I lied about the next one being last...

Thoughts on a Digital Familiarization Course and Feelings of Inadequacy


I could, Zorba-like, teach you to dance,
to take part in the parson’s laughter of the feet.

I could introduce you to turnout, posture, carriage, proper handing, and a bright social spirit.

I could teach you steps - starting with the right foot except for the exceptions:
beginning hands around deseal -
and figures -
mnemonics to keep you straight most of the time:
the skirts go up and the pants go down; otherwise known as second couple face down;
which way to start as odd person out in a reel of three.

I could impress upon you the horror of a two-beat pas de basque,
and traveling on the hop.

I could indicate the few dances you should know by heart, and how to remember them;
chase, set, chase, set, down, up, pou, sette;
which tunes go with only one dance, and which dances must start with a certain tune.

I could show you how to recognize which are antique dances,
and which, gym mistresses’ redactions;
which are well thought-out, and which require unspecified foot-fiddling;
which are delightful dolphin innovations, and which are pointless modern messes;;
which are the products of Bletchley Park,
and which issue from the mathematics department at the University of Aberdeen;
let’s roll up the carpet and I beg to differ.

I could tell you what makes a reel a hornpipe or when a jig might slip,
and why Cairn Edward is almost worse than taking five with Brubeck;
introduce you to the joys of singing along, buchtin’ time is near, my jo;
and the hazards of such singing, oh my mother’s name is Lily, she’s a…

I could mention weekends and weeks, Asilomar, Pinewoods, Pawling;
tours with Ken to castles or islands or the Mediterranean.

I could explain how to order from the late James Senior;
how to tie a bow that will never untie itself, yet release easily when you want it to;
tell you about innersoles and gel liners,
and why tying your shoelaces above your ankles makes you look like McDork.

I could show you how to drape and pin an evening sash in a number of becoming ways,
Juan Valdez’s serape not being one of them.

I could recommend that you shorten your ball dresses so you won’t step on the hem,
choose breathable fabrics, use makeup that won’t sweat off,
and hold back on the color and pattern to let the men show off.

I could copy you my pattern for kilt hose,
lend you some stocking needles, show you how to cable,
and how to kitchener a toe (not true, that story about the general).

I could summarize crotal dying, fual mordant, wauking;
the tartan myth and the Sobieski brothers.

I could introduce you to pleating to stripe, to sett;
box-pleating, and gathering to a belt laid on the floor;
warn you about pushing your high-waisted, custom-tailored garment down to Levi’s level
and wearing it dangling around your calves;
about pinning both aprons together, matching your tie, or your socks before six;
and about inappropriate times for going regimental
(and I could Google up Col. West and Lance Corporal Wotherspoon for you as well).

I could point you to necessary lyrics through and beyond Burns and Scott and Caroline, Baroness Nairne.

I could give you party pieces, ach where were you, McAllister,
and they had conquered millions frae the Tiber to the Forth, Hamlet, Hamlet, loved his mammy;
and campfire songs, half a pint of woad per man’ll, let us worship like the Druids,
I am an Anglican, and round and round and round and round…

I could tell you why Miss Nancy Frowns (it has to do with Mrs. Hepburn),
and give you peripheral book and movie selections by the dozens, possibly hundreds.

…but it would take more than an hour a week for nine weeks.

Last Week, Thing 23 - The Last Post

Well, here is the "Last Post" for all you bugle fans, and here's my last post for Maryland Libraries Learning 2.0. It has indeed been a long, long trail. I came into this program as a not especially technologically advanced "digital immigrant," using applications like search engines, word processing, and basic spreadsheets easily in my daily work, aware of some of the applications now used regularly by others - and I'm leaving knowing a bit more about a number of digital applications.However, I still don't own a computer, and am in no rush to get one; I prefer to live my life in other ways.

.

At the beginning, we were told that this program would take about an hour a week for nine weeks. Maybe this was true for some younger, more digitally savvy folk, but not for me. Ten of the staff members at my branch signed up, and I see that I will be the third to finish. Probably two more will complete the program, but I doubt if the others will; so we'll have a 50% dropout rate. I've heard that some branches had a much greater sign-up rate, and suspect that if this branch had had a "techie" on staff at this time, or even a different mix of personalities, we might have done better at signup and completion.

