I must admit, I am not the best ELM user. I have taken the training class a few times, but since no one ever asks for help with ELM, I rarely get a chance to practice.
That being said, I think the interface is great and I will be recommending it more and more as we slowly move away from having as many print periodicals as we currently have. Not only is the site easy to search, but it provide information that might be difficult to find if you were just searching paper copies. I really like that there are newspaper archives, especially the Argus Leader, which is technically more local for us than the Star Tribune would be.
In addition to ELM, Plum Creek has access to Overdrive for our Ebooks and I am familiar enough with that site to assist patrons in getting the books they are looking for. It's a good site, though I think it could be a little more user friendly and clear - the instructions can get a bit pedantic.
We are going to have Zinio within the year and I am looking forward to playing with it - being able to have patrons check out magazines to their home computers will be a blessing for many of them, especially since they don't really have to return them and will be able to peruse back issues at home or from a mobile device. How cool is that??!!
Friday, February 21, 2014
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
23 Mobile Things: Thing 10
I'm trying out Instagram and I must have tried it before, since an account for me already existed. That doesn't bode well, honestly. If I've made an account but didn't like it enough to stick with it, I may delete it in a few weeks without ever having really used it. BUT - my little niece has an instagram account, so that might be enough to keep me active.
I took a picture of my desk as my first post, set up more followers, and changed all my push notifications so I don't get one every three seconds. I hate the push notifications. In fact, I wish NOTHING had push notifications. If I want to know if someone has sent me a message, I'll check when I have time, not when you ping me, you silly thing.
Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, but it does take time to get it all under your belt. I'd almost be willing to say that it takes MORE time to learn everything and I bet that's why people get discouraged. If you don't have the time to use it over and over again, it won't become second nature and it will just get in the way.
But I digress. Instagram seems to be entertaining. I will post a few more pictures and see how it goes!
I took a picture of my desk as my first post, set up more followers, and changed all my push notifications so I don't get one every three seconds. I hate the push notifications. In fact, I wish NOTHING had push notifications. If I want to know if someone has sent me a message, I'll check when I have time, not when you ping me, you silly thing.
Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, but it does take time to get it all under your belt. I'd almost be willing to say that it takes MORE time to learn everything and I bet that's why people get discouraged. If you don't have the time to use it over and over again, it won't become second nature and it will just get in the way.
But I digress. Instagram seems to be entertaining. I will post a few more pictures and see how it goes!
23 Mobile Things: Thing 9
Aviary seems to be a very cool program! I can change frames on pictures to give them more effects, write on them in various colors and pen sizes, crop them into specific sizes, and even create memes. Seems to be a great app!
I tried a photo of a hat that I made for a friend, resized it, gave it a cool frame that made it look like a stamp, then wrote "For Phoebe" on it with red. At first, I used a pen size that was quite large and had to find the eraser to remove the writing. The eraser was rather fun as the original picture appeared as I erased the red. Once I changed to a smaller size, it was easy to write the message I wanted and it looked almost like a postcard when I was done. Way Cool! I can't wait to play around with this even more!
I tried a photo of a hat that I made for a friend, resized it, gave it a cool frame that made it look like a stamp, then wrote "For Phoebe" on it with red. At first, I used a pen size that was quite large and had to find the eraser to remove the writing. The eraser was rather fun as the original picture appeared as I erased the red. Once I changed to a smaller size, it was easy to write the message I wanted and it looked almost like a postcard when I was done. Way Cool! I can't wait to play around with this even more!
23 Mobile Things: Thing 8
Social Media Management Tools!
So I've heard all about Hootsuite - lots of people use it for keeping track of all their social media needs, but I'd never tried it. Mainly because I think that I'm not that interesting and couldn't possibly have a need to keep track of that many things.
In order to really get a feel for it, I got an account on Foursquare and attached that, Facebook, and Twitter (which I put back on my Ipad) into the Hootsuite account. Fascinating.
I can look at everything at once, from inside one app, and the thing I like best about it is it shows you EVERYTHING on Facebook, not just the entries that Facebook thinks you should see - know what I mean? I can see all the pages I like if they've updated, all the friends on my list (not just ones I've interacted with recently) and it flows continuously. I'm not sure I quite understand the "Pending" column, but I'll probably figure that out as I go along.
Will I keep using it? Maybe, who knows. I still don't think I need that much management since I have a real like I like to experience once in awhile and I've never managed to stick with Tweeting, but it does seem to be a very useful app for those people who have a lot to manage.
Thumbs up!
So I've heard all about Hootsuite - lots of people use it for keeping track of all their social media needs, but I'd never tried it. Mainly because I think that I'm not that interesting and couldn't possibly have a need to keep track of that many things.
