Good things, not maudlin!

A note from one of my fave online friends (actually, we did get to share a face2face meal at ALA Katrina) just made it onto the "good things" that have happened to me today. GoodReads.com definitely is one for the year.

I plan to be one of the biggest boosters of web/lib 2.0 on the planet ad nauseum. It has been so important for me the last few years. I would be stark staring mad without it. (Peanut gallery--comments will be ignored.) If and when my fingers will type better (coming and going with maddening frequency), I will post again! And if typing my crazy long elliptical daft posts gets too hard, voice recognition software can be another hurdle to thud my way over/across/behind.

I started out today a bit maudlin. Picking charities in lieu of--arrant self indulgence. I've been sort of behaving myself since...while cackling with friends while eating Easter candy!

I thought I should put up a bitty post...to remind Blogger who I am, and to tell anyone who wants thanks so much for any good thoughts you can spare. I believe in them even more than my stated creed of Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, and hamentaschen.

Plus, I had to share the photo of the Ocean Beach Librarian skateboarding to work earlier this week. Do I know how to pick my priorities, or what?

Happy 2008

My best wishes to one and all for a happy, healthy new year. Dang, I really and truly will be 50 this year, if I make it to September. In any case, my year-in-review site is up. Mosy by if you'd like to see my even sillier side. It is still a work in progress. Best reads of 2007 to come!

Thing 23--FINISHED!

I finished the InfoPeople 23 Things Challenge yesterday. You can see all my 23 Things here. I thought I'd copy the post here so you can see what I've been up to. The good news, besides being done, is that the challenge did reinvigorate my interest in the social web, and the biblioblogosphere in particular.

I'm happy that I've looked at some new and not-so-new technologies and ideas through the lens of "what can enhance my library?" I wasn't that interested in the "Library 2.0" bandwagon when it brushed past me in 2005-2006. Taking a good hard look at it now was useful. At least now I feel au courant with the buzz, as of last March. Looking more closely, I see the original 23 Things was "loosely based upon Stephen Abram's article, 43 Things I (or You) might want to do this year (Information Outlook - Feb 2006) and the website 43Things." I know nothing makes something dated faster than a blog post. Being au courant a year-ago-last-February makes me feel decidedly less au courant. But I don't care deeply, as I think my surfing and reading around were more current, and anything that let me sit back and spend quality time with Walt Crawford is good. (Of course, I saw the new C&I came out yesterday. I think I'll print it at work!)

I do intend to get back to biblioblathering! I have to note some recent likely candidates that have joined the great unfinished: A Distant Magic (Mary Jo, how could you?); The Lonely Patient, The Dog Whisperer (if he can whisper, I can skim); the two-volume history of the Kumeyaay (interest and intention but SO dry).

23. Summarize your thoughts about this program on your blog.

In checking to see that I had actually done all of the other 22 Things (one of the payments for going out of order), I had many chances to revisit what I liked, didn't like, etc. Plus what I didn't get to: if you want to know the only library use I found for twitter, email me.

The time constraints were difficult. I originally said I would set aside one to one and a half hours a week to work on this. Of course, there were some weeks when I just did not have a spare 5 minutes. There were also many weeks when I thought the Things were too interesting to leave alone and gladly spent my own free time to work on them. Not every student is going to want to do that. (Note: I have no idea how much time I should allot to training this week :D) My boyfriend did NOT approve.

I found my Learning Contract this week accidentally (it was in the Program Expenses file?). I had correctly identified time as my main obstacle, and told myself to find off-desk time, attention/focus, and access to the office PC. I have to report that these things did work a bit for me. My co-workers have been great about giving me time--now I know I can ask when I need it. My attention and focus have been pretty good. Once you have played with enough of these Things, you learn to stay on track. Or you make your boyfriend mad, don't meet deadlines, etc. ANYTHING that helps me with time management is GOOD. So that was an unexpected side benefit.

One of my thoughts is that I'd like to keep on mentoring others doing this challenge. I think a more active leader could really help. I hated hearing people say they were stuck on stuff or lost or whatever. Now that I'm done, I don't want to lose these skills. So I'm going to see if I can find a way to keep this going.

