Deb's Blog

Thing 22 - NetLibrary

2008-05-13T09:28:00.003-04:00

OK - I'm not loving the selection here. Most of the audiobooks that are of interest I've already read or heard. And is it me or is there a serious lack of useful information about the items? For a lot of these things there is just author, title, and possibly a subject heading, but not always. I don't know what they are about or anything. For instance, they have a series of lectures. Well, I don't know who these lecturers are or what their qualifications are or when the original lecture was given or to whom. So, I don't know if this would be useful or not. For example - they have a lecture about the "truth" about the Dead Sea Scrolls. So, who is the lecturer? Is he an archeaologist? A priest? A Hebrew scholar? An interested layperson? A new-age author? And who is his audience? The College of Cardinals in Rome? a convention of professional archeaologists? A freshman college class? The general public? The answers to any/all of these could dramatically change the scope, POV, and value of the lecture.
The subject index is also rather flawed. For example, Charlaine Harris has written a series of vampire books about Sookie Stackhouse. NetLibrary seems to have most of the series. However, ONE of them is listed as Sci Fi/Fantasy, ONE is in horror, and I'm not sure where the others are; I found them by cross-referencing on the subject heading in the meta-data after I stumbled on the one listed in the horror index. By the way - these are not exactly what I would call horror. They tend to be a light read - definitely not in the Stephen King, Richard Laymon, H.P. Lovecraft mold.
And let's not even talk about trying to find anything in the ebooks instead of the audiobooks - author, title, older, newer are your sort/search options? What good is that?
So, while this is a coolish idea, I think that the user would need to know exactly what they were looking for, and it might be helpful to have a second window open to some other source to cross-reference what you find.
Oh, a last note about the Sookie Stackhouse search - the cross-reference was on the subject "vampires". It brought up the Stackhouse series, Stephen King's Salem's Lot, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and a series by MaryJanice Davidson, which, based on what I read about them on Amazon, is the ongoing romantic adventures of a newlywed named Betsy who is also a vampire queen. Betsy?!?
And this is why catalogers are so picky about bibliographic records.

Thing 21 - podcasts

2008-05-13T08:47:00.004-04:00

OK - back to podcasts. So, I'm looking for library podcats. Didn't find anything on the index. Doesn't mean they aren't there, just that couldn't find them. That whole lack of a controlled vocabulary for index searching thing ....

Anyway, I did an old fashioned Google search and hit on these:

http://podcast.denverlibrary.org/ - we could do something like this.

And here is a link to a wiki that has a whole list of libraries that are podcasting. http://libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Podcasting This also has a list of resources for libraries that want to make their own podcasts. Very helpful.
I thought it might be cool to see if NASA had any podcasts, but the hits on Google return a 404 error.
As I mentioned in my previous podcast post, my MAC comes with iTunes installed. I'm also taking an online class which has the lectures posted as MP3 files that I download and listen to at my leisure. My experience? Once I download them all I have to do is click on the file and iTunes will automagically open and play them for me. Back to the class on MP3 - this is a possible model for our training plan. Staff Development Committee, are you reading this?
However, here's my caveat - who has time? I don't have time to seek out and listen to podcasts any more than I have time to actually read all the RSS feeds I subscribed to. I am, hopefully, starting new classes in the fall towards a Masters degree, so that will become the greater vacuum of all free time for the next couple of years.

Thing 20 - You Tube

2008-05-06T08:09:00.003-04:00

So, You-Tube. Well, for starters, I had some issues with sharing a video. The rules are that you must prominently post a link back. But, when you click on the share to your blog option, it doesn't give you an option to include a link. You can add text, but you can't turn it into a link. Then if you attempt to edit the post in Blogger to add new labels or turn the text into a link, the video disappears. Not brilliant.
What to use You Tube for?
1) See the Big Cat Rescue link on my other post (the one with the missing video). They have a "channel" with their videos and links to their main web-site. But their channel talks about what they do, and how to get involved, donate, etc. Youtube has a whole listing of non-profits who have channels.
2) Training - in my recent Master Trainer refresher class we discussed online training. One of the suggestions was to create You Tube video demos to incorporate in the trainings, and as a way to connect with students who are not physically with you. In a face-to-face class you can do ice-breakers and such; in a real-time webinar type class you can at least talk to the class and have them see you on web cam. But in a "canned" class you need some other mechanism to create a safe learning environment, and a You Tube video might be a way to introduce yourself and create that sense of personal interaction.
So why are blogs filters but not You-tube? I found a lot of sex out there.

