Viva Velma

Photo Editing

2010-11-26T10:51:00.000-08:00

Okay, I don't post photos to Engaged Patrons, so I am not sure if the size is correct. Once I find out, I will re-post if necessary.

Challenge #7

2009-11-20T12:20:00.000-08:00

this challenge taught me about some very cool features in Outlook, and reminded me of others that I stopped using for a while, and have started using again.

1. Since our branch is making the move to Outlook 2007, I took a short course on managing an overflowing mailbox. this is a perpetual struggle. I will definitely use the Mailbox Cleanup feature a lot! I will also use the Find Large Messages tip.

2. I also sent an email using voting buttons. My question was "What is the biggest selling item manufactured by the Hershey Corporation?" The top vote getter was Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, just like they told us when I visited Hershey earlier this year!

Google Follow Up

2009-04-23T17:36:00.000-07:00

I know you wanted us to share heartwarming google tales, but I just gotta say, it's not all wine and roses.
In "Elsewhere, USA" a non-fiction book about changes in American society in the last 50 years, writer Dalton Conley talks about his visit to Google headquarters. This excerpt from an article in Smithsonian Magazine from an interview with Conley captures the flavor of the place:
"What did your field trip to the Google headquarters teach you?
They were really ahead of the curve in terms of making their work environment very homey. They provide everything a 1950s housewife would have provided. Do your laundry. Give you a massage. Great food for free. At first glance it seems like a very expensive strategy, but I think it’s brilliant. People don’t want to go home. There’s a volleyball court and board games around. It feels like a college campus. And Google gets more out of each worker.
You mentioned the urinals at Google.
In English or Irish pubs they pin the sports pages over men’s urinals so you can read while relieving yourself. At Google they put up coding advice. It felt a little 1984."

A New York Times July 5, 2008 front page story describes how Google doubled the cost of on site day care at their headquarters:
"Parents who had been paying $1,425 a month for infant care would see their costs rise to nearly $2,500 -- well above the market rate. For parents with toddlers and preschoolers, who were charged less, the price increases were equally eye-popping. Under the new plan, parents with two kids in Google day care would most likely see their annual day care bill grow to more than $57,000 from around $33,000."

"Google co-founder Sergey Brin said he had no sympathy for the parents, and that he was tired of ''Googlers'' who felt entitled to perks like ''bottled water and M&Ms,'' according to several people in the meeting. (A Google spokesman denies that Mr. Brin made that comment.) On Monday, Google began the first phase of its new day care plan, letting go of the outside day care firm it had been using."
Google is a company, out to make money. They would like to replace libraries with fee based access to information. We would do well to spend some of our time learning about ways to search for information that do not leave us completely dependent on one monopolistic search engine.

Challenge #5 - Newspapers Online

2009-04-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

1. I searched for "West Creek". An "all text" search gave me 7,388 hits. Many hits were from Tennessee, colorado, and New Jersey. The oldest hits go back to the mid-1980's. Limiting to lead paragraph cut my results down to over 1,000, but I still got a lot of hits from outside New Jersey. "Headline" got me down to 200 hits, 1/2 from NJ and 1/2 from Tennessee, for the most part.

2. I searched for the name "Roden Lightbody". It's a pretty unique name, so all but one of my results are from New Jersey. Next I tried "William Polhemus" and got 163 hits, with the lion's share in NJ. I guess some people in Ocean county have very unique names! Searching for "Elaine McConnell" got me 666 hits, with most from the District of Columbia. Adding the word Ocean cut out almost all of the DC results.

3. I searched for one of my favorite authors, Richard Russo. there were man, many hits becasue this is a common name, so I limited the search to the state of Maine and got much better results.

4. I got an error message when I tried this search. Perhaps this is a problem that cropped up since the Polaris migration?

5. Okay, I was able to find and send an article.

6. Most of the searches that come to mind are rather sad - obituaries are most frequently requested. Next, I would have to say is car accidents and third, crimes.

Challenge #4 - Google

2009-04-09T08:59:00.000-07:00

From NYT article, I didn't know about flu Trends and Google Sets.

