File Converters

I followed the instructions and converted the document. However I was not confident that I am doing this correctly. I will ask a colleague to go through this with me and intend to practise this exercise in the future as it will be very useful for helping patrons.

Evaluating Websites

Booktalk.org
People who are the audience of this website are book lovers and those who like to participate in online forum discussions. The subjects of the discussions can be politics, science, religion etc.
The purpose is to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas on politics, books, religion etc.
Authority is dependent on the administrator of the site who has the authority to decide what can be posted and who needs to register and who does not. The administrator maintains the standard of the site.
The site describes itself as "dedicated to quality books, good people and great conversations" and says"Anyone isn the world is welcome to join". It is necessary to register to enable access to some areas of the site.
Most recent posts are August 2010 and the books displayed are current so the site is being well maintained. As the site is a collection of contributions from the public, none of the information can be regarded as totally reliable and much of it is opinion only.

What should I read next?
This website is for booklovers looking for new titles, authors and recommended reads. The purpose is to match readers with titles and authors similar to those they have enjoyed. As much of the website is the opinion and ratings of other readers, this must be taken into account when using the information provided. The database is comprehensive, with 70,000 different titles and more than one million reader recommendations. The titles I have looked at are current. I requested books similar to "How to talk to a widower" by Jonathan Tropper and was presented with a list of titles which sounded as if they would be on the same subject.
This website is useful for library patrons searching for a new author or an author similar to one they have enjoyed. Useful also for the librarian helping this patron!

An Author's Perspective

Reading Rockets is a great site to find information about children's authors. The videos or podcasts are invaluable for allowing the viewer to get to know the author. This in turn gives the viewer a better understanding of how the author came to write the story.
I chose to view the podcast of Megan McDonald, author of the Judy Moody stories and more recently the Judy Moody and Stink stories. Megan spoke about how she was the youngest of five sisters and was bossed around by her sisters. Her character Judy Moody is a "big sister" figure and Megan felt that Judy needed someone to boss -hence Stink, her little brother. One of the incidents described in an early Judy Moody story actually happened in Megan's own childhood. I thoroughly recommend that Children's Librarians view this very happy interview with Megan McDonald.

Readers and Booklovers

Using the title of a book I enjoyed "How to talk to a widower" by Jonathan Tropper, I explored the websites listed. The Yahoo Booklovers Club had no records of the book.
"What should I read next" gave me a list of suggestions for the next book I should read. 'Kate Atkinson's "When will there be good news" and Linwood Barclay's "No time for goodbye" were on the list and I can tell by the titles that they will be on the same theme.
I would like to join and follow Litchat -the themes and suggestions looked interesting. Book Seer recommended "Love in Present Tense" by Catherine Ryan Hyde. In "Good Reads" the tab "Trivia" led to a quiz about the book and author -fun to try and answer the questions!

Google Specialist Search Engines

Among the wide range of videos on Blinkx, there were two which I found interesting. Wild Films India.co had produced a travel video "Chatt Puja in India", a very colourful account of a trip in India. WSMV4 News produced a video entitled "What is your dream vacation" in which people were interviewed about what they saw as their dream holidays.
Google and Blinkx used similar topic headings and methods of searching but the front page of Blinkx was much more exciting than that of Google, because it showed several thumbnails of the videos side by side rather than listing them one underneath the other with the remainder of the page blank.

The Time magazine website brought up by the Google search was mind boggling with so many topics to search. The search box was useful and I did a search for tennis which brought up the latest results of tennis matches around the world. The side panel offered extra related topics like "game" and "tournaments" and "women" . Covers of each edition were displayed with hypertext allowing the viewer to see the contents in full text. The cover with Venus Williams, tennis player, appeared first. Wonderful!! Useful for school assignments, for patrons wanting information about past events.
Specialist Search Engines
I compared the images section of Bing, Yahoo, Exalead. The differences between them are-
Bing has related topics which can be searched. Includes sketches, cartoons.
Yahoo has the filter which selects images with permission from the creator to be reused
The images in Exalead are not as sharp as any of the other sites. the choice of landscape or portrait is given.
The Yahoo filter selecting reusable images is particularly useful for people wanting to use graphics to illustrate works for use in the public arena. All other images can be used for illustrations for private use only.

Module 4 Topic 1

My favourite is Google, with such a variety of functions and possibilities. I used the subject "Conservation" . The main Google search gave a wide range of sites eg Wikipedia, Home page of Department of Conservation(NZ). The discussion part of Google gave such aspects of conservation as "Proof that the law of conservation is wrong..." and "Energy conservation is the foundation of energy independence"
The "Books" heading gave titles such as "Fight for Conservation" by Gifford Pinchet 2009
and the images gave photos of pipelines and cartoons. Clicking the News heading produced "Paua poachers caught in night raid" and article from Stuff.co.nz
The wonderwheel offered the heading "Conservation jobs"
The other search engines like Yahoo and Bing gave similar opportunities for searching eg all included Related searches in one form or another but none offered the wide range of possibilities offered by Google.
I was not impressed by the rather severe appearance of the Metacrawler results page.

Module 3 Topic 1

I created a feed from "Drawn: the Illustration and Cartooning Blog" to be sent to Bloglines. Last time I checked, it had 3 feeds, one of which was "Tourists in Paris' by Rick Tulka. I have emailed this cartoon to the northshore gmail account. I have also generated an RSS feed from the Herald to be sent to my email account.