10 Random Things For Bonus!

1) I don't feel very good today.

2) I just finished my third win at National Novel Writing Month, an online writing contest where you try to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November - check it out @ http://www.nanowrimo.org

3) I'm originally from rural Pennsylvania.

4) I'm Quaker

5) I like villains - Sylar from Heroes, Ben from Lost, Joker from Batman, etc

6) I dressed up as a mad scientist for Parson's Poetry Scram and won first place

7) I have a secret crush on Cilian Murphy - shhh....

8) I like to sing in the back room with Amanda P!

9) My husband is getting his PhD in Economics from Ohio State, so I've heard lots of mini lectures about the bailout!

10) I hate when people beep at me for not turning right on red. I know it's red, I'm not going to go if there's cars coming because I'm not stupid, so just hold your horses and only use your horn if you're about to hit me.

The End of the Road

Well, Learn & Play, it's been fun, but we've come to the end of the road.

I've really enjoy this program: more than I thought I would, to be honest. I figured that it would be an easy breeze through program and I would collect my flash drive and go on with my life unchanged.

Most of the things I *was* very familiar with - YouTube, Flickr, etc - but instead of making it boring, it was more like a nice break in between learning new gluts of technology information. I appreciated their inclusion because it meant I didn't have to think as hard as I did when learning about, say, that annoying pb wiki or the rss feed one.

On the whole, though, I've seen a lot of benefits from the program. I think it was a fun opportunity for all staff to bond together in a common project. I really enjoyed watching everyone share with each other all the fun things they've discovered how to do. It was kind of a level playing ground, too: while I was often called on to help with some of the tasks, there were definitely ones where I had to ask someone else what to do, and those people would ask me on the next task, etc. It was all circle-icious!

Thanks for the opportunity to Learn & Play, CML. It was lots of fun, and I'm a little sad it's over...

MOLDI

Dug through MOLDI a little bit this morning. I'd seen it and tried it out when I first moved to Columbus and started using CML as a patron, but my computer wasn't that great and I had a lot of things on my mind - like planning a wedding and working on my MLIS, for two - so I sort of disregarded it. Now that those things are taken care of, I have more time for this sort of thing. Plus, I have a pretty long commute to work and have taken to getting audio books on my iPod for the trip. I think MOLDI will be a good resource for me.

It's not a bad site: pretty user-friendly, and pretty straightforward. Just by browsing for a few minutes I found one audio book I put on hold and one I was able to check out. (Now I just need to remember to download it when I get home!) The selection isn't quite where I think we'd all like it - some more popular titles, and so forth - but it's not that bad, and I think it's also a chance for people to expand their interests a little. It's a fun option for our power users or for some of our patrons who may have exhausted our supply of books on tape and are casting about for something new to listen to.

The music....well, let's just say I'm not too excited about the music choices. But of course, I'm pretty sure my demographic is *not* the target audience for MOLDI, so that's OK. :)

Podcasting

To be honest, I'm not nearly as excited about podcasts as I used to be. Once upon a time I thought podcasts would be awesome. I was sadly disappointed.

This is not because podcasts themselves aren't a good idea. It's just that I don't have the time/inclination to listen to them.

Example: I subscribed to the podcast for my morning radio, The Riot on 88.7. I thought I'd listen to the podcast on days when, for whatever reason, I missed the show. Then all of a sudden I realized it was a month later and I had this whole mess of episodes built up that I was never going to get to. So I deleted them all, unsubscribed, and there you have it.

I was looking around PodcastAlley to see if there was anything that caught my eye, and I just wasn't getting excited. All the library ones either had nothing to do with libraries or sounded very dull. All the ones I searched for using my fandoms were either low on material (Harry Potter news? Really? There's no Harry Potter news any more...) or too broad (really it's a podcast about comic books but Neil Gaiman's name just happened to be in the keywords.)

I think what it really comes down to for me is that podcasts are just a place for people to hear themselves talk. I tend to get very irritated when people are talking just for talking's sake - I like silence, I like quiet - and I *especially* get irritated when they're ranting, like pundits on TV or most radio personalities. Why would I subscribe to something that is basically stuff I don't like? And, as seen above, even when it *is* something I like, I won't like it enough to actually force myself to listen to it at a future point.

So, all in all, I think podcasts are a lost cause for me. I'm sure there are people who enjoy them - the people that watch talk shows and listen to radio personalities - and that's fine. Me, I'm going to pass on getting any deeper into this one.

