Magically Delicious! - Thing 14 (Delicious)

This is a neat tool. I'd heard a lot about Delicious, but never explored it before. I've often found myself wishing that there was a better way to organize my bookmarks and here it is! My old outdated software and computer wouldn't allow me to import my bookmarks, but it gave me an opportunity to clean out my bookmarks. A number of the links no longer work. I also found a number of links that I want to add to my Google Reader list. Click here to link to my Delicious account.

There are several links that I am not going to make public and that is our contracted vendors. I don't think I should have that for everyone out there to see. If someone wants that information they can call me or contact the City's Purchasing Department, but I don't think I should put it out there for everyone to see.

Tag! Your it! - Thing 13 (Tagging)

Yeah! I am halfway through the North Texas 23.

After reading this section on Tagging, I went back and inserted tags for all my blog posts, something I was remiss in doing when I wrote them. Tagging for me has been more of an afterthought.

It's interesting though. I've been reading BLOG BLAZERS: 40 TOP BLOGGERS SHARE THEIR SECRETS and, so far, not one of them has mentioned tagging as being important to blogging. They all emphazise the headline which indicates to me that they are thinking in terms of keyword searching rather than tagging. They are also thinking in terms of grabbing someone's attention. I think people are so used to keywords from searching on the internet.

I am not a cataloger so I don't have any emotional attachment to traditional LC and/or Sears subject headings. I've always thought the COOKERY subject heading was ineffectual. I say anything that helps the patrons find what they need is a good thing, but relevance is a big issue, too. I find Amazon very frustrating at times because I wonder how I got a hit on something that seems totally unrelated to what I am looking for.

One thing I wonder about tagging is if there are people out there that create tags just to bring people to their post. I am thinking, for example, a Neo-Nazi writing hate posts and then using taglines that might bring Jewish readers to it just to be hurtful to them. I'd like to think that wouldn't happen, but I'm not that much of an idealist. I suppose that would be one advantage to having a nonpartisan third party (i.e. a cataloger) assigning subject headings.

Twitterpated - Thing 12

It's been 3 weeks since I've worked on the NT23 and I've totally forgot what I did with Thing 11 - Instant Messaging. I can't even find the profile and avatar I set up. I'm going to chalk that up to "I'm not going to use it anyway" and not pursue it. I still don't have a cell phone and it seems like it would just be further interuptions to my work to have it open on my desktop. Given that I am going to choose to not set up a Twitter account for the same reasons. I think this training is great, but what happens to all the stuff that gets set-up and is never used. It just seems like I am just clogging up the Internet with trash. I wonder what percentage of stuff out there can be deleted. Just think how often you click on a link and it goes nowhere.

Having kept up with various blogs through the recent ALA conference it was obvious that Twitter was being heavily used by participants. Twitter allows individuals to participate in history (look at the recent elections in Iran), it shows that innovation can happen anywhere, it offers many-to-many communication, it is interactive in that it allows consumers to become producers of information, and allows news to be reported as it happens (as in the recent earthquake in China).

Despite my blog title I am not Twitterpated (i.e. confused by affection or infatuation) by Twitter. Confused -yes. Infatuated, no.

Thing 8 - Part 2 - Facebook

I am not sure I like Facebook. It is like email on ADD. It is all over the place subject-wise. It seems so disjointed with messages coming from every which way. This is going to take some getting used to.

Thing 11 - Not so instant messaging

I signed up on the Yahoo web browser. That is what I use at home. My husband and I have a combined account so his name (Milburn) shows up. I created an avatar for me, but she doesn't look like me (only in my dreams). I went with their so called "plus size" models, but she doesn't even come close. I did both the video and online tutorial. I was sorry to see that you can't do photo sharing or file sharing through the web browser. I also studied the acronym dictionary.

Now I guess I wait to see if anyone IMs me.

http://www.messenger.yahoo.com/web/

USER NAME (I am not so sure if this is it): beauzo@flash.net or rsbeauzo

Please send me a message so I can finish this assignment!

I will close with one acronym I knew before IM. As Tigger would say "TTFN."