.

It was hard here to find time to work on this. We have lots of computers, but what with desk time and other responsibilities, setting aside a block of time was often impossible - and this work generally demanded blocks of time, not just a few minutes such as could be used to check ones e-mail (or, perish the thought, whip through a quick game of spider). It was best to use a computer in a little-used area, and announce that one was going to be working on "23 Things," so please limit interruptions - sometimes this worked, sometimes it didn't

.

Another difficulty, maybe only for us older, linear types, was the format of the exercises. Though there were lists of things to be accomplished, much of the information was presented in the form of links - multiple links, sometimes seeming to be a daunting glob of "stuff" in one big mass, with no orderly progression. I wasted a certain amount of time flipping from screen to screen, and finally ended up printing out many of the excercises for reference. I prefer the "classic view" of linear training to the "Aquabrowser" word cloud of items you might find interesting. Sometimes I wondered if I'd really done what was expected (and a few times I was pretty sure that I hadn't, though I felt that I had accomplished the goal of finding something new).

.

My posts have been pretty boring and free from exiting insight, but as far as I can tell, hardly anyone is reading them!

.

I would certainly be willing to try a similar familiarization or training program again, but my expectations about whipping right through would be moderated. I also look forward to BCPL using some of these applications in our work! It's been great.

.

But I still can't seem to figure out how to separate my paragraphs consistently! I've created a clumsy work-around for this post.

Thing 22 - Downloadable Audiobooks

I've looked at BCPL's Overdrive e-audiobooks and Gutenberg's audiobooks, and now feel much more confident about explaining this service to customers. So far, though, I've found that most customers interested in e-audiobooks are pretty digitally savvy, and don't need much help beyond telling them that these are available and showing how to get to the page.

I do have a friend who often listens to audiobooks and was disappointed to find after she'd checked out her first e-audio (quite a while ago, now) that she couldn't use it on her Mac (this is now stated much more clearly on the BCPL site, I'm glad to say). She felt bad that she was depriving other borrowers when she couldn't "return" the download that she couldn't use immediately!

It's interesting to see that Overdrive lists the narrator in a way that implies co-authorship; but I suppose that users figure that oddity out quickly. I also was interested in Gutenberg's little "okay to burn a copy" icon. This would certainly be useful for listeners who for some reason want to listen from a CD rather than a computer.

I checked out an "always available" mystery title in Overdrive, but don't really have the equipment to listen to it (reminder, I'm the one with the rotary-dial phone nailed to my kitchen wall). That's why I chose an always available book - didn't want to hog a limited circulation for no purpose but training.

There certainly seems to be a wide range of titles out there for downloading - something for everyone, I'd say. It's almost enough to make me want to go out and buy a computer of my own!

Week 9, Thing 21 - Casting a Wide Pod

It seems to me that podcasting is now where web addresses were a few years ago. First, we started seeing those little www's attached to company advertisements, movies, and finally, just about everything ; now, we are reminded that we can listen to again, or hear expanded versions of, almost everything we hear

I've now found out much more than I knew before about podcasts; searched for, looked at, and listened to some library-related podcasts; and subscribed to LibVibe, the library news podcast.

Although sound-only podcasts are not my personal first choice for finding information and entertainment, I must say that I'm impressed with the uses people, especially library people, have put them to. How nifty is it for aural learners to hear how to use the catalog, get started on the Internet, or about any number of other how-to subjects? Story times available whenever parents are free to "attend" with their child? Well, you lose some interactivity, but maybe that's okay if you don't have to load Junior and Junioress into their snowsuits and boots and the van and get them to the library building. And Story Line is a perfect fit for podcasting - let's get busy on that one, Marketing and Youth Services!

Although I'm not eager to appear (audio or video!) telling a story on BCPL's future program podcast site, I'm sure that there are talented programmers in the system who would be delighted to do so; and podcasts of any special programs - author talks or "visiting expert" presentations - would be a boon to busy customers who can't get to the right branch at the right time, or who hear a rave review from a neighbor after the date has passed.

These are just some of the customer-focused uses we might find for library podcasting. I can think of staff training sessions that could be handled this way, too.

