Thing 20: Libraries and Social Networks

I had to jump ahead because I'm now an administrator for our library's Facebook page. I joined the group "American Library Association Members" because I am. I'm not sure what that means, though. I can't see where it is on my page. I guess it just means I can go to their page and see posts and comment. Facebook sure is popular with our patrons. They use it on our internet computers all the time. It seems to be quite addicting and a great time sucker. I'm sticking with library friends for now, until I can get comfortable with it. The privacy issues concern me, so I hope I have those setting figured out. DPL just joined Facebook a few months ago and we're figuring out how to best use it as we go along. Fortunately there are others on staff that know more about it than I do.

Thing 11: Tagging and Delicious

So, I've already been using labels on these posts -- as a good cataloger should. As a cataloger, however, I find that random tags can be a problem because you don't know which term people are using. I signed up for Delicious a few months ago. Plugging slowly away... I haven't used it since, but I guess once I got used to it it would be helpful. There is so much stuff out there, though, and it's a big time drain once you get sucked in exploring various tags. The Menasha moving tag cloud is fun to look at, but hard to use. It doesn't seem to be related to Delicious, though. I can see using Delicious to keep track of recommended web sites, but I don't see where any of these libraries have a link from their web pages. I can see using this for research. It's easy to find many articles on a topic using the tags, you just have to be careful of the source. BYW, Yahoo Avatars seem to have disappeared from all the blogs. I wonder if it's a Blogger glitch or a Yahoo problem.

Thing 10: Wikis

OK, so it's been two months. It's supposedly Spring now, so my avatar is wearing a nice pastel turtleneck sweater. I've also changed the template for my blog to freshen things up a bit.

I did look a little at wikis. It seems like a good idea for groups of people to share and collaborate. I really like the Common Craft videos they are simple and to the point, and fun too. I think wikis are a bit dangerous if anyone can edit. Wikipedia is great for quick information, but if a kid is doing a report they better back it up with reliable sources. I don't think it should be banned altogether, they should just be aware that it might not be accurate.

Instead of playing around with one of the wikis listed, I decided to add to "laurasreadinglist" a wiki that was started by some colleagues on pbwiki. The list needs some organizing, so I started a new page and copied some titles and put them in order by author. I needed to know what's on the list before I could add my recommended titles. We could use a wiki like this for reader's advisory and share what patrons are asking for and what titles we found to answer their requests. There are lots of possibilities.

Thing 7 revisited: Challenge #3, Twitter

When I found out that the Youth Media Awards would be announced on Twitter, I had to go and sign up. It seems like it would be the quickest way to find out the winners. I downloaded TwitterFox to get regular updates on Mozilla Firefox. I also managed to download my Yahoo avatar to Twitter and add a Twitter update link to this blog. I haven't had much to say yet. As for use in libraries, the award thing is great. I guess posting info on new books or events at the library could be helpful. I could also follow other library or book related sites to see what else is going on. Well, on to Thing 10 . . .

Thing 9: Online Collaboration Tools

Well, it has been awhile since I actually did this Thing. It's been kinda crazy lately. I recall having some trouble being able to edit, but the idea is good. I have shared a booklist using Zoho Writer with some of my colleagues and I think that it will work well and we can each add titles and edit as needed to make the final document.

Thing 8: Share your creations

So apparently I can import this to my blog. I tried to do a Zoho show, but I really didn't have anything to create a slide show about. All of these tools seem useful, but I'm not sure what I would use them for right now. This Zoho writer seems like a good idea so you don't need a word processor on your computer and can easily share online. Ok, now let's see if I can post this thing.

Well, here it is! That worked pretty well. I just wrote this post on Zoho writer.

Thing 6: Online Image Generators

Here's my trading card. I also added something I made on ImageChef to the bottom. It would be fun to use somehow with programing and publicity. I could spend a lot of time on this, but I'd better move on. My fellow thingsters are urging me to get to Thing 20 so I can be their friends on MySpace or Facebook. I have a lot left to do!

Thing 5: More fun with flickr

Hockneyized Moppet
Originally uploaded by suzannepalm

Here's my cat Moppet using the Hockneyizer at Big Huge Labs. I played around quite a bit with this "thing". It is definitely easy to waste a lot of time playing with flickr. I added a couple of things to my blog earlier. A link to a Splasr presentation on the left sidebar and a "Spell it with flickr" on the bottom. It kind of gets lost there, but I'm not sure how to insert it between posts. I guess we could find lots of ways to use this at the library. I might try using flickr to create signs for book displays. I think photo sharing is a great idea, but I was a bit reluctant to put myself out there. It took me a while to decide to let anyone see the photos in the first place, but I had to make them public if I wanted to blog about them! When I first got my digital camera, about 5 years ago, I signed up with Ofoto (now Kodak Gallery) and I have been using that as backup storage for my pictures. It's mostly a place to share with family and friends, and of course to buy prints and stuff. I haven't used it for anything but storage. I think flickr is more for public sharing and having fun with the pictures. I might consider adding more of my personal pictures here at some point, or just using it exclusively. It's easier to use, too.

