Learn a Language at Your Library

The library has lots of services to help you learn a new language both from home and inside the library. Here are a few:

Tell Me More is one of Durham County Library’s newest online databases. Tell Me More teaches Dutch, English, French, Italian, German and Spanish (Spain and Latin America). Practice reading, writing, listening and speaking for beginning through advanced users. Learn everyday and/or business vocabulary. You will need your library card number to log in. There are detailed instructions if you need them.

NetLibrary is an NCLive Database which contains ebooks and eaudiobooks. It includes the Pimsleur Language Learning series as downloadable audiobooks which you can play on your computer or mp3 player. There are forty different languages available as well as many audiobooks for those who are learning English as second language and would like instruction in their native language. Call your local Durham County Library branch if you need the NCLive password or need additional help using NetLibrary.

The Library’s Catalog also has many books, audiobooks and some videos to learn another language. If you go to the catalog and choose the Subject Keyword search, type the name of your language followed by the word language and self instruction.

For example: spanish language self instruction would list records for items that teach you Spanish.

Once you click on the title, you will see which locations own the item and whether or not it is checked in. If you are at home and the item(s) you want is on the shelf, please call your local library to reserve the copy for quick pickup. If the item you want is checked out or you would like it to go to another location, click on Request First Available Copy to have the item sent to the branch of your choice. You will get a phone call or email when it is ready for pick up.

English as a Second Language classes are available for free at many branches. Check the events calendar to see what is available at your branch or call Judy at 560-0157 for more information.

Please leave any questions you have as comments to this post. – Kathy

Setting Browser Preferences

Are you still using Internet Explorer? Have you tried Firefox yet? If not give it a try. In the meantime, I wanted to talk a little bit about setting some of the preferences for whatever browser you are using.

In IE (Internet Explorer) from the menu bar select TOOLS then select INTERNET OPTIONS. You will see a window with lots of tabs, the first one being GENERAL. So what can you do here? The first thing you can do is set up your home page. This is the page that will appear every time you click on your IE icon to go to the web. I highly recommend that you set your home page to http://www.durhamcountylibrary.org – but I’m just saying! You can set your home page to just about anything you like, just type in the address or URL of your home page. Click on APPLY and OK and you are done. Click on the little house button in your toolbar and you will be taken to your homepage.

Another thing you can do on the GENERAL tab is to deal with Temporary Internet Files, Cookies, and your browsing History.

Temporary Internet Files are just that, files that are loaded into a temporary folder on your computer when you visit a website.  Click on the SETTINGS button. The first thing you see here is how often to “Check for newer versions of stored pages.” This feature works with the Temporary Internet Files to save you time when you go to a web site. If it is set to Never, your browser will use your temporary files and show you that version of the website. If the site has been changed or updated, you won’t see those changes. I have mine set to Every visit to the page. This assures that when I go back to a site I’ve been to before, I’ll get the newest version.

Next thing on the settings window to look at is the Temporary Internet files folder. You can see the location of the folder and the amount of disk space your computer computer has alloted for these files. Mine is set to 50MB, plenty of room!

Now click on VIEW FILES. If you are like me and have your Cookies turned on – you should see lots of files there. Close that window, click on OK and go back to the General Tab. You can delete all of those files you just saw, and the cookies by clicking on Delete Cookies and Delete Files. It’s okay to do this and select Delete all offline content when you delete the files.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is the History. This is a helpful option you probably didn’t even know about. Go back to IE and click on the little down arrow at the far right side of the address bar. That is your History list. It you go back now to your Internet Options you can see how many days of history are there. Mine is set to three, but I push that Clear History button pretty often. After you push it and go back to IE and look again at the little down arrow, you will see nothing.

If you are sharing computer with someone knowing this information may come in handy. It’s not my job to judge, but I’m sure if you think about it, you can probably see advantages and disadvantages to the History, Temporary Internet Files and Cookies options. You can clean yours up as you like. I’ll talk about more of these Internet Options in my upcoming posts. — Jill

Web 2.0: Gimmee some blogs

Now you know what a blog is (don’t know?–read the “What is a Blog” post), let’s find some blogs to read. Of course, my favorite blogs are related to subjects I like (cooking, knitting, reading, and green design), but there are a ton out there on anything you can think of. Here are some suggestions:

Chocolate & Zucchini: Clotilde Dusoulier lives in Paris and writes about food (recipes, experiments, and general thoughts). She writes very well, her recipes are always interesting (even if it is something you may not cook yourself) and I find her willingness to experiment inspiring for my own kitchen.