Week 9, Thing 20 - YouTube

I've seen a number of online video clips - in ALA's online weekly magazine, e-mailed by friends , etc., but I've never really searched any video sites until today. After locating a couple of favorites to view again, I enjoyed clicking on the related videos tossed up next to whatever is on the screen, and did some searching on YouTube, Yahoo, and Google; didn't really spend enough time there to notice any huge differences (I feel so guilty using up staff-only bandwidth in these public-MySpaceless days!). They were all easy to use.

I'm always up for clever fun, and there certainly seems to be no end to available spoofs (including, as far as I can see, spoofs of spoofs of spoofs) and people with wayyyyy too much time on their hands. The imagination and creativity of some amateurs is impressive. I have snickered over or admired commercials from around the world, movie trailers (real trailers, ones performed by Legos, and a Bollywood Superman riff), and holiday videos including The Nutcracker Suite with animated bicycle parts, music-synchronized Christmas lights on a house (saw that on Snopes.com last year), and a precis of It's a Wonderful Life with bunnies!

I'm not going to take the time and bandwidth to add it to this blog, but my favorite is SSgt. Roger Parr lipsynching a C&W song with his company of British soldiers in Iraq - "The Way to Armadillo" will get you there in a search. Watching this comforts me when I find myself worrying too much about my wonderful nephew and hating our dullard of a national leader too much; to me it says that there can be bits of fun even in bad situations. An added giggle is that this video crashed the British Ministry of Defense computer system when all those stiff-upper-lip types formerly played in movies by Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, and David Niven started forwarding it to each other...

Week 8, Thing 19 - An Award-Winning Web Tool

I looked at SEOmoz's list of Web 2.0 awards, and my eye was naturally drawn to "books." I noticed that Library Thing, which is one of (cue the music, start twirling on the mountain in the dirndl) my favorite Things, was only third-place winner, so I spent a while checking out Lulu, the first-place winner in the books category.

Oh, no! Lulu is a vanity, oops, excuse me, self publishing service! Now it will be a snap for every idiot, oops, I mean every well-meaning person, who writes a book, to get it published. If I sound just a bit negative about this very smoothly-designed and well-presented "tool," it's because over the years I've dealt with a number of author wannabees, each convinced that their book is the next absolute best-seller. And I've handled quite a few slightly "off-looking" vanity press volumes which always seem to end up in my inbox when they are mailed to my branch (though they don't linger there long; they're off to Collection Development as soon as I see what they are). Although there are always going to be a few self-published books that make great reading, and sometimes get picked up by a standard publisher or talk-show host, most that I've seen are, well, of personal interest only.

On the other hand, Lulu would enable someone writing a family history to create a few professional-looking, relatively inexpensive copies for relatives; it would also be great for local history, or really for any book that is of such limited interest that a non-online (nonline? brick-and-mortar?) publisher wouldn't be interested. I wonder how Lulu's costs compare with those of the small local publishers who do this kind of thing now? The advantage of Lulu and similar online publishers is that they need not actually make any more copies than are requested at a given time; the book can lurk in cyberspace until another person asks for it.

Thing 18 - Online Productivity Tools

As quickly as possible after my horrible experience with the *&^%$#@! Sandbox Wiki, I moved on to the next thing - like climbing back on the horse after the stupid beast stops dead and pitches you over the rails and into the pond.

I'm really impressed with these online tools - they make communicating information electronically even easier, more efficient, and filled with possibilities. I added a Zoho Writer text to my blog - see previous post - and then went back and edited it! It's good to be able to integrate different "things" like this. I suppose that one reason this exercise was so much more satisfying than the last - apart from the fact that I was actually able to do it - was that it built on wordprocessing and spreadsheet skills I already have.

(I would also like to point out that St. Joyce was very kind helpful, along with St. Ellen, with Thing 17, and I apologize for my vulgar language to the former about the people who put the instructions for the *&^%$#@! Sandbox Wiki on the various sites!)

Testing, testing...

Well, here's a test document to be sent to my blog from Zoho. I wonder what "zoho" means? The word processing seems to be pretty easy to do; I'm used to using MS Word, and after that hellish "Sandbox Wiki" excercise, anything is bound be easier and more fun.