YouTube

I'm not going to talk long about YouTube. I've been on to YouTube since college - lots of fun videos for bored college kids to enjoy, and when we entertain our friends now we mostly end up just sitting around watching YouTube videos all night - and my husband and I also have our own account where we post videos of our youth group kids (http://www.youtube.com/user/engelhardtlm1) so I consider myself *very* comfortable with YouTube and the way it works.

And that was an incredibly long sentence.

That said, here is a fun music video by the French group Dionysos. They do good stuff:




May I also recommend Hulu (www.hulu.org) for TV shows and movies online, and Animoto (www.animoto.org) for a place where you can make your own short films to share your photos online. Both great video sharing sites.

WOW

Holy crap, I just found my new favorite waste of time. I was on the CML toolbox looking through the different links we have. Most of them I'm already hip to, either using every day several times a day (Google, Firefox, etc) or having tried them out through Learn & Play (delicious, LibraryThing, and so on.) I decided to try out Stumble because I had never even heard of it before.

This site is absolutely amazing.

Stumble (at least the way I tried it out) works as a toolbar added on to your browser. Even though I know it won't stay once the computer is rebooted, I decided to download the toolbar anyway and play around with it. When you sign up for Stumble, you select your interests. Then it adds a button to your toolbar (well, a few buttons, actually, but one main one) and when you hit it, it takes you to a random site based on the interests you selected. You can then click on thumbs up or thumbs down, depending on whether you liked the site or not, and those ratings will affect the next sites you get.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have found my new time waster.

One of the other buttons added to your toolbar is deceptive, because it says "Favorites" but what it really means is "List of things you liked." When you click on that button, it takes you to a blog that basically is just a list of the sites you said you liked. That way, when you "stumble" on that awesome site, it's not lost forever. You can also share sites with people if you know their email address. My friends and I are always sending sites back and forth, so this is a really handy way to quickly send it without having to sign into my email or onto my blog and post it that way. Click a button, type in their address, and it's done.

I know this toolbar will go away when the computer restarts, but as soon as I get home tonight I'm putting it on my own browser (Firefox) and will probably promptly spend hours just clicking through, looking at all the awesome things. I love the internets, and I love the things people put on the internets, and this is just one more fabulous way of finding them. Thanks, CML, for linking to it! :)

Comiqs

Out of the Web 2.0 awards list, I decided to play with the website Comiqs. It was ranked third place in the "Fun Stuff" category.

At first I was incredibly enamored by this website. I love places where I can play with pictures, and the idea of being able to make an awesome webcomic *easily* is very exciting to me. Unfortunately, the more I've played with it, the less user-friendly it becomes. I was able to make one or two strips, but the menus are not very intuitive. In places where you'd expect the site to just go to a new page, it would inexplicably open in a new window, which cluttered up my screen and made me angry. (I'm a tabs person, anyway.)

If the navigation would become a little more intuitive, and if there would be less screen popping up, and if directions were a little more clear, it would be an awesome site. I can see why it got third place. The concept is awesome, but the execution is lacking as is.

Google Docs

This is really cool! I can see just a lot of situations where Google Docs would be a great tool. One personal application that comes to mind: my sister and I have different versions of Word. We're both writers, so when we're trying to send documents to each other to read or edit we run into lots of problems trying to get our computers to play nice. Google Docs can definitely clean up that problem and make it way easier for us to share things.

I can see how this would be great professionally, as well. In the HHC, kids don't always have A) time B) money or C) inclination to print out their assignments. If they needed to, we could save their work on a Google Docs account and they could bring it up at school the next day or on one of our other computers if they wanted to work on it again. So easy!!

Wikis

So I'm reading this article by Meredith Farkas (http://www.webjunction.org/social-software/articles/content/438229) about wikis and their potential use in libraries. It's overall not bad, except I don't think she was careful enough about hiding either her bias or the bias she assumes her audience has. From what I'm reading, she's clearly writing for librarians who are A) older and/or B) not comfortable with technology. For example:

"It can be difficult for people to get used to the idea of a website that anyone is allowed to add to or edit. The notion of private property is so deeply embedded in our society that it’s difficult to imagine going onto someone else’s website and changing things, even when they want us to. "

Um, no? Not for me and my generation, at any rate. The idea of popping in to a website and adding content is pretty much run-of-the-mill for us. Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, a wide variety of message boards, even things like fanfic sites (http://www.fanfiction.net/) or original fiction sites (http://www.fictionpress.com/) or video creating sites (http://www.animoto.com/ - and I really recommend this site, it's awesome) are a part of our normal lives.

