RFID

I really enjoyed reading up on RFID for my final paper. I saw a presentation on this a few years ago and become very intrigued. Aside from cost, I really don't see why any library would hesitate to implement this. It's all the benefits of barcoding times twenty! I think about the possibilities every time I am up in the book stacks unable to find the book I am need of because it is not where it is supposed to be. Frequently, I am able to look around the few shelves near it and the title will catch my eye. But sometimes I'm just out of luck; it is nowhere to be found. I wish I could wave a magic wand and it would appear. Oh wait, I could, if we had RFID!

HTML

I was moderately looking forward to the HTML assignment, prior to its unfortunate demise. I took a brief class in HTML last year, but have not really gotten to implement those skills yet, aside from a MySpace page. I'm sure I have lost much of my coding skill by now. If you don't use it, you lose it, right?

Powerpoint

Powerpoint is so much fun. Especially compared to Excel. No headaches, just a user-friendly creative outlet. I enjoy experimenting with the animated entrances. It's really something simple that adds so much to an otherwise boring presentation. I've been to far too many library staff presentations that needed some spicing up! A little animation can help keep your audience awake even if you are a sub-par presenter. All in all this was a useful assignment, as I will be doing a presentation this summer on the topic I used, though it will be much expanded.

Excel

Excel is a bit of a headache. Always has been. I'm sorry to say that I have taken classes in Excel and still struggle with the more complicated maneuvers. I had done graphs in Excel 2003, but 2007 seems more unclear, to me. 2003 had a nice little Chart Wizard that spelled everything out for you. Not so much with 2007, though, there are clearly more fun visual options in 2007. I literally spent hours just trying to have my Legends labeled correctly. It turned out fine, but who knows if I went about correctly. I probably went the long way around. The best part about Excel is the magical Fill Handle, by which all cells turn to gold with just a click and drag.

Word

I think I underestimated MS Word. I thought I knew everything. Let's face it. We use Word everyday. But, honestly, I hadn't really taken the time to explore Word 2007, since it is so similar to 2003. When I found the SmartArt feature, it it made my day. I can think of so many Word documents I could've improved by using this. I love making work flow bubbles! Although, nothing compares to the day I discovered the Bibliography feature...oh, how life changing.

Module 3

I thought my non-interest in computer technology had peeked during the hardware module, but I was so wrong. Operating systems, what a snoozer. Though, I could tell that the websites were trying to make it fun. Bless their little hearts.
I originally tired to find an article about Microsoft's FAT lawsuits, but couldn't find anything about the most recent TomTom battle. At least not, in the UK databases, as the assignment required. That peeked my interest momentarily, but only as a matter of law, nothing at all to do with FAT.

Module 2

While reading an article about brain-computer interfaces, I came across a startling sentence. The author of the article states: Many believe that humans and computers will be integrated as one, and certainly the technology is almost there." How scary is that? Reminds me a bit of Michael Crichton's novel "Sphere".. and that didn't go so well.

Along the lines of humans and computers becoming one, I will say, it seems that, even as we are currently two separate entities, our human world is completely dependent on these machines. Just this week at the library where I work our network was upgraded. During the upgrade there was network downtime. Therefore, work was completely halted, for an entire afternoon. We might as well have been sent home. My co-workers and I just sat around reminiscing about, the good old days, before these machines took over our lives.