Thing 4.2: more flickr

I just added a picture from my flickr page to the sidebar. It took a while to figure out where to put the HTML code, but it seems to be working OK. I'm finding this a little frustrating. I've tried to attach one of my flickr pictures to this blog post using the add image link and inserting the HTML code to link back to flickr and I get 2 copies of the picture plus some misc junk. Aargh! OK, I just tried to put the HTML right in the post using the "Edit Html" tab. That seems to work. So, here's our "Happy Birthday" cake for the summer reading display:

Lunch

Lunch
Originally uploaded by Pieter Dirkx

I was exploring "interestingness" on flickr and found this fun food foto ("Look what's cookin" you know is our summer reading theme) so I'm trying the "blog this" feature to see what happens.

That worked a lot better than trying to add the photo from Blogger. I'm a little concerned about copyright, but wouldn't it not let me do this if there were restrictions? I will try something with my own pictures next.

Thing 4 - Photosharing with Flickr

Wow, it's amazing what you can find on Flickr. I've been looking though some old photos recently and thought I might search for Nesna, my mother's birthplace in Norway. It's a very small town so I didn't think much would come up, but I got 187 results. It's still a small result set (there are over 600,000 results if you just put in Norway), but I am amazed that Norwegian photographers are using Flickr. I guess I shouldn't be, everything on the web is so international now. The thing is, they are all such beautiful pictures. Most likely they are all professional photos and not the tourist snapshots that I might get if I searched Oslo, for example. Still, I feel like any of my pictures would pale next to the stuff here on Flickr. But here's the really cool part: One of those photographers has a link on his profile to genealogy site of the region and I found my grandfather listed!

OK, so here's one of the pictures I found on his Flickr page. I am very confused as to how to attach Flickr photos that aren't mine. It worked to just copy the image location (Thanks, Sarah) but the rules say we should have a link back to Flickr and the HTML code is not there if it's not your picture. Anyway to give credit: This is "Tomma seen from Nesna" copied from Frode's pix on Flickr. I will experiment more with other ways to add pictures.

Thing 3 - RSS feeds

I signed up for Google Reader on advice from a friend since we already had to sign up for a Google account. No point in adding to the myriad of accounts, logins and passwords. Overall I think RSS feeds are really cool. At first I was thinking this would be just one more thing to check besides my email. It does have advantages, though, like separating these things out from your regular email. Once you find some interesting blogs it's great to get the new posts as they are published. The main problem is that it can get overwhelming very quickly. The news sites are the worst. I signed up for the news package they have and even after deleting a couple of the less interesting sites I seem to be getting hundreds of posts a day. When I continue to use this for real for the library I think the news sites will have to go, or at least I won't try to read them all. This could be a mega time waster if you let it!

I added some other DPL blogs right from the reader and that was pretty easy. I think it's pretty easy to add feeds from anywhere, really. I found some others after coming across different articles and thought it would be interesting to read more from that blog. I added Common Craft because I really liked that video. I couldn't get the CNET video to work. We have so few computers with sound around here, but maybe I could try it out on a different computer. I also added Libodyssey even though he hasn't posted anything new lately, and iLibrarian which has a lot of posts about Library 2.0 with links to other sites. There are some real practical tips about things I still don't know much about yet and some that could be useful to me now if I had the time to read them. I also added the Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator for fun. It's a site I found last year and had added the feed to the bookmarks toolbar on one of our computers. That's another easy way to keep track of things and you don't even have to sign up for a feed reader. I'm sure I'll find lots more to add in future.

Thing 2: What is Library 2.0

I have tried to make time here and there to read the blogs and articles for this "Thing" As they say, it must be something you choose to do. With so many other tasks piling up you have to just do it. This could be and endless job. One thing leads to another and there are links and links to click on sending you into an infinite number of possible readings. From the comments on John Blyberg's blog entry I found not a comment, but a link to another blog that mentions his article (I ought to figure out how that works) Anyway, this blog is called Libodyssey and the article is "Library 2.o, or why I'm not running off to join the cult just yet" and gives many different views on the topic. I guess in many ways it's just a label and what we really need to do is serve our patrons the best we can. I'd like to learn more web tools and see if they will help me do that. I use the internet a lot for ordering books. I've used BookLetters to create booklists for the library (another thing I'd like to have more time for) however, I have not contributed to any of our library's blogs. I look forward to learning some new things. Enough of the articles, let's get down to business!

Thing 1.2: Blog on a stick

Well, I spent way too much time yesterday setting up this blog. I need to read over everything before I start and then check out all the options. I guess the avatar took the most time. It was a lot of fun choosing all the options. I finally settled on something simple and professional looking to start. I know I can change it later. I suppose I tried too hard to make it look like me. Failing that I chose, perhaps, something that I imagine I look like or would like to look like. Ah, the joy of virtual worlds!

I figure I know a little something about computers having used them for over 30 years. In ancient times I wrote math programs using the Teletype machines (connected by modem to the computer) in high school. We saved them on long strips of yellow paper with holes punched in them. Am I really that old? Well, I won't go through the history of computers here. I have advanced to PCs (Windows and Mac) and the internet and email but don't know much about blogs and social networking sites and all that. I'm hoping that these 23 Things on a Stick will bring me up to speed or at least give me a better idea of what's going on out there.

Thing 1

I have created my blog and am now working on my avatar. So many choices!