Thing 13: Tagging

Being a cataloger, for me open tagging makes little sense. We were taught in library school that in order to help people sucessful in finding meterial, we needed to have some sort of controlled vocabulary!

I think the fact that librarians often have standardized on fairly esoteric terms. How many people do you know who talk about cookery books? And from an earlier time, do you know who Eric Blair is? This from the time when librarians insisted on not using popular pseudonyms or pennames.

Addendum

Also, this probably stemps from having to clean up a library database where these was no controlled vocabulary when I first came here. It took hours and hours and hours.

Librarians need to become more proactive in using contemporary vocabulary rather than sticking to the old traditions.

Thing 12: Twitter

I attended the SirsiDynix user group conference in Dallas in April and twittering was incredibly popular. The conference was hastagged at #SirsiDynix

I signed up for an account when there was a contest between Ashton Kutcher and Larry King. Immediately after signing up, I got email from two women who wanted to follow me. Both had rather suggestive names.

At the moment I am following CNN, two fellow system admins, and an RFID guy in England.

And our library. Yes, we do have a twitter page for summer reading club.

Where did I most recently hear about Twitter? During the recent Iranian elections apparently the only news that was getting out of the country was coming from Twitter.

Thing 11: Instant Messaging

I do not like it, Sam I am. I not like IM. With apologies to Dr. Seuss.

I tried instant messaging almost 15 years ago with my brother. I found it frustrating because my brain works much fast than my fingers and I was always wanting to jump ahead of my typing. I also did it with my friends brother when he as home. At that time, the service came under fire for security issues so we quit using it. At that time I did get a few people whom I did not know asking to chat with me.

My plan is to revisit this task a bit later when I can talk some of the other staff who are doing this project to have a chat session and then disable me account.

For me, this is another service that seems to be better implemented in other packages. You can chat in Facebook. Texting on cell phones. I have read about libraries using texting in reference work from patrons who are actually in the library. Seems strange to me.

More later. . .

Thing 10: Ning

I did visit Ning.com, however, I I also read the information at the ChartingStocks blog and will not be creating a ning account at this time. I am just not comfortable with their policies. I am also not convinced that I see the advantage of Ning. It seems to duplicate what can be done at so many other sites!

I did watch the tutorial and unfortunately the audio was still compromised.

I searched the site for clarinet(ists) and fouond one site for Band Geeks. I also found one of my fellow system admins had start a "by invitation only" site for her library staff and I can see that as possibly a good use of ning. I also found several RFID groups inclulding some for specific vendors.

I did find the ALA site unlike several of the North Texas 23 participants and listened to the Open Source ILS.

Thing 9: More Facebook

One of my Facebook friends just got a new job and is moving from Texas to Rockville, Maryland. He has been commenting on selling the house, packing the truck and moving on his blog and Facebook. It has been interesting.

The groups I joined were "Free Prizes", "FacebookLibrarians@ ALA", and "Official: Facebook Clarinetists" I am also a fan of Alton Brown and the New Philharmonic Orchestra of Irving. It takes a lot of time to find groups because there are so many and even so I really did not find the right ALA group. What I found was a group for folks who are going to the conference. I'll probably drop the group! I never could find North Texas Regional Library System.

I am not sure that I really can see the purpose in a Group, although I suppose it would be possible for our group to post rehearsal announcements there.

I do most of my Facebook stuff on the iPod Touch. I do plan to go for the new iPhone. It has some really cool new features.

Thing 8: Facebook

I recently joined Facebook in part because the Community Orchestra I play in started a Facebook page. I found several people there that I had lost contact with, so asked them to be friends. The orchestra had planned to use Facebook as a communication tool, but never really put it into practice. I never did manage to join the orchestra's page.

I like that on Facebook, you do have complete control over who can see your info. Most of my friends are either work colleagues or professional colleagues from the SD conferences that I have been to over the years.

Tuesday, I had lunch with a former staffer. We made all the arrangements over Facebook. Really cool way to do it!

I have read the blogs of others who did not feel comfortable with Facebook, but I feel more comfortable with it than I do with this blog where anybody can read it, but I am fairly cautious and would never give my password to anyone! -- for any reason.

Thing 7 RSS feeds

I am not sure that I understqnd the difference between RSS feeds and blog readers. Both seem to accomplish the same thing--putting all the blogs in one place for the user's convenience.

The Mac has a really good blog reader/aggregator and I tend to use it to keep up with "current events." My daughter used to support Mac's at St. Thomas University in St. Paul and she suggested that I get a Mac Book Pro last summer. I am extremely happy with the Mac. It just works!

I did subscribe to a couple more blogs on Google Reader although I had some trouble with Helene Blowers' blogl For some reason, I could not access it at work. (Maybe this is time for my rant on the fact that as a librarian, I want to give people access to all types of information. As an IT professional it is their job to keep people out. It is unfortunate that we can't get any dialogue going because as a System Administrator I am very sympathetic to their problem and we might be able to figure out a way to keep both of us happy.

Because I am doing some of this work on a 8 1/2 in Acer Netbook, I had a lot of trouble finding the link on Helene's page, but in the end I did succeed.

Now, to te next challenge. . .

Thing 6 Blog Readers

I have had an account at Google Reader for a long time just so that I could read Stephen Abrams posts. I also subscribe to Rableonsylvie (who does the same job as me at Martin County FL), the Library Moose (from Burbank, CA whose owner does the same job at Burbank), and the Shifted Lkbrarian, Jenny Levine. I chose Google Reader then because it did not require installing additional software on the PC which is a practice our Information Services Department frowns upon.

I was surprised how integrated Google Reader in Blogger were. All the folks I am following on Bllogger were already listed on Reader! I have encouraged everyone at Hurst to follow each other so that we can get the full experience. Already we have found one user who can not post comments. I suspect that this may be that my work PC is nowhere near the public floor and as system administrator I may have privileges she doesn't. My next step will be to have her try sending a comment logged onto my PC.

The major problem with this task was that the screenhots were pretty blurry and because I already had an account my screens did not always remotely resemble those pictured, but it did all come together. I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that there is just too much information out there!

Thing 5 image Generators

I used existing pictures that I were already on Flickr and was totally amazed at how easy the cube was to create. I have a glass cube that I bought at Aaron's frame shop and never created the pictures to fill it. I think will be able create this cube, convert the image to a pdf by using cute.pdf as my printer, then I should be able to print it at a specified percentage to fit the glass cube.

At this point, all reader's eyes glaze over). Being the library system admin I am used to glazed eyes, especially when I do a demo to the Library Board.

I took my cube to staff meeting and everyone seemed to think it was really cool! I wish I had been able to talk up the project to staff sooner, but I feel that getting four other staff to participate has been invaluable.

I left my cube at work, so I had to print another one for home. I plan to come back, edit this post, and add a picture of the cube--the one I took at work on my cell phone is of very poor quality.

Later, , ,

I have added the cube photo.

Thing 4 (continued)

I am experiencing some frustration on thing 4. I created the images with Flickr toys, but when I try to add them to the blog, they come as separate posts. Since one of the things I do in my free time is desktop publishing for a volunteer group, I want this to look the way I envision it should, so I plan to keep trying until I get it right.


I am happier with the way these look and now have a better feel for how these work.