# 23 WOW!

This has been a very interesting journey. I said I couldn't do it, and at times I couldn't. At least not without the help of a more knowledgable, more computer savoy fellow worker. But I did get through all 22 other "things." Some items were much more difficult, and interesting than others. Some I just didn't really get the "hang of." The avitars were cute and fun to play with for a time, but I didn't see that they would really be of much value to me at HCPL. (Of course, the position I have held here, that of being behind the counter and not at the Information Desk, did not lend itself to helping anyone use the available resources. We were discouraged from using time to help anyone, and not do the job we were assigned to do.) However, it was good to know what is out there, and accessible for the patrons. Since I am one of the patrons, I now know what is available to me, as well. I did notice one thing that I would rather not have happened as a result of some of the exercises. My e-mail was overcrowded with "updates" that were totally unwanted. This would be a good thing, I guess, if I really wanted to subscribe to the topics/subjects as a patron and wanted the "latest" comment/blog from multiple people from around the globe. If I had the time, it would have been much more interesting to investigate each of these responses. But, time marched on, and I was squeezing this in, whenever I could grab a moment, often, on Tuesday nights, if we had a spare moment or two. I really need to use something multiple times in order to really thoroughly understand and feel comfortable using; you know: practice, practice, and more practice.

# 22 DOWNLOADABLE MEDIA

LIBRIVOX was easy to get to from our link. It showed latest news, new releases, links to catalog, & forums, how tos for listening & volunteering and much more. I thought the idea of being able to volunteer to read/record your voice reading chapters from books in public domain very interesting. There were also RSS feed links to community podcasts, book podcasts and news releases available. Something for everyone.

WOWIO was also easy to link to. I did however like the set up better in that right up front they showed catagories for selection, such as: title, author, ISBN, keyword ect. This appealled to me. They had additional features such as: featured publisher, featured book, book of the month, staff favorites, the top 10 books . All of this was visable from the first screen. It seemed to me that you had more of a selection on that one screen than in LIBRIVOX's opening screen. Since I am very careful as to which authors/publishers that I want to read/listen to, being able to access this information quickly, right up front was a great feature.

#21 PODCAST

I went to podcast.net. Items of interest fell under Religion & Philosophy ( christianity, faith, spirituality ect), and Arts( books, stories I media), and Learning & Instruction. This one was quite extensive, but I added it to my blogline, as a RSS feed through cut and paste. (With some help from a co-worker. I felt that the Learning & Instruction podcast would benefit the librarians the most, as many of the questions asked regularly would fit under this umbrella. It was very easy to get into podcast.net, whereas the other two choices given required more from the user. They were not upfront with the various catagories visable, like podcast was.