In order to really get a feel for it, I got an account on Foursquare and attached that, Facebook, and Twitter (which I put back on my Ipad) into the Hootsuite account. Fascinating.
I can look at everything at once, from inside one app, and the thing I like best about it is it shows you EVERYTHING on Facebook, not just the entries that Facebook thinks you should see - know what I mean? I can see all the pages I like if they've updated, all the friends on my list (not just ones I've interacted with recently) and it flows continuously. I'm not sure I quite understand the "Pending" column, but I'll probably figure that out as I go along.
Will I keep using it? Maybe, who knows. I still don't think I need that much management since I have a real like I like to experience once in awhile and I've never managed to stick with Tweeting, but it does seem to be a very useful app for those people who have a lot to manage.
Thumbs up!
Sunday, February 2, 2014
I Love Me Some Tagalongs: UMSJ 3
So it's come down to something ridiculous. A friend of mine posted today that she is upset that her daughter, who is a Girl Scout, might get rejected for cookie selling because of the Girl Scout Organizations politics. You see *gasp* the GS supports Planned Parenthood, sort of, by supporting a politician named Wendy Davis. Remember her? She campaigned for women's rights in Texas by filibustering for hours on end in pink sneakers without even stopping to go to the bathroom.
So don't buy cookies because the Girl Scouts is pro-choice.
What?? Leave those scrumptious, delicious cookies alone and break a small girl's heart because you think, in a roundabout way, that the organization she is selling for somehow rips babies from wombs? And this little girl has something to do with it? My friend phrased it best: she doesn't support abortion, she loves her daughter, who is more important than Planned Parenthood.
So that wouldn't have been my first reaction. See, I support Planned Parenthood. You know why? Because when my ex-husband cheated on me with who knows how many other women, I didn't have very good health care and I had no one to turn to for testing. For STDS. That he could have given me. It wasn't enough that I was humiliated and brought low by his actions, I had to possibly suffer long-term consequences. So I went to PP and I asked for a test. The women there were understanding - they held my hand while I wept on the exam table, they made the tests as painless as possible, and they gave me timely (thankfully positive) results and they do this everyday. For anyone who asks.
But they perform abortions!!
Yes, they do. For the women who come in and need help. Do you think these women undertake such a procedure lightly? Do you think they think "Hey, I'm preggers - better go abort it." It's possible that some think that way, but a vast majority do not make this decision like it's changing their underwear. It's a long process, agonizing, heart-wrenching, and nothing anyone else can understand without walking miles in their shoes.
For all you folks out there that are pissed off about Obama making healthcare decision for you because of the Affordable Healthcare Act (which gives us free birth control), I call foul. Shame on you for wanting to prevent me from making my own health care decisions about an abortion when you rant and rave at Obama for making you change your plan. I tell you what - I'll vote against the Affordable Health Care Act if you keep your sanctimonious hands out of my uterus.
For the record, I am not pro-abortion. I am pro-choice. I believe that abortion is wrong - FOR ME. That doesn't mean it's wrong for someone else, and it's certainly not my place to tell another woman what she can and can't do with her body. If she feels this is her only recourse, then it should be an option that is available to her. It hurts no one but her, when it comes right down to it, and the father if he even cares. It doesn't hurt you down the street. It doesn't hurt the man protesting outside. It hurts her. The baby is a cluster of cells, unable to live apart from her. Without her good-will, it has no future. We are a culture that wants to bring babies into the world, but we don't want to care for them, as is evidenced by the protests against the ACA and the incredible education cuts that have been occurring. We don't pay our teachers beans compared to CEOs of companies that make trillions of dollars off the backs of the working poor, but we value the life inside a uterus when it can't survive on its own? We have our priorities backwards.
So don't judge, folks. God will do that himself, it's not our place. You can protest and say "It's murder" and then turn around and murder the abortion doctor instead, or vilify the woman who has the abortion, but do you think that's what Jesus would do? No. Jesus would hold her hand while she wept in her silent grief and help her recover, so that in the future she could choose a different road and save her soul. But he will do that, not you. Hurtful words and epithets do nothing to advance the cause of Christianity. Please keep that in mind the next time you tell a woman that it's her fault that she got pregnant (even in the case of rape) and it doesn't matter how she feels, she has to have that baby. Nice. Really Christ-like of you.
If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go buy a box of Tagalongs from the nice little girl, who has her innocence intact and her whole life ahead of her, who is standing at my door. Because of PP and women like Wendy Davis, she will start to believe she can do anything she wants to do with her life. She could be an astronaut, a home-maker, a teacher, or a politician and she could change the world.
Enjoy your cookies.
So don't buy cookies because the Girl Scouts is pro-choice.
