WIKI MADNESS

If I know nothing about a subject at all, I will go to Wikipedia for a fast, if not always reliable source for information. There are so many lovely links, and subjects like - movie stars who died in car crashes (yes, it's true) dog information, etc. While you cannot take the information you find there as the verifiable truth it definitely gives some great starting places. If I am just looking for fun, I just enjoy, but if I am using it for research purposes I always verify the information with another reliable source.

A few of the tarot people I know from the internet have made a Tarotpedia wiki.

It would be great in a lot of ways to have a King County Library System wiki. In addition to basic information, like library locations, open hours, and links to same, it could have information about the history of the Library System, art that the libraries have, things that people might not look for on our website but might be interested in knowing.

LibraryThing

I have used Library Thing, Shelfari, and LibGuru one and all to try and find my MISSING BOOK. You know the one I mean, that missing book, read 30 years ago, no idea of the title or author...yes, I have one too. Mine is probably going to be forever hard-to-find because it was a 70's pulp Western, probably only released in paperback.


I also like using Library Thing for personal use to find new authors. One of these days I may even enter all my personal books, however, I doubt it.

Here is my LibraryThing site. Watch for new books to appear daily. Or not.

del.icio.us

The ability to gather all my bookmarked sites together in one easy to use pile is very handy, and I have already gotten my own account. I am online every day, and like most of us who are, I have sites that I visit daily, some I visit once a week or so, and some (like sites with, for example, mouldering cheese on video) monthly.

I can see this as a good tool for anyone doing extended research for a project. As a writer, I do a lot of research and sometimes I'll run across a site I might not want to add to my lengthy list of favorites, but also don't want to plow through three pages of a Google search to find at a future date. Del.icio.us is a perfect spot for it. I have already added a few of those sites to my personal account.

I can also see where this might be useful for students researching projects, or even for myself - I am doing a mystery book display, and change my theme every three or four weeks. This would be a handy place to gather all the mystery websites I have found helpful without having to put them on our shared favorites page.

Also handy for us as a researching tool - putting all those websites we find helpful together for easy access (especially as my favorite websites may not be the same as my co-workers).

Friendless in My Space

So, I don't know what happened with My Space. One minute I was a friend of KCLS 27 Things, the next I was denied. Maybe I clicked too many boxes when I was getting rid of Tom. Again.
Hopefully in the near future I will be back on the friends list - until then I'll just have to be satisfied with my lovely little work blog.

IF in the distant future we had money for those YA midnight programs again, social networking sites would be a great way to publicise them. Also regional YA event sites.

My Space

I actually have a "personal" MySpace, as opposed to my work MySpace.

My older niece talked me into getting one, and then my younger niece wanted one. Since my sister is not particularly techno-inclined, she asked me to keep an eye on my younger niece's site. The best things about it have been keeping in touch with my nieces and nephew. The older ones are in their 20's and we don't see them often often. I've also re-connected with a few people I went school with - which has been fun. Many people my age are not on MySpace.

As a music fan, I have also discovered several interesting indie and unsigned bands, and joined a few special interest groups as well.

I think it would be a good way for libraries to connect with teens, especially younger teens. The demographic is shifting downward, age-wise as these things do. Who knows what the next big social site for high school and college age students will be at this point.

RSS Part II

Now that I have finally been successful with adding pictures from Flickr (and let me just say, I have used Photobucket and Hello without problems) I will return to RSS feeds. So, now I am wondering why I didn't know about this fabulous thing sooner????

I go to multiple news sites daily, so I added my favorites feeds from those sites, and I will be adding more as time permits. I found it depended on the site as far as ease of-use. Going to familar sites I use was the easiest, especially since I know the URL's by heart. (How sick is that? Nevermind.) Searching was easier when I was just browsing for fun.

I found all the search tools fairly easy to use, except for Topix.net. I'm not sure if it was because the site seemed so busy, or if it was just me.

Tinkerbell

Tinkerbell
Originally uploaded by vgimlet3.

So, let's see if THIS picture from Tinkerbell from Flickr works....

Yay! So, with Peggi's help I found out that to upload pictures from Flickr onto a blog FIRST you need to log into Flickr and add (like giving an okay) the url of all blogs you want to be able to upload pictures to. I added this blog of course, and two of my personal blogs as well.

I also used the "add a page element" feature, which added the cute picture of Magic (pre sock-removal) and my sister-in-law's new Cavalier King Charles Spaniel puppy, Chesney to my profile. As soon as I remember to bring my digital camera to work, I will have more work-related pictures as well.

RSS Feeds Part 1

So, making a Bloglines account and signing up was fun. I had never played with RSS feeds before - and maybe that was a good thing. News hound that I am, I will just say I could spend a lot of time adding feeds to Bloglines.

I have added feeds to my work Bloglines account, and I will be creating a personal Bloglines (or other) account for home. For work, I am going to look for book review sites. We used to get Publishers Weekly, which helped keep us up-to-date on the new books being released. I'm interested in sites that feature not only bestsellers featured on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but also the lesser known titles. I will be looking for good feeds for these.

I can see many uses for my personal life too. I am even going to show my husband how to use them, I think they will be very useful for him as will.

I think this would be a great library tool - offering some of the library sites like the new book releases, and maybe even a staff review blog, Programming...there are lots of applications.

Flickr

Being a fan of graphics in general, I found it difficult to pick just one application.

I love the spell with Flickr tool - my favorite part was being able to change the letter by clicking on it. As someone who likes a certain flow to my graphics it was great to pick and choose my lettering.

I also enjoyed the Color Picker - I could amuse myself for days with that. Very handy if you wanted a color-themed photo montage, for whatever reason. But also cool just to click on a color and see what comes up.

The trading card application was also too much fun. That one might even come in handy in real life. Library staff trading cards? Kind of like Pokemon - gottagett'emall. Also as just a fun thing - pet trading cards. You could even make some kind of game out of them, which would be fun.

Here is the photo I uploaded to Flickr. Because of pop-up blockers it is not showing up at the moment. Which shows that there's always more to learn, even if you (somewhat) know what you're doing. If you click on the white square the picture shows up. When I figure out how to fix it, I will post the resolution as well - I am sure I won't be the only one having this problem.

My cat Tinkerbell has nothing to do with the library. She would make a very bad library cat, since she tends to bite when she gets irritated. She's irritated a lot.

However, she would have a great time climbing the library shelves, chasing whatever mouse or insect life she could find, bouncing on the keyboards, and various other activites she deems worthy.

I deleted my "Spell with Flickr" experiment, since apparently that mashