LCPL Branches Maps

Loudoun County Public Library System

Branches maps from Google map

Directions from Cascades Library to:

• Ashburn Library
• Lovettsville Library
• Middleburg Library
• Purcellville Library
• Sterling Library
• Thomas Balch Library

Final words on Learning 2.0

I am glad that I am reaching the end of the program, not just for the MP3 player. Even though I learned and experienced most of the 23 things before this program, I still learned a lot from the program and have a better big picture of the landscape of the Web 2.0 than before. A couple things learned on the way of this program did make me thinking about how to implement similar applications for our library. Yelp is one of them. How about let our patrons write reviews on our programs or services? Or let them to tell us what kinds of program or services they are looking for and let others to vote on it? We definitely can use those tools to promote our services, like posting library news on YouTube, to extend our service, like Podcasting our story times or book clubs, or to add new service, like personalizing our library website to fit patrons' different needs. I know this is the end of the program, but not the end of the Learning 2.0. We will have a long way to go to keep us from falling behind the digital world.

By the way, I think our AskAway blog is a great application of the Library 2.0 and thank you for doing that for all of us in the system.

About NetLibrary

To be honest, I have never thought NetLibary as an application of the Library 2.0. Maybe because I happened to know it a long times ago and at that time I had never heard about Web 2.0 or Library 2.0. But thinking it over, it dose fit the main feature of the Library 2.0, user-centered online application. It not only provides an online collection of ebooks and eAudioBooks, but also provides functionalities for users of taking notes and marking down favorites. I tried to download eAudioBooks before and it worked fine for me. As a librarian, I recommend this service to our patrons almost everyday. Some patrons like it and make a good use of it. Some patrons just hate the format, especially for those without a high-speed Internet connection. I truly believe that the NetLibrary will play an important role in the future of our library.

Podcasts v.s. RSS

Podcasts is just an application of RSS. It deliveries video files broadcasting to its subscribers. It is really easy to find things of your interests from the Podcasts directory, like Podcast.net. One Podcasts I found from the Podcast.net is the Sunnyvale Public Library Podcasts. There are 10 videos published in last year and nothing has been uploaded in this year. I am just wondering about its current situation. So what we can learn from this case is that new tech won't save the world. Facing the storm of the Web 2.0, we have to find the real problem we are facing right now before we jump into any tech fantasy.

Sharing a Video of my puppy

Here is a video clip of my puppy Emma. Hope you will like it.

Thanks to YouTube, we, as a regular people, can became a movie maker to have a five minutes of fame on the web. But most of us might not have the time to make a lot of videos and upload them to YouTube and we will just enjoy in watching other person's great or not so great works. The website is aimed for fun and it is fun to explore it. For our library, it won't be a bad idea to use it as a marketing tool to promote our programs and services. But please keep it in a fun way, not too serious.

Yelp, the way Web 2.0 should be

I like the idea behind the Yelp to have real people to write real reviews about the real local things. What make Yelp different from other online directory is that Yelp transfers the power of online publishing to real people and make the information sharing a practice of real needs. I do wish it will continue its success and attract more participants for its growth.

Online Applications

I have been using Google Docs for over a year. It is easily enough to learn in a few minutes and powerful enough to fulfil regular office jobs. The main attraction of the Google Docs is its online availability, which free you off the physical limitation of the information storage. You don't have to carry your laptop, or even a jump drive around to have your electric files with you. All you need is a computer hooked up with the Internet. Starting the Internet, opening your Google account, you are ready to go to work on your file. You will find most of functions like in the MS Word while paying nothing for using the Google Docs. Of course, there will be some security issues with storing files in Google's server. But it won't stop me to use it for storing my non-sensitive information. I will strongly suggest you to give it a try.

Having fun with PBWiki

It is always fun to play with any wiki websites like this Learning 2.0 Wiki Sand box. I added my blog to the favorite blog on this website and a comments with a picture of a pug on the page of Favorite Animals. I don't have much to say about this exercise and I think it is simply enough already.

