# 15 (Week 6) Roll your own search tool with Rollyo

Do you have a group of websites that are your favourites? Or a set of similar online resources that you frequently use to answer homework or reference questions? Well Rollyo may be the tool for you. Rollyo allows you to create your own search tool for just the websites you know and trust.

Take a look at some of these search rolls that have already been created:

Public Domain e-Books Search
Rare Book Library Search
Free Photos
Quick Quotes

Explore other rolls here.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Explore Rollyo and create an account for yourself.

2. Create a search roll for any subject you like.

3. Can you see a potential use for tools like this? Create a post in your blog with your thoughts and experience of making a search roll and put a link to the search roll you created.

4. Use your gmail account to email northshorelibraries@gmail.com with a link to your blogpost. Please put Exercise #15 in the subject heading.

OPTIONAL: Add your searchroll to your blog

• Go to Rollyo at http://www.rollyo.com/
  
• Click on DASHBOARD
  
• Scroll down the page and click on SEARCHBOX
  
• Put the name and URL of your blog in the place provided
  
• Click on the search rolls you want and click on the > arrow to transfer them into the into selected SEARCHBOX ROLLS box
  
• Go to STYLE and select the type of Rollyo icon you want (it will preview your selection)
  
• Go to the COPY AND PASTE CODE BOX. Highlight all the code that is in the box and copy it to your clipboard (highlight the code, go to edit on the toolbar and select copy OR hold down the Crtl key and click the C key at the same time)
  
• Sign into your blog and go to the dashboard
  
• Go to LAYOUT
  
• Select ADD AND ARRANGE PAGE ELEMENTS
  
• Select ADD A GADGET in the place you want your blogroll icon to show. (Side or bottom of your blog)


• Scroll down this page and select HTML/JAVA SCRIPT and click Add to Blog. This will lead you to a page that has a space to put (a) A title (b) Content
  
• Key in a title (Such as rollyo)
  
• Cut and paste the html contents you have copied into the CONTENTS. Do this by going to Edit on the toolbar and selecting paste OR hold the Ctrl Key on the keyboard down and click on the V key at the same time
  
• Click on SAVE CHANGES
  
• Preview your blog and the rollyo search should be on the template down the side of the page.

# 14 (Week 6) Take a look at Library Thing and catalogue some of your favourite books

Are you a book lover or cataloguer at heart? Or do you enjoy finding lost and forgotten gems on the shelf to read?

Then LibraryThing may be just the tool for you. Developed for booklovers, this online tool not only allows you to easily create an online catalogue of your own, it also connects you to other people who have similar libraries and reading tastes.

Add a book to your catalogue by just entering the title -- it’s so easy that you don’t even need MARC record training to do it – to connect with other users through your similar reading tastes.

Not just for personal collections, libraries have started using LibraryThing as well. Small libraries are using LibraryThing to catalogue their collections. According to their website, LibraryThing is “exploring relationships with libraries, to offer non-commercially motivated recommendations and other social data.”

As a result, they’ve created LibraryThing for Libraries. Libraries can add the LibraryThing widget to their web pages or blogs to recommend books and list new titles, or install a LibraryThing Search box (instructions are here). Being a non-commercial site makes LibraryThing a good option for libraries.

There are lots of ways to use LibraryThing. You can even view your books on a virtual shelf.
So why not join the ranks and create your own library online. With over 65,000 registered (BTW: LibraryThing also has group forum for librarian users and over 4.7 million cataloged books, so you're bound to discover something new).

Discovery Exercise #14:

1. Take a Library Thing tour (click on the Next >> button)

2. Create an account and add at least 5 books to your library - your own LibraryThing catalogue.

3. Add a post to your blog about your findings and add a link in your blogpost to your LibraryThing catalogue.

4. Use your gmail account to email northshorelibraries@gmail.com with a link to your blogpost. Please put Exercise #14 in the subject heading.

# 13 (week 6) Play around with Image Generators

Generators? No, I’m not talking about those gas powered back-up things. The generators I’m talking about allow you to easily manipulate images and graphics to create fun images like this:

For this discovery exercise, we just want you to have fun. Find a few fun image or text generators to play around with and write a post in your blog about one of your favorites and display the result.

Adding a mocked up image you have created to your blog is as simple as copying and pasting the code that the page provides OR you may just need to right click on the image and then save it to your hard drive before using Blogger’s image button to add it to your post.

Have a look at these sites to start with:

The Generator Blog

Letter James

FD Toys

Imagechef

You could also search for online generators, text generators or image generators and see what you come up with!

Discovery Exercise #13:

1. Play around with some image generators and find one that you like.

2. Create a blogpost about your experience using the image generator and add the image you mocked up to the blog or add a link to the image generator you played with (copy and paste the URL). Note: some of the image generators don't keep the image you created. If you want to add it to your blog save the image on your computer and then upload it.

3. Use your gmail account to email northshorelibraries@gmail.com with a link to your blogpost. Please put Exercise 13# in the subject heading.

# 12 (Week 5) Add an entry to the Learning 2.0 SandBox wiki

"Sandbox" is the term that wikis often use to describe the area of the website that should be used for pure play. For this discovery and exploration exercise, we have set up a whole NSL Learning 2.0 Wetpaint* that’s for nothing but play!

Discovery Exercise (#12):

1. Look at the following resources:

• Wetpaint - Find out how this collaborative tool can be used.
• Wetpaint - editing a page - A short " how to" video.

2. Explore the NSL Learning Wetpaint wiki. The theme of this wiki is simply “Favourites”: Favourite books, favourite holiday spots, favourite restaurants, favorite anything …all you need to do is play and add your thoughts.