All that to say, I wish she would have stayed away from assuming that all of her readers are uncomfortable with this.

Because we're not.

The wide majority of the article, though, is really good. I enjoyed her suggestions for how libraries can use wikis; I especially liked the idea of subject guides as wikis. I can see CML using wikis for things like organizing when different branches have tech trainings or FOL booksales, and also for lists of specialty DVDs or books, like Triple Crown books or horror movies.

Also posted a few things on the CML wiki sandbox. Fun, except I kind of wish the formatting was different. This seems more like a many-paged message board. Not as clean or streamlined as I'd wish, but then again, I'm kind of picky about that.

Library 2.0 stuff

As someone who uses "open" technology quite a bit, there's a lot about Web 2.0 and consequently Library 2.0 that I like. I like user-directed stuff, and I like that users can share content. I also have to add some caution in there, though. Open content means, of course, it is also open to abuse, and there are still people on the web that are not wise to that and seem to be surprised when some sort of abuse happens. There's a balance that needs to be struck between enjoying the variety and diversity of user content and understanding that with that enjoyment comes the possibility of seeing something that maybe you don't enjoy so much.

I think that balance is something that needs to be taken into consideration when implementing user-driven features in our libraries. Many people don't understand that balance or aren't willing to strike that balance, and even though we as librarians love new technology and are always ready to jump on the technology bandwagon, I think we need to keep these people in mind, as well. I'm afraid that we'll go too fast; that we'll lose our "lifelong" customers while we try to court the fickle young minds that adore this technology.

Yummy

Checked out Delicious today and set up some bookmarks. With a lot of these learn & play activities, it seems like they would be very useful on my home PC but not so much at work for various reasons. With Delicious, I think the problem is that our work PCs reset every time we restart them. Since I don't have a dedicated user PC, all that stuff about putting a tab button in the toolbar etc doesn't work for me. So if I want to bookmark stuff, I still have to copy the URL, head to Delicious, sign in, and then set up a bookmark for it. I guess it is handier than having to search for the website every time, though.

I do like how they show you how many people also have the website bookmarked. This "social" part of social bookmarking makes it kind of neat to check out those people's bookmarks and see what else you might have in common.

Anyway, here are my bookmarks: http://www.delicious.com/hhcmeg

Speaking of play, we get to go bowling next week! Yay!

Twittering away

http://www.twitter.com/hhcmeg

Half of the libraries are closed today because of the power outages. The other half are open, and I know that here, at least, none of us are very happy about being here. But what do you do?

I was trying to get Twitter to consecutively post with, say, Blogger or my Livejournal, but it wasn't working. As far as I could figure out, you can only have it download tweets in lump sums at a set time during the day from LoudTwitter. Not really what I wanted. But I'm pretty sure some of my flist can get it to work on LJ, so I'm not sure what I'm missing. I'm sure I'll keep playing around with it and will probably figure it out, but that on top of my terrible horrible no good very bad day already today, I'm not very positively inclined towards Twitter right now.

LibraryThing

Clearly I'm using today to catch up on my Learn & Play tasks, haha. Although I was lucky on this one: I already had a LibraryThing account. I didn't do much on it for like a year, but today I logged back in again and added a few more books. Take a look: http://www.librarything.com/profile/tahmthelame

Photo Phun

I kind of hate myself for using that "ph as f" thing in the post title. Oh well.

I love messing around with images, so I really enjoyed this challenge for the Learn & Play.

I messed around with making a picture cube from Big Huge Labs: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/cube.php. I still have to cut it out and put the tabs together, but it's a little bit of awesome. And it was nice because it could link right up with my Flickr account.

And because it's fun, I also messed around with Cool Text (http://www.cooltext.com/) and embossed my name.

Library RSS feeds

Here are some interesting library-related RSS feed sites I found:

http://www.libraryjournal.com/learnrss (A whole list from Library Journal - all look pretty good!)

http://www.ala.org/apps/xml/alonline.xml (American Libraries Online RSS top stories feed)

http://www.loc.gov/rss/ (A bunch of RSS feeds from the Library of Congress)

RSS feeds

I've never really dealt much with RSS feeds. They're a little bit intimidating, since people like professional online comics stars and famous authors have them. But, since that's the newest task for CML Learn & Play, I've given it a try.

And I kind of like it...