1. Everyday Essentials - I searched for weather in Cooperstown, NY, since I am going there next week. I got a 10 day forecast.
Local Search - tried the real estate listings, results depend on size of community I searched. My home town just sent me to realtor web sites. A search of "Chicago" got me the "Go" button described in the instructions, but there were too many hits to process. Fortunately, they give you several ways to refine and narrow the search.
Reference Tools - I tried earthquakes since there was a recent quake in Italy. the US Geological Survey did have some information.
Query Refinements - I tried Fill in the Blank - Tiger woods won* and got a nice listing of all the major tournaments he has won.Search by Number - I tried the area code search.
Choosing Keywords - I tried the dictionary definitions search
Trip Planning - I used the map search

2. I searched "breast cancer"- over 48 million hits. First results were news headlines, two ads with .org and .edu extensions.

:gov - 49,000 hits. First hit was rather random - a press release about some initiative started by Gov Blagojevich! Maybe because I put the phrase in quotes? Tried without quotes - over 8 million hits, and they look more like what I would expect.

:edu, without quotes - 136,000,000 hits - got results all over the map - .org, news headlines, .gov

3. The search of the NJ website timed out on me, while the Google search displayed results immediately.

4. It looks to me like the web search yields more information that focuses on Oona, while the book search focuses more on Eugene.

5. I added the Google blog feed to my page.

6. I found this interesting post that shows that you can now limit image searches by color.

Challenge #3 GVRL

2009-02-13T12:16:00.000-08:00

Part 1. I was curious, so I looked at the oldest title in the GVRL collection - The International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences from 1968. On the public catalog, I found I could actually drill down to an actual encyclopedia entry - very cool! I looked at the entry for "Aesthetics". I tried a General Keyword Search for the word "Aesthetics" and the Gale Reference did not come up. I wonder if this only works for Tables of contents, not encyclopedic formats. It's too bad that the Print and download links are visible on the public catalogs inside the library. These are misleading. Customers do not understand why they can do things on some computers and not on others. IMHO, they should be able to do everything on every computer, with the exception of scanning. I know I am probably in the minority on this, but there you go!

When I browsed the title list from the website, I found that there is indeed a new edition of The International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences that was just published in 2008. I wonder why they haven't deleted, (or "weeded" if you will) the older edition. I guess some challenges never really go away!

Part 2. I sent the email and printed the confirmation if it is needed. That is a nice feature!

Part 3. Citation in MLA format was sent via email.

Part 4. This did not work for the 1968 edition, but did for the 2008 edition. Nice feature!

Part 5. I looked at the review for the movie "inside Moves" and both are identical as far as I can tell.

I hope this fulfills the requirement for this challenge.

Challenge #2: digital Projector & Laptop Presentation

2008-11-19T11:56:00.000-08:00

I presented a Powerpoint slide show to my branch staff at a monthly meeting. The presentation was created as part of a practicum for the Certified Public Manager class I am taking. The topic was the culture of the staff at my branch. The set up and presentation went smoothly. The only glitch really was that I projected the presentation on a screen. Our Friends donated a beautiful plasma screen television, but the connector that was installed does not match the cables for our laptop or digital projector. The Technology Department is working with me to find an adapter that will make evrything sync up.

I also used Google Documents to create my presentation, which is something I learned about when I did the previous WebThings Challenge. Woo hoo!

Listen NJ

2008-10-22T16:03:00.000-07:00

Aargh! this task was much more challenging than I anticipated. First, ListenNJ was difficult to find from the Library home page. I had to go to the alphabetical list of databases on the Research & Information page to find it. I did not see any link to it on the home page, nor was it one of the "Quick Links". How are people going to find out about this? And then find it? Sure, it's great once you know about it. Anyone can make Listen NJ a Favorite on their home computer. But it feels like a service that is only for those "in the know".

Then, I had to find a title that looked interesting to me. This took a while. As a user, I was confused by the array of downloadable formats available. I was not sure which was the one I needed! Consulting the Sansa Clip box helped. I thought I would browse the Teen Fiction titles, hoping to find some recent fiction, but most of the available titles were classics. This could be a turnoff to teens looking for contemporary fiction.