Thinking on WIKI

About two years ago, I helped a non-profit international organization to set up their wiki website for their staff members to share their local information and expertise. At that time, the concept of Web 2.0 was just emerging from the horizon of the Internet and most of people do want to pay much attention to it. So that project failed to keep going without participants' enthusiasm. Right now, as one of the featured applications of the web 2.0, Wiki has a lot of success stories. Personally, I do think our public library could use Wiki website for collaborating intelligence within our staff members or attract our patron's participation in our library planning or development. The real problem behind this is how to find out what is the real need of our patrons, which will be the basic incentive to keep pushing the wiki website to grow and develop.

why Library 2.0?

Traditional library, Library 1.0, is a place for people to access to the knowledge world. It will be much easier for a foreigner to understand the importance of the traditional library, or Library 1.0 than an American citizen. Why? Because a regular citizen might have a lot of troubles to access public libraries in other countries, especially in developing countries and appreciate the value of the library bringing to their community. Here comes the Internet, the almost free information resources to everyone. The library lost its privilege of accessing to information resources. So how can we keep our social role or even gain a more important role in our community? The answer is the Library 2.0. It doesn't matter how many articles, how many technology reviews you read about library 2.0, what really matters is the idea of user-centered service. Computer guys have better understanding of tech stuff than us, professionals and expert have better understanding of knowledge in their field than us, and patrons have better understanding of their needs than us. Only if we can connect them together really nicely, we can win the war.

Technorati, c+

First of all, if a website is not reliable, it is not a good website. I am hoping that this is not one of them. But it did failed to show up for this whole afternoon. So I can't give it a pass to this website right now and will check it later to see if I can access it tonight.

All right, I can get on this website now. So what makes this so popular? Humans' curiosity. You can't resist the temptation to find out what others are looking for and reading about. The Technorati meets this particular need. I explored around this website and discovered some features it offered. Also I set up an account and claimed this blog on Technorati. But I don't have much interests in using this in the future. Looking through Top Searches, I found none of them having anything to do with my professional or personal interests. Looking through Top Tags, I can hardly agree with most of them to be a Tag. I understand I should not use the standard of Subject to qualify words to be a Tag, but at least I think they should make more sense than just an adjective word, such as "hot". I totally agree with the basic idea of the Web 2.0, user-centric, but it won't make things better if it totally lost of control. I wish it best, but right now I give it a C+.

Sharing and Learning

For me, it was always a pleasure to listen to other classmates to read aloud their essays in our classroom. Reading mine, for sure, will boost a teenager’s self-esteem for ten minutes. What actually happened here is the learning and sharing progress, which is what I preferred to than just listening/learning from our teachers. Del.icio.us makes it worked in the virtual world. You can tag things of your interests and find someone with same interests and learn from them. Isn’t it amazing? Yes, it is. But be careful with your time management skill. It is not like the old time in a library with a card catalog system, in which you can’t find a lot of resources you want to check on. Right now, you have the problem to allocate the time you need to check on what looks like interesting to you. Therefore, I do like to tag things on the web, but not spend too much time to check other’s interests. I don’t know if I need to change my habit to make the best use of this tool and am still looking for the future of this exciting service.

BookNews: a search engine for book lovers

In a information-overwhelming world, it is not difficult to find things, but to find the very thing you really want. So it is a wise idea to create a personalized searching engine for yourself or someone alike to limit your searching targets to a handful well-known resources. Here you are, the BookNews from Amazon.com, bn.com, Washingtonpost BookWorld, and NPR bookReviews. Of course, we could add more resources to this search engine to have more coverage. What is really matters here is the idea to have something personalized to fit our needs. Here is a link to this search engine: http://rollyo.com/masonyang/booknews/. Any suggestions are welcomed to make this more useful in the future.

