23.07 Share Drives (or, the G: Drive)

The share drives for the branches, and for specific projects, are easily accessible from any computer logged into Novell. Again, click the “My Computer” icon on the desktop. Under the Network Drives heading, this time, look for a folder called Lcg on Colmain 2. Double-click to open and look for LIBADMIN. Double click again and look for LIBRARIES SHARED. Then double click again. (I know – lotta double clicks. Making a desktop shortcut is # 23.09). You should now be looking at the main folder for all the library’s share drives.

The nice thing about share drives is multiple people can work on documents together, and you can share out a finished product without having to use email attachments, which clog up the strained GroupWise servers. Not that there’s anything wrong with attachments. The share drive space for your branch, like your Personal Novell Space, is backed up by DIT. As with your Personal Novell Space, you can save files there, or drag and drop files there – as well as accessing the documents others are sharing with you.

23.08 Portable Storage Media – or, why you really ought to use the backed up spaces on Novell

There are three types of portable storage media commonly used here: diskettes (often called floppies), CD, and USB or flash drives. Diskettes are an old format: they hold little, fail easily, and the quality control, both on diskettes and the drives they use, has really gone south. Stop using these! CD’s come in two flavors “Read only” and “Read/Write”. Files written to a “Read only” CD end up on a medium with a nicely archival feeling, since they cannot be overwritten and edited. But “Read Only” is not much use if you want to modify a file later. “Read write” is more flexible. I tend to think use of CD’s as storage media has peaked, though, because of USB/flash drives. Also called “dongles” and “key drives,” these devices plug into a USB port on your computer (usually on the front of the CPU) and in most cases, proceed to map themselves to a drive letter. To use a USB/flash drive, plug it in, wait while some popups keep you informed, and, when it’s ready for use (it’ll tell you), open it as a folder not unlike the way you opened the two Novell folders above.

USB/flash drives rule because they have the capacity of hundreds or thousands of diskettes, they are built to be rugged, and they are extremely portable. They’re getting less expensive all the time too. They aren’t that hard to lose, though, so if your files are important, they are still much safer on a Novell drive – yours or a share drive.

23.09 Desktop Shortcuts

Remember all that double-clicking to find the share drives? Really, you only need to do that once, and then make a desktop shortcut. If you’re using a network resource frequently, shortcut it. Just browse to the drive/folder that contains the folder you want to shortcut. Select the folder. Then, right mouse. From the pop-up menu, choose the “Send to” option, then select Desktop (create shortcut) from the pull-down menu. Then, you will have that shortcut on your desktop and won’t need to go searching each time you need the resources. (Note, like many things in Windows, there are other ways to create a desktop shortcut. The above is one way, but others are just as good).

23.10 Helper Apps and Plug ins

Sometimes you will get an email, or be using a web resource, and it will prompt you to download (or perhaps update) a program in order to view a file. The most common programs this will happen with are Adobe Acrobat Reader, Flash, Quicktime, Windows Media Player, and Shockwave. In an ideal world staff computers get these downloads (like our operating system and Office) automatically overnight. But if you’re using these at home, or haven’t gotten the upgrade automatically, panic not. Just follow the on-screen directions and the required programs will almost always download/update just fine. Watch out at the end of all these, they tend to want to install Yahoo or Google Toolbars. Just say no (unless you are at home, not the office, and know you really want these toolbars, which are, to some degree, spyware).

23.11 Application files in email or web browser windows

Again, just say no. Save these files to your My Documents folder by right-mousing, then using a Save As dialog. Once the files are sitting on your computer, you can open them in their native application (or at least, Acrobat Reader). You will get more printing options, more viewing options, more editing options (on editable files), and a ton more stability if you don’t view application files through GroupWise or a Web Browser. This is easy to do once you get used to it, and honestly, it works a lot better. (Because of how our public computers are configured, it’s less of a “slam-dunk” on those stations – using the in-browser viewer may be the best choice there).

23.12-20: More Web 2.0 Stuff

More web 2.0 stuff that we left out of the 23 things. Some of this you can explore, other stuff I am talking about because it seems to be big in the blogs on Library 2.0. For the record, this series is also my much delayed Thing 15 post.

23.12 Putting it Together: MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, etc

MySpace is the 3rd most popular Internet site in the US, and it’s pure Web 2.0. It combines features of blogging, wikis, audio and video sharing, and other technologies, and it’s whole reason for being is to bring together social networks (which leads to collaboration). Of course, since most of the social networks that live on MySpace are fairly small, it can be bewildering and tribal … it’s a web 2.0 site that only bands and teens can get, sometimes. Musician’s MySpace pages give a pretty good feel as what is possible on MySpace. If you’re exploring, keep in mind that vulgar speech is the norm.