So, I finally settled on a title. When I tried to download it, I got error messages saying the security on the computer prevented this action. (Yes, I was on a PC Plus machine.) I had to reboot the machine and start over again.

So I got to where I needed to be and then had to download the OverDrive software. That took a few minutes, but it was not too bad. Okay - ready to download, right? No, I still could not download an OverDrive WMA file. Security message again. So I selected an MP3 title. Success!

Alas, it took 1 hour just to download the entire audio book to the OverDrive program.

Total time spent on this task - 2 hours! I consider myself fairly competent, technology-wise. And I had played around with ListenNJ before.

So I am not sure where things went wrong. I think the security settings on our branch PC Plus machine need to be tweaked before this is offered as a viable option for customers to use for downloading audio books.

New Challenges

2008-10-15T10:37:00.000-07:00

It looks like I will be using this blog to track my progress on a new set of Web 2.0 challenges. Some will be a review, but others will be new to me. I can't wait to get started!!

Thing #23: That's a Wrap!

2008-05-15T11:04:00.000-07:00

My overall impression is that the Web 2.0 Challenge was a really good motivator for me to try some things I had previously been hesitant to approach. I also enjoyed the sheer variety of blogs created by OCL staff and I hope people keep on bloggin'.

The favorite thing I learned about is probable wikis. They had seemed so intimidating to me before. Now I really want to use one for something in the near future. (More on that below!)

What I liked least was Technorati, because I am not immersed in blogging culture and not so invested in blogging either. It's not a meaningful tool for me.

What areas of 2.o should the library get more involved in? I propose that OceanNet become a wiki! If more staff could update the information it would be kept more up to date. Just imagine, each branch having their own page to share photos of recent programs, instead of having to see the same old links from Ripple Effect every day because Technology staff are stretched to the limit.

I would love it if we could offer feeds of new acquisitions in different subjects to library customers. Wouldn't it be cool to get an email once a month with the newly acquired Italian cookbooks listed for me?

I also expect that more and more webapps will be used by systemwide committees as well.

I have not shared much with my family. They seem to still be comfortable with email. It's the most exciting thing for them. We also use a site that has been around for a long time, called MyFamily, which actually started doing what MySpace does a long time ago!

All in all, this was a cool exercise. I have one more suggestion. I have not been able to figure out who's who among staff bloggers. How about a lunchtime meet and greet of willing bloggers at staff Development Day? We could wear nametags with the names of our blogs on them!

Thank you to the hardworking committee who put this challenge together. I know it was a lot of work, and a lot of e-mail. you did a stellar job!

Thing #22: Listen NJ

2008-05-14T17:15:00.000-07:00

I have an ipod, but so far I don't think it's usable on Listen NJ (although I read somewhere that that might change soon. Of course, now I can't find the article!!!) . I burned "On the Road" to a CD. I didn't like the fact that there were no tracks. It was hard to pick up where I left off. Also, I don't understand why you cannot return something before its "due date". This makes items unavailable for longer than they need to be. The overall look and feel of the site is very clean and user-friendly.

Thing #21: Podcasts

2008-05-14T11:33:00.000-07:00

I played around with podcast.com and found a series of lectures on autism from the UC Davis MIND (Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders) Institute. I think this is just a great tool for researchers who can't afford to go to conferences. I hope that more colleges do this kind of thing. It could enhance education and expose people to lots of ideas.

Frustrating note: I had no problem viewing a lecture from my office computer. But now, as I sit at the Reference Desk, I am running into all sorts of difficulties downloading and viewing. So I went to the UC Davis MIND Institute website to find the podcasts. You can find the lecture series I viewed here.

The one I watched is called:

Tony Charman, Ph.D. - "Looking for Subgroups Amongst Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders"

Thing 20: YouTube

2008-05-10T11:29:00.000-07:00

I keep tripping over my expectation that the Internet has all the information known to humans. It simply does not. I am currently reading Bella Abzug: How One Tough Broad... It's a hybrid biography/oral history of Bella Abzug and her role in the feminist movement in the early 1970's. I have dim memories of Bella - she wore hats all the time and she spoke with a pronounced New York accent. I thought it would be cool to see Bella in action in her prime. So I trotted over to YouTube and found: next to nothing. There's a snippet of her in a documentary about breast cancer, but it's very brief and she looked very old and tired. It was not exactly the inspiring clip I was looking for. I did find the following clip of Rosie O'Donnell giving the Bella book to a girl at some conference:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDtjgLg-9JM

At least SHE remembers Bella.