Nice indentations, something I haven't figured out how to do on Blogspot (and am not interested enough to pursue there), and I've added font and background color - let's see if that will copy onto my blog.

(Oh, no! I explored the toolbar and did what I once swore I'd never do - I added a smileyface!! And now I've done another one - put this dereliction down to rebound from my utterly frustrating experience with Thing 17.)

I can see that this kind of office application tool is a further step in the continuum of files on one computer, files on a disk, files on a better kind of disk, files on an area network, files on a thumbdrive. It's very handy to be able to put stuff on a storage device that could be used on any computer, but even more convenient to be able to get to it from any computer that connects to the Internet. Very useful for business, and adaptable to purely social stuff as well.

Thing 17 - Sandbox Wiki

Well, I managed to log in to the Maryland Libraries Sandbox Wiki, look around, and then try to add my own blog. At this point, all "play" ceased, since any instructions on the Maryland Libraries Learning 2.0 page or in the Sandbox Wiki are, as far as I can see, unintelligible. "Add your blog to the Favorite Blogs page." Okay, HOW?

I see a place for "creating a new page," but what I want to do is add a blog. I see several assurances of how simple it all is, but no place to paste my blog address. And I see several odd, unclickable items in the list, so maybe some others have had problems, too. Any instructions available seem to be written for people who already know what to do, and that doesn't include me.

After quite a bit of clicking and reclicking, cursing, checking to see if anyone else in the branch has accomplished this, calling 3000 and talking to Joyce, and blowing my nose really hard, I have reached the "screw this!" stage and am moving on to Thing 18. This particular "thing" is the most unfun "play" I have ever experienced. Not worth the time to exchange maunderings with people I don't even know.

Thing 16 - Wikis

I've now done some reading about wikis, expanding my horizons far beyond Wikipedia. From conversations I've had with other librarians, it seems I'm more comfortable with the "everybody can edit" concept than some. Sure, there will be some additions or changes that are suspect, but that's life. I've been given to understand, and truly believe, that there are plenty of people out there just waiting to correct errors the second that they pop into a wiki. It's like anything else you read, in any format; you've got to stay alert, because seeing it in writing doesn't necessarily make it true.

I would really like to see some BCPL wikis soon. For years, it seemed that BCPL ran on big blue notebooks of information, policy, and procedures that generally stayed up-to-date for the first three minutes after they were distributed. Even the looseleaf format couldn't guarantee that what you read was correct. Wouldn't a policy wiki be great? We are getting more and more used to getting all kinds of information from a computer screen (and many of us have mostly relied on computer screens for information since birth now), and an information source that could be updated as soon as whatever committee or team or individual decided on the change would be extremely handy.

The idea of customer wikis is great, too. What a readers' advisory source! All those bagful-a-week readers checking to see what their favorite recommender (staff or public) suggested, and then putting in a few ideas of their own!

And, as Meridith Farkas reports in the article "Using Wikis to Create Online Communities," when she set up a wiki for the Chicago ALA convention, it headed out in all kinds of useful directions she hadn't even thought of. I want to see this happen for BCPL!

Thing 15 - Some Perspectives

I've gone through the suggested readings, and of course they reminded me of other writings and conversations on similar topics that I've read or heard over the past few years. A co-worker and I were talking the other day, and we'll probably ask that all our librarians read the linked articles in Thing 15, since only a few of us are participating in the program. Everyone needs to be aware of what's going on, and sometimes it's too easy to be focused only on next week's replacement list deadline.

I thought that "Away from Icebergs" was especially good - well, they all were - but also liked the suggestions made by Michael Stephens in "Into a New World of Librarianship." Many of his suggestions were actually extensions of what good librarians have been doing for decades, if not for centuries: putting users' needs first when planning; embracing new tools as they are developed, and yet; not buying technology simply for its own sake. And very important in this world of fast technology changes, making decisions quickly (although well), because by the time an extended planning process is complete, the world may have moved on.

