23 skidoo

Well this Learn and Play Web 2.0 business was interesting, thought provoking, and sometimes fun. My favorite things about the program were reading the other blogs and Youtube. I feel I am a little less of a Luddite and a little more tech savvy, having strengthened areas with which I was already familiar and broadened my Web horizons with new concepts and applications.

I would definitely participate in another discovery program (Web 3.0?) like this in the future.

Exiting the blogosphere,
Library Man

P.S. The reason I named this blog "and in this corner...Library Man" is because my son sometimes tells people his dad is a professional wrestler and a library man.

your mold samples, Dr. Honeydew

MOLDI. What a moniker. I checked out MOLDI and I indeed like it. I found a new Dinosaur Jr. DVD on the front page and promptly put it in my cart to watch later. I couldn't find any e-books by Vladimir Nabokov which I thought was weird. However; I wasn't too disheartened though, for I find reading too much from a computer screen makes me feel like Beaker from the Muppets. Nevertheless, I see MOLDI use growing, especially with AV.

pods

I am familiar with podcasts. I have some favorite podcasters that I listen to quite often. I used Podfeed.net to find a possible new favorite: Alternative Kitchen Garden which is now added to my bloglines account. I found a library survival guide by Woodruff Library on Podcastalley.com; however, it required a software download, so that site receives a thumbs down. The podcasts I frequently listen to are hosted on libsyn.com which I like well enough.

As to podcasts relevance, we could follow Woodruff Library's example and create a customized guide to CML. Also, the futurist who visited CML last year said info will be passed along more and more verbally with books on CD, podcasts, etc. I have to agree with him.

So yeah, I like podcasts.

Quiet Library

I am very familiar with Youtube. I watch videos on the site a few times a week. My favorite channels/users are Permaculture Science, Peak Moment, and the Dervaes family's Path To Freedom.

For something a bit more humorous. Here is a clip from a Japanese game show called Quiet Library. The ending is unforgettable.

Tools

I checked out the toolbar and the Tooling Around blog. The Book Burro sounds promising. Some of the books which I am interested acquiring are out of print and out of my price range. I wonder how much more effective Book Burro is than the behemoth Amazon.com.

I read the top five reasons to get Gmail on the Tooling Around blog. I used to have a Gmail account a few years ago, but I let it atrophy. I already had enough e-mail accounts with enough storage and didn't feel like sending out the e-mail "Here is my new e-mail address."

Lulu

For Thing #18, I glanced at the winners and found Lulu. I had first used Lulu to buy a book earlier this year: After the Crash: An Essay-Novel of the Post-Hydrocarbon Age. I was impressed with how the book looked and felt...the content was pretty good too. So I investigated the Lulu site a bit out of curiosity. Lulu's goal "has been to have 1 million users that sell 10 books instead of 10 authors that sell 1 million books." It would not seem like a financially prudent proposition to pay even the minimum prices to get a book published if a user only plans to sell a few books. But hey, sometimes it is all about getting the word out so to speak.

Heaven Seventeen

Dear Blog,

I have neglected you for so long. I am trying to kick start myself again after the hiatus of Learn and Play assignments. For some reason I have had the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange in my head as of late...hence the title of this very entry.

Regards,
Jared

P.S. So Goggle docs. Heeeeeeere's mine. I cannot foresee how this would help me in my current position (except to win some tech swag). However, I can see how it may come in handy with reading lists and/or finance reports.

P.P.S. Sorry about that guttural sounding moniker of yours. Cheer up, you could of been named Blah.

Wiki II: Enter the Wiki

Well using a Wiki for the first time was an interesting experience. I see why many wikis require the owner to accept a user or have other safeguards for it seems that once one is in the site one has carte blanche to do what they will to the wiki. I'll check back at the PBWiki Learn n' Play site next week; I am interested to see what others have posted.

Wocka Wocka Wocka? Wiki Wiki Wiki!

Watching the Common Craft video on wikis made me want to go camping instead of blogging...but here I am.

It seemed to me from the video that wikis could act like a digital community bulletin board. I have used Wikipedia many times in the past and and know that there can be a downside of the community having the ability to edit and save info; the downside being accuracy. I suppose that is related to why Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki requires e-mail confirmation to edit because they have had vandalism problems?!? That makes me think of electronic tagging in a whole new way.

Library 2.0

Well I read Rick Anderson, Michael Stephens, and Dr. Wendy Schultz's ideas about Library 2.0. All made good points.

I agree with all of Rick Anderson's ideas. This especially struck me: "But if our services can’t be used without training, then it’s the services that need to be fixed—not our patrons." I feel it will be a real balancing act adopting technological trends yet incorporating easy to use technology and/or easily implemented customer education. The aforementioned quote also reminded me of what Michael Stephens said in his address to CML about 2.0., to paraphrase, he said "if staff doesn't get behind a technology it won't work no matter what it is." I feel this ties in with Stephens' idea of controlling technolust. Technophiles don't necessarily set the trends we should incorporate wholeheartedly; if the average library user cannot use it with little difficulty, the technology should not be central to the library experience.

The most attractive portrait of libraries of the future was painted by Dr. Wendy Schultz. Aside from the Second Life bit (which I think is a wrong direction to go and so do many corporations who are pulling out of it in hindsight) the library she describes sounds divine. Library 4.0 with its mind gym sounds a bit idealistic, but hey I'm an Aquarius. I find it very forward thinking that she describes a part of the library as being a "sanctuary" and a place to "retreat from technohustle."