It looks like it might be a neat way to keep all my most-visited websites together, which I suspect is probably one of the points of the whole thing. It was also kind of a winnowing exercise deciding what to put on my feed and what to leave off. Sort of a "I go here often but is it really THAT often?" discussion in my head.

ETA: FINALLY got my bloglines website thing to show. You can find my blogroll here: http://www.bloglines.com/blog/barigrl. (A note about the name "barigrl:" While it is often misread as BAR girl, it is actually BARI girl. In high school, I had the distinction of being the only girl in the whole county who played bari sax in marching band. Obviously I'm reaching far back to pull out very old usernames for this projects, haha.)

Technology Frustrations

Today we're supposed to blog about something technology-related, so I'm going to tell you how annoying Blogger is being right now. Amanda and I are trying to put pictures behind our headers, and it's just not working. Mostly the problem is that the picture has to be a certain length and width, but nowhere on Blogger does it tell us what those measurements are. So we've ended up with several pictures that are too short, not wide enough, not even the right format, etc.

I guess this is the LEARN part of the Learn & Play thing, though. So far I've pretty much just been able to jog through these things without too much problem, but this picture has me stymied. It has been kind of neat to be able to work with several coworkers on the problem, though. That's one thing I like about the initiative: everyone is excited, and everyone is sharing tips and hints for the different tasks.

Hopefully I'll be able to update soon with a working picture, but for now I'm going to go search the Internet for "long horizontal sunset picture."

Thomas Kincade on Endor

Thomas Kincade on Endor
Originally uploaded by Ethan Hein

I was looking around at mashups on Flickr for one of the Learn & Play @ CML projects, and this one definitely caught my eye. My mother-in-law *loves* Thomas Kincade: I can generally take or leave him. But Thomas Kincade + an Ewok? Yes!!!

Paddington check his old Haunts

Paddington check his old Haunts
Originally uploaded by BenSpark

I was browsing around Flickr for pictures about London and I found this one. Last year my husband and I went to London for our honeymoon. Our little (and I mean little!) hotel was literally right down the street from Paddington Station. I bought a tiny little Paddington Bear. The ones this size were waaay too expensive, haha.

Challenges

I've been looking at the 7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners, and I'd have to say that the habit that is hardest for me is looking at problems as challenges. I like to feel sorry for myself sometimes, and even though I get through the problem I don't really enjoy it. I think this habit is also hard for me because I don't enjoy challenges all the time. I'm the girl who cheats on video games: when I had a ROM emulator on my laptop at college, I was hitting the instant save button every two seconds to make sure I didn't have to go all the way through the big boss fights again. I have to work on adjusting my attitude towards challenges and come to enjoy them instead of just suffer through them.

Probably the easiest habit for me is playing. I think "playing" is how my generation and those younger than us have learned so much about technology. If there's a new program or product or website that looks cool, we just play around with it until we know how it works and all the little tricks and tips to make it work better or faster or more awesome. I love playing with new things, especially web-based things. It's intuitive and it's fun for me.

Blogging @ Work

Everyone has started to get a head start on things with the Learn & Play @ CML program - even though we can't "officially" do the blogging until next week, a lot of us started this week! Today we all compared notes on how to change layouts, add friends, make comments, etc. I actually learned a thing or two - I thought I was all set on blogging, but Blogger is way different than what I'm used to with LiveJournal. Oh well - the whole point of this exercise is to get better at tech, right? And it's neat to see the staff sharing tips and tricks like this. Very fun!

Obligatory Welcome Post

Welcome! I've made this blog as a part of the Learn & Play @ CML initiative at work (http://http://columbusmetropolitanlibrary.wordpress.com/) so if you're interested in what it's all about, take a quick jaunt over and see what we're doing.

Since I really don't have too much else to blog about right now, here's a poem! I took the title of my blog from this piece by C.S. Lewis:

An Expostulation

Against too many writers of science fiction

Why did you lure us on like this,

Light-year on light-year, through the abyss,

Building (as though we cared for size!)

Empires that cover galaxies

If at the journey's end we find

The same old stuff we left behind,

Well-worn Tellurian stories of

Crooks, spies, conspirators, or love,

Whose setting might as well have been

The Bronx, Montmartre, or Bedinal Green?

Why should I leave this green-floored cell,

Roofed with blue air, in which we dwell,

Unless, outside its guarded gates,

Long, long desired, the Unearthly waits

Strangeness that moves us more than fear,

Beauty that stabs with tingling spear,

Or Wonder, laying on one's heart

That finger-tip at which we start

As if some thought too swift and shy

For reason's grasp had just gone by?