and linked it to my Google Drive. I used a word document to create my To Do list for the next few weeks.  I was looking for a save button, but apparently it saves when you click done to close the keyboard. I also loaded my blog slideshow into this app and the PowerPoint part of the app looks do-able too.

SignNow is also a valuable app for the rare occasion when I will need it. The support page shows the specifics for the iphone. It looks very easy.

Thing Five: Notetaking

I am now using the Springpad app for recipes and creating grocery lists. You can make a list of favorites and even add your own photos. I now have a new chocolate cookie recipe that I will be trying this week. It uses 2 pkgs. of vanilla pudding mix. I also learned that corn starch in a cookie recipe will keep them soft.

Once I get some valuable, shareable content in my Recipe notebook, I'll be able to embed that notebook in my blog.

Thing Four: Keeping Up

I downloaded Zite and selected two book news groups, among others. I became distracted and had to watch a guy pack his suitcase in "Packing Like a Pro", but I soon collected myself and restored focus. I then migrated to a Discovery news page "Wearable book plugs you in to characters' emotions". Well, it is interesting, but not for me. I do not need any assistance getting into a book, or movie for that matter. I was scared just reading the section in Whole Library Handbook about real haunted libraries.

While in library school, I set up a Bloglines account, got real excited, then never had the time after that to keep up on much.

Google Reader was discontinued in 2013, so maybe 23Things could find a video that doesn't use GR as an example. Here's an article from LifeHacker recommending reader alternatives:

I'm not on Twitter, but lots of people forgo a reader and simply follow on Twitter. I've been getting some of my professional reading sources from LinkedIn.

Thing Three: Utilities

I downloaded Wi-Fi Finder. Blue pins on the map denote paid wi-fi, red pins are free to subscribers (example Xfinity), and green pins are free. I will be completing my 23 Things in rapid fashion while I am still a Minnesota public library employee. All of this newfound knowledge will come in handy.

Thing Two: Mobile Device Tips

I lost myself for the better part of the day investigating my iPhone 5. My favorite newfound tricks:

Web Clips - This adds an icon to the Home Screen so I don't even have to access my most used sites through bookmarks. Visit a site, tap Share, tap Add to Home Screen, and adjust the descriptive name if desired.

I discovered the Emoji keyboard. >Settings >General >Keyboard >Keyboards >Emoji
What fun! ⏳⚓️

HDR setting for photos - High Dynamic Range  - this option takes three exposures (long, normal, and short) and produces the best photo. There is an option in Settings to keep the normal photo too. I asked myself, "Why not?"

Spotlight Search - Neat!!! This function is located in Settings under General. You can limit the items that are searched first. I typed in the beginnings of a name I had emailed once long ago and it drew up the email.

I learned to quick delete a single email by swiping it left. In calendar, tapping Search allows me to view all events. I've also taken the time to use Siri and love the way I can text by talking. Good for on the go. I will also use Dictation by talking notes to myself.

Learning my iPhone will keep me occupied until such date that I get a new one. I've never been one to follow the masses regarding any material thing, but I love my iPhone. I have the book iPhone for Dummies 7th edition. They offer additional information online, so here are the links:

www.dummies.com/extras/iphone

www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/iphone

And more:

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/20-tips-tricks-most-iphone-155034799.html

 Macworld is where I discovered that the microphone on my earbuds is a remote as well. I can answer and end calls as well as pause music and turn volume up and down. It pays to put on one's reading glasses and notice the + and - signs on my mike.

Have fun!

March 12 - my son just taught me this:  To take a screenshot on my iPhone 5 just hold down the Home Power buttons simultaneously.

Thing One: Blog

I am absolutely stoked about this 23 Things opportunity! It came into my life at the perfect time -- serendipity. I have been working two jobs for umpteen years and this week marks a huge lifestyle change for me. I quit my FT night office job and I am now only working PT at the library, where I've been for five years. I will be spending my newfound free time on professional development and the job search.

 

I read on one person's 23 Things blog that he was retired now and has the time to do a project like this. <insert sigh here> That's how life often goes. Seriously, how many of us would like to devote more time to professional development? That's why I'm taking advantage of this season in my life that I've already named The Interlude. It's my transition between working 60 hours weeks plus commute and a future day job of 40 hours/week. Whether this interlude is six weeks or six months, I'm going to savor every moment!

 

I have blogged at the library for work purposes, but this is my first ever "all my own" blog. It will reflect Expressions of Me as stated in my slideshow. Now I must locate some peeps to be my readers......