Thing #12 - NetLibrary and WorldCat

Thing#12 has two parts: NetLibrary and WorldCat

NetLibrary ebooks

There are free ebooks all over the Internet (examples include Project Gutenberg and the classics available from the University of Virginia. Websites like these are great for out of copyright classics. There are many ebook websites including Amazon.com and ebooks.com where you can download new ebooks from bestsellers to textbooks for a fee. NetLibrary offers access to both out of copyright and new ebooks that are free to library customers who sign up for an account with their library cards from subscribing libraries.

While NetLibrary offers audiobooks for downloading to libraries, the subscription that Ocean County Library gets through an arrangement with the NJ State Library only includes ebooks. The option to download the ebooks is not part of our subscription.

The new copyrighted titles available in NetLibrary depend on what each library choses so just as different libraries have different collections on their shelves, the NetLibrary collection from the State Library is different from a collection chosen by a library elsewhere. This collection tends to be heavy with business and computer titles.

Unlike the other electronic subscription databases, customers (and you) have to be inside a OCL location to sign up for an account. Once you have a free account you can use it anywhere but the first time you have to be inside one of our buildings using one of our computers (not a laptop using our wireless connection).

Discovery Resource:

NetLibrary Help and FAQs

Discovery Exercises:

1. Go to our list of subscription databases about Books and Reading. Click on NetLibrary and sign up for a NetLibrary account. Remember you have to be inside a library building when signing up.

2. Take a look around NetLibrary. Find a book either through browsing or a keyword search. Learn how to move around the chapters and pages. Don't know what to search for? Try a basic search term like BUSINESS or COMPUTERS.

3. Blog about NetLibrary. Was it easy to use? Could you show a customer how to use it?

Optional Advanced Exercises:

1. For a different ebook experience, explore the classic reference books on Bartleby.com including Respectfully Quoted, a great quotation book that was created by the Library of Congress. Even though this book was published in 1989, as a US government produced title it is free of copyright restrictions.

2. Visit Project Gutenberg and download a book to your computer. You can search for specific titles in a variety of ways or just browse the Top 100 Ebooks downloaded recently. If you're interested, you can subscribe to an RSS feed that will keep you informed as titles are added. Project Gutenberg has public domain audiobooks and digital sheetmusic, too. Hint: it is easy to find a downloaded file if you download it to the computer desktop but when you've completed this optional exercise, please delete the book from the computer. Too many unnecessary files on the desktop can slow a computer.

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WorldCat

WorldCat lets you search the collections of libraries both locally and thousands more around the world. WorldCat doesn't include every library but it is the largest collection of searchable titles in the world.

Items in WorldCat include

* books

* music CDs

* DVDs/videos

* article citations - sometimes with links to full text

* documents and photos of local or historic significance

* digital versions of rare items

WorldCat is a version of what our Interlibrary Loan department uses to find what libraries own items so the items can be requested for our customers.

Discovery Resources:

About WorldCat

WorldCat help and FAQs

WorldCat Advanced Search screen

Discovery Exercise:

1. Take a look around WorldCat and search a recent book title. Click on the title for more detailed information and in the Enter location box put in your home zipcode and click go. What's the closest library that owns the title?

2. Click on the different tabs on the screen for a individual title such as Details and Subjects to find what information is hiding under those tabs.

3. Go to the advanced search screen and play around with some searches, then blog about WorldCat. Do you think WorldCat will help you and your customers with the form below?

Optional Advanced Exercise:

1. Use the Ocean County Library catalog and search any New Jersey or Ocean County history topic. Pick a book with an old publication date (the older the better). Now search that title at http://www.worldcat.org/. See how many libraries are listed in WorldCat as owning that book. Can you find a title where OCL is one of 500 or less libraries that own it in the world? Or just search the Pauline Miller title, Ocean County: Four Centuries in the Making to see who owns a copy of our local history.

Technorati tags: oclwebthings, ebooks, netlibrary, worldcat

Thing #11 - A thing about Library Thing

Are you a booklover? Do you enjoy finding lost and forgotten gems to read? Would you like an easy way to keep track of what you've read or want to read? Or, would you like a way of finding books by what they're about in a way that a standard library catalog just can't? Then LibraryThing may be just the tool for you.

What is Librarything? Enter what you're reading or your whole library —LibraryThing is an easy to use book catalog created by people in classic Web 2.0 fashion. LibraryThing also connects you with people who read the same things.