Tiger Splish Splash at Big Cat Rescue

2008-05-06T08:06:00.001-04:00

See post below for the link

Tiger Splish Splash at Big Cat Rescue - 1

2008-05-06T07:55:00.003-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/user/BigCatRescue

Library 2.0

2008-04-30T13:19:00.003-04:00

For some unknown reason I recently received several emails of articles from a library trade journal at UCR. I have no memory of signing up for it, so it was serendipitous. Also, good reading. The columns below are for your reading pleasure.

http://associates.ucr.edu/journal/?page_id=111
http://associates.ucr.edu/journal/?page_id=140
http://associates.ucr.edu/journal/?page_id=114
http://associates.ucr.edu/journal/?page_id=129
http://associates.ucr.edu/journal/?page_id=139

Thing 21

2008-04-29T08:15:00.002-04:00

OK - skipping ahead a bit - here's a podcast for Browncoats. http://signal.serenityfirefly.com/

I happen to have the extraordinary good fortune to have a Mac at home, so iTunes came with the package. So far, the biggest challenge is trying to keep my stuff and Serenity's stuff separate. More later.

Thing 19

2008-04-24T15:36:00.003-04:00

I still can't get this thing to use the font I select! So, I'm giving up and trying a different one. And what's up with the line spacing?
Anyway - Thing 19.
So I looked at that the list, and I'm enamored of Meebo. A web-based IM system that can talk to all the other major systems and doesn't require any downloads seems like an excellent thing for libraries to use to talk to patrons. And I've been advocating for staff to be able to IM each other for years now. So much easier to be able to IM staff at a public desk than to expect them to go find a station to check their email. So much easier for supervisors to IM a staff person than to have to get up and go hunt them down. Or vice versa. So Tracy needs to talk to Erin who is on the ref desk - instead of getting up from her work, walking out to the ref desk and waiting while Erin deals with the patron she's helping, or calling Erin on the phone and interupting a patron transaction, Tracy sends an IM which Erin can then respond to when she's finished helping the patron.
My other find was Squidoo. Not sure about a library use, but looks interesting. And, of course, Helen has now got us all hooked on Meez ...

things 18 continued

2008-04-23T08:28:00.005-04:00

So - Google docs. Haven't quite wrapped my head around what this would do for me. We've experimented with collaborative software in PALS and it hasn't been a rousing success. I use excel for my spreadsheets and don't need to share them with most folks. And don't need other editing them, so I'm not currently seeing a need to this.

AIT 2008 pics

2008-04-20T21:42:00.001-04:00

I've uploaded the pictures from AIT 2008 to my Flickr account if anyone cares to go look at them. www.flickr.com/photos/caitsidhe

Thing 18 - google docs presentation

2008-04-15T17:56:00.005-04:00

OK - here is a small presentation I've made with google docs.

More on this later - Oh - I learned that there is a 2MB max for the size of an image you can download. My camera doesn't do small pictures. So I had to finagle to get these slides made. For bigger views of these pictures they are on my Flickr account. www.flickr.com/photos/caitsidhe

Things 16 & 17

2008-04-08T19:01:00.002-04:00

Wikis - I've added my blog, and another favorite blog. I've added a movie and some websites, and I've added a page to the FRL blog.

What to do with a Wiki? Well for staff we could have policies and procedures in a Wiki. We could include the Sirsi procedures. And it would give staff a place to share shortcuts and clever local practices. We could use it for internal FAQs. We could post ideas for better ways to do things, or ask if there isn't a better way to do something. And we could post suggestions and questions from patrons. And if we get a particular question a lot from patrons we could put in here what the answer is and how we found it.
For the public we could have FAQs about how to find things on the website or in the libraries. We could have book reviews done by local readers. We could have staff picks. We could have the information that is in the literacy resources brochure and things like that. We could have information about the Reading Rover and it's stops, about funding, about "per capita" funding and what it means to our staff and our patrons. We could have information related to the building programs du jour. We could have pages devoted to our Friends of the Library groups. We could have information about the library board and library governance.

