Adventures in Learning

Toolbox cool

2008-10-14T15:17:00.003-04:00

Well well well, here we are again. I checked out the Tool box for CML this morning. Looked at several sites-- Make--Technorati-- Tech Crunch, & saw some interesting things. A couple of these look like the sort of things I might even read for a while, if I could carry this screen with me on breaks & lunch. But, this is not to be. N'import. The thing is, I liked what I saw, & MAY, eventually , make it back there.
Meanwhile, I lost Terry hours ago on BoingBoing. She followed a link to a Wonder Woman art show, then a link to a Barbie site... Well, you can imagine. I did agree that the BIRDS Barbie (Barbie as Tippi Hedren--same green suit, & 3 black crows attached to her clothes & hair) was pretty nifty--- unfortunately, it was still a Barbie site, & I have a feeling we may have to add a nursery, if she gets hooked on these dolls as she was showing signs of doing. I love her to death, but a second childhood can be a little trying at times. Oh well-- L'amour c'est toujours fou.
Later, Gardner

Library Thing

2008-10-09T14:55:00.002-04:00

It's been weeks since I could go on with this, I begin to despair of ever finishing the 23 things.
Today I did take time to go through Library Thing. At first I thought it would be just too time consuming to try to catalog my hundreds of books, but having taken the tour, I was intrigued with the idea I might find some new things to read based on shared tastes. I posted 5 books, & spent time looking at who else had read the things I had. Although it seemed strange that the Library of Congress had no copy of the novel Persuasion by Jane Austen (only critical works about it) I decided to try more recent work & had better luck.
It was interesting to peer into other's book shelves, but I can't say I saw anything that new to grab my attention. Also, strangely, the one book I wanted to rate 5 stars, it would not let me add more than 1. When I finally got in to the site, I discovered that was the average rating for that book. I don't know if they're related (can others also not give it more than one star?), butI don't have time to try to contact Library Thing & attempt to correct the situation.
I did think this might be a tool for our library to take advantage of, for all those people who want to keep track of books they've read, or to receive e-mail reccomendations of things to try, or even new books by favorite authors. The first situation I have seen many e-ref requests for, & the other 2 I have seen in recent weeks. I have no idea how much work it would take to connect us to them, but perhaps just providing a link, & letting people sign up for their own account would be sufficient. As something customers have requested, it makes a lot of sense to me, if we could offer this to them as a service--IF it was a simple thing to do.

Gardner

Avatars

2008-09-18T15:01:00.005-04:00

So, while I'm thinking about it, I thought I should say a word about the idea of an Avatar Librarian. I really can see the appeal in that concept--whether you're a fan of the past & would like to interact with Sherlock Holmes or Indiana Jones, the Goddess Athena or Diana, better known as Wonder Woman--or prefer the Future, where your information source could be a cloud of mist or a diembodied brain, like that of the faux Oz wizard.

Whether you prefer images cartoonish or scholarly--more Hollywood or more Oxford University--there could be "something for everyone".

I find myself thinking about the man in Total Recall, being asked to describe his dream companion for his "vacation" to Mars, in which he requests not only hair & eye color, but attitude & presentation. In a world of Avatar Librarians, I would think you might have the choices of a pre-fabricated concept (enter Sherlock Holmes or Athena), or perhaps you would choose to customize a librarian to suit you... It had never occured to me that the Game World nor Science Fiction would ever invade the world of the Library, but I suppose "anything is possible" in the "limitless" world of the Future...

Library 2.0, 3.0, 4.0? Uh oh...

2008-09-18T15:01:00.002-04:00

So, I spent a while reading 5 OCLC articles about Library 2.0, which was interesting, but in the end I read one on the FUTURE of libraries, & began to wonder... "What Have I gotten myself into?" They did help me to understand some concepts a little better, (though I cannot pretend to grasp them thoroughly or in all their many implications--perhaps no one does?) but that last article just made my head spin. There are just too many ideas in that 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 concept.
Some of it really made me laugh. "Superstar Librarians" (not that some of you aren't, but really...)--or--my personal favorite--people collecting Librarians instead of books. !
I actually do understand that one, but I must say, my first image was of a slave market & rather laughable.
I actually doubt I will survive into the Library 4.0 era--I'm no spring chicken--& I must say I think I hope not to survive into the 3.0 era, if it means libraries as ONLY virtual entities. I'm afraid I like person to person contact & am rather inclined to think that a "retreat" into a Virtual world is NOT a good thing for living, breathing people. Oh, I understand the impulse--believe me. I was an "out of it" teenager, as disaffected as today's youth, but I'm afraid it was neither a headset nor a "virtual" reality that "cured" me, but rather, being forced to deal with the messy reality of human beings, & LEARNING to get along. From the little I've read, I think Virtual reality is unlikely to "fix" the personality flaws which I suspect encourage people to retreat to a world they think they can control...
I'm afraid I've wandered from the subject, dealing with human interactive problems, & not just the applications to libraries, some of which seem a good thing indeed. The idea of meeting users on "their" ground, helping to make people's searches easier, & providing a good experience (the latter 2 I believe we're already doing--no--all 3, for "E-mail a Librarian" & "Know It Now" both provide an arena which is closer to the customer--esp. at 3 a.m.) all seem like good customer service, & that seems to be part of what we are after. I'm not sure we can ever do that really well, but that may well just be my age talking, & the limitations of my perceptions, formed by a particular time & place, "in a galaxy long long ago, & far away"....
To those of you who will carry this further into the future, I wish you luck. I'm sure you will manage to astonish some of us, as you go farther than we ever imagined possible.

