Thursday, December 6, 2007

Finito- Numero 10+

I must say that the 10 Things was interesting and challenging for a "retired" part-time staffer but worth the effort. Upon revisiting sites I know I will get even more information in the future. Thanks to the team for pushing the envelope.

Our website is one of the finest library sites out there and I especially like the homework help section with bookmarked links for patrons. I agree with Linda that the Coolkids Collection, our ongoing bibliographic resource is fantastic and extremely helpful with reader's advisory. This past weekend I went to our site from home and used the "Fun and Games" section on the kids page to find games for my grandson. I knew that what I found would be appropriate and I was a heroine with the Lego game.

Thanks to Ricki for helping me to complete the downloading of an ebook to our computer in the reader's advisory area earlier today and then to an MP3 player. I will try this from home when I get a chance but the collection is growing and I really like this resource for patrons.

Louise

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Thing 9

I've used Google but will admit that I never noticed all of the tools that it makes available.
I expecially like and have used Images and find it wonderful, but Finance and Google Docs will be used by me in the future. When I was working on the writer's workshop with Esther Hershenhorn, a childrens book author, it would have been wonderful to be able to make all the revisions and editing changes in the kids stories by using a shared document access. This is a very useful service

Louise

Thing 9

Thing 8- Wikis

"Radical trust"for an open wiki on the www pushes a bit beyond my comfort level. Wiki's open to a particular community with a password seem to be the best of both worlds in this innovative sharing technology. The staff wiki, whether for a university or for a library could cut down on meeting time with preliminaray work being done by the committee by brainstorming on a wiki.

Wikipedia is not a verified resource but it can often be used as a starting point to find links with documented sources. In the library, when we offer writers workshops, wiki's could help participants share ideas and materials.
I have finished Thing 8.
Louise

Podcasts

Having completed the 7th Thing I have added the New York Times Book Review podcasts and Slate's Audio Book Club podcasts (an online magazine which I check because a friend's son, Seth Stevenson, is a wonderful journalist who writes for Slate) and because I like to travel I thought Rick Steves Audio Tours would be fun to listen to as well.

I never realized how many podcasts were out there and what resources there were for almost any topic imaginable.

I think that podcasting our annual VOYA author visits and in fact any author visits would be invaluable to students studying these authors. I have listened to SLJ's podcasts with children's authors and it brings them more personally into my life. I particularly remember an interview with Marcus Zusak whose book The Book Thief is narrated by dealth during WWII in Germany.

Louise
I chose a link to the Miami University website for Children's Picture Books to add to delicious. This was my 6th thing. I entered several tags for readers advisory and "picture books."
Well, having been on vacation for 3 weeks during the 10 Things and only working ten hours a week, it's been a race to try to get through the tasks. I've explored Flickr and downloaded photos which I then sent to my blog. Mission accomplished. I don't think that I will be doing this regularly but I'm glad to explore the technology available for organizing digital photos.

I think that Flickr could certainly be an archival resource for YS pictures. We could tag YS pictures with the event names/year since we often repeat events (eg. SRC) and perhaps we could use seasonal tags as well.

Louise

Lou


lou
Originally uploaded by theskokieten
This is a family favorite-good for blackmail- of Lou at age 14 or so with accordian and hair. We made a poster for his 60th birthday.

This photo was uploaded from my flickr account.
Louise

Thursday, November 29, 2007

I opened my Facebook account today and uploaded a picture of my family. I've invited several staff to be my friends- and some actually agreed. It is interesting to see some of the "groups" that I could join...NOT!

Louise

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

I've IM'd (?) Dave in YS and have invited a number of other staff to IM with me. Doing this at the desk with patrons will give them another way to reach us.
I love the RSS and Feed Readers that our library has to inform patrons and staff about new books in both the Youth and Adult sections. I also look forward to the reminders about youth programming even though I work in the department. I look at the reminderes from a grandparent's point of view to see what would interest the 8,6,4,and 2 year- olds in my life.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Retirement

Being out of the library for much of the last two months has left me out of the loop as far as the 10 Things goes. We've travelled to Eastern Europe- Warsaw, Crakow, Budapest, Vienna and Prague, and then this past week to Nevada and then San Francisco and Napa. I now know more about wine than I ever wanted to know!

Louise