Thing 14 - Technorati

I've looked in Technorati and done some keyword searches for "Learning 2.0." The results for blog posts were more interesting to me... it was neat to recognize some fellow-BCPL bloggers' names. About the blog directory, which seems to go by blog names: what kind of non-imaginative person names his or her blog "Learning 2.0?" Probably some librarians' librarian, I'd think. I went back to investigate more thoroughly, but the page was temporarily inaccessible. Couldn't see a tab for a "tags" search. Will look again later.

One thing I noticed about the searches I did through the "Popular" page (top favorited blog, top searches, top blogs) is that they're mostly about topics I barely have heard of. Though I do have a Facebook site, and that was one of the top searches. One of the top blogs, also "top favorited" (I really dislike non-verbs used as verbs), was Engadget, and the first hits there included one in Spanish and one in Turkish. I was going to write "scratch a Turk and find a Tartar" should now be "scratch a Turk and find a blogger" since they're so online now, but I see that the phrase is actually, "scratch a Russian and find a Tartar." So much for clever writing. And it's really Tatar anyway.

I went back and fiddled with my blog profile; put in my birthdate and saw that it appeared as my astrological sign. Since I'm not mired in the false beliefs of ancient Babylon, I went back in and took it out! Maybe if I'd included the year it would have shown as a simple C.E. date?

Week 6, Thing 13 - Tagging and Del.icio.us

I've just spent some time going through some of the links to for this "thing," and have explained tagging (probably not quite correctly), to a co-worker who is not participating in the 23 Things program, as, "It's subject headings, but you can make them up instead of looking in Sears List of Subject Headings." The advantage being that as everyone out there adds what they think of as appropriate tags, others see those tags and use them too, resulting in popularly created tags that make more sense to more people, and are more intuitive and easier to use, than some of the old subject headings found on heh, heh, library catalog cards, or even in today's telephone book yellow pages. Wasn't it Sandy Berman who kept trying to reform antiquated subject headings? The group (non) effort of tagging would seem to be more effective than a single voice in the library wilderness.

One writer describes tags as paving the routes people walk on, rather than making sidewalks and expecting people to walk there. We've all seen those dirt trail shortcuts across expanses of grass, and in fact I remember a geography professor many years ago pointing out that "waiting a while, and then paving where people walk" would be far more effective than pouring unused sidewalks and endlessly re-sodding the muddy paths that were a permanent feature of campus landscaping... he was right about that.

As in other goodies I've explored in this progam, my feeling is, how nifty; though perhaps more useful to those engaged in active research, blogging, etc., than I am at this time.

Oh my gosh, I had to go back and edit this post because I forgot to tag it! And Ellen had just recently sent out that message that few of us were adding tags to our posts, so I should have remembered!

"Use is second nature," as they say; I'm still not used to all this stuff. And I still don't get that silly "tagging" game that is like a digital chain letter, but I never appreciated chain letters, either.

Week 5, Thing 12 - Rolling past Rollyo

I've just gotten back to work after a brief vacation, and need to catch up with the program!

I looked around the Rollyo site, and can think of a number of situations that would make it very useful. If I were interested in a specific topic - a game, an author or celebrity, or cult movie, for example; some subject with a number of active sites that I might want to search repeatedly - it would be efficient to set up this kind of focused search tool.

One of my reciprocal reader's advisory and book-lending buddies (who was absolutely delighted when I let her know about Library Thing) does a fair amount of online reading, and would appreciate the e-books Rollyo that was shown as one of the examples in the Rollyo site, to help her find the kind of older, long-out-of-print titles she often ends up reading from a computer screen.

A teacher might also set up a Rollyo of useful sites for certain assignments to help manage the amount and quality of online information sources for younger students.

However, at this time I don't really have a need to set up a Rollyo, so I have not opened an account. There's too much else to do, both in the 23 Things program and the rest of my work life!

Vacation was great - Colorado, scotch, and haggis; can life get any better?

Week 5, Thing 11 - It's a Library Thing

I looked at LibraryThing and created an account. Cool. I could really spend some time playing with this! http://www.librarything.com/catalog/gumushlu

I added five titles from my home library, but was stymied by the various editions listed. I chose what might be closest to the books I have, but if I get serious about this, I'd have to check to see exactly what I've got. It was interesting to see that no one else had listed more than one of "my" titles, so I added a couple more (one of which I don't actually own), and did see that a few others had also listed two of my new list.

