Picasa Project.

For the grand total of 2 people that view my blog posts, does anyone here remember the movie Fargo? You know, the movie that takes place in the middle of nowhere, and it's really snowy all the time? Well, this winter when I was out in Allendale, Michigan, I couldn't help but think of that movie when I saw the beautiful countryside that was around me, so I decided to take pictures of it. I was going to take pictures of the some of the flooding that the Grand River has done to me here, but when I saw this album, I couldn't resist but upload a slideshow of these pictures instead. What I found to be pretty coincidental is that I drive an economy car just like the character off of Fargo did, and I'm driving in a similar area. Go find the opening credits soundtrack to these pictures and it will fit pretty well. Anyway, I'm getting off topic, I just wanted to share these.

Web 2.0 Project

So for my Web 2.0 Project, I decided to do the Twitter Project. Here is a link to my Twitter page, my username is just Spencer Litten. https://twitter.com/SpencerLitten

Search Skills Blog

     For this post, I was to find a peer reviewed, full text article about library website design. The title of the article that I found is "Library Website Design and Database Access" by Barbara T. Mates. The article was published in the academic journal Library Technology Reports as a part of the May/June 2004 issue, volume 40, Issue 3. I found my article in the EBSCO Host Academic Search Premiere database through the Ivy Tech Virtual Library. I found this article by simply typing in library website design, in all lower case, in the search bar of Academic Search Premiere.

     "Library Website Design and Database Access" alludes to our previous session of assistive technology by stating that library website design should be detailed enough for patrons to find information successfully, but at the time same should be accessible for those with physical disabilities. According to this article, the library website is no longer a novelty, and is now a necessity in this technology driven world. This article touches on many of the concepts that were mentioned in Chapter 12 of our textbook such as how a library website should be remote accessible for users. I do happen to have some personal experience with website design. About six or seven years ago now when I was in middle school, I became incredibly curious with how websites were designed.

     After some quick research, I stumbled across HTML, and then began to teach myself how to use it. I would make fake websites through notepad when I would get bored, and did make a website of sorts back in the day through a free domain provider, but I'm not sure if it even exists anymore. I had and still have a lot of fun with HTML, and thanks to it, I've considered the position of web librarian.

Virtual Reference Project

At the Grand Rapids Public Library, I don't believe that virtual reference is available just yet. I think with such a large population, virtual reference may come in handy. Virtual reference may be an effective part of library staff time depending on the questions asked. I didn't have any complaints about using Skype, it seemed rather novel to be able to talk to someone through my computer. Well, I actually just used a text chat. However, Skype may be an inconvenience to patrons who do not have the technology for a video call.

Social Bookmarking Project

     Back in session three of this class, I was presented with the task of picking a social bookmarking website to explore over the course of four weeks. I wasn't entirely familiar with social bookmarking when I began this project, and now after dealing with RSS feeds, I'm a little more aware of social bookmarking. The website that I chose was Diigo. Why Diigo? I had never once heard of this website before, and I thought it would be interesting to me because it's something new that I have never tried. With Diigo, users have the ability to bookmark whatever they find on the web, whether it is an article, song, video, or anything else.
   
     It literally feels like a bookmark that you would use when reading, which is what I enjoy the most about this tool. Before Diigo, I would just use the favorite tool on my web browser to bookmark my websites, but that would make things rather cluttered, because my favorites menu would only hold so many links. Diigo can hold an infinite amount of links from what I can see, though I was only able to favorite a handful of links within the time frame of this project. Another one of my favorite features of this tool is that I am able to create a checklist in my 'library' of saved links. As you can see from my profile library I made a checklist reminding myself that this project and the tech tools project are due next week. There really wasn't a whole lot that I didn't  like about this website.

     I guess the only thing that I can think of off the top of my head is that this website doesn't appear to be used by a lot of people, that's what I don't like. In a library job, I could bookmark articles to help answer patron questions, or jot down on the notes tool of this website the various tasks that I need to complete before the day's end. I was able to locate the library that I will soon be completing an internship at, the Grand Rapids Public Library, but unfortunately their Diigo page is currently down.

