Thing 37-photos and fun

In the earlier version of this exercise I set up a Flickr account. Having seen a lot of libraries use photo rolls, I can see using this or tools like these for promotional purposes, especially for a lot of children's activities, i.e., storytimes, summer reading programs, special programs, and events. Because I have some great photos at home to play with, I plan to use pictures on a home computer to do more of this exercise.

DD discovered there is a great piece of software built into newer Windows machines that times and displays selected photos and applies music. She did one for her cousin's Hawaii wedding this past February, and it will be played on their DVD player at their wedding celebration and open house in the next week or so. It turned out nicely, what with the software knowing how long the song is, being able to time the bleeding of the pictures and melding into the next, and it was free. It seems the sites in this thing either wanted registration or one would be using someone else's pictures, neither of which I want to do. The first one was of a darling bride and groom at their wedding, and she found it on YouTube, but the music was removed from someone at YouTube because it was a copywritten song.

Thing 36 - Comic Relief

I used the conversion to .pdf tool. This is the productivity tool I've been waiting for. Granted, it's probably been around a while but I didn't seek it out. What I converted was an application for interning at my library. Someone took the application to volunteer and converted it to put it on the library's website and now this one can be placed there in a similar format too.

The next fun thing I did was a fake newspaper headline commemorating the birth of my grandson. Because I murdalized names, I'm not going to post it anywhere visible and plan to delete it once I've chuckled over it one more time.

I made a tinytag but man, was it tiny! You know those ads for enhancement? This tag could use a vitamin V! lol I know they're for embedding and viewing on a computer screen but this wasn't the best use of my time in the end. I really don't foresee libraries (at least not here) generating their own comic strips or even cartoons. There is an unwritten code saying we don't make fun of patrons or books. We should listen to this one -- it's sage advice!

Thing 35 - books 2.0

I'm not interested in organizing or cataloging my books either in-house or electronically. On my FB account I have used the Visual Bookshelf but don't care enough about it to keep it updated. Sadly I don't find as much time as I had to read so spare time is used rather to read than to blog-and-share it. I am a tangible person -- I like the feel, the touch of paper, the smell of ink, and the holding of the book. I've listened to an audiobook on my iPod and enjoyed the narrator. Since then I've picked up a hardcover of a different title and enjoy imagining hearing the narrator's voice. I plan to download a number of items to listen to on my summer trip because we'll be spending a lot of time in the car. I hope they're just as enjoyable as my first iPod title was. Wish me luck.

Thing 34 - not a competition

Asked to read articles on whether librarians compete with AskA services, my thoughts are mostly in the No camp. I know some questions can be answered quickly there, but do I want someone seemingly untrained to answer questions that are *very* important to me? No. I want an answer that comes at me from all directions. I want responses to an important question answered from authoritative resources -- known, credible, and answered from someone who cares that I get the right answer. This being said, I understand how easy it is for someone to rely on an AskA service, get a quick-and-dirty response to something they've pondered. There are times and places when Google answers questions, but not always.

If a good reference librarian cannot find an answer, they'll readily recommend a department, an agency, an expert, a place, or a person who, even if they too cannot answer a query, can lead me in another direction to find the right one.

It scares me to think of all the K-12 librarians and media specialists who have been cut from schools. If someone does not give proper direction and instruction to these budding minds, will they become a generation of "google does it all?" I sincerely hope not. College and University libraries should not be the only place to have properly and adequately trained librarians working with students and those being educated. Even the college and university librarians are being re-purposed.

It may sound like I'm trying to protect my own job. Granted, I don't want to lose my job, and I do realize evolution is happening whether or not we want it to. I'm happy to learn how to do things differently and to learn new things. One of the things that makes me happiest about being a reference librarian is that I learn from people who ask me to find answers for them. It's sort of like stealing, but the information was there to be found, I just didn't know the question to ask!

Thing 33

With the prevalence of Wifi and the ease of carrying a laptop or Wifi-connectable device, the links on this travel 2.0 exercise would come in handy for a lot of people. I'm planning a driving trip this summer and have taken note of the url to search for hotspots along the way. We'll be staying in some chain hotels and probably some non-chain hotels but we're looking at this time away from work as a sereindipitous excursion. Maybe we'll want to blog on hotel experiences and maybe we'll walk away without wanting to mention details. There are a lot of travel ideas in this Thing. I'll come back to this one when our departure gets closer.

Thing 32

Do the Mashed Potato . . . Do the Twist . . . yes I like it like this!

