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