Typography from Vancouver Film School

Wonderfully fresh video on a serious subject

Claiming My Technorati

Technorati Profile

9th Thing - Feeds

9th Thing Feeds: Investigating the various feed sources yielded a multitude of results. I did look at Bloglines search feature for articles on teen and libraries for a small number of 16 hits. Topix.net comes up to the Richmond Times Dispatch page. I guess this default is customized by area? Syndic8.com gave me Teen Reads as the top 5 most viewed sites by 77,819 people but they only have 24 subscribers. Technorati looks much more user friendly to me than Syndic8. I found a article for Sherida on the new eee! Their feature to find blog by tags is really user friendly.

7th Thing - RSS Feeds

7th Thing RSS Feeds: We had a RSS feed subscription at home but I've now set one up at work. I subscribed: 1) to the entertainment section of the Richmond Times Dispatch (for weekend possibilities!) 2) Unshelved which I already receive in e-mail 3) Teen Reads - one of Sydic8's top listed sites worth exploring I hope 4) Flickr album and 5) Librarians' Internet Index from Bloglines' recommended like feeds. I like the idea of receiving summaries from sites of interest - a good way to organize information. It seems like a quick way to keep up!

Tech Note: CNET video is not playable or available anymore?

http://www.bloglines.com/public/LibLinda

2008 Summer Reading Program Committee Agenda

April 3, 2008

I. Storytime

• Resource Time with Lisa
• Storytime Swap & Share
• Storytelling Workshops

II. Special Programs

• Global Youth Service Day

III. SRP

• Performers
• Pop Quiz
• PSA
• Count out prizes

Next meeting: May _________ from 12-2 at Hanover Branch

Handouts: Prince Caspian posters

19th thing - Podcasts

19th Thing Podcasts: Listening or viewing podcasts can be fun and informative - yet another way to receive information. I listened to a Jim Dale interview podcast from Mugglenet.com (found on top March choices on PodcastAlley.com) where I was amazed to discover that he developed a record 147 voices for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Also the final movie is coming out in 2 parts! I decided to subscribe to an Italian feed (from podcast.net) for our upcoming trip to Italy but was less successful here in accessing their contents.
Tech Note: I could not get Windows to open M4A files.

18th Thing - Web 2.0 Awards

18th thing - Awards: It's gratifying to see that many of the sites on our 20 Things list are award winning sites. I looked at the top 3 travel sites. RealTravel sounded exciting since it includes restaurant and hotel reviews and photos by actual travelers but it turned out to be very subjective and peripheral a lot of times. Kayak says it searches across 140 sites to get you the best deal!

17th Thing - Google Docs

17th Thing Google Docs: Looking forward to our class on google docs! I did publish a document - Summer Reading Program Committee Agenda - to my blog. I used this as a sample seeing perhaps a future use for the members to help create the agenda and even edit the minutes afterwards.

16th Thing - Wikis

16th Thing - Wikis:
Oh Wikis, not to be believed necessarily but quick references! I wonder if George Bush's wiki is the most edited at Wikipedia? I recall recently how several universities had to forbid students to use Wikipedia as a source for papers. I was astounded that college students didn't know that the information wasn't reliable. Or maybe they did and it was just a quick reference.
A statewide youth services committee that I'm on is using pbwiki for our project work, signing on with passwords. Applications for Pamunkey - perhaps the Customer Service Guidelines project ;-) And speaking of true community readers' advisory, imagine the ability of any reader adding content to the catalog which OCLC is testing now!

15th Thing - Second Life

15th Thing Second Life: Role playing has certainly come a ways since my Myst playing days. I found games like Myst somehow more satisfying in their discovery aspect - not as weird?! But now TV shows characters like Dwight of The Office and The Gossip Girls are either playing or in second life. Librarians and libaries are in Second Life. I'm not going to be in Second Life personally but I see its applications for work. One of the neat uses I've read for Second Life was a college fair. Many universities participated with booths and gave out virtual swag.

