Part 2

I looked at webjunction tonight and I think it'll be a good site to get to know.  I'm sitting here watching my cat Topaz sleep and trying to figure out how to get everything done this semester.  I'm reminded of travel in the late 19th and early 20th centruy.  That's what webjunction reminds me of - a train for librarians that travels to who knows how many destinations.  I guess I'm a supplier for that train, but hopefully somebody can come up with a better analogy.  What is this trainride going to bring?

Delicious Bookworms

I just signed up for the delicious account, which means at this point I have no idea what I'm doing.  I saw the name delicious and thought maybe I had warped into a cooking class by mistake.  Little did I know, that it had so much to offer.  Yes, it's taking time to figure out, but I expected that.  Live and learn right?  I've never been big on bookmarking.  I never understood the purpose, but maybe this exercise will help demonstrate that.

I started looking up different authors, just to see what would come up.  Wow was there a variety.  Looking up things for this class specifically was harder.  As with most searches I found that my parameters were not as specific as they needed to be.   I decided to look up e-readers like Kindle since this technology seemes to be the new "in thing", it's important to know how and why things are changing.  I can see both sides of this fence.  It would be easy to say that a traditional book is better, but one can also argue the other side.  The simple truth is books are not going away so a libraray isn't going away.  Things are changing of course, but if things didn't it would be boring.

Wonderful World of Wiki

Having looked at the wiki introduction I have a better understanding as to what it is.  I love languages and had no idea that "wiki" actually meant something.  I just figured the creators of "Wikipedia" made up the "wiki" part of the word and combined it with encyclopedia.  You learn something new each day.  The advice I've given in the past probably won't be changing much.  I have said that if someone were to use a source like Wikipedia it could not be a primary source.  Professors have frowned on the site so it is best if using sites like that at all to just get ideas and get the research elsewhere.

I have never edited Wikipedia nor do I plan on it.  I've used the site to get basic bibliographic information for my own knowledge.  Often this was after listening to something on the History Channel.

I think wikis will and do have a use, but it seems that this is secondary to the other resources that libraries have at their disposal.

I don't know enough about web syntax to comment - yet.

Self-Assessment

Ok so we're supposed to look at the site http://www.lis.unt.edu/main/ITKS/ and take the assessments, hence the obvious title.  However, it begs the question who is better to assess our abilities?  Oneself or another party?  Now, I won't pretend to have an answer to that question.  Personally, it's too easy for me to be self-critical.  Going into the exercise I thought I had basic compuuter knowledge and wordprocessing maybe but not the rest of it even though I've been using a computer most of my life.

The scores were as follows
basic  98% 98% 98%
Word Processing 100% 100% 100%
Spreadsheet 81% 96% 92%
Database 92% 100% 96%
Presentation  75% 89% 84%
Internet 79% 88% 82%
Web development 55% 33% 45%

What I found after reading the assessment was that while I may not be able to define something well I was able to aply it.  Therefore, I wonder if my answerers were somewhat skewed.  I know excel is since while I understand the definitions and am capable of applying them with the functions, for example I would need to go back and read the directions.

Goals for this class include improving all of my skills.  Particularly I would like to focus on  web development since I've never done that before.  Further goals include focusing on powerpoint and maintaining my knowledge of the other programs.  The primary reason my spreadsheet and database scores were so high is the computer class I took last semester.

Greetings and Salutations

Hello my name is Susie and I am a student in Muncie Indiana.  I grew up in Wisconsin with my parents and younger brother.  Mike's a lawyer in California now and getting married in July.  I'm an avid bookworm and a writer  (although not professionally).  I've been writing stories and poems since I was a child.  The library science degree will be my second college degree.  I graduated highschool in 1999 and then went to Carthage College in Kenosha, WI where I graduated in 2003.  I got a Master's in 2006.  I moved to Indiana a little over a year later and have been happy here.

My love of books is why I am getting into library work.  I want to share my passion with others.  I want to learn as much as I want to teach.  I worked for two summers at a library in Ohio in Acquisitions.  I'd like to do that again, or cataloging, or anything. 

Some of my interests are listed in the wordle
http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2987619/Some_of_Susie%27s_Interests I lead a simple life spending time with friends after school or doing homework.

I look forward to learning more in this class.  Good luck to everyone.