Cortona Tuscany seen from the air.

Mushroom Risotto

Thing #15

It happens I did this thing last. And it seems a suitable way to end.Still have to post some concluding remarks for Thing 23.

Exciting things are happening in the world of librarianship. I appreciated this article by librarian Michael Stephens:

http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/3.htm

I'm glad to see that our own library services are trying to keep up with or stay ahead of this fast-moving technological evolution. Ask Us now! virtual reference service is an example of being where the customer is. They even have a MySpace presence. We have email reference service as well.

Allowing the customer to link from our catalog to other libraries' catalogs is wonderful.

Keep it going, BCPL!

LOOG

Thing #21 Podcasts

I decided to go to www.wypr.org to listen to a podcast of the Marc Steiner Show. Cool! and you can do other things on the computer while you listen. I will use this!

Here's a link to a Maryland Morning podcast about banjos. Very interesting.
http://www.wypr.org/MD_MORNING.html

LOOG

Thing #21 Podcasts

The initial turorial was fine, except that when I chose a podcast to watch, it took so long to download I got bored and quit.

I chose Yahoo podcasts and chose travel Italy. It loaded right away. But that was only audio.

So, apparently, the video takes ages to load.

LOOG

Thing #11Library Thing

Cataloged some of my favorite books at Library Thing.

http://www.librarything.com/whatnow Login name Librarianonthego, password blogstudent

Thing #10 Image Generators

Obviously I studied the stuff about image generators or I wouldn't have been able to create the avatar that's on my blog.

URL:Watched Second Life intro and There intro.Created an avatar in Yahoo Avatars. Yahoo id is trattoir, password is blogstudent. Added avatar to my blog.

Am I sounding a little impatient? I am. I just want to be finished!

LOOG

Thing #9-Also found!

Registered for Merlin with user name Librarian on the go and email baths@bcpl.net. Watched overview show.

Thing #8 Found!

I registered with baths@bcpl.net, password blogstudent. I subscribed to several feeds & read them.

LOOG

ARRGGH!

I know I did something with Things 7-10 and 12, but I don't see any posts here. I was probably in the middle of them and was interrupted.

I remember signing up for RSS feeds and reading some library literature. I even wrote a comment about some articles. Where are they??

Just when I was beginning to think I'm almost through, here I am having to backtrack. Did a Thing lead me to set up an account somewhere and the evidence is within that site?

I may not finish!

LOOG

Thing #7 Something interesting this week

Photobucket.com
Today, a young staff member introduced me to photobuket.com. She used it to help a customer who was trying to re-size a photo he received in his email.

Photobucket looks as though it has the features of many photo sites, providing storage, sharing, collaging, files of pictures to choose from, etc. It looks a little "edgier" than Flickr or Snapfish. There's lots of advertising, contests, and a flashy Hollywood aspect to it.

Think I'll stick with my Flickr account.

You never know what resources and skills the folks surrounding you have. Turns out Tiffany is also certified in MS Word and is expert at Powerpoint. look out Tiffany-I'll be coming to your for help!

LOOG

Thing #4

done.

Thing 5 & 6 Flickr

Catching up. Hadn't posted for #5&6. Yes, I have a Flickr account and have used it to post and share pictures.

Mashups look amazingly helpful for so many settings, but the video was pretty much over my head. Still, I can see lots of applications. for instance, my husband tunes pianos. I can imagine a map showing locations of clients' homes. You could click on them and get a detailed map to their house with driving directions. You could have information about their pianos as another layer. Another feature might be dates and times of appointments. I might help you plan the appointments more efficiently.

LOOG

Thing #20 You Tube-AARRGGH!

I found it VERY difficult to upload a video to my blog. At first, I didn't know you had to open a UTUBE account to download a video. So after much difficulty with login names, I finally did.

Then I couldn't post. Nothing in the help menu on Blogger or Utube gave me enough to get me through it. I asked help from a staff member who had done it twice. We couldn't do it. She found a tip sheet she got at a catch-up session. Even then, it took us 15 more minutes to get it done. Something wasn't quite right on the tip sheet.

So, that was all pretty frustrating and took a lot of time. Now that I've done it once, I found I was able to do it again without as much hassle. But how can I include it in a posting, rather than have the video appear on the front page of my blog?