I like the links to authors' websites. Too bad most of the books I own are by dead people who are just not very digitally savvy. However, photos of 2/7 of my authors did appear, and I did know who was who in the photos.

It seems to me that the people most enthusiastic about Library Thing are probably more interested in "which edition"- type information; more librarian-y than I (though some people think I'm pretty librarian-y). The books that I own are often slightly worn "reader's copies," often "ex-lib" (now there's a real surprise!); titles that I'll want to reread and expect will not be readily available at a library - why keep something you can easily borrow? I already have a logical classification system, so don't need a new one. I already swap recommended titles and actual books with a number of people whose tastes are similar, so I'm not sure I need to find out what some stranger in Oregon likes to read just because he/ she owns several of the books I also own. But it's still fun to play with, and I've recommended it to one of my book-swapping buddies.

Week 5, Thing 10

"Remember to be tasteful," the exercise says!... well, I guess that is an important reminder, since some of the generators I've just looked at are indeed a bit... coarse. There are plenty of clean ones, too, though. I created a Simpsons avatar that was scarily like me, if yellower - probably this would be a hit with lots of folks; I have attended a fairly formal wedding where the lovely cake was decorated with Simpsons figures, and I understand that the English chalk hill figure known as the Cerne Abbas Giant (nude, brandishing a club) has recently been given a (supposedly temporary) neighbor in the form of Homer (tighty-whitied, brandishing a doughnut). Oops. Perhaps not tasteful (go ahead, you know you want to do an image search on that one!)

My favorite is the chocolate bar generator, but I still haven't been able to add my chocolate bar here. The address, though, is:

http://www.kessels.com/Downloads/choco/index.html

Week 4, Thing 9

I looked around some of the newsfeed search tools - I wonder why this selection-aid familiarization excercise comes after "subscribe to at least 10 newsfeeds?" (I sometimes seem to be a little too linear a thinker for this sort of link-cloud learning program) - and found that each was a little different. I'm sure that if I were a more digital, online-type person I would quickly latch on to a couple of favorites. I like the local-ness of Topix, but had best luck in my specific searches with Syndic8. Technorati was interesting to look at, but I'm not really into surfing strangers' blogs (yet; who knows what the future may bring?). I didn't actually subscribe to anything I found on these, because I don't find time to keep up with the feeds I already have!

I've set up a Merlin account, looked around this career resource, subscribed, and am ready to move on to the next "thing."

My posts do not seem as insightful as some of those published by people who have been using computers more, and for longer - but at least I'm continuing to learn!

Tag, you're what?

Betsyboop, you're fired!

I see that I have been "tagged" by Betsyboop. I looked this term up (online, of course) and found a number of definitions, none of which fit the situation. There was one I really liked, though: "the practice of shearing wool on udder and dock regions." Maybe I'd better be on the lookout for co-workers with shears? Aiiiii!
It seems that I now am to give the rules, list eight things about myself, and then tag eight other people. Sounds like digital chain letter to me...

THE RULES:
List 8 facts or habits about yourself. Post the rules of the game at the beginning before the facts are listed. At the end tag 8 people by posting their names and leave comments on their blogs.

EIGHT THINGS ABOUT ME:
I'm just not very digital.
The telephone in my kitchen is a rotary-dial one, nailed to the wall.
I still own opera records, but the turntable I have won't play them in stacks.
I can't play the 78 rpm "Six Songs for Democracy" at all.
But I have it on CD now, too (so why do I still have the records?)
I own a few books in languages I'll never be able to read (Tabasaran, for one).
I have a complete set of collectible BCPL SRC t-shirts.

No, I just can't bring myself to tag eight people who might be total strangers! This is not really my idea of fun. But I'm tagging Bahama Mama, Jem and Scout (does that count as two?), Ready...Set...Tojo!, and Ruby's Experiment. Now back to work.

Pursuing extra credit...

Several posts ago I mentioned that my niece suggested that I try for extra credit in 23 Things - "maybe you could win bonus points by telling the referee that you beat your goddaughter onto facebook." In a comment, "the referee" suggested that this might be possible if I blogged about library uses for this social networking site, so I'll give it a try (especially since KQW is working here today and is wild about the idea - she belongs to several work- and library- related facebook groups already).