14th Thing - Web 2.0

14th Thing Web 2.0: Library 2.0 is to me a way to connect with a younger generation of users. Promotion of library services through MySpace and Facebook accounts and even Second Life accounts can counteract the perception of libraries as stodgy places of the past. Though there may be internal 2.0 applications such as google.docs, I feel the major effect is external from the patron's perspective. It seems even more necessary for libraries to survive into the 21st century, for us to reevaluate the methodology of our services.
Reading Dr. Wendy Schultz's essay on Library 2.0-2.4 was thought provoking. I was interested in her distinction between the 2.0 and 3.0 tenants of product and service. Many economic analysts are predicting the evolution of the U.S. economy into a service economy. However, her Library 4.0 seems a throwback to the elitist first libraries - or is it impossible at this point to imagine what libraries will conceivably be like that far in the future?

13th Thing - Technorati

13th Thing Technorati: I'm almost afraid to dip my toes into the water - this is the one thing everyone is talking about! However, I am really liking Technorati! The ease of navigation, ability to see who's blogging, favorites, etc. Looking at the blog posts for Learning 2.0, I see 11,116 results including some PLA conference reports. Blogs on that subject are less only about 1,008 while tags equal 1,037. For some reason all peaked on that subject around March 11? Wonder what happened on January 7 ;-)

12th thing - Tagging

12th Thing Tagging: Will I use Del.icio.us? This one is a question mark. I can see the benefits however it does require establishing another 'set of bookmarks.' Although it is acclaimed for its unstructuredness, one must still remember what phrases one is using for tagging certain subjects. I never thought I would think like a cataloguer (sorry Alyce) but the plus about LC standardized subject headings is that they give you a clue where to look if you forget or don't know! An use for this site that I did find unusal is that one can create a unique tag so just a common group of users can find and use it. Amazon even offers tags now.

Tech Note: Several Habits link is no longer there.

20th Thing - Summary

20th Thing Summary:
The 20 Things was an excellent exercise both personally and professionally. It did meet my lifelong learning goals of always learning new things and satisfying my curiosity. My one surprise was the amount of people out there ‘sharing’ whether it is pictures, favorite books, music, etc. Not my style but apparently for many it is!

Favorite sites that I explored included My Space, Library Thing and Flickr. On the personal level, My Space gives me the opportunity to ‘visit’ with my new grand nephew in Massachusetts and other far away relatives and Library Thing is a good spot to put all those books I’m meaning to read. I am excited about the possibilities of using Flickr at work for a project long in the works – a visual storytime resource catalog. PRL may want to have a presence on My Space as well, especially for teens. Many branches found a great side benefit to the 20 Things project – team building.

If we were doing the project again: I would have preferred to set up the program with basic training by trainers and then let staff explore the related links and do their exercises independently. I know my husband is currently doing a train the trainer program at another library system for their 20 Things. I think this would have relieved a lot of the frustrations and produced a more positive experience.
The list of activities was a good selection and mix, excluding perhaps Technorati which seemed to stump many people! The number was very difficult to keep up with whether for our predominantly part time staff or for full timers.
On the technical side, it would have been easier to have required software and hardware in place before beginning the exercise. Can anything be done about the spy ware? I’d caution people initially about keeping a list of passwords and user ids – maybe even several copies ;-).
These observations are based both on mine personally and on other staff’s comments.

11th Thing - Rollyo

11th Thing Rollyo: This site would certainly be a good one to utilize for the poetry month promotion of handling out quotes. I searched daffodils on Quick Quotes and got a number of hits on William Wordsworth's poem but also some commercial sites such as FTD! I started my garden searchroll just in time for spring planting!

10th Thing - Online Image Generators

10th Thing Online Image Generators: Acouple of technical problems here: The text on Helene Blower's video on adding RSS feeds to Bloglines is too small to see and I couldn't get CNET video to open. The picture here is my great nephew which was 'framed' on Big Huge Labs - home of fd's flickr toys. More babies: at the Generator Blog's Who Generator, I adopted a "Who" and named her WhatWhenWhy (from Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who) but couldn't get her embedded in my blog.

5th Thing Flickr

5th Thing Flickr: Certainly a way to share photos with others. Exploring Virginia Libraries group, I see that Arlington Public Library has a Flickr presence though it merely directs you to its website. Maybe old fashioned branch photo albums are still the way to go as all these photos of library programs would require many many permission forms! I am wondering about a storytime resource catalog on Flickr though! Photo credited to pollyalida of New York State Libraries SRP.