I trotted over to digital overlords Google Video and found this clip:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1858775945321622894&q=%22Bella+Abzug%22&ei=ae4lSL65BpLw-gHntujmCQ

But could not get it to load.

So this is what YouTube, and the Internet, is not so good at - anything that happened prior to 1990. Are events that occurred prior to the Internet age going to be lost to the masses, like the contents of the Alexandria Library? Sometimes I wonder if this might be true.

PS- I tried to embed the video but cannot figure out how to paste the entire piece of code into my post. If anyone could help me with that, I would sure appreciate it.

Thing #19: Web 2.0 Awards

2008-04-30T16:12:00.000-07:00

I checked out several award winners. I think I could use and enjoy Yelp (Best in City Guides & Reviews). It seems like a good place to get insider information on different locations - where to eat, where to shop, where to catch the best live music. Unfortunately, it will only work for major cities. And it is subject to shills disguised as regular users (I know there is a cool term for this but I can't remember it). Again, if enough people commit to it, the wisdom of the crowd will prevail. But there are lots of services out there like this one - what makes this the one that will stand the test of time?

Honorable Mention: I loved Guess the Google! That is too much fun. So random and addictive.

Thing #18: Web Apps

2008-04-30T16:06:00.000-07:00

I have used these before in a very limited way. Web apps would be helpful when you need to collect information from people spread out over a distance. For example, the Teen Librarians have used it to order different types of fliers and brochures for a summer program. A collaborative spreadsheet made it easy for the person gathering the information to collect it from 20 different people. Instead of waiting for a response from each person and copying and pasting the information into a spreadsheet, each responder enters the information. This has the added benefit of helping the collector know who has not responded yet. It is much more efficient!

Thing #17: Playing in the Sandbox

2008-04-30T15:52:00.000-07:00

I added a few songs to the favorite CDs request, and also added my blog to the sandbox. I found the experience to be easier than I expected. I could see this as being very useful for collaborative efforts, like committee work. Or it could be used to revise a policy manual. I was just on a committee revising a communication plan, and it would have been interesting to have used a wiki instead of endlessly exchanging emails. I wonder if there is any way to track accountability. I assume that there is a way for administrators to track who made what change. That could be necessary to know who to ask for clarification (or, sad to say, in the case of Wikipedia, who to block from making any more edits.)

Thing #16: Wading Into Wikis

2008-04-24T08:12:00.000-07:00

My first thought on wikis is that there has to be some "tipping point" of participation that will guarantee fact checking and accuracy. If too few people participate, the wiki is subject to opinion and paranoia. If enough people commit to the wiki, it can work. But they are mostly volunteers. What about the long haul?

So, I watched the Common Craft video and can see how wikis are more than a reference source. Their utility as a communication and collaboration tool is really exciting. Just today I found myself on a merry-go-round of email messages about something at work. A wiki would have made the process flow much more efficiently.

I was a little disappointed by the Library Best Practicies wiki. I am currently taking the Certified Public Manager Levels IV, V, and VI course, so I gravitated toward the management subject areas and did not find much content. It felt like false advertising. The wiki seemed to be saying "Look here for some great information" but when I clicked on the topics, it was more of a "If we build it, they will come" scenario. What if nobody shows up? There is no guarantee that anyone is looking out for comprehensiveness.

A cool wiki I have seen:

Flu wiki - This one started up back when the possibility of a global flu pandemic became big news. I see it has not been updated in 3 months. That's slightly alarming.

Thing 15: The 2.0 Thing

2008-04-23T15:32:00.000-07:00

The things about 2.0 that I like:
*User driven content
*Customizing ability
*Interactive
*Social

It's exciting and fun. Really!