About the LibraryThing

A couple years ago, I tried to build up a library catalog for readings/collection using MS Access. After a while, I gave it up because I cann't access it remotely, in another words, from Internet. Here you are, the LibraryThing, an online personal library catalog. There is no doubt that I like this idea. After playing around with all kinds of tools in this online catalog, I found it quite useful. There is no need to mention those standard fields for the book catalog, but I am really glad to see the fields of date, including Aquired, Started, and Ended, which are helpful to me to track down what I have read. Also the Comments field is good for writing down some notes about the book. Last thing I want to mention is the tag which help on grounp things/books together in a non-traditional way.

By the way, a link to my catalog at the LibraryThing is posted at the top this blog.

Flash Clock

Hi, this is cool. Actually, I tried to get some background image from the background generator. But I found the Flash clock application from the main menu. After selecting the clock style from the sample pool, you just need to copy the code and paste it to your webpage, or your blog, like what I just did on this blog. So, right now I have a clock on the top of this blog and I don't have to check the time on my cell phone now.

Here is a list of websites I used in this exercise:

1. http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/
2. http://toolshell.com/clocks/

Something simple

It was always a pleasure to enjoy the Saturday morning coffee with some newspapers along the chair. Life can't be more simple and more luxury than the five minutes lost or wondering of the mind from the traffic light and the "greetings" from one of your morning commute "friends".

So, may we have something simple and enjoyable? Yes, you can. The Topix clearly is trying to bring the new tech to you as simple as possible. Typing a zip code is all it takes to bring your the local news or talks to your screen. Also you can become a member of the talks editors in the forum. Try it and have fun!

What about RSS?

Hi, is this really cool, or not? I think it is cool. You select what you like to read in the future and you read what you have selected before. Sounds really fine to me. How about you? If you are still think it is just another fancy tech word, please let me share with you about how I use RSS in a "real world"?

I am a yahoo.com user and set up my.yahoo.com years ago. Since RSS started to make buzz on the Internet, I checked it out. Then I designed my yahoo home page with a lot of RSS feeds from several major newspaper. So everyday I opened my yahoo home page, I will find preselected news on my yahoo home page. Of course, I put my email preview on the home page too, so I can check it the first thing in the morning.

When I find somethings interesting, I will add them to my yahoo news feeder if they are RSS ready. Therefore, next time I will get all the updates for that new added item and don't have to do my search again.

In one really simply sentence, RSS provides a way for me to manage my online information resources. I like it.

For the purpose to accomplish our Learning 2.0 exercise, I set up a bloglines account and published my bloglines account. Here is the link to my bloglines page: http://www.bloglines.com/public/masonyang.

Enjoy it, I hope!!!

iPhone?

Do you really want an iPhone? No, I don't.

I have a cell phone to make phone calls and take pictures once a while. That is it, a simple, boring, and regular cell phone user. I know there will be a market for the fancy and sexy iPhone, but I am not looking forward to this so called "new generation" cell phone. Please, if you have the money to spend on new technologies, find something really useful and creative, not a new package of old things.

Let's talk about "retrievr", an application of Flickr

Hi, it is really funny. Check this out: Retrievr at: http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/.

I thought it was a great and exciting idea to have such a system to retrieve images from a sketch. But, actually, it just a great idea, not a real image retrieve system, at least not up to my expectation. When I tried to draw a sketch of flowers, it did return 3 pictures of flowers out of 20 results. Not too bad though.

Sony eBook reader

Sony eBook reader
Originally uploaded by TeddyTheBear.

Is this the future of the book reading? I really doubt about it.

I won't deny I am a old fashion guy, but I do have an open mind to all kinds of new stuff. While this is not my type. I can read, actually browse, a real book and get what I want in twenty mintues. But I can't do it with this fancy thing. I just don't know how I can flip pages to scan lines while I am trying to figure out what I am really looking for. Anyway, I might need to get use to it in the future. But right now, it is not my thing.