I did find a risotto cooking lesson to post. I never thought to use UTUBE for anything useful, having only seen humorous things on it. I shall pass this idea on to my chef!


LOOG

Thing # 17-Sandbox

OK, I think I got that right. I created "What's to eat at my house" and posted my blog on the list.

LOOG

Thing #2-Lifelong Learning

OK. OK. I was one of the students who didn't blog #2. I wasn't into tracking my progress on my blog at that time, and forgot to go back and do it.

Easiest of the 7 1/2 habits of lifelong learners: Accept responsibility for my learning. I've done this many times. Taught myself to play a little guitar, speak a little Spanish, speak a little Italian, learn floral arranging, learn a little sign language. I think about what I want to know and find the resources and gather the tools. No problem.

Most difficult habit: Play. I get all serious about what I want to accomplish, self-concious if I don't do well or it takes longer than I think it should, then I don't have fun. Got to work on that!

LOOG

Photobucket.com

Today, a young staff member introduced me to photobuket.com. She used it to help a customer who was trying to re-size a photo he received in his email.

Photobucket looks as though it has the features of many photo sites, providing storage, sharing, collaging, files of pictures to choose from, etc. It looks a little "edgier" than Flickr or Snapfish. There's lots of advertising, contests, and a flashy Hollywood aspect to it.

Think I'll stick with my Flickr account.

You never know what resources and skills the folks surrounding you have. Turns out Tiffany is also certified in MS Word and is expert at Powerpoint. look out Tiffany-I'll be coming to your for help!

LOOG

Thing #23-Finished! And a few thoughts

Found rather interesting: Most of the things.. It's been worth it to heighten my awareness of the continuously changing world of technology. If a customer asks me about Delicious, I can at least say, yes, I've heard of that.

Think I may use: Flickr to share my digital photos, Google documents to work on and share documents with others at home and at work, Delicious to manage my favorites from any computer, Library Thing to keep track of my reading. Not bad, huh?

Didn't care for: constantly setting up and keeping track of accounts and passwords.

I couldn't use the same login name all the time because some site required a number in the name and some didn't. If I had known this at the outset, I probably would have created a login name with a number in it and stuck with that throughout the 23 Things. Wish I had known.

Confession: I just wanted to get through it did a minimal amount of work on most.

I used the additional time we were given to delve a little more deeply.

Obstacles to delving more deeply: I'm in charge of the collection at my library and the process of packing up tens of thousands of items, emptying and shifting around offices, and planning for re-opening has been time-consuming and distracting. We are overstaffed at our branch because we're operating out of a mini library, so staff have been assigned to other libraries and encouraged to take vacations. Working on 23 Things was not what I wanted to do on vacation!

Thanks, Ellen, Jim & whoever else worked on 23 things, for all your efforts!

Susan, the Librarian on the Go

Thing #22 Downloadable books

OK, I know I'm jumping around the "things", doing them out of order sometimes. But sometimes I have just a couple minutes and look through the "things" to see what's easy.

I've already downloaded books to my home computer. Thank goodness I have cable Internet. It would be impossible at work, it's so slow. But I don't like reading books on a computer. don't even like long emails.

I knew about Project Gutenberg, but took another look. Wow! That's easy. And the poem, "The Raven",inFrench, is even gloomier than in English.

Just trying to slog through all 23 Things.

LOOG

Thing #18 Google Docs

Another "thing" I can actually use! If only I can get my sister-in-law and daughter to give it a try.

Librarian on the Go does stay home for holidays most of the time. This year we're having an awful time figuring out how to get together for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I've created a Google docs spreadsheet with names of the families and individuals and possible dates. I'll share it with them and ask them to mark the dates they're available.

Easier than going back and forth with multiple emails-I think! Well, we'll see. thanks, Google.

LOOG

Thing # 13 and 19 Success with Delicious!

Cool! I'm registered and have begun to bookmark and tag. It was actually reading about the award winners on Web 2.0 that lead me to the first site to mark for Delicious. The site checks airfares and advises you when to buy. Librarians on the Go LOVE that kind of thing.

I've installed Delicious icons on my home computer. Now I can access my favorites wherever I go! I've tagged enough sites that I'm learning more about using the tags, bundling, etc.

LOOG

Thing 14 Technorati and tags

Search Technorati using tags for Italy and Sicily (our next trip, hopefully!). It was just ok.