What?? Leave those scrumptious, delicious cookies alone and break a small girl's heart because you think, in a roundabout way, that the organization she is selling for somehow rips babies from wombs? And this little girl has something to do with it? My friend phrased it best: she doesn't support abortion, she loves her daughter, who is more important than Planned Parenthood.
So that wouldn't have been my first reaction. See, I support Planned Parenthood. You know why? Because when my ex-husband cheated on me with who knows how many other women, I didn't have very good health care and I had no one to turn to for testing. For STDS. That he could have given me. It wasn't enough that I was humiliated and brought low by his actions, I had to possibly suffer long-term consequences. So I went to PP and I asked for a test. The women there were understanding - they held my hand while I wept on the exam table, they made the tests as painless as possible, and they gave me timely (thankfully positive) results and they do this everyday. For anyone who asks.
But they perform abortions!!
Yes, they do. For the women who come in and need help. Do you think these women undertake such a procedure lightly? Do you think they think "Hey, I'm preggers - better go abort it." It's possible that some think that way, but a vast majority do not make this decision like it's changing their underwear. It's a long process, agonizing, heart-wrenching, and nothing anyone else can understand without walking miles in their shoes.
For all you folks out there that are pissed off about Obama making healthcare decision for you because of the Affordable Healthcare Act (which gives us free birth control), I call foul. Shame on you for wanting to prevent me from making my own health care decisions about an abortion when you rant and rave at Obama for making you change your plan. I tell you what - I'll vote against the Affordable Health Care Act if you keep your sanctimonious hands out of my uterus.
For the record, I am not pro-abortion. I am pro-choice. I believe that abortion is wrong - FOR ME. That doesn't mean it's wrong for someone else, and it's certainly not my place to tell another woman what she can and can't do with her body. If she feels this is her only recourse, then it should be an option that is available to her. It hurts no one but her, when it comes right down to it, and the father if he even cares. It doesn't hurt you down the street. It doesn't hurt the man protesting outside. It hurts her. The baby is a cluster of cells, unable to live apart from her. Without her good-will, it has no future. We are a culture that wants to bring babies into the world, but we don't want to care for them, as is evidenced by the protests against the ACA and the incredible education cuts that have been occurring. We don't pay our teachers beans compared to CEOs of companies that make trillions of dollars off the backs of the working poor, but we value the life inside a uterus when it can't survive on its own? We have our priorities backwards.
So don't judge, folks. God will do that himself, it's not our place. You can protest and say "It's murder" and then turn around and murder the abortion doctor instead, or vilify the woman who has the abortion, but do you think that's what Jesus would do? No. Jesus would hold her hand while she wept in her silent grief and help her recover, so that in the future she could choose a different road and save her soul. But he will do that, not you. Hurtful words and epithets do nothing to advance the cause of Christianity. Please keep that in mind the next time you tell a woman that it's her fault that she got pregnant (even in the case of rape) and it doesn't matter how she feels, she has to have that baby. Nice. Really Christ-like of you.
If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go buy a box of Tagalongs from the nice little girl, who has her innocence intact and her whole life ahead of her, who is standing at my door. Because of PP and women like Wendy Davis, she will start to believe she can do anything she wants to do with her life. She could be an astronaut, a home-maker, a teacher, or a politician and she could change the world.
Enjoy your cookies.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
23 Mobile Things: Thing 7
I am already a Pinterest addict, let me make that clear. I have the app on the Ipad and I almost never use it because once I start, I can't seem to get off the darn thing. The interface is easy to search, fun to use, and I think they did a great job with the design.
Pinterest is a brilliant way for all of us to share websites, pictures, recipes, craft ideas, all sorts of things just by pinning them to our boards. I have a virtual bookshelf inside of Pinterest to keep track of all the books I read over the course of 2014. it will be fun to look at that shelf when I am finished. I also have a Dream House board where I keep track of decorating ideas I will never use, a Yurt Board for my fantasy yurt, and a board of silly pictures of animals where I make up dumb quotes to go along with the pictures. Yes, I know, these boards are really only for my own entertainment, but the fact that other people can look at them does make me quite happy.
More fun than Facebook!
Pinterest is a brilliant way for all of us to share websites, pictures, recipes, craft ideas, all sorts of things just by pinning them to our boards. I have a virtual bookshelf inside of Pinterest to keep track of all the books I read over the course of 2014. it will be fun to look at that shelf when I am finished. I also have a Dream House board where I keep track of decorating ideas I will never use, a Yurt Board for my fantasy yurt, and a board of silly pictures of animals where I make up dumb quotes to go along with the pictures. Yes, I know, these boards are really only for my own entertainment, but the fact that other people can look at them does make me quite happy.