Thing 10: Ning

I chose not to join Ning because I don't need another thing to remember to check. Also, the groups seem to be smaller in Ning than in Facebook, but I agree with Becca's blog that many of the Ning network pages seemed more professionally done than the Facebook ones. I noticed several of the Ning networks were by "invitation" only. I was able to find some interesting networks on polymer clay (Polymer clay productions and Beadopolis) that did not require joining to look at them.

I would say a library joining this would have many of the same uses as Facebook. Primarily as a way to get the word out to patrons, but I would choose to use Facebook over Ning because Facebook seems more widely used.

To change the subject (sort of) I find news of the Iran election and use of social networking to get the word out to the world fascinating and scary (for the Iranians). This validates the value of all this new technology. How else would the world know what it going on? It reminds of Tiananmen Square in China and how email was able to keep us informed about what was going on. It's awesome.

Thing 9 - more Facebook

I am pleasantly surprised at how many people have found me on Facebook since I signed up less than a week ago. Many are childhood friends. I have also been able to contact several people that I grew up with. It's been fun, but again it can be a real time-eater. I would have had an easier time of it if I could remember which year I graduated from high school. I spent a whole lot of time looking at 1978 graduates worrying about how bad my memory was because nobody looked familiar. When I took it back a year I was relieved to find a lot of familiar faces.

When I started the post I forgot to include my maiden name and it took me awhile to figure out how to correct that. I did get a picture posted, but not of me. I posted 2 things to "what's on your mind" as assigned with the second linking to the Feast on Books blog.

I have joined 3 groups so far - 1 is weight loss related and 2 are craft (polymer clay) related. I haven't had a chance to check back into those yet. I also joined a group for twins, but then unjoined once I realized that it was more about raising twins than being a twin.

I can see where a library having a face book page could be an advantage and help draw in younger users. It'd be a good, cheap way for libraries to get the word out to that segment of the population. Several of our branches used to have MySpace or FaceBook pages, but they were taken down until the library can develop a policy that would guarantee a quality product.

THING 8 - FACEBOOK

I got the Facebook account set up. I had a little difficulty I got error messages for both my work and home email when I tried to find friends, but I was able to add 1 friend by name and I will add more for Thing 9.

I am not sure how this could be used for work. Our City network does not allow us to use facebook for legal reasons. There were some branches with Facebook accounts, but they've all been taken down. If we could use it, I see it as one more way to allow us to reach patrons.

THING 7 - RSS FEEDS

Like Thing 6 (Blog Readers), RSS Feeds are a good thing. I have to admit the day after I did Thing 6 and I went back into Google Reader I felt a bit overwhelmed by all the stuff there was to read. It took an hour to skim them all, but when I went back in today I was able to get in and out very quickly because few of the blogs had been posted to since yesterday. That was a relief to realize that if you read them regularly it shouldn't be too time-consuming. It certainly beats bookmarking everything and clicking back-and-forth and back-and-forth. This really will be a good tool for helping me keep more current.

Learning about RSS feeds came in the nick of time. I was researching FanFic for a blog I am writing for Fort Worth Library's Feast on Books blog and discovered the http://www.fanfiction.net/ site and they have the linking icons for RSS feeds so it was nice to understand what that meant. It was also fun to find the crossover fiction such as "Calvin & Hobbes Goes to Hogwarts."

I am not sure how to apply this to patron usage other than encouraging patrons to add the library's blog to their reader accounts. Of course in acquisitions there is not that much patron interaction, but perhaps some of my vendors have sites I can add to my Google Reader. hmmmm.....I will have to check into that.

Blog Readers - Thing 6

This assignment was a real eye-opener. I was wondering how other people seemed to be able to keep up with new information from blogs. I am a supervisor of several people who are doing the North Texas 23 so I added them to the subscription list so I can keep track of their progress. I am not intending to use this in a bad way. It's mainly because they are such better writers than I am and it's fun to see what they write. Check out Sallie's Perpetual Beta Test http://salsbetatest.blogspot.com/ and Kickin and Screaming... http://kickinandscreaminintothe21stcentury.blogspot.com/. Both of them also post regularly to the library's Feast on Books blog http://feastonbooks.blogspot.com/. My apologies for sounding like a proud mother hen. I can't take any credit for their work.