(This is not my niece in the picture, it's the uh, avatar I've used for my facebook account!)

Social networking sites are new to me. I understand that facebook was originally aimed at college students, but has since expanded to include others, including high school students. Among my small group of facebook friends, the ones who seems most active on the site are the youngest, still in or just out of college; so this kind of site does seem to be, as we have been told repeatedly, one of the ways younger people now communicate - and if it's the way they communicate, then it makes sense that libraries should use it to communicate with them.

Facebook has many more features than I have been able to figure out or even look at yet, but one major part seems to be groups - people with like interests. How about a facebook teen book group? Or teen advisory board group?

Or, for us age-enhanced library staff, a group of librarians exchanging ideas about programming (including managing book groups)? Photos seem to be big in facebook, too, so one could form a group to share ideas visually with pictures - merchandising ideas, Summer Reading Club or program decorating, ideal meeting room setups, office arrangements, a national comparison of mascots... ooops, seem to be getting silly; I've been in front of the computer a bit too long, I guess.

The thing is, there are other digital ways to accomplish all this, and I'm not yet sure which are best. One thing I certainly have found out is that there's a wide world beyond pine!

No extra credit points needed - the learning process is the reward!

(Now why the heck does this keep posting as a solid lump of text, without the spaces I type in?)

Woo hoo, I blogged from flickr!

mm 004
Originally uploaded by gumushlu

So since library people are into cats, here's a picture of the one Toni Spagnolo forced on me several years ago at the Essex branch crab feast. Turned out to be a very satisfactory animal.

Thing 5 - Proof of success

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Now I'll need to see if I can add a couple of the pictures I took with the branch digital camera and added to my flickr site just now.

Thing 10, or part thereof

While waiting for a Merlin password, I started looking at some generators... some funnier than others, some easier to use than others. To express a deeply held personal belief, I generated an image of a chocolate bar imprinted "Food of the Gods," which was quite satisfying as well as etomologically accurate; but then somehow it didn't show up correctly on this post. I'll try again later - it should be doable, and I should be able to figure out what went wrong.

And speaking of figuring out how to do things, I'm finding that the collective learning aspect of "23 Things" is not always ideal in my branch. Those of us who are participating in the program have different schedules, so it's hard to get together. Also, most of us are at quite basic levels of computer expertise and the computers we tend to use for the program are those in quieter corners of the workrooms - i.e., the oldest ones in the building, which have some of their own expertise issues from time to time. Still, most of us are bumbling onward!

Extra credit, perhaps?

At the urging of a (much) younger co-worker, I now have a Facebook account, and have communicated with several young friends and relatives via this, uh, thing. My youngest niece has offered to pilot me through the dangers (e.g., "intense poke wars" ... can't wait to find out what that is all about), and another has suggested that I might get extra credit in "23 Things" for beating her onto Facebook (she had been too academically focused to take part before her elderly relatives started hopping onto the cy-bandwagon, I guess). So how about it, Ellen and Jim? Maybe I could be like that slow kid in your third-grade class who always got "tries hard" on report cards (effort expended in all the wrong directions)?

Week 4, Thing 8

Whoa, I've just managed to open yet another account - with Bloglines - and selected a couple of RSS feeds. First I chose New Urban Legends and BBC News, but must have messed up on the second one (probably didn't go down and hit that second "subscribe"), since it didn't appear. Then, realizing that the urban legends one just duplicated stories that I feel I read often enough on Snopes.com, I figured out how to delete it.

This looks like a valuable tool for those whose computers are on all day, and who check a number of blogs regularly. However, for one who goes to a computer only for a specific task once in a while, maybe it's not so necessary (I realize that the latter type of person is becoming less and less common in my socioeconomic class). Nifty to know about, at any rate.

I thought I'd start with a news feed - maybe the Guardian, since those cheapskates at the Stornoway Gazette - WAIT! - I did add the Stornoway Gazette! Wow! However, the Oban Times still requires that you pay money for a subscription, so forget them!