Detroit

2008-04-08T11:22:00.002-04:00

So, here we are in Detroit for the SirsiDynix conference. Detroit has made us feel right at home - on Sunday night a water main outside the hotel burst and we were without water for a few hours. We found out about it when Donna called down to the desk to find out what was buzzing in out hallway (it was the ice machine alarming because it could refill). The desk told her that they didn't know what the noise was, and by the by there was no water. They offered to bring her a glass of water. I found out it was repaired by watching the 11:00 local news broadcast.
The weather has been clear, crisp, and windy. The hotel is right on the river - you can see Canada across the water. We've been taking afternoon walks after sessions.
See you all in a couple days.

April Fool

2008-04-01T07:42:00.000-04:00

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/index

For your viewing pleasure.

Things 14 and 15

2008-03-30T14:23:00.007-04:00

I'm not really thrilled with technorati. It just seems like too much work to find things that I care about. Plus, I'm beginning to see a pattern with all these sites. They are all very much based on popularity contests and therefore tend to bury any content that doesn't play to the pit - technorati even goes so far as to call it "authority". They really don't give much of an opportunity to hear voices that may have something new or innovative to say. Personally, I find that "authority" thing a little offensive. Any student of history knows that popularity does not equal authority or wisdom. The whole world once believed the earth was flat. That didn't make it true.

Library 2.0 - Do I think Library 2.0 is something we need to get to? Yes. But do I think these authors are being particularly helpful in there suggestions? No. Even while they are acknowledging that not all libraries have a lot of money, they are still suggesting things that take a lot of money. The biggest expense to the library is personnel. 75-80% of FRL's member libraries' operating budgets go to personnel. But the suggestions in these articles are all staff intensive. For example - we did the PLA planning for results thing. It was massively time-consuming and staff intensive, and took us a year to do. And after we do all this planning, it's up to the staff to implement and support the changes.

The open-source ILS would require us to hire additional staff to manage the system - open source pretty much requires a programmer/developer on staff. Sure, Georgia PINES is a wonderful thing, but it is being developed as a statewide initiative by the Georgia department of education. Not exactly a low-cost local solution, that. The OPAC does need to be more responsive. Unfortunately we don't control the OPAC, Sirsi does. And it is one of the biggest issues that ALL Sirsi customers across the board complain about. Unfortunately, OPACs are proprietary. You can't just go out and buy another unless you get a completely new ILS. Sirsi cost us $150,000 14 years ago. Imagine what it would take to do replace it now.

Then there is the technology issue. Technology is expensive and most IT departments do not trust their staff or the pubic to mess with it. They do not want to spread their limited staff even thinner dealing with new and potentially insecure applications. Plus, at FRL we do not have an in-house webmaster, so we do not have the resources to experiment with and support interactive applications on our webpage.

So, the challenge for us is to find ways to do things that do not exhaust our resources, or stretch our staffs beyond their limits.

Thing 13

2008-03-27T13:15:00.003-04:00

del.icio.us - I am registered, and have added the buttons to my links. And I've added it to my blog page so that you can tag me if you want. I think I need to play with it some more to decide what it's good for, other than creating portable bookmarks. I 'ported some bookmarks from my IE favorites over to it so that I could access them at home on my MAC. I also tagged the FRLearning blog so I could get to it from home, too.

I seem to be bad at tagging things. Not just in del... I do not instinctively do a lot of cross-referencing in tags. So, like this post, I end up with 1 or 2 tags on a picture, or post, or bookmark. I believe that is something I need to work on. I'm also not much for the descriptions. Partly because I usually know from the name what it is, and partly because I feel like I have to be clever, and putting a description on 5 different views of rock cliffs taken from my cruise ship's deck doesn't seem to inspire me to cleverness. I enjoyed taking the picture, and looking at it, but captioning it just isn't fun.
I am not entirely sure how useful it is for research. I just did a search for Serenity. I got 5,194 hits. In the first 40 I only found 3 that did not relate to the movie. Now I happened to be looking for the movie, so I kind of loved that. But, if I had any of the other Serenity concepts in mind I would not have found this helpful. Also, I didn't detect any sort of organization to the returned hits. So, for casual browsing this hit list is fun to find other sites that I might not know about, but if I was doing serious research I would be probably not use this as a tool.