One of the reasons I wanted to do this course was I hoped it would be a way to get to know more people at MPOW. It was, but on a fairly limited basis. I think the decision to do our posting by email was a mistake. Subscribing to all the blogs with an aggregator really worked for me to see what others were doing--Outlook just doesn't have the same functionality for links, images, etc. Meanwhile, now I'm going to miss keeping up with some of 23 Thingers--I already have informal plans with a couple. The interactivity is my fave aspect of library 2.0. I would like to see more interactivity with my colleagues, as well as our customers!

When I read Walt Crawford's article (see Thing 15), I started to wonder 1)why did InfoPeople suggest an article so opposed to the "Library 2.0" bandwagon and 2)why were we all doing these Things?

I went back to the FAQ

There is a lot of buzz in the library press about Web 2.0 and its impact on libraries. The California State Library believes that Web 2.0, and the social software that it has given birth to, has tremendous transformational potential, perhaps second only to the introduction of the Internet itself. In recognition of the importance of Web 2.0, the State Library has made a special grant award to Infopeople for a series of FREE training events titled Moving Libraries Forward to Web 2.0.

I think staying fresh on new technology is important in our line of work. We need to know what our most "permaconnected" users want and need. In part because we need to serve them, but more because things trickle down from the early adopters. I didn't want to touch a computer when I was in college. I keep wishing I could find that boyfriend-with-the-incredibly-common-name who tried so hard to get me interested. YOU WERE RIGHT! I also thought iPods were kind of stupid less than three years ago. Now, you will take mine from my cold dead ears.

The fun aspect of 23 Things is important, too. Having fun helps us learn, and opens us up to innovations. Many of the 23 Things left me cold, and/or I never saw any compelling way to use them in libraries. But other people have. Great! Let's keep the candles burning.

So, let's make our online presence vital, let's reach out to our communities and start two-way discussions, let's look at new services, let's look at existing services in new and different ways. In the words of one of my top ten favorite biblioblogs, It's All Good.

Now I'm not going to touch a computer for at least ten minutes :D

reminiscent of whom

Well, I've been on a bit of a carnival ride in my social software 23 things course. It does remind me of how I felt a few years ago when I discovered the biblioblogosphere. It was like I was no longer alone. There were other people whose ideas and thoughts were there for me to explore, AND I could talk to them!

Then I moved to California and became a branch librarian and my life changed. I could barely glance at LibrarianInBlack while on the reference desk, though I have staunchly kept her as one of my five Firefox home pages because she is a California public librarian! I should know what she says. But I often only get to read the subject and a snippet of a post. If there are links to follow, dollars to doughnuts a customer will come up with a question as soon as I start reading.

Therefore, I cringe to admit my Bloglines account has some 3,000 posts waiting for me to read. I keep trying to buck up, admit defeat, and delete some of the feeds, or at least clear the counters. But then I open it up and HAVE to read some Caveat Lector or Walt at Random or Tinfoil+Raccoon. I love Dorothea and Walt and Rochelle. And Meredith and the other Rochelle and way too many others to list. And this will NOT help me--I will just get seduced some more.

I keep wishing for better time management skills. However, the reality is that I spend much of my time as an extremely busy, extremely overpaid clerk. On top of customer needs, the fact is that I am not that speedy anymore. So that better time management desire translates into a need for more time.

Playing with web 2.0 stuff can lead to more time frittering, so I am trying for discipline. Unfortunately, for me, the techie toys are addictive. But I will be strong, and talk about a book.

It's the love of books that keeps me going. I finally got around to reading The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan, after having recommended The Omnivore's Dilemma to everyone in shouting distance. It was fascinating, well-written, and fascinating. Science and history interwoven with philosophy and agriculture. One reader on LibraryThing commented, "I will never look at a potato the same way again". I feel the same way. But I won't think any plant the same way again. I look out at the hybrid tea roses off our balconies. I am sure they are shaping my view of the world. My only action is to occasionally deadhead them; my landlady and the gardener take care of the majority of their needs. But they may be training us in some way.