Challenges:
*Infrastructure - that cool Google map mashup loses its effectiveness if your Internet connection is so slow that it takes 5 minutes to load
*Digital Divide - users who do not have computers at home do not have hours to spend on the Internet playing with the latest 2.0 widget - they need what they need now, not for fun, but for survival. They do not have the luxury of play. Many of the customization and convenience aspects of 2.0 mean nothing to them. All they know is that they have to use the Internet to apply for a job. The trip to the store where they want to work now involves an additional trip to the library to use technology unfamiliar to them.
*Literacy - all of this 2.0 stuff is useless to the person who cannot read.
*Perpetual beta is not a working environment compatible with government bureaucracy

Please stop telling me my profession is close to disaster if I do not pay heed to 2.0. I am trying to learn. My head is not stuck in the sand. I am living and working in a real place with actual living breathing customers who need help right now. Thank you!

Thing #14 is Technorati

2008-04-21T06:40:00.000-07:00

My first reaction is that it seems like a whole lot of noise being made by just a handful of people. The top result for the Learning 2.0 search in the Blogs section has 102 fans. The second top blog has 12 fans. Hardly a large slice of the blogosphere. It strikes me as a cliquey club that those "in the know" probably obsess over. I thought at first that this site might use some kind of popularity indicator like Google uses PageRank. But it looks like you only get considered on Technorati if you add their html code to EACH POST. Is it me, or does that seem like a lot of bother just to stroke my own ego? Or maybe it leads to more readers. I don't know. I guess I will have to try it on my own blogs. At least delicious seems to be more democratic and a more accurate reflection of what people are reading and caring about on the blogosphere.

Thing #13 Del.icio.us is Add.dict.ive

2008-04-17T17:43:00.000-07:00

Jill got me into delicious about 5 months ago. My links are at:

http://del.icio.us/chrodas

At first I did not see the practical use for it, but now I find it to be addictive. I am one of those people who loves to save newspaper and magazine clippings of interesting articles on all kinds of topics. Now I can do this virtually, conveniently, and in an orderly fashion with del.icio.us. So far, I am using it for quick and easy access to the ALA Great Stories Club page, which is hard to find on their web site. I am also using it for lots of library related topics. And since I am currently crazy about soup, I have bookmarked all kinds of soup recipe sites. I love how del.icio.us is portable and can be accessed anywhere I go. I am just getting into the social aspect. I used to browse a site called Blogdex, which was run by somebody at MIT. It employed some sort of algorithm to determine the most popular blog posts on the Internet. Now I can see what the current zeitgeist is by checking out the most popular sites - which means the most frequently tagged sites - on del.icio.us. It's fascinating. I also stumbled on a feminist's bookmarks, and have learned a lot about current women's issues from trolling her faves. It's also a great way to keep up with co-workers and colleagues who I do not see every day. And it's so exciting when someone sends me a link. It means they were thinking of me and knew what interested me. So so cool!

My one concern is for the potential ephemerousness (is that even a word?ephemeralness?) of the Internet. I love saving and tagging interesting news articles, but I do not think they will last too long. They get pulled by Yahoo and other news services in a relatively short amount of time. I guess time will tell if tagging and social bookmarking affect the actions of these news wires.

Worldcat

2008-04-08T11:38:00.000-07:00

I have used Worldcat to look up items here at the branch. My biggest beef with it is that although it looks like a union catalog, it is not necessarily comprehensive. There has been commentary on the blogosphere about Worldcat and its advantages and drawbacks. This post from Jessamyn is a good place to get the gist of some of it. Basically, it SEEMS authoritative. It seems to say that if it's not listed here, you will have to buy it (and here's the link to Amazon to do so - does anyone besides me have a problem with that? Why not encourage Interlibrary Loan? Is this ultimately discouraging the use of public libraries by saying "go buy it"? OCLC is a company after all, right? It's not a library, and it does not operate as a library.) But what Jessamyn is saying is that a lot of smaller and/or rural libararies may not have their holdings listed there.

AND I often wonder how current the information in Worldcat is. If anyone can point me to the place where I can find this out, please let me know.