Happy Easter

2008-03-22T12:57:00.003-04:00

http://www.millikin.edu/staley/peeps/

Goodreads

2008-03-20T16:43:00.004-04:00

OK, question now. When someone makes a comment in your blog and you want to anser them do you make a comment on the same post, or do you do a new post?

So, Sarah told me how to add books to my shelves when I select them. But how to get back to the hit list after doing the review? I did it once by accident, but since it was an accident I don't seem to be able to recreate it. I do believe this interface is even more convolute than Sirsi's iBistro!

Color me confused!

I guess I'm not human ....

2008-03-19T12:43:00.003-04:00

Is it just me, or does anyone else have trouble reading those letters that you need to type into these sites to prove your human? I had to go to the handicapped access and listen to one of them the other day, because I couldn't figure out what one of the letters was meant to be.

Thing 12

2008-03-18T14:18:00.006-04:00

So, for my thing 12 here are 12 interesting bits I've found to share.

http://www.woot.com/

http://comember.net/blogs/firepixel/

http://www.mapofstrange.com/

http://help.cnet.com/digital-photography-learning/

http://dailylit.com/

http://www.twistedphysics.typepad.com/

http://www.makeuseof.com/

http://presurfer.blogspot.com/

http://www.stumbleupon.com/

http://www.writing.com/

http://www.nps.gov/archive/yell/oldfaithfulcam.htm

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/GiantPandas/default.cfm?cam=LP2

OK, here's a 13th one just for fun.
http://www.libraryghost.com/

Thing 11

2008-03-18T12:10:00.003-04:00

See the post below from Digg. It was easy enough to set it up. The hard part is figuring out what I want to select to look at. I added it to my iGoogle page, also. But, what's a "shout"? I should know this, right? It asks me to make decisions about how to handle shouts, but I don't know what a shout is, so I don't know what I would do with one if I got it. I'm thinking Digg is one of those things I have to spend more time getting familiar with before I'm really comfortable.

p.s. I still like reading books rather than reviewing them and much more than I like reading a computer screen.

A year after pet food recall, still buyer beware

2008-03-18T12:09:00.003-04:00

One year after contaminated pet food killed potentially thousands of dogs and cats, few safety measures have gone into effect.

read more digg story

Things 10 - Goodreads

2008-03-17T11:59:00.008-04:00

So - I've created a profile on goodreads - http://www.goodreads.com/profile/dlawley

I've added some books. Actually, several books, but not nearly all the ones I've read in a lifetime. Just ones I could think of. After I added 50 or so, I decided to put them into shelves. OK - the directions were 5, not 50, but as you've probably already figured out from my flickr account I'm an overachiever. Anyway, I was not impressed with the procedure. Maybe there is an easier way to add them to shelves, but I haven't found it. So, I ended up editing them one at a time, which put them all in the "read" shelf, and also in one other shelf of my choosing. Well, almost all, I missed one! So I had to go back through the entire list one by one to find it because I couldn't figure out how to list them all on a page and show their shelves with them.

By the way, I only actually wrote reviews for a few of them. It was a lot like being back in school and having to write book reports. I always hated book reports. At the end of the school year I had probably read more books than anyone else in the class but had the shortest list because I never bothered to do the book reports.

But I digress. So. Then I went back and added a couple more books to see if I could shelve them at the time I added them, but this didn't seem to be possible, either. I was noticing that there are people with several hundred books listed. Where do they find the time to edit them all? And how do they remember that many titles?

I was contemplating joining a group, but the sci-fi fantasy one seems to be my daughter's age, and are reading books that are not exactly my cup of tea. I think I'll lurk a little and see if there is anything else out there I like better.

Blogging layout

2008-03-12T15:31:00.002-04:00

I seem not to be fully compatible with editing on this blog. I don't ever seem to be able to get posts to look exactly as I want them too. It's as bad as MSOffice, at times.

Deb

Thing 8 & thing 9

2008-03-12T11:09:00.007-04:00

I found: http://www.coverpop.com/pop/flickr_stickfigures/

Warning - this is addictive. You'll want to look at every sign.

So here are a couple of attempts at playing. The first one is my cat, Anton, warholized.

And the second is Anton in the museum, since he is such a work of art.