Although I couldn't get the map with directions into the body of the blog, check out the map on the sidebar -- it's the route to get to our temporary library. Since we'll be here until summer of 2010, I'm pleased I was able to get this here. There seemed to be a significant problem getting the map into the main page. Adding the HTML to the sidebar, however, was easier. To find the directions they recommend, click on the button that says View Larger Map

This is a sweet application, and one I will suggest to DD whose planning a November wedding that will have a lot of out of town guests. If we can simplify travel for them I know they'd appreciate it.

Thing 31

In honor of my ignoring Twitter, I wrote a haiku:

Tweeting's not my style

Do you not understand this?

Twitter's not my thing.

Thing 30

I use RSS and would hesitate to winnow it down through the use of the tools suggested in this thing. If all I subscribe to would be things I want to read, why would I deliberately minimize what I get? Google Reader is my choice to manage RSS feeds to which I subscribe, and the way I've managed it is to remove those blogs or feeds that had either no action or ended up not being what I want to read.

I have faithfully read and kept current on all blogs and websites I've followed. They're the folks I enjoy reading about, their trials and travails, conquests and commitments. It's enough. Sometimes there's such a thing as information overload, and if I limit myself to these few folks, it's plenty for me!

I don't share a lot of bookmarks and don't care to tag them, and should I want to share a website with someone, I can't think of a more finicky way to do it than through Delicious. So if I'm happy with my RSS feeds, why would I want to sign up to follow Delicious? Is it the same thing, or different enough that I should check further? Hmm. Well, not today anyway.

Thing 29

Google manages to nail almost everything I use on a computer. Google News is one of my widgets (culled from other news sources, but it comes in through GNews), productivity-wise, I've used GMail and GCalendar for a couple of years, and I've recently blogged about the Desktop and Toolbar, which are part of my iGoogle setup (well, that's when I set them up).

Must say tho', Google Health, only 2 words for this: no way. I want nobody tracking what I'm looking for. It's way too Big Brotherish for my tastes!

Thing 28

I love iGoogle. Correction. I love iGoogle when my computer isn't busy. There are multiple widgets set up on my home desktop, and among these is my favorite: a clock! Trying to be a good steward of time, I keep my eye on this clock (it's a face clock, not the digital one on the bottom of the window's screen) in order to keep track of when I should be changing what I'm doing. The next favorite thing on here is a widget for weather. Although it's not always right, I can glance and see what weather my sister is having.

The photo roll isn't as enticing because instead of going only through my current personal pictures, it also includes those of blogs I follow. I don't want to see all those photos -- I want to see my favorites. If I were able to limit it to what pictures I wanted to see, I'd be much happier. The news snips ~ eh. They're not necessarily new. It's become like the newspaper has, old news, news I've already heard about, or so removed from what I care about that it's not really news then, is it?

Thing 27

Twitter. Another account (I have too many already). To answer the question"What am I doing?" I'm going to go under the premise that nobody cares, or if they did care, there'd be many other places and priorities to contact me through, so I'm not going to
a) create another account
b) worry about who might be missing me
c) worry about who I might be missing

I have one child who's on Twitter, supposedly to follow celebrities. She was disappointed to find out that whoever's Twittering or tweeting for said celebrity, is a fake.

Thing 26

I'd joined Ning as one of the first 23 things but didn't stay active. To complete this Thing I posted a picture of my cat to the Ning and tried posting the Ning badge to my blog, but somehow the code was corrupt or unevenly tagged. Since it's a matter of posting code which I've previously done, I won't try to figure out which code is unbalanced. Because it's another quasi-social networking site, if I were looking for someone in the field, I may look there, but I didn't join any groups or even pursue beginning one.



Sometimes sites are laid out compactly and manage to hide features from me. If a website or network's page changes significantly, I don't plan to invest enough time on them to make them readily updatable or find out where "that thing" went in order to update my information. If I focused on one website where activity was more my style, I'd make it more of a priority to find where "that thing" went to in order to keep it up to date.

Thing 25

While I understand the necessity of readability piece in a blog, when something is assignment-based, the practical application piece of 'readability' will be something I set aside until I need to personalize it. I try to know who my audience is and write things that may be of interest to them.

I must say that several of us have taken our Facebook accounts, Twitterized them (used our status like a Tweet), used mashups, photo manipulators, added links, videos, articles, and quizzes, many of which are in this Thing. We all seemed to recognize the "Twitterizing" of our FB status on the same day, and when we discussed it, we all agreed that it's a version of one-stop shopping. Dont'cha just love how we can verb things on the spot? ;-)

Thing 24

Although I haven't blogged a lot since completing the first 23 Things, I had changed my avatar, added a widget (quote of the day), read many other blogs (continued interest), added a few blogs that I do follow, and took a lot of time to digest details from those first 23. In my personal information, I added a picture of our library mascot, Booker instead of a picture of myself -- it was handiest.