Search Engines

Well, I have to say, I'm a google girl. I searched for something I've been wondering about: a map of the trails at Fort Ebey State Park near Coupeville. I searched on Google for "Fort Ebey State Park trail map" (not in quotes in the search box) and got a map as my first hit. On Mamma, the same hit came up as #5, and 1-4 didn't even include any evidence of a map, nor even reference to a map. On Dogpile, my hit was #11, though I could see evidence of map references in my other hits (1-10). Rollyo was fair: it didn't give me a direct link to a map, but did give me the wikipedia article with links to a trail map.

So, then I tried to find a schedule for the Guemes Island Ferry. A search on Google for 'guemes island ferry schedule' took me right where I needed to go on the first hit in the list -- the ferry schedule. Dogpile gave me a list of commercial, irrelevant hits at the top of the list, but also took me where I needed to go via the fourth hit on the list. Dogpile was even worse -- a whole long list of irrelevant commercial links, and the link I needed was #5 in the non-commercial list! Rollyo was as good as google in this case.

I also love google for the ability to cache websites -- you can have your search terms highlighted on the web pages in the list of hits. Helps a lot when you're scanning content for something in particular.

Podcasting

Well, it's just another way to get media into your life... conveniently... and without having to read.

So, I checked out a few podcasts from various library sources, and I like "This Week @ Your Library," which is a podcast feed that covers current news and events at the Mississippi State University Libraries. I also discovered some feeds for podcasts of actual library programs. These both seem like things that could be useful at Sno-Isle -- podcasts that explain various library services, for example, might be kind of cool to put on the website. Users could subscribe to an RSS feed and be kept abreast of new goings-on.... or maybe just library news... like a newsletter, except in podcast form. And podcasting video or audio from library programs might be kind of neat, too. We could certainly increase our audience by making those events available outside the constraints of time and space (i.e. you don't have to come to the library at a specific time to see the speaker you want to see.) Just some thoughts...

So, anyway, I subscribed to a few personally interesting podcasts as well in my google reader -- some stuff from the center for fairness and accuracy in reporting (FAIR) and daily podcasts of "Democracy Now!" -- one of the news shows I like to catch. I'm sure they'll just pile up in my reader, but it's worth making an effort.

Online Image Generators

Here's my image I made. I though it was appropriate, given the difficulties associated with driving these days... i.e. it now costs me $50.00 to fill my HONDA CIVIC. I have to move closer to work.

OverDrive Digital Media

So... I did the whole download a book thing. It was, for the most part, a pleasing experience. I placed a hold on a book I've been wanting to read for a while now and received a notice that it was available for "checkout" in about a week. This was especially nice because I'm also on the holds list for the actual book on CD, and I've been waiting much longer than that already... with no light at the end of the tunnel. Yay! When I downloaded the book at work, it took about 20 minutes (kind of a long time), and now I'm going to try to burn it to a CD so I can listen to it in my car.

I also browsed the movie collection, and was not as impressed with the selection as I was with the books. For the most part, I was able to find books I wanted, but the movie selection seems to be lacking in recent, popular, or... frankly... any films I want to see at all. So. Little bit of a letdown there.

I did experience a bit of a bummer when I tried to download the book I ordered to my personal computer. While I was able to download the OverDrive Media Console without any problems, the link provided in SnoIsle's instruction for downloading the current version of Windows Media Player did not yield any downloads of the current version for Vista (my operating system.) I searched and clicked for about 15 minutes, and finally threw up my hands in frustration... then I thought, "Wait, maybe me computer is new enough that is has the most current version!" But... nope. No such luck. I tried the book download with my current version of WMP, and it didn't work. Still trying.

del.icio.us and social bookmarking

This is a dangerous exercise. Any time someone tells me to start looking up things on the internet that interest me, I go into a time-free zone where nothing else exists except, well, at the moment, going backpacking and fishing for trout in Washington's high lakes.

So... now that I've emerged from the wormhole, here are my thoughts:

del.icio.us is a useful tool if you want to be able to access your bookmarks from any computer with web access. Most of the time, I'm just messing around on the internet, so access to my "important" bookmarks isn't something I really need. However, if I were doing a lot of web-based research, I can see how this would be EXTREMEMLY USEFUL. I could find articles or blogs that address things I'm researching, get myself some feeds, and go to town. I imagine if you're doing academic work... and thus academic networking... that this would also be very useful as you could make connections with folks who are researching the things you're interested in.

I guess if I were more of a socialite, I could hook up with hiking or fishing buddies through the whole social bookmarking thing, but... well... I've kind of got some buddies already...

As far as usefulness in libraries is concerned, I think social bookmarking could be very useful in reference, especially from the tagging standpoint: the ability to search for bookmarks by keyword, especially if those bookmarks are compiled for their usefulness to library reference staff, could save lots of time and effort.