Thing 7

2008-03-12T08:50:00.002-04:00

OK. Thing 7 was to Flickr. I've flickered. I actually ended up upgrading to a pro account (my own money - not FRL's). I've posted pictures from last year's AIT and from the Safari party. I put them in sets, organized them into the order I wanted, added (admittedly lame) titles and descriptions, and gave them tags. Aha! Be sure to read the directions for creating a multiword tag.

I also added a buddy icon to my profile. There are a lot of free ones available on the web. I googled buddy icon.

Trying to upload this image was not fun. Flickr and Blogger seem not to be speaking to each other so everytime I tried to configure my blog in Flickr I got an error message, which I dutifully sent on to the appropriate support folks at whichever side I happened to be trying from.

So, Go to flickr. See my photos. http://www.flickr.com/photos/caitsidhe/

Thing 5 and thing 6

2008-03-04T17:05:00.001-05:00

So, I've now sampled some rss feeds and decided that rss is not chocolate, so it doesn't tempt me off my diet. (And, by the way, why doesn't this blog program remember my font choice? Is it a Microsoft product?)

As far as I can tell all RSS does is give me a lot to read. I don't really need more to read - I have plenty enough what with list-servs, trade journals, etc. I barely have any time for books! And yes books are much more fun to read that RSS feeds. Books are chocolate. They feed my soul, not just my computer files.

OK - so it was kind of fun to add a NASA feed and the USGS list of earthquakes in the world, but once I added them I didn't feel like actually reading them, so I marked them all as read and that was that. Stephen Colbert's videos maybe entertaining. But I tend to watch his show, anyway. And my taste in you-tube videos rarely includes the top 10 in popularity. So I flushed that one down the disposal right away.

RSS really is simple. But I don't want simple. If I want something automated I also want to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. RSS gives me the wheat, the chaff, the dirt, and the manure. Then I have to separate it myself. Hardly an improvement from just bookmarking the site and going directly to it. (I had to bookmark my reader instead.) Besides, Helen's blog is so much prettier in the original than in the RSS feed.

So, I'll not be spending much time feeding at this trough. I'll wait for the RSS 2.0 or maybe 3 or 4.0.

- Deb

thing 3 - exercise

2008-02-28T10:40:00.000-05:00

7 1/2 habits -
Easiest - determining a goal. I generally know what I'm trying to get out of a course of study. And I generally have confidence that I can learn something, once I put my mind to it. (Let's not talk about trigonometry, though.)

Hardest - I guess it would be accepting responsibility - although I don't think that's exactly phrased correctly. I fully accept that it's my responsibility to do it. I just seem to get side-tracked. I think it's more of a motivation thing. If it's something I want to do for myself, in my off-time, at home, I never seem to get around to doing the work. On the other hand, if it's an actual in-classroom thing, or something I have to do for work, then I get it done. I think the classroom thing is conditioning. After 16+ years of school I am properly conditioned to do my class work and homework. But online courses seem more like a hobby than actual school, so they don't carry the same psychological imperative.

Anyway, the 23 things will get done because it's for work. But the on-line class I'm taking at home - I'm on lesson 3 and already have gotten behind in my homework.

Thing 3

2008-02-28T09:46:00.001-05:00

My library is doing our version of the 23 things. Creating this blog is thing 3. What to say about the act of creating a blog? Well, I've considered it before, it was on a to do list, but never quite made it to the top. I've worked on computers for most of my life - starting with an IBM 360 mod 30 programmed by punch cards. Let's see, 35 years ago? So I guess that playing on a computer when I get home doesn't seem all that interesting after all these years. Not that I don't play video games now and then - heck, we had an Atari when their tennis game was hardly more than pong. Right now we have a PS2, a Wii, a couple of DS's, various iterations of the gameboys ... But the computers just seem more of a work tool than a toy to relax with. And Books are meant to be held in the hands to be read, whilst lounging, or in bed, or the bath, or a waiting room - not something that requires a screen and sitting up, etc.
But as for this blog. Here it is. Fairly easy to set up. Hardest thing is the profile questions. How much do I want to share about myself? Not much, apparently, from what I ended up actually putting in the profile. What about formats? I haven't decided yet. I'll probably play around with that later. For now - here it is - a work in progress. Aren't we all?