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.

New Technology in Libraries

     Well, it's been already been two years since I've had the chance to work in a library, I can't believe how time flies. At the library that I previously worked at back in high school, I'll be perfectly honest here, the staff there didn't exactly focus on updating technology as much as they should have. I'm not sure if it was just the library that I worked at, but it took them a number of years to clean up their website, it was a mess of HTML when I first started working there, and I'm not even sure if there are self checkouts there today. However, where I'm currently living in the Grand Rapids area, there recently was a new form of technology implemented to the Grand Rapids Public Library in the Fall of 2012. During this time, self checkouts were finally installed in the circulation part of the library where people checkout their books, which happens to be at the main entrance.
     The purpose of the self-checkouts were to reduce lines. Normally on a weekend the entrance would be incredibly crowded. I as well as other library patrons, were surprised at first to see the information desk having been moved to a different location of the library and in it's place a series of computers and scanners, however this did not affect library operations too much. There was a librarian there to specifically aid patrons with the self-checkouts, and to answer any of their questions about why the information desk had been moved to a different location.
     Usually a lot of college students, including myself, will come to this library, sometimes in between classes. Before they would be in a time crunch, and waiting in a line didn't help anything. Now they can find and check out a book in a matter of minutes and still have time to make it to their next class.

Search Skills Blog

     For this blog, I had to look up an article pertaining to a current trend in the Library Technology/Science field. After a little while of searching, I came across the article titled "RFID Standards" by Lori Bowen Ayre. This article was published in July of 2012. This article discusses the new trend of RFID tags on library books. I found this article using the EBSCOhost Academic Premiere online database provided by Ivy Tech. RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification. Many libraries in America are trying to make the switch to RFID tags for their books.
     Rather than having to put a magnetic strip in the books and use a large alarm system such as gates, libraries will be able to track the exact location of where the library book is at and when it was checked out. The main issues with RFID tags is that for a little while, there weren't  any standards for using them, and a lot of libraries trying to integrate them into their system before the standards were created, causing some disarray in the circulation department. Now that standards have been set, many libraries have decided to give RFID tags a shot. Currently, neither the library that I used to work at nor the Ivy Tech library has decided to use these to the best of my knowledge. Personally, I think this will be a very effective and innovative way to track library books.
     Right now this trend is off to a rough start, but that isn't uncommon for new forms of library technology. I remember as a kid when my library first got electronic gates, and that didn't take off right away either. I think now that standards have been put in place, this trend will become commonplace in all libraries in due time.

Core Competencies

     Alright, second blog for the day. After hastily trying to put together a presentable blog (that I think is coming together alright), I was presented with the task of having to take an assessment of some kind. It turns out this mysterious test was an assessment that was created by the University of North Texas. Through this, I had a chance to have my computer knowledge assessed. The assessment was broken into seven parts: Basics, Word Processing, Spreadsheet, Database, Presentation, Internet, and Web Development. I went ahead and post my results here as you can see:

Basics

You demonstrate a 95% comprehension in the Basics Knowledge area.
You demonstrate a 100% comprehension in the Basic Skills area.
You demonstrate a 97% in the Basics Assessment Group.

I'm not very surprised by this in the slightest. I am, after all, a part of the first generation that received the functional internet, and by functional I mean dial-up. However, that on top of numerous school computer classes have taught me plenty about Computer Basics.

Word Processing

You demonstrate a 100% comprehension in the Processing Knowledge area.
You demonstrate a 100% comprehension in the Processing Skills area.
You demonstrate a 100% comprehension in the Processing Assessment Group.

This once again comes as no surprise. I have been practicing using a word processor since the late 90's. A word processor is key to communication through a computer, especially in an online college.

SpreadSheet

You demonstrate a 63% in the Spreadsheet Knowledge area.
You demonstrate a 58% in the Spreadsheet Skills area.
You demonstrate a 59% in the Spreadsheet Assessment Group.

Now this one caught me off guard. It's been at least two years since I've used anything requiring a spreadsheet, so this is definitely something I want to come out of this class having improved.

Database

You demonstrate a  100 % comprehension in the Database Knowledge area.

You demonstrate a  78 % comprehension in the Database Skills area.

You demonstrate a  88 % comprehension in the Database Assessment Group.

I feel pretty glad that I remember databases. This will be one less hassle for me this semester.

Presentation

You demonstrate a  100 % comprehension in the Presentation Knowledge area.

You demonstrate a  100 % comprehension in the Presentation Skills area.

You demonstrate a  100 % comprehension in the Presentation Assessment Group.

Once again, growing up, Microsoft Powerpoint was the default program for group projects, so I've had a lot of experience with it. I'm happy to see that I knew everything there is to know about this though.

Internet

You demonstrate a  89 % comprehension in the Internet Knowledge area.

You demonstrate a  98 % comprehension in the Internet Skills area.

You demonstrate a  93 % comprehension in the Internet Assessment Group.

It's nice to see that I know quite a bit about the internet as well. I probably sound like a broken record at this point, but this is yet another tool that I've had years of experience with, starting in about 1999.

Web Development 

You demonstrate a  100 % comprehension in the Web Development Knowledge area.

You demonstrate a  100 % comprehension in the Web Development Skills area.

You demonstrate a  100 % comprehension in the Web Development Assessment Group.

I feel rather proud of myself for scoring a 100% on every area in web development. I remember teaching myself HTML when I was about  fourteen, I'm surprised at how much I was able to retain.

Introduction

     

Hello fellow classmates. This is my second introductions of sorts and an introduction to my blog. Right now it seems rather barren I'm sure. I plan on changing that by the end of the semester. As I said before, I was born in Columbus, Indiana, and now I'm living in a suburb of beautiful Grand Rapids. My current aspiration is to finish my Associate's in Library Technology, and then move onto getting my bachelor's degree in Music. I would love to experiment more with synthesizers during my piano career. I'm not currently employed, but in High School, I worked as a page for the Greensburg Public Library. My hobbies include playing video games, reading, and playing the piano as well as listening to music.