Add a book to your catalog by just entering the title and doing a little clicking. The LibraryThing tour explains the details. Then you add your own subjects or tags to organize your titles. The tags can be whatever you want: "Want to read", "Bookclub", "Recommend to grandchildren", "Books for Class" as well as more familiar subject heading like "Science", "Mystery", "Nonfiction" or "Cookbooks." Connecting with other users through your similar reading tastes is easy. LibraryThing tells you how many other LibraryThing users have your books. There are lots of other ways to use LibraryThing, too.

Libraries have started using LibraryThing. Small libraries are using LibraryThing to catalog their collections. Libraries are using the LibraryThing widget on their web pages to recommend books and list new titles.

So why not join the fun and create your own library online? With over 389,000 registered users and over 25 million cataloged books in LibraryThing as of March 2008, you're bound to discover something new. The podcast below from The Public Library of Charlotte-Mecklenburg is a little outdated in its statistics but otherwise is worth listening to as a start for your thing about Library Thing.

Listen to this podcast [1:52]-->

Discovery Resources:

* About LibraryThing
* Library Thing tour
* LibraryThing blog (updates & news)
* How libraries are using LibraryThing

Discovery Exercise:

1. Take the Library Thing tour around LibraryThing and then create an account. It is one of the easiest and quickest accounts to sign up for yet. You don't even have to give them an email. (Giving them your email is recommended because if you ever do forget your password, then they can help).

2. Add a least 5 books to your library. You find a title, click add to your library, then type in your subjects (called tags in LibraryThing) and save. Separate different tags with commas.

3. Blog about your use of LibraryThing. Be sure to link to your LibraryThing catalog on your blog. How popular were your books? Did you find any discussions about your favorites?

Optional Advanced Exercises

1. Visit a library catalog that uses LibraryThing to give their customers lists of similiar books and tags for more connections. Here's a list from the LibraryThing website of libraries or go directly to these examples: a Harry Potter title, a nonfiction title on economics called Freakonomics

2. Go to the Search page on LibraryThing and do a Tag Mash search. You search two terms like sailing and mystery together (called a mashup) and LibraryThing finds books with both tags. Tags assigned by LibraryThing users aren't as formal as Library of Congress headings but they often include topics in books that the LC headings ignore. So you can find really interesting connections and ideas on what to read next or that book a customer sort of remembers had a detective who was an librarian! When you enter the terms in the Tags search box, separate the terms with commas: librarian, detective. Try out your own Tag Mash.

3. Explore the groups of LibraryThing users. They range from I see Dead People's Books (A group for those interested and involved in entering the library catalogs of famous readers, including books owned by Thomas Jefferson) to Nonfiction Readers and Crime, Thriller & Mystery fans. In the groups there are discussion threads and a list of the most commonly shared books of the group members.

For Thing #11, our thanks go not only to the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County but also to the Minnesota Libraries whose variation of the 23 things on a stick was very helpful.

Technorati tags: oclwebthings, librarything, tagging

Thing #10 - Technology Blogging

You've tried a lot of new things in the first weeks of the challenge. Now we're asking you to express yourself about technology on your own blog and comment on someone's else blog.

Discovery Resources:

Not sure of what to blog about? Looking for a technology related topic to get started? Here are some places to look around. Each has a different approach. If you have something in mind, go straight ahead and blog about it.

Interested in some serious ideas about what will impact libraries?

• Read 20 Things to Watch by Stephen Abram for his list of what will be the important technologies to affect libraries in the near future.

More interested in personal technologies (including fun stuff)?

• The New York Times Personal Tech page. David Pogue's weekly article and email newsletter are a great source of technology news that doesn't expect you to be an expert. His newsletter is a good reason to sign up for a free NY Times account.

Want to see a variety of blogs on all sorts of technology topics?

• Visit this list of some popular blogs on technology you could explore.

Discovery Exercise:

1. For Thing #10, simply blog about anything technology related. Yes, it can be anything that relates to technology! Just share a few thoughts. If you are unsure of what we expect of a successful blog entry, check out the second of our Frequently Asked Questions.
   
2. Add at least one comment to another participant's blog or to one of the committee members's blogs. That's what online communities are all about - connecting and communication.
   Where can you find links to the blogs? Scroll down the page at this Web Challenge blog. On the right, below the Timeline, the Labels and the Useful Links, you'll find links to the blogs belonging to the Web Challenge committee members. Keep going down and below the RSS Feed links and the Blog Archive links you'll find links to the Player Blogs.
   

Technorati tags: oclwebthings, technology, web2.0, library2.0