Lesson 6 Part 1 Challenge

I use social networking in my personal and professional life. I keep up with family and friends using Facebook and Instagram. I follow blogs and Twitter accounts of other librarians, educators, authors, book reviewers, etc.

Lesson 3 Part 2 Challenge

3 Public Libguides: Job Guide It's not uncommon to have a teen ask staff questions about what sort of information to include on a job application or where to look for jobs. Of course, we're more than happy to help with this sort of thing, but the Job Guide is a useful resource to recommend for further research or information when the library is closed. What Do I Read Now? Teens can be voracious readers, and often ask for recommendations based on genre or favorite authors. While staff can most often assist with readers' advisory questions using their knowledge of the collection, our readers' advisory tools can come in handy when dealing with an unfamiliar subgenre or when the teen would rather do the digging on their own. This libguide links to a variety of print and electronic resources for finding something new to read. Teen Volunteers One of the most common questions we get, from students, teachers, and parents, is about our volunteer program. We've got a spiel about the program down pat, but if the patron wants to pass the information along, this is a great reference. 2 Staff Libguides: I regularly find myself referring to the Circulation libguide to make sure I'm doing something right (like entering a name). I'm sure many of my coworkers do, too, but I figured I'd mention it anyway. By contrast, I very rarely look at the Self-directed Learning libguide, but I did for this exercise. There's a lot of useful information and links to be found there!

Lesson 3 Part 1 Challenge

A young woman came into an unexpected inheritance. Using information and S&P Capital IQ, she invested the bulk of that money wisely, coming out of that investment with a significantly improved financial situation. She used that money to put a down payment on a fixer-upper house, and consulted the Home Improvement Reference Center for information on how to make necessary repairs and improvements. When it came to decorating her fixed-up house, she consulted the Hobbies & Crafts Reference Center to create DIY home decor. Three cheers for library databases!

Lesson 2 Part 3 Challenge Outlook

Creating a signature was a fairly simple process. You can create links and add images from within the editor, which is nice. Is there a way to make signatures sync across computers? It's kind of a pain to create duplicates on every computer I use.

Lesson 2 Part 3 Challenge: Word

Creating an informational flyer about my location with Word: I used text boxes and some clip art. I like that the different fonts are used in the fonts list, but I have to admit a preference for Publisher when making flyers and posters.

Lesson 2 Part 2 Challenge 2

I do like having my most-used programs accessible on the Taskbar - sometimes my desktop gets a little cluttered.

Lesson 2 Part 2 Challenge 1

I love the snipping tool. I have become a snipping tool evangelist. What a pain it was to "Print Scrn" and crop and fiddle with the picture. Yay, snipping.

Lesson 1, Part 3 Challenge

For this challenge, we were instructed to follow the 11.5 Cosas blog through our blog platform. I found this to be a fairly simple task - especially with the detailed instructions provided at the 11.5 Cosas blog. I like to use a dedicated reader to follow blogs - I follow quite a few and like to keep them organized by category. (I like the simplicity of Digg Reader, but there are so many options out there!)

Lesson 5 Challenge

This exercise was an interesting one because it was such a different way of looking at search queries than what I'm used to. Generally, when presented with a search problem, I try to work with the patron to nail down specific terms that will best fit their needs, rephrasing rather than parsing the question as given. I could definitely see how this could be a useful exercise for illustrating how search engines work.