Method #12 Reflection and Evaluation

*First off, I enjoy the "in plain English" videos. Lee Lefever does a great job. Maybe my favorite discovery in this program was finding some good groups to join in the social networking lesson. It is very important to try and learn something new on a daily basis in order to provide the best service possible. My favorite exercise was YouTube. I can see how patrons can sit in the library all day watching them. *TSLAC's A Dozen Ways to Two Step program has enhanced what I learned during the North Texas 23 things program. I have set up accounts for the library in many of these applications and this learning experience will be helpful as we set up our virtual library in the future. *One takeaway from this program that surprised me was the number of social networking sites. I had no idea how many there were. I am thinking about ways to explore marketing our library and libraries in the international market through an international social networking site. * The way this program is put together is very good. Please keep the "in plain English" videos. One improvement would be to introduce the next level of 2.0. New sites that people probably have not heard of so that libraries can be ahead of the game with new concepts. *I would definitely participate in another program. Thank you for providing this opportunity and the CE credits.

Method #6 Movie Tubes

I have explored YouTube before but had not seen TeacherTube. I am under the impression that I could trust what was on teacher tube because of the educational aspect where as YouTube is a free for all of expression by anyone. I do like the layout of YouTube better, it appears more "user friendly". Since National Library Card Sign Up Month just ended, I chose the YouTube video Scott Township Public Library - National Library Card Sign-up Month at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwn94jqgmVU. I did try to embed the video into my blog but nothing worked, including asking two of my co-workers if they knew how to do it. We all pressed the same buttons and tried the same things and nothing worked. Very frustrating. I would like to do more promotions of the library programs and services using YouTube but I still need a lot more understanding of how to use this medium and also more time, which I just don't have right now. I will keep an eye out for a volunteer or a student who might be able to assist us with this project. This would also be an important addition to virtual branch libraries, which we hope to have some day.

Tubing the Internet

First of all, I thought that our library had a YouTube account but I did not find anything under the library's name so I just started looking at some Little Elm tubes...The first was entitled Coming to Little Elm--Limited Engagement promoting the musical Bye-Bye Birdie. The promo had still pictures moving in and out with music. I thought it was pretty well done. The title is what caught my eye because I was wondering what the library did not know about. I also watched a Little Elm Autumn Fest 07 HipHop video of a HipHop group performing during the 2007 Autumn Fest. It was pretty good videography though it did not look like it was done by a professional. It would be useful to promote future Autumn Fests. I did notice that after watching that Hip Hop tube, other Hip Hop tubes came up for me to choose, so I liked that option. After perusing down Little Elm Lane I decided to go back to the Library world and found a tube entitled Discover a New World @ Columbus Public Library. Wow, was I impressed. The purpose was to show what the library had to offer. Very unique format with animation and popups. I had never seen a tube done in this fashion before but then again, I do not spend a lot of time on YouTube, though my patrons do. Since I just finished learning about Twitter, I watched a tube that was answering Twitter questions. The camera was focused on the individual answering questions. The camera would pan from the screen with the question to the individual reading the question and then answering them. Though the picture was clear and the reason behind what the purpose was understood, I thought the format was pretty boring. I do think that YouTube use by libraries can be very beneficial to promote what libraries are doing to various age groups and also help to train staff or general public about different things. I did try to sign the library up for an account but have not been successful yet but after I get finished with the 23 things assignment, that will be my next goal.