Pollan closely examines four plants and their interactions with humans: apples, tulips, marijuana and potatoes. Each section has revelations, none that I expected. Pollan is a gardener. I think he manages to get across the full spectrum of why we need plants in so many ways, and they need us. He probably makes the most cogent case I have heard for biodiversity, without starting with that intent or ever mounting a soapbox. I often read nonfiction to fall asleep, but I warn you, I found The Botany of Desire riveting. Thought provoking. Funny. Lyrical. Now there's a bunch of words that wouldn't make good tags!

(I also keep swearing to myself that I will clean up the tags on these the posts. Do you see how I get confused between de.licio.us conventions and Blogger? Plus these posts don't have subjects...didn't they warn us against indexing ourselves in that ASIS course I took??? OK, I fail some of web 2.0.)

(Some day, I'll stop using random lyrics or overheard comments and such as post titles. They are so utterly useless as jumping off or access points. Be grateful I don't list the songs that get stuck in my head.)

Going from pillar to post

My posts for the LITAblog are up here. The posting was much more smooth this year. Either WordPress has improved immensely in ease of use, or my skills are much better. I'm leaning towards the former.

Today, Boyfriend and I, along with Mom and Sis, visited Mount Vernon. I managed not to refer to it as Mount Vermin in public. I believe I last visited it at age 8, in the company of elderly cousins. Since then, they (the Ladies of Mount Vernon, as the owners are known) have created an adjacent complex with a very extensive museum, interpretive center, restaurants and gift shop. The gift shop was what I remembered most from my previous visit. I guess the importance of good museum shops has been explored by some dissertation by now. I know that many of the conversations I have been in about museums have been mainly about who has the best gift shops.

We did not dabble to long at the Mount Vernon gift shop. I did look for a Washington monument night light, to no avail. Maybe tomorrow. I still hope to get in a trip to the Library of Congress, whose gift shop is celebrated far and wide!

Jingle jangle

Thank goodness (over and over) for the Wayback Machine. Saving my blog jewelry is not their raison d'etre, but what a help!

Of course, I couldn't resist looking up pages I authored in 1994 and 1995 while I was there. One of which crashed my browser and lost the first version of this post. I blame Anthony, the poor little recent high-school graduate who first got me started on the web. I am thrilled that Philanthropy News Digest is still going, with archives back to 1995, an RSS feed (not that I am subscribing), chat, commentary. Incredible. I used to call it Current Deaths, and it was a weekly nightmare--if you've ever photocopied newspaper articles en masse, you know what I mean. I was the hunter, gatherer, table of contentser for a weekly photocopied Current Awareness service. Then, at an SLA conference, I heard a speaker talk about doing a digital CA. I was immediately hooked, even if it did take two years to implement, and Anthony told me I was crazy when I said we should base it on a database. I got hooked on library conferences the, too. Let me tell you, SLA freebies should never be shunned.

OK, I've wrestled the new, user-friendly, intuitive Blogger interface to the mat for now...so being home sick for a week has been of some use...really, I need to eat lunch and spend some time on TitleSource 3. Too bad none of you can help me with my February carts!

Resistance is futile

Web 2.0, the machine is using us, form is no longer related to content...

My very first YouTube link. Welcome to last year, again. A little scary, this video by an anthropology professor, but fairly interesting ideas, even if some of them have been around far longer than 2.0 ideas.

Nowhere near as scary as Blogger insisting I change over to one of my gmail accounts for log in and to change over to their new, no longer beta Blogger. But I held my breath and did it. So far, it's not all that different. Being able to add tags is the biggest change I've noticed. Let's see if I can index my own posts with any consistancy or logic! I muddled around in the template a little, but didn't make many changes. It looks like they still expect me to put on my html hat ocassionally. Unfortunately, it's stuffed all the way at the back of the closet, wrinkled, dusty, faded, sad indeed. As I endlessly tell my PC Basics students, use it or lose it.

Agh, I've lost all my blog jewelry! Blogger swore they would save it. Now to find it and bring it home!

I did dust off LibraryThing a little. I still have some resistance to adding library books to "my library", but I still want some kind of a way to keep track! Now I swear I am going through all the 2006 posts so I can finally compile my "best of" list, just in time for the Grammys? Oh found a new-to-me blog via Rochelle, I think. May even add it to my blogroll is the dust on my Bloglines doesn't set off too much digital asthma.