There were a lot of documents to go thru. I used the advance search with multiple tags, but I didn't get as good results as I would with Google.

I'll try again another time.

LOOG

Thing 13 AARRGGH!

I listened to the Delicious podcast. I tried to register for Delicious. And tried and tried. It wouldn't accept any of the 5 passwords I tried. I folowed the instructions, using at least 6 letters, using one number or symbol, and not using any part of my user name.

I give up for now.

LOOG

Cleaning up my blog postings

I guess I didn't really understand at the outset of this "23 Things", that I should have been recording in my postings which "Thing" I was on. At the catch-up session, I was able to add this info. Now that I'm in the habit, I'll continue-promise!

LOOG

Thing #11 Library Thing-

Well, that wasn't too bad. I inserted a few title, wrote one review, and did a search to learn how it worked. Pretty easy. I've always kept a list of my adult reader for reader's advisory purposes. This might be a better way to organize it. I would need to use tags.

OK. On to the next "thing"!

LOOG

Librarian on the Go is just back from a few days in beautiful Brockport, NY. It's on the Erie Canal and has a charming small town atmosphere. Visit their home page at:

http://www.brockportny.org

Took a side trip to Niagara-on-the-Lake, minutes from Niagara Falls. What a fabulous and beautiful little village! The most amazing flowers everywhere and a part that goes right down to Lake Ontario.

Time to Catch Up!

Life at my library has been wild and crazy lately. We packed up most of our 63,000 items and moved to the smaller wing of the library. It's been hard work and pretty crazy. Not much time to think about "23 things", especially since I'm in charge of the collection and had 63 other things to think about.

The mini is quiet and doesn't require a lot of staffing, so now there's time to catch up on my 23 Things. In fact, next week I'm going to spend 2 hours at a special session where I can concentrate on the activities and get help if I need it.

It's been sort of interesting, but I'll be glad when it's over.

You know those bumper sitckers-"I'd rather be..."? I'd rather be planning my next vacation!

LOOG

Thing # 16 Wiki versus blog?

At wetpaint.com, I created a private wiki for my husband's professional organization. It was very easy to do. But I got to thinking that the group would be better served by a blog. I had an interesting conversation with a knowledgable staff member, who concurred. I'll delete the wiki after I show it off to my husband. Lots of fabulous cyber tools out there, but which to use for which purpose should be given serious consideration.

LOOG

Thing # 12 Here's a link to my Rollyo...

Forgot to post a link to my Rollyo for Home Care & Decor.

http://www.rollyo.com/explore.html?rollterm=Home+care+%26+decor

LOOG

Thing # 12 Thumbs up for Rollyo!

Now, this I like!

There are many sites I tend to search over and over for certain topics. I've created a Rollyo account that allows me to search within those sites, and not others.

My first Rollyo is Home Care & Decor. When I search for "decks", the search retuns hits from my favorite URLs I've listed for that topic. Sweet!

My second one is for mystery fiction. My personal learning plan is to expand my mystery reader's advisory skills. I've marked a few sites to help me with this.

Here's a link to my Rollyos:
http://www.rollyo.com/trattoir/

I think I'll set up Rollyos for travel & Italian cooking & wine.

LOOG

Thing # 9 The Blog Police are watching!

Found this doing thing #9 after registering for Merlin.

"12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know" can be viewed at www.avivadirectory.com/blogger-law. There are laws! Who knew?

LOOG

Thing #10 Gizmoz avatars-Your real face!

Anyone tried http://www.gizmoz.com/? I read about it in the July 2007 issue of School Library Journal. It allows you you download a real photo of your face and put it on an avatar that's 3-D and animated. Looks like fun. Think I'll give it a try.

Spent last evening watching "Visions of Italy-Sicily", a narrated, helicopter-eye view of Sicily. Fabulous! What a rich history, with input from Greeks, Normans, Africans. Perhaps we can combine a trip there with our Southern Italy trip.

Librarian on the Go

week #10 Avatars

Thanks to Kate for suggesting Yahoo Avatars. It was pretty easy to use. What I want to know is-where are the realistic avatars? Where are the well-rounded middle-age women with thinning hair? There's probably some program out there that allows you to create just about any type of person you'd like. Is there a site called, "Avatars you can relate to"?

Librarian on the Go

My avatar

Sick of creating accounts!