The Abandoned Mall of My Childhood: 16 Bits of Memories

Photo by CityCaucus: http://www.flickr.com/photos/citycaucus/3806266351/
Photo License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
Sound by OurMedia: http://archive.org/details/Legend_of_Zelda_a_Link_to_the_Past__Kakariko_Village
Sound License: http://archive.org/about/terms.php
 
     It's always a challenge to find an opening statement for a post that contains so much nostalgia for me. Embedding the picture and sound using HTML wasn't a challenge in the slightest for me, it just took a couple of re-edits, because I had my HTML confused, and after finding the proper code, it was a mere 'plug and chug' method to get everything to work properly. Originally, I wanted to use the song "Corridors of Time" off of the video game Chrono Trigger, but I was unable to due to copyright restrictions. I highly recommend looking up that song and listening to it while viewing this picture."Corridors of Time" definitely would have worked well, but the theme that I found does this picture just as much justice.

     Over the years, I have come to appreciate urban decay. I really see it as a form of art. It's especially fun to find buildings with old posters and merchandise in it from the era it was abandoned, then it appears to be eternally frozen in that time period while the rest of the world moves on. After I found a picture of this dying mall, a wave of nostalgia and sadness hit me. It immediately took me back to 1996 when I was a kid in Columbus, Indiana.

     Malls were a large part of my childhood growing up. Every time it rained, snowed, or otherwise wasn't a nice day, odds are my mother would end up throwing my brother and I in our '94 Caravan and take us to the mall in order to keep us from destroying the house out of boredom. Back when I was a kid, the Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 dominated the gaming industry along with the Sony Playstation. I remember all of this like it happened yesterday. So whenever I would visit a mall, it was highly likely that I would be playing a demo video game on one of the video game consoles listed above.

     The song that I used was off of  The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. It was a video game for the Super Nintendo, released in the early 90's. When I hear this theme, the sound of falling rain on the glass slanted roofs of a mall enters my mind. I'm taken back to The Commons Mall in Columbus, Indiana, before it was shut down. I'm also taken back to the adventure filled, cold autumn air Saturdays at Fair Oaks Mall, back when it was the place to be on the weekend.

     I'll never forget the smell of incense, plastic, and cheap pizza dough as I would enter the mall, scouring the place for an electronics store in order to droll over what the newest form of technology was at the time. There are still malls around of course. The area that I am living in now happens to have one. Unfortunately, the 'magic' of the mall appears to be wearing off for me. As a kid, I found malls to be a wondrous place full of cultural phenomenons just waiting to be discovered. Now, they just feel like big warehouses full of fake, plastic storefronts, containing employees with an equally fake enthusiasm for their company and products, all trying to swindle people out of their money.

     Perhaps it's because I worked in one for a number of months that I no longer care for them as much as I used to. Perhaps it's because malls just aren't what they used to be. They used to be a social haven, back when people would go out and mingle in the evening. Anyone here remember that word? Back before facebook ruled our lives, back when we would make friends not by sending a virtual request by the click of a button, but by physically asking with our mouths, "Wanna be friends?"

     Anyway, I digress, I'm going way too off topic. I think what happened is I grew up, and things don't seem as trivial anymore. As malls all over America (or I guess in my case, the Midwest), slowly diminish and are replaced with other forms of entertainment, I feel as though a part of me has diminished a little inside too. Malls are a link to my past, and I will always be able to cherish the fun times I had as a kid in them.

RSS Feed

     Honestly, I don't know why I never bothered with RSS Feeds. I'm a little surprised that I didn't even bother thinking about them until this assignment. Usually I'll just check whatever website I want to visit for it's latest updates. I guess I like to still type in urls to keep my fingers in shape for typing on my keyboard. Anyway, I decided to subscribe to Angela Mayer's and Sondria Steadman's blog. As for the two news websites to subscribe to, I decided to go with USA Today and Drudge Report. Coincidentally enough Drudge Report is a popular news site I've heard about but still haven't found the time to read. Thanks to this RSS Feed, I'm now able to.
     As I said before, I don't know why I never bothered with subscribing to RSS Feeds, they're quite nifty from what I can see. Rather than having to tirelessly check the same websites I visit everyday, I can have any updates come to me the instant the updates happen. I think I'm going to like using RSS Feeds a lot. I'm definitely going to subscribe to other RSS Feeds on my other e-mail accounts, and I'll probably continue using them for as long as they are in existence.