I just realized that I could do prettier links to the sites above, but won't because I am trying to get this done before I leave work today.

If you haven't discovered it yet, click on the "BROWSE FOR STUFF" button in Google Reader. It has a list of 449 "bundles" for links to blogs on popular subjects. I added the bundle for COMICS to my list, but promptly took it off once I looked at them. The only link to a popular/mainstream comic was DILBERT. All the others were ones I wasn't familiar with. BUT I was much happier when I found the bundle under "LIBRARY." It contained severals blogs I told myself months ago that I need to start looking at regularly and promptly didn't do it.

Also of interest is a bundle labeled "STEAMPUNK." I'm not interested for me, but for my daughter. She just told be about this type of music a few weeks ago and she has been showing me some of the videos (think Mad Max meets The Thompson Twins meets Jethro Tull). So I will surely tell her about that.

All in all blog readers are a "good thing." (Forgive me Martha Stewart for stealing your phrase).

Thing 5 - Imagination Generators

After yesterday's frustration with Flickr, I am feeling much more competent today. All these tools are really fun! I mostly played with Big Huge Labs and Image Chef. With these tools anyone can be a graphic artist - even a librarian with few artistic skills.













Here's my motivational poster.











Here's some bead art.









Here's my Warhol moon.







And here's my sunny caption.


Okay, I said this allows everyone to be a graphic artist, but I could certainly use more skills on layout and placement. One step at a time. I'd love to play some more, but it's time to move on to Thing 6 or I will never get caught up. Toodles.

Life is Flickring before my eyes

You name it an Flickr has it. At least it seems that way. I didn't try looking for anything that might be considered pornographic or obscene, but there were tons of images for everything I tried. I looked at book-related themes such as people reading and cats reading. Then I moved on to some of my own personal interests such as polymer clay, marbled paper, fractals, and kaleidoscopes. If I am ever out of ideas for stuff to make all I need to do is go to Flickr for inspiration.

Thing 3 has made me realize how much photography has changed with the advent of digital cameras and cell phones. As with everything there is the good with the bad. The good being the sharing of images - family, creative, historical. The bad being the reduction of privacy and clogging up the Internet with junk.

Digital photography has been a boon for me. Before digital cameras I became known as the "Headhunter" because I was always chopping off the heads of my subjects in photographs. I wasted a lot of film (and money) taking bad pictures. Digital cameras allow me to see my work right away and allows for "do overs."

In the nick of time

This North Texas 23 could not have come at a better time for me. I am going to start contributing to Fort Worth Library's "Readers Nook" blog. My first article will appear on Wednesday. It looks unsophisticated compared to the more experienced contributors, but I am sure it will look better as I gain more experience. The trick will be coming up with something to write about every week. We'll see how it goes. I will be most interested in seeing if I get any reader feedback. Wish me luck!

Reading at the speed of light

I watched the shifted librarian video. I enjoyed it, but had difficulty reading fast enough. I have also seen Stephen Abram speak in person on Library 2.0 just last month. He was very thought provoking and I enjoyed his sense of humor. The exponential growth of knowledge is hard to keep up with and there is so much to filter, but even so I can see where it can lead to great things. I like the idea of collaborative knowledge and, having been a former ILL librarian, I wouldn't mind seeing copyright laws fall by the wayside. That would save a lot of people a lot of work. Of course I might feel differently if I put my blood, sweat, and tears into publishing something and found someone else claiming it as his own.

Ode to Oblio

"A point in every direction is as good a no point at all." This quote says everything about how I've been feeling about technology lately. I can really relate to Oblio from the 1970's cartoon, THE POINT. There are so many directions that I could go that I don't know where to start. This North Texas 23 program came just at the right time for me and I am looking forward to joining the 21st century. Maybe my 24th thing should be to finally get a cell phone.