NetLibrary

2008-04-08T10:48:00.000-07:00

I have not used NetLibrary in quite a while, so this exercise was a good refresher. I like that it displays a summary for each title. That could help me to decide whether or not I want to view the book. I tried a "for Dummies" search and sorted the results to see newest publication first. The most recent "--for Dummies" title is copyright 2006. That doesn't seem very up to date at all. So that's a little disappointing. My results also included books that are not in the "--for Dummies" series. It looks like, although I chose to do a title search, netLibrary also searches the descriptions. That seems a little strange.

When I choose to view all of the e-books available via OCL, I see that about 3,500 titles are available. The most recent publication date is 2007 - not very current.

I like the fact that you don't need to check books out anymore to view them. Also, the ability to add titles to my own Favorites is a plus. I can also add notes! These are very nice features. I printed 8 or 9 pages from the book I viewed without any trouble as well.

On the whole, I have found this product has improved since the last time I tried it. I still found online viewing to be somewhat disjointed. It just doesn't feel like book reading. The information seems to have less weight and depth somehow. It lacks some elemental sensory experience that I associate with reading a book.

Library Thing

2008-04-06T13:09:00.000-07:00

As is evident from my Sidebar, I have created a LibraryThing account. I am using it to keep a running list of the books I read in 2007 and am reading in 2008. It was very easy to set up. I like the display of information. It is very intuitive and visually interesting. Easy access to similar title recommendations has great reader's advisory potential. I cold see spending a lot of time on this site. It is a book lover's paradise! My titles do not directly match anyone else. My kidlit and teen titles match other teen librarians. But the adult stuff I read is all over the map.

The Techno Sweat Shop

2008-04-06T10:38:00.000-07:00

For Thing #10 in the OCL Web Challenge, there's a front page article by Matt Richtel in today's New York Times about the stressful life of bloggers who get paid by the post. It's currently the most blogged article on the New York Times web site and the most e-mailed article in the Technology section. Richtel writes of three well known bloggers who have recently had major heart attacks. Two, aged 60 and 50, died. The third, 41 years old, survived his coronary (so far). These bloggers worked in the highly competitive technology blogging world, which requires 24 hour committment. Richtel writes,

"To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style. "

Being plugged into the world via the Internet means that there is literally an endless stream of data to view, process and communicate about. There is no natural filter or brake mechanism. How many of us have gone online just to do one little thing and looked up 2 hours later, wondering where the time went? Combine this aspect of the Web with a competitive, capitalist economy and you've got a store where the doors never close. We are Open All Night. To turn off may be interpreted as lazy, and, even worse, it means you are out of the loop. You are missing out on the next big thing that everyone is talking about. How are we going to manage this particular technological challenge? I can foresee Computer Turnoff Weeks in our future.

Thing #9

2008-03-29T11:56:00.000-07:00

Spring Break!! I'm glad I have a little time to catch up because Thing #9, "Finding Feeds" can be time consuming. I find myself wandering to all sorts of places, then spending lots of time editing my Bloglines feeds.

My first exploration was with Topix. I think I only skimmed the surface of this vast tool. I really like the site map, which breaks down all of the news feeds by category. I added a few on subjects I like to follow. Then I also created a feed for the search phrase "Ocean County Library". This site seems like is could replace the Yahoo and Google News Alerts that send emails with links to recent articles on keywords that the users choose to your Inbox. I'll keep both for a while and see which method of delivery I like better.

Then I tried the Bloglines Feed Search. Way, way cool! Via Bloglines, I subscribed to another Topix feed that hadn't been on their Site Map, and I found a Library Journal news feed. I searched the feeds with the phrase "Ocean County Library" and discovered that OCL's Going Green Committee has started a blog. Just typing the word "Library" in the Feeds Search got me over 39,000 hits. I wonder if that means that a lot of librarians out there are blogging like mad? Wow, Bloglines also tells you how many subscribers each feed has so you can see which are the most popular. I could spend all day browsing through these feeds.

The bottom line, to me, is that there are an endless number of feeds out there, depending on where your interests lie. Used wisely, feeds can be a great way to sculpt your blog reading habits according to your interests. But the vastness of the blogosphere and its seeming ability to endlessly expand mean there is not enough time to explore all of its delights!

I hope this post fulfills the requirements of Thing #9.