Then I added a kitchen column from NPR - I can see how entertaining and addictive this might get! - and a couple of fellow-BCPL-blogs, and to make this more librarian-y, some library-type feeds. Done. Whew. I tried to add a list of my feeds to this, but I guess it's just too late in the day for me to be able to work it out, and there's not a colleague free right now to help me out. I'll try again later.

Week 3, Thing 7 - Technology, like it or lump it

I experimented with type size in this post; that's something technological! I found that "smallest" is actually "too small."

As one who just doesn't own many electronic devices, I don't have much first-hand experience with the stuff other people talk about (though I can identify some of these devices when I see them!). Hmmm. I have looked at pictures on other people's cameras or phones; I have observed the changes in the Internet and the increases in the number and depth of subject-related pages that are useful or interesting; there are sites that I now check regularly, or turn to as first sources for certain kinds of questions. I'm sure that as this program progresses, I will find some of the items I explore easier to use, and may even be motivated to purchase something to tech up my life.

I have already posted comments on several other "BCPL 23" blogs - motivated either by subject matter or knowing who the blogger is!

Week 3, Thing 6 - Nifty things

I've now looked at some of the neat things one can do with photos on Flickr; as a traveller, the mappr feature looks especially interesting to me. Too bad that I don't take pictures when I travel! Maybe that will have to change from now on.
One thing I've noticed about many of these photo mashup things is that they are taking forever to appear on the screen of this computer. It's not one of the branch's newest models, I guess.

Week 3, Thing 5 - welllll...

I've looked at Flickr and taken a shot at putting one of its photos here. This appears to involve stepping out of the fun, if overwhelming in its size, pile of photos to create several more different accounts, with Flickr and Yahoo and Google and God knows who else. After spending a reasonable amount of time fiddling around with all this, trying a second computer because the first one wouldn't show me the secret word in its freaking little box, finding that every reasonably memorable name has already been chosen by someone somewhere else, I have determined to just put my selected photo's address here. So go look at flickr.com/photos/ozguuun/537753659. That last number certainly seems to indicate that Oz Bey has quite a number of snaps on the site. He also seems to respond to comments fairly quickly and graciously. And this picture's caption does sum up the subject's expression and my current frame of mind - so maybe life does get better than this!

Week 2, Thing 1 & Thing 2 - Backing up a bit...

Okay, having accomplished Things 3 and 4 by setting up and registering a blog, I can now track earlier Things here.

#1, Finding out about the program, done, and hey, it sounds great. Read the "About" page, checked the "Tips" page, which seems empty now but I expect that it will fill up as we all move along.

#2, Lifelong learning:
I like these 7 1/2 principles. The last half-principle reminds me that some time ago I heard a professor point out that you can tell that a new thing is going be really useful when people start playing with it - he was thinking of guys creating computer games in the dawn of the computer age. He also pointed out that this playing around by the rank and file usually makes those in charge mad - I'm glad to see that this uptight attitude is not going to be a part of this program!
My goal will be fairly broad, to find out more about technology as it expands and changes. I know that everything I learn will make future learning easier, because I can remember those first little Apples and how difficult computers seemed then. New computer systems aren't scary at all now. Or not nearly as much.
Major obstacles for me will be other job responsibilities and interruptions. Also, I do not personally own much new technology - may be the last person in Baltimore County to own a pantograph - so will have to do some borrowing.
Which relates to my toolbox, which will be largely borrowed. But hey, we work in a library and borrowing is what it's all about, right?
And a library has great resources - I expect that I'll be using the Internet, and calling upon co-workers, especially those who are following the same long, long trail of 23 Things at the same time as I, and, in a pinch, the always-helpful folks who work at extension 3000.
My path will be the things in this program, and I'll keep an eye on my progress during the summer through this blog. Which will get less and less vanilla, I hope.

Not templateless after all

... I almost immediately realized that my blog is not templateless, but rather, has a sort of plain vanilla, default-type template, which I expect to change soon.

This is one of my newest pals. Is she cute or what? And very intelligent, too!

Week 1, Things 3 & 4 - Templateless?

Help. I'm trapped in a templateless blog! Why, I wonder, do the tutorials offer screenshots of the most understandable, intuitive bits, while ignoring the parts that one can't figure out? It's like all the trees in the parks being labeled except the ones that you can't identify. Roll on the 21st century!