Dear Author: Six readers write reviews, commentary, and thoughts. They write mostly about romance and fantasy. Their reviews are written as a letter to the author and they have a nice community of readers commenting on their posts.

Cute Overload: The perfect respite for a bad day–pictures of cute animals.

Endangered Durham: A local Durhamite, G.K. writes about land use, sustainability, and development in Durham. He has lots of pictures (historical and current) and is very opinionated. It’s an interesting blog to read.

Confessions of a Pioneer Woman: Ree lived and worked in glamorous LA. Then she married a rancher in Texas and her life changed. She writes about her life as a ranching wife, her children, Texas, and posts beautiful pictures.

Daily Kos: A liberal political blog.

Little Green Footballs: A conservative political blog.

Leave Me Alone, I’m Digging: This is a gardening blog from Greensboro, North Carolina. He has product reviews, pictures of his gardens, and general thoughts.

The Other Ebert: Our Audio-Visual Librarian has his own blog with movie reviews. Chuck has a wry sense of humor and broad tastes. Of course, you can always ask his opinion in person.

What’s Up @ Your Library: Check out our library full of information for teens–interesting links, new books, and more.

Up next from me:

• Is there a blog directory?
• I’ve got twenty blogs I like to read, how do I keep track of them (aka–what is an RSS feed)?

–Jennifer

Cleaning Your Keyboard and Mouse

A recent article featuring a UK study from Which? Computing gives some alarming news about how dirty your keyboard may be.  The study found that in an ordinary office, keyboards had more bacteria on them than you would find in a bathroom. So it’s time to clean your keyboard and mouse.

Simple how-to: turn off your computer and unplug your keyboard and mouse. Pick up your keyboard, turn it upside down and shake it. If you have canned air, spray between all the nooks and crannies. Wipe the whole keyboard down with a disinfectant alcohol wipe.

For your mouse, you can follow the same procedures. Canned air, disinfectant alcohol wipe and if your mouse has a ball, take it out and wipe it down. A cotton swab dipped in alcohol can be used to wipe around the inside of where the ball sits inside your mouse.

While you are at it, if you have a mouse pad, shake that guy out too. Many mouse pads are safe to wash in the top rack of the dishwasher…use your best judgment here on that one (don’t try it with any gel-filled pads). You can always wipe that mouse pad down if you’re afraid to try the dishwasher. If it’s really nasty, go buy yourself a new one – they are cheap and it’s better to be safe than sorry when it comes to nasty germs.

There are lots of web sites with good examples on how to keep your computer clean. Just Google “cleaning your keyboard.”

After cleaning your mouse, you might notice an improvement in its ability to move! So remember this, next time you feel like you are fighting with your mouse to get it to move across the screen. Give the little guy and his pad a bath! –Jill

How to Post a Comment to a Blog

Did you know that you can ask us questions and tell us what you think on this blog? We would love to hear from you! At the bottom of each blog entry is a link which either reads No Comments or it will give the number of comments to the post. Click on this link to go to the Leave a Comment box.   You can also click on the title of the blog entry to go to the Leave a Comment box.  You do not need to enter your name or give your website if you do not want to. You must enter an email address; your email address will not be displayed to the public. Type your question or tell us what you think and click on Submit Comment. Your comment will display in a little while, and we will give you a reply. – Kathy

Web 2.0 and Staff Training @ the Library

Jennifer’s last post about blogs comes just in time for the Durham County Library staff training about Web 2.0. This Friday and next the 2nd and 9th of May our staff will be participating in Web 2.0 training. Topics to be covered will include social bookmarking, social networking, blogs, RSS, wikis, Flickr, podcasting, and YouTube.

We are offering the training four times in those two days so we can get all of your Durham County Library staff up-to-speed on the latest technologies.

Staff training at the DCL is a large part of our Strategic Plan – “Saying ‘Yes’ to the Community: Durham Builds a Customer-Centered Library.” To see more about our plan, check out our wiki -  http://dclstrategicplan.pbwiki.com/

Please feel free to comment on the wiki or here on our blog. — Jill