My thoughts on 20 for 20

from Birdfreak.com's photostream on flickr

I have enjoyed learning about photosharing and hope to use Flickr for personal use. I think I also might pursue Second Life on my own. Gaming continues to be a personal passion.

I am blogging on the Collection Development blog. I have created a list of library blogs and I do check them check them daily. Of course, I actively use search engines. I may try listening to some podcasts including about libraries. I listen to talking books during my commute. I check the catolog for titles. I may do an Overdrive download when it is available for the title I want.

Not everything was interesting for me, but in the future I would volunteer for this kind of training.

My bird is a northern flicker. More than one is currently coming to my suet feeder. You can see them stick out their very long tongue to get the suet. I can hear call in the area, but thankfully they are not pounding on the house, just the telephone pole.

Something I know - gaming

I come from a family of gamers. My first games were back when you took a cassette and loaded the program on to the computer. It made Pong look good.

My family has had Nintendo and both version of PS. The kids got Wii for Christmas. The little ones are good at bowling and baseball. My nephew has Xbox but I have not seen it.

My brother is seriously into racing games. I like puzzle games. We have a subscription to Real Networks. I can get new puzzle when the old ones get boring. I am currently stuck on Bedazzled. I also like the solitare games. They go fast, no shuffling the cards. The puzzle games are addictive so don't get me started at work.

Googling earth

From jackanapes' photostream in Flickr

I was able to install Google Earth. I checked out my house, around Snohomish, and the Sno-Isle Service Center (where you can see the bookmobiles parked).

I looked at the Mount St Helens tour.

I like to be able to click and see panoramas and the links to information. I could link to Wikipedia and get current and historic information on Snohomish - the oldest city in Snohomish County.

I would enjoy using this in the future when I was planning on visiting a place. The task bar was easy to use.

The chickadees are coming frequently to the feeder. I think they are nesting in the tree I just had pruned. They seemed to have survived the commotion.

second life

I made my Tektek avatar twice, but the picture won't transfer. Unlike certain of the teen librarian avatars, I was willing to go with gray hair.

I sampled the Second Life videos. I signed up for Second Life so I could look around but my email verification did not come through. I have not entered Second Life before but I think it would be interesting. It would take more time to really get involved and knowledgable.

online applications

Google had limited function. Zoho was difficult to use. The only good thing is it is free. It is hard enough to figure out one set of offfice tools. Don't need to do multiple sets.

Guess I wasn't persuaded.

search engines galore

goldfinch from flicker -ibm4381's photostream

I regularly use Yahoo because I am often looking for a publisher or business. Because they use a "tree system" for catagorizing their items, the businesses will pop up first.

I spend a fair amount of time on Google especially when I cannot find a title requested by a patron. I find it easier to find something specific like a title there. When I was selecting the International Collection, I occasionally used the translate function. It comes up with some really strange English phrases.

I used to use Ask.com a long time ago. It seemed to become less useful over time. I think now that it has been updated, I am willing to try it again.

Dogpile.com would be useful thing for those "I can't verify" titles. I tried searching Cairn terriers and got a wide variety things.

The American goldfinch picture above appealed to me because that is the look they give when the feeder is empty. I feel like they're saying "hey lady, what gives, where's our food".

podcasting

I looked at several public library podcast sites. Several had picturebooks being read. I listened to a book review of Tyson's Death by Black Hole at the Pierce County website. I am in the middle of this book so I found it interesting. Kankakee Public Library had recorded a presentation by Elizabeth Berg, a favorite author of mine.

I used the more general podcasting sites to look up items. I found Animal Wise and NPR Story of the Day and added these to my Google Reader.

I could see Sno-Isle using podcasts within the system to expand availability of training. The general public might be interest in reader's advisory by podcast. It would be important to keep the informaion fresh. I noticed several libraries had started podcasting but did not have any recent material.