This creating new accounts to do all this learning is really wearing thin. I'm now tracking the log in names and passwords in my 23 things Tracking log and that helps. But man, this is getting annoying!

Sigh!

Thing #8 Does Self-Checkout Make Libraries Less Friendly?

I agree with this article! From the Seattlest website. What do you think?
Librarian on the Go


About Seattlest
Seattlest is a website about Seattle. More
July 30, 2007
Does Self-Checkout Make Libraries Less Friendly?

Back when Seattlest lived in Wallingford, we went to the Fremont branch of the library once a week. We got to know the staff there very well -- hi, Carl! Hi, Joan! Hi, Betty! We served as one of two citizens on the committee that picked the architectural firm that handled the branch's remodel.
While Fremont was closed for construction, we switched our regular patronage to the University branch. It's bigger than Fremont, and worked fine, but we never really got to know the staff there.
Before the Fremont branch reopened, we moved to Wedgwood and started using the North East Branch as our regular library. North East, so we've heard, is the busiest branch in the system. And we liked it fine -- plenty of hubbub -- but again, we never got to know the staff. We recognized them, and when we spoke to them they were friendly, but none of them seemed to remember us.
And now we're at Rainier Beach, a branch that (small exceptions aside) feels warmer than any branch we've used since Fremont. But even here, we don't feel as connected to the staff. We come in, get our books, help Little Miss Seattlest explore the kids' section, and leave.
Perhaps this will change over time. Perhaps we have changed, and become less friendly. Perhaps Fremont was an exceptional branch.
But we have a theory: self-checkout has made the libraries less friendly.
Our evidence: right around the time we switched to the University branch, self-checkout appeared in the library. There were hitches -- we had a particularly memorable experience where it took us 10 minutes and the help of two staff members to check out seven pieces of library material. But self-checkout improved, and we no longer got to chat with librarians or staff members as they scanned our books.
Now, with self-checkout, we can frequently get through an entire library visit without interacting with any library staff member. Unless anti-theft bits don't turn off, or we're picking up a DVD, in which case we have to flag a staff member to resolve the issue for us.
Without that interactivity, we don't get to know the staff, and the staff doesn't get to know us. They're not themselves unfriendly, but they're by necessity less social, less conversational, more multitask-oriented.
Has anyone else had this experience? Does anyone else find self-checkout a mixed blessing, at best?
(We don't mean to pick on the library. Really, we love the library, even when it shushes us. But it's the things we

Thing #6 Ready to Flck My Pix!

I've opened a Flickr account. This weekend top priority (beside knocking out a few more chapters of Harry Potter): post those vacation pix!

I know nobody's out there reading my blog-why would you? If you are reading this, WHY??? Go read a book.

Had to do this for a training exercise. When it's over, I'll probably withdraw my blog. My life just isn't that interesting that anyone else would want to read about it.

Umm, what else?

My lovely daughter took we for a spa afternoon with her. Very nice. My first professional manicure! Even MY pathetic nails look better.

Well, abientot!

Thing # 6 Ready to try Flickr

I've posted vacation pix on Flickr and shared with friends. Cool! and easier than sending as email attachments.

LOOG

Thing # 5 &6 Have you tried Flickr?

I have sometimes struggled to send pix to my friends. I access them thru Adobe Photoshop on my computer and try to send them. I have to enter all my friends' emails into an address book in Adobe in order to do this. Also, sometimes people have trouble opening the photos.

Sometimes I create a file of the pix I want to feature and try to send them as an attachment to the emails I send my friends. Sometimes works, but seems like an estra step.

Sounds as though a Flickr account would bypass these problems. Looks like I would post my pix on Flickr, then send my friends an email telling them to look there if they want to see the pix.

If anyone reads this and has had some Flickr experience, I'd love to hear from you.

The Flickr collage feature looks really cool!

I have some great pix of Seattle and Victoria I want to share.

Now-where shall I wander next?

Librarian On the Go

Things # 1-3 My New Blog

I had to return to my first blog to edit it because I hadn't recorded anything about doing Things #1 &2. I Read things #1&2. It was months ago. I think it made sense at the time.

Here's the first posting I actually did:

Welcome! I can't believe how easy that was to get started.

I call my blog, "Librarian on the Go", because I love to travel. Off to the northwest soon. Seattle and Victoria, BC.

Any suggestions for sites to see? Beer to drink? Let me know!