More fun than Facebook!
23 Mobile Things: Thing 6
First off, I decided that Cloud On would be the best one for me, considering I use Microsoft at work and at home and would love to be able to access it with my Ipad.
I did NOT know until I started that I needed a DropBox account, which I don't have. So I made one. I should have made one a long time ago, considering I could take things home with me much easier on a snow day or when I'm traveling to edit documents and improve my book orders from the Ipad.
I 'dropped' my book order file into Dropbox without choosing individual documents to see if it would take the whole thing and it did! I could open everything that was in the folder as separate documents in both Excel and Word, which was crazy awesome. This will definitely improve things for me. Two apps with one download - without Dropbox, I never would have accomplished anything!
This is so much fun and a great thing to do at work on Saturdays, when not many patrons come to visit us. I am still doing library related work and learning more about my device and how to help people and filling up the empty hours at the same time. Great!
I did NOT know until I started that I needed a DropBox account, which I don't have. So I made one. I should have made one a long time ago, considering I could take things home with me much easier on a snow day or when I'm traveling to edit documents and improve my book orders from the Ipad.
I 'dropped' my book order file into Dropbox without choosing individual documents to see if it would take the whole thing and it did! I could open everything that was in the folder as separate documents in both Excel and Word, which was crazy awesome. This will definitely improve things for me. Two apps with one download - without Dropbox, I never would have accomplished anything!
This is so much fun and a great thing to do at work on Saturdays, when not many patrons come to visit us. I am still doing library related work and learning more about my device and how to help people and filling up the empty hours at the same time. Great!
23 Mobile Things: Thing 5
I tried out Remember the Milk and Bamboo Paper, both of which I think I will keep!
Remember the Milk is a GREAT list tool. I really like the simple organization of the week and that I can mark things completed as I do them - along the left side it tells me how many things are scheduled for the week, by day. Love it. A dream for an OCD librarian like myself. I can have personal, study, and work lists, which is also great, though I wish I could edit the titles of the lists. There might be a way, but I haven't yet figured it out. If I upgraded to a Pro account, I bet there would be more bells and whistles.
Bamboo paper is cool, though I wish I could type in it. I like that I can change the size of my lines when I sketch (which would be easier if I had a stylus) and that I can change colors - that is very cool. Occasionally I have an urge to sketch things out, though not often. This will come in handy when those urges arise. It's a pretty neat app. I like that I can change the colors of notebooks, add more notebooks, change titles, etc. It's very user friendly. Tells me how many pages, when it was last edited, etc. I like it!
An app that I really enjoy that was NOT included in this list is Evernote. One, it's represented by an elephant, and two, the interface is really easy to use. I'm not sure if it's free or not (I don't remember), but I really like being able to keep track of different "notebooks" and have one for the library, one for daily tasks for myself, and one for travel notes. And it emails pretty easily.
Remember the Milk is a GREAT list tool. I really like the simple organization of the week and that I can mark things completed as I do them - along the left side it tells me how many things are scheduled for the week, by day. Love it. A dream for an OCD librarian like myself. I can have personal, study, and work lists, which is also great, though I wish I could edit the titles of the lists. There might be a way, but I haven't yet figured it out. If I upgraded to a Pro account, I bet there would be more bells and whistles.
Bamboo paper is cool, though I wish I could type in it. I like that I can change the size of my lines when I sketch (which would be easier if I had a stylus) and that I can change colors - that is very cool. Occasionally I have an urge to sketch things out, though not often. This will come in handy when those urges arise. It's a pretty neat app. I like that I can change the colors of notebooks, add more notebooks, change titles, etc. It's very user friendly. Tells me how many pages, when it was last edited, etc. I like it!
An app that I really enjoy that was NOT included in this list is Evernote. One, it's represented by an elephant, and two, the interface is really easy to use. I'm not sure if it's free or not (I don't remember), but I really like being able to keep track of different "notebooks" and have one for the library, one for daily tasks for myself, and one for travel notes. And it emails pretty easily.
23 Mobile Things: Thing 4
So I gave Flipboard a shot and I didn't like it at all. I don't think that it is as user-friendly as it wants to be and, after adding content and trying to make sense of things, I deleted the application. I guess I'm a BBC or MSN news kind of girl.
I did like the fact that I could blog surf, that was fun, and it was nice to save those blog posts for later reading, but the whole magazine layout idea I didn't get and didn't like. Maybe I'll try it again in the future and see if it makes more sense.
I did like the fact that I could blog surf, that was fun, and it was nice to save those blog posts for later reading, but the whole magazine layout idea I didn't get and didn't like. Maybe I'll try it again in the future and see if it makes more sense.
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