Samoas are good but Tagablogs are delicious

I had seen the strange spelling of "del.icio.us" before on the web and wondered "what is up with that?" Thanks to Web 2.0 my ignorance has been squelched and my curiosity satiated. del.icio.us is pretty cool. I played around with it and made my own account. I will probably use this in my personal life as my bookmarks on my PC are currently a bit unwieldy. I like how one can access their favorite sites from other PCs as well as the social networking feature which allows one to find that hidden gem of a site that someone else has discovered.

Sylvester and Tweety

Hearing about Twitter and tweets made me think of those Looney Tune characters Sylvester and Tweety Bird. I can just envision a tweet (stuck in cat's mouth...halitosis engulfing me 10 seconds ago from bluetooth) coming out of Sylvester's feline maw before Tweety makes an aerodynamic escape, flyng (back into) the coop.

I wasn't too excited about Twitter. I read a few blogs regularly and have known about blogging for a while but this is my first blog. So why would I want to micro-blog? But I gave it a shot. I found and followed some co-workers, the learnandplay account, and searched for some things I am interested in like urban homesteading. I just don't think I'll use it much personally. I could see how it would be more effective than texting with a phone if someone was in front of a PC most of the day, which applies to some library workers or other professions.

Oh yeah, my Twitter alias is: librarymanimal

Thingy

LibraryThing, you temptress. My curiosity has been aroused by your modus operandi in the past but I had not succumbed to your wiles...until Web 2.0. For you know, as I know, that one can tell a lot about a person by what they read. Even the psychologists agree. A friend even threw you a party, LibraryThing, and had people over to help catalog her thousands of tomes. Today I have only given you five books I love; however, your siren song of ones and zeroes tells me you will not be satisfied until I give you all of my cherished ISBNs.

CML Factory

I had fun playing around with Generator Blog and Letter James. However, I couldn't quite figure out how to use the Letter James. I used a lot of the links on Generator Blog. Some of them were quite amusing, some not so much. I decided since the Warhol exhibit is coming to the Wexner center to go with http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/warholizer.php ,which was one of two Warhol links-the other gave me an image that looked like it was created by an Atari 2600. The future is now, start the 15 minute stopwatch.

Feed me more Seymour

Using the different search tools for exercise #9 was a bit unproductive. I guess the blogs in which I am interested I found in connection with a website or another's blog. Or maybe they just fly too far under the radar and/or are too multi topical. The key word searches kinda gave mostly general results. Syndic8.com seemed the best at finding some feeds related to the topic on which I was searching. I liked Technorati the best though because of its layout and the searches came up with youtube videos.

Feed me Seymour

Well RSS is new to me. I recall seeing the little icon in the corners of some blogs I read, but never gave it much thought. This exercise expanded my understanding of how the modern blogosphere and Internet work.

Using this in my personal life may save a small amount of time; however, I could see how it could be very useful if I was researching a certain topic and could get many daily feeds of said topic and thus many different viewpoints. In relation to topic searches, RSS seems it would be a great tool for seeing what the current buzz is about CML on feeder sites.

And here is my blog roll: http://www.bloglines.com/blog/librarymanjared

Techgnosis?

Well I rarely get excited about new technology. I have never been awed by new whiz bang gadgetry (although I must confess that I have ordered SPORE, which is being shipped as I type, because the breakthrough animation corresponding to the game's evolution theme speaks to my biology nerdiness).

However, I picked my brain for some sort of technological advance which had recently piqued my interest. I recalled this article: http://www.realitysandwich.com/collecting_sun

My wife and I have been researching adding solar panels to our home but are waiting for Ohio solar incentives to increase, because right now the cost of a homeowner adding enough panels to their home to make a significant difference is still quite expensive. Hopefully this solar energy storage breakthrough will help Ohio, and other states, encourage solar energy even more.

1 cheer for brevity

I played around with some Flickr mashups and tools. I can see how the Flickr color Pickr would be good for designing a website. The retrievr was my favorite, but it never produced the owl picture I had "drawn." However, the results were thought provoking.

Well I'll be a sea monkey's uncle

http://flickr.com/photos/columbuslibraryteens/2587589671/

I was pleasantly surprised to find this enchanting image, posted by Megan, on the CML Teen Flickr site. It brought back memories from my childhood of advertisements in comic books for sea monkeys. The advertisements always made the monkeys look regal; there was always a castle in the background. I never got any of these marine primates; however, I did get some "castle crystals" which when dropped into water made miniature psychedelic spires of crystals which lasted about two days before they toppled into a dreary post-psychedelic soup.

In high school I got a big fish tank. I learned that a favorite food of tropical fish is brine shrimp. Brine shrimp I came to find out were also known as "sea monkeys," obviously a fantastical name used to shill to kids. I now wonder if Desmond Morris had seen sea monkey ads as a daydreaming child and thus his aquatic ape theory was first born. Anyway, I am glad I found out later instead of sending away for them as a whippersnapper only to feel duped when I got a package with some weird crustaceans that bare no resemblance to magical apes or any other mammals.

seven (and a half) lively habits

Well this is my first blog ever. So I am learning something new, this blogging business.

During my mandatory schooling years, I once heard a person say that "if you are not moving forward, you are moving backward." That struck me and rings true now even more than it did then. If we don't somehow grow in our professional and/or personal lives then we are indeed moving backwards.

I watched the 7 & 1/2 Habits online tutorial and identified which habits are the most difficult and simplest for me.

The hardest: habit 3
It is easy to fall into the trap of viewing a challenge as a problem, especially if it is monumental "challenge." It is usually easier to keep a positive mental attitude when issues have easy or apparent solutions.

The easiest: habit 2
Excepting responsibility for my own learning has always come easy for me. Maybe I was fortunate enough to have been born...er...curious. I feel that an adult should be responsible for one's own learning. I can't think of a more important aspect in life with which to incorporate DIY, proactive techniques.

Habit 7.5 also ranks pretty high the ease meter.