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.

image generators

So this is where all the for dummies signs came from.

I could spend hours goofing around with this kind of thing. Here is my monopoly card.

overdrive media

I have done the whole process of burning to a cd from home. I have talked a few patrons through the process when the patron was on the phone. It's hard to make sure you are talking about the same screens.

I like that the Listening Library items are available because I listen to a lot of my children's and teen titles during my commute. I wish there were more science fiction and fantasy but they are hard to find in talking book format.

del.icio.us revisited

I did have an account but had not used it recently. I searched for graphic novels but was disappointed that many of the the links were very old. I just did a general browse and found many more technology items. A search on books and reading did find some nice collaborative sites.

To create links, I used the search of birding and find a good selection of the birding sites I was aware of and I added these to my account. Don't know what other librarians will make of this.

I am able to now varify the new bird at my feeder last night was a female black-headed grosbeak.

Picture is from Flickr by Peggy Collins

wikis

This format seems to feed the librarian's love of lists. Although they appear easy to create, you would need to keep on top of it to keep out inappropriate material. The wikis themselves often look very "vanilla".

Watch That Video

Picture from Flikr jacojaco's photostream

I was having problems doing this project because the videos are playing so slow. I am one of the those people who is a sucker for cute animal videos. I spent some time looking at cairn terrier videos. I often watch the videos highlighted on Yahoo and on my website provider Comcast.

The public libraries (which brought up many more items than public library) items were pretty boring. If I lived in that town, I might find it more interesting. The history of Huntington Library looked good. Watching them install the floors at the Bedford Library, not so exciting.

Hulu and Fancast had some items I might watch. My brother and I are active users of the video on demand of Comacast where some of these items also are.

The current problems with watching videos on my Sno-Isle computer would definately put me off for now. I might watch some from home where the speed is much better.

exploring facebook

I set up a profile and invited a few friends (Sno-Isle buddies). I will check back later to see if they accepted my offer of "friendship". Yeah, Tracy did. I was unable to load a picture. I will try sending one from our digital camera at home.

It might be fun to look up old friends. I know my niece spend much of her time on myspace. I think I have other things to do.

I just finished reading Rare Bird by Maria Mudd-Ruth. It was about marbled murrelets, those rare birds of the old growth forests. They find them by standing under the most likely trees at dawn and looking up for fast flying birds. It took many years to find out what the most likely nesting places were.

Whether than spending my hours on social networking, I prefer the isolated acts of reading and birding.

flickr

I have spent some time before looking around Flickr. I keep thinking we should do this with our photos from home, but haven't spent the time yet. We had a computer scare in the last few weeks and we thought we might lose the photos. It gives more emphasis to getting this done.





I searched on malachi and dog and look what I found.

This picture is of course by our Jim McCluskey. I like the fact that it is close-up but still has lots of action. I think Malachi is the original ham. My dogs and cats always look nervous when the camera comes out, not excited like this.

streaming music

This gave me a chance to look at the Smithsonian streaming music. I really like the old folk songs and I was able to put together a playlist of Pete Seeger songs.

I looked at Pandora. I put one thing in to see what came up. It was interesting but I wanted to skip ahead to see what they had selected for me.

rss feeds - I should do this

Some of my co-workers are already doing this so I feel a bit behind. I have added some useful feeds to my bloglines. I will try to keep up with them regularly. It's a little harder to curl up with bloglines, than it is with a book and a cat.

instant messaging

I have not done this before but I can see how it would work will in a reference situation. It allows for a lot of back and forth. I used to think I was a good multi-tasker, but maybe not. I find it easier to do one thing at a time. I think I would find instant and constant access at little stressful. I would also want to jump right to it, no matter what else I had planned to do that day.

I'll just contemplate the sunset instead.

See, I can do a photo.

looking at other people's blogs

It was fun to try and find blogs of people I know. Many blogs are much fancier than mine. Maybe soon I will learn how to add pictures. For now, I can change the color of my text.

creating a blog

I have done this process before so it was not too hard. I hate coming up with a good name for the blog. That was the worst.