3. Add an entry to the Favourite Blogs page, that's how we'll know that you've been there. (Tip: After you have clicked on 'edit', your cursor will appear in the left top corner. Place your cursor at the end of the page and press Enter to create a new line. Key in your blog name and add a link to it. Save your entry.) While you are there add some more entries to the other favourite lists if you want to experiment a bit more with the wiki.

4. Create a post in your blog about the experience.

5. Use your gmail account to email northshorelibraries@gmail.com with a link to your blog post. Please put Exercise #12 in the Subject Heading.

* NOTE: The NSL Learning Wiki was created using the free version of Wetpaint, a tool that lets you create webpages that anyone can edit.

# 11 (Week 5) Learn about wikis and discover some innovative ways that libraries are using them

A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content.

Wikipedia, the online open-community encyclopedia, is the largest and perhaps the most well known of these knowledge sharing tools. With the benefits that wikis provide, the use and popularity of these tools is exploding. Some of the benefits that make wikis so attractive are:

• Anyone (registered or unregistered, if unrestricted) can add, edit or delete content.
  
• Tracking tools within wikis allow you to easily keep up on what been changed and by whom.
  
• Earlier versions of a page can be viewed and reinstated when needed.
  
• And users do not need to know HTML in order to apply styles to text or add and edit content. In most cases simple syntax structure is used.

As the use of wikis has grown over the last few years, libraries have begun to use them to collaborate and share knowledge. Among their applications are pathfinder or subject guide wikis, book review wikis, conference wikis and even library best practices wikis.

Discovery Exercise (#11):

1. Look at these resources to learn more about wikis:

• What is a Wiki? – Library Success wiki presentation


• Using Wikis to Create Online Communities – a good overview of what a wiki is and how it can be used in libraries.

2. Have a look at a Youtube video demonstrating wikis, by Commoncraft videos.

3. Take a look at some library wikis - here’s a few examples to get you started:

• SJCPL Subject Guides – a pathfinder wiki developed by the St. Joseph County Public Library system
• Book Lovers Wiki - developed by the Princeton Public Library
• Library Success: A best practices wiki
• Other library wiki examples

4. Create a blog post about your findings - What did you find interesting? What types of applications within libraries might work well with a wiki?

5. Use your gmail account to email northshorelibraries@gmail.com with a link to your blog. Please put Exercise #11 in the Subject Heading.

#10 (Week 4): Read a few perspectives on Web 2.0, Library 2.0,

Library 2.0 is a term used to describe a new set of concepts for developing and delivering library services. The name, as you may guess, is an extension of Web 2.0 and shares many of its same philosophies and concepts - including harnessing the user in both design and implementation of services, embracing constant change as a development cycle over the traditional notion of upgrades, and reworking library services to meet the users in their space, as opposed to ours (libraries).

Many have argued that the notion of Library 2.0 is more than just a term used to describe concepts that merely revolve around the use of technology; it is also a term that can be used to describe both physical and mindset changes that are occurring within libraries to make our spaces and services more user-centric and inviting. Others within the profession have asserted that libraries have always been 2.0: collaborative, customer friendly and welcoming. But no matter which side of the debate proponents fall, both sides agree that libraries of tomorrow, even five or ten years from now, will look substantially different from libraries today.

Discovery Exercise (#10):

1. View this great video that illustrates the Web 2.0 phenomenon.

2. Read Web 2.0: Where will the next generation of the web take libraries? in the OCLC Next Space Newsletter.

3. Read two or three of the perspectives on Library 2.0 from the OCLC Next Space Newsletter:
Away from Icebergs
To a temporary place in time

4. Create a blog post about your thoughts on any one of these:
Library 2.0 - It's many things to many people:
- What does it mean to you?
- What have you learnt?
- How can you see it being used in our libraries?
You may like to talk about North Shore Libraries' vision for the future, and how you see Web 2.0 being incorporated into this.

5. Use your gmail account to email northshorelibraries@gmail.com with a link to your blogpost. Please put Exercise #10 in the subject heading.

Further Reading (optional):

• Into a new world of librarianship
• To more powerful ways to cooperate
• To better bibliographic services

# 9 (Week 4): Explore Technorati and learn how tags work with blog posts

So now that you’ve been blogging for a while, you might be wondering just how big the blogosphere is. Well, according to Technorati, the leading search tool and authority for blogs, the number of blogs doubles just about every 6 months.
On July 31, 2006, Technorati tracked its 50 millionth blog. Yes, these numbers are astounding, but as you’ve already seen for yourselves, blogging is so easy that these publishing tools are being taken advantage of by almost every industry, including libraries.

So how does a person get their blog listed as part of the blogosphere?
The answer is that your blog is probably already being captured by Technorati due to the fact that you're already using Blogger, the most popular blogging tool.

There are many ways of searching for blogs in Technorati. You can search for keywords in blog posts, search for entire blog posts that have been tagged with a certain keyword, or search for blogs that have been registered and tagged as whole blogs about a certain subject (like photography or libraries).

Discovery Exercise (#9):
1. Explore Technorati - click on the links in the Navigation Bar.

2. Use Technorati Advanced Search and search for “Learning 2.0” in Blog posts, in tags and in the Blog Directory. Are the results different?

3. Explore popular blog, searches and tags. Is anything interesting or surprising in your results?

4. Create a blog post about your discoveries on this site.

5. Use your gmail account to email northshorelibraries@gmail.com with a link to your blogpost. Please put Exercise #9 in the subject heading.