Whoops, I've done it again!

2008-09-17T17:13:00.002-04:00

OK--had a few minutes at the end of the day, so I thought I'd try to "play" a bit.

I went into the Bloglines account I had set up & edited the feeds I had subscribed to in bulk when I set this up. (Honestly, I set this up INITIALLY thinking I was setting up a blog. It's the first thing I did. Who knew I'd be back?)

Then I thought I would add a few blogs to follow. I asked 2 co-workers--no,3--& finally tried something on my own. My ASSUMPTION was that I would see feeds on my FEEDS tab, & blogs on my BLOGS tab. Only there are a few problems...

First, I noticed that my blog is there under the blog tab. Except--only the first post. Why hasn't anything else showed up?

I have no idea.

So, being unable to explain that, I thought I'd try to subscribe to a couple co-workers blogs. I hit "ADD", & copied in the url of the blogs I found. It seemed to go well, but then--nothing showed up. ?

They're not on my Feeds tab, they're not on my Blogs tab.... Where did they go?

I have no idea. But I think it's time to go home to my cat & my dark house, & see what mischief I can get into there. (the cat is usually good inspiration for that). Wish me luck. Terry

CUIL! (pronounced cool)

2008-09-12T14:57:00.002-04:00

Well, this was my first thought of a new technology to pursue--a new browser I heard about on NPR, sometime in the last month, but had forgotten the name of. Thanks to Google, that wasn't a problem, I searched "new browser" & this looked like the most likely one, or one there had been much "buzz" about in the past month or 2.

I started by reading a few posts about it on other sites before I went there, then read a couple pages on the site, then I just jumped in. What better way to try a new thing?

I must say, the results didn't live up to the hype. My first search was a somewhat arcane one--something I discovered years ago when doing a very long, drawn out search. I quickly learned, years ago, what 3 "magic words" would find this site in Google, so I tried them. I got 28 matches--surely better than Google's 318,000 matches--esp. if it is more SELECTIVE or targeted than Googles wide net.

Alas, cuil did not find it in 28 matches, while it was the FIRST match in Google's 318, 000.

OK--bad start--but don't give up. Ask some others for suggestions.

So I did. I asked 5 or 6 colleagues for sample searches I might do, to play "Stump the Browser". Of the first few, I did no better than 50%--not bad, but not Google.

I kept asking folks, till the one where i got NO matches in cuil, & the 5000+ matches in Google only took 20 hits to find the somewhat arcane site my friend had referred me to.

So--I went, I saw, I faltered. Well, you can't "conquer" all the time, & at least, it tells me that there really is something about Google that works for me. Whether that's because I "cut my teeth" on it, or that it really is "smarter"--who knows. Who Cares? Not me.

Off on another adventure-- Gardner

Beauty!

2008-09-12T11:40:00.002-04:00

Well, thanks, as usual, to "a little help from my friends", I have managed to add a new "color" here... I'm still looking around flickr, trying to find something known as a "third party group", but all I find are the "groups" you can search by title or subject... is that what we're talking about? I don't know.
What I do know is that this photo always makes me feel better, so it will be a useful addition to my .Adventures in Learning

How fleet is time...

2008-09-12T09:14:00.003-04:00

My, how fleeting is time when one lives in the material world. I have one day to attempt to "catch up" on 2 1/2 weeks of "play".... hardly the best incentive--still....
I have done a couple things, with out having time to write about them; more success with some than others. I found my way to flickr, loaded some photographs, hoping to have a chance to attach some here--it needs a little visual interest don't you think? But alas, time is fleet & the fleet has been out. I suppose that's the next thing I will try.
I tried to explore "mashups" (strange term) but all I managed to do was command the beast to make a photo collage, & when I attempted to e-mail it to a friend, I copied myself to see the result, & I fear what came thru was NOT what I had seen & thought I was sending... What will Janey think of my new skills? Unemployable, I'm afraid, but then Janey can be a tad critical.
Well darlings, wish me luck, as I go out to "play"... Terry

20 minutes in my Universe

2008-08-26T10:09:00.000-04:00

So, this is my third time to try to play around with this stuff. This morning, I couldn't even find my blog. Methinks 20 minutes per "task" is not going to work for those of us who didn't grow up with these toys. I watch my younger colleagues buzz around on these things, & I know I'll get there, but I know it won't be this month. Maybe next month. Maybe next year.
I do like learning new things, but sometimes it makes me feel sort of stupid. Sigh.

This is a first!

2008-08-13T14:42:00.000-04:00

Learning new things is great! This is a great way to start learning 23 things. Now I just have to learn something so I have more to say.
I really enjoyed Michael's presentation yesterday. A few of the ideas from other libraries were so great, I'd love to see CML adopt them--next month! I heard from a colleague that he's putting that presentation on his blog soon. Anyone else want to start a "revolution"? Later