Feed Me

2008-03-26T08:03:00.000-07:00

This post is designed to cover Thing 8 of the OCL Web Challenge. I have been a fan of feeds for going on three years now. Hard to believe! I got a Bloglines account after hearing Jessamyn West of Librarian.net talk about them at the April 2005 New Jersey Library Association Conference. She planted the seeds of the web challenge idea, telling librarians to get out there and try these cool new Web 2.0 widgets.

Like many of these Web 2.0 tools, Bloglines is addictive. It's an easy way to keep track of favorite and inconsistent bloggers. I have divided my many feeds into different categories, including: News, Libraries, Books, Health & Nutrition, Hip Moms, Technology, and the Brain. Some of my favorite News feeds are: Yahoo Most Viewed, The Daily Nightly, and Slate. I also think it is a legitimate way to keep up with trends in the library profession. I think it would be great if OCL could add catalog feeds listing new acquisitions in a given subject. I would sure love to receive a feed listing newly purchased books on autism spectrum disorders, or Asperger's Syndrome. Wouldn't it be cool to be one of the first to find out about the latest cookbooks purchased by the library?

For this web challenge, I've added The Asbury Park Press news feed for Ocean County and an interesting blog on the changing job market from the New York Times called Shifting Careers . I also subscribed to the feed for my branch's events, as well as the OCL Web Challenge feed. (I already subscribe to Unshelved). Bloglines is a great tool - simple and intuitive.

What Book Is It?

2008-03-19T12:46:00.000-07:00

This is the photo I scanned and sent via email to the OCLWebthings Challenge. Can you guess what book it is from? First to post the correct answer gets a free something that I picked up at ALA MidWinter in Philadelphia and hauled back with me on the Magic OCL Bus.
Soo..Flickr - photosharing - how to use at work? I think it would be very cool to scan and post images from old and out of print local history books online, making sure to tag the heck out of them. what a great service for people who are doing local history research! I think the Web 2.o aspects of Flickr, the way a group of people can pool their knowledge of something, could be used to maximum advantage in gathering local history information.

Photos I have Taken

2008-03-18T13:43:00.001-07:00

This is a series of photos I took of a Banned Book Week display here at the Stafford Branch. It was Sue G's idea to wrap the books in brown paper. Eye catching!

Not That TR

2008-03-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

I am playing with Flickr and trying to learn more about it. I wanted to share this:

The Library of Congress is posting photographs from its extensive collections on Flickr. You can see what they have posted so far here. This is so neat! I have subscribed to their photostream on Bloglines, so I can see what they add as soon as they add it. Unfortunately, postings have been spotty.

It's also interesting to read the comments that other users add. Go, LOC! This photo also has notes (I think they were added by some other Flickr user.) If you move your mouse over one of the squares on the photo, you can read more information someone has posted. (You have to do this on the Flickr page.)

This photograph is presumably Theodore Roosevelt (that TR, not Toms River) in Perth Amboy, New Jersey.

Velma Trivia

2008-03-14T06:49:00.000-07:00

As Velma's Wikipedia article explains, Velma's last name is Dinkley. And, former "Facts of Life" star Mindy Cohn has voiced Velma in a recent incarnation of the show.

Seven and a Half Habits

2008-03-09T11:29:00.000-07:00

After viewing the 7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners I would say the easiest habits for me are Play and Create a Learning Toolbox. I like finding and exploring fun, interactive (free) sites on the Internet. It's kind of exciting to customize a site and make it purely my own, and to discover other people out there with similar interests.

The hardest habits for me are setting goals and viewing problems as challenges. To set goals, you have to know where you want to go. I have been struggling with this issue my whole life. I envy those people who knew from a young age exactly what they wanted to do. That has never been the case with me.

Regarding problems, I would say that I get frustrated quickly for several reasons, but the primary one would be realizing that conditions beyond my control are contributing to a problem.

Eyes on the Prize

2008-03-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

I'll admit it it. I want the prize. Dangle a free gadget before me and I'll try anything! Don't believe me? I have subscribed to the Just Free Stuff newsletter for YEARS! If it's free I'll take it! So MPOW wants to give me something free for learning more about Web 2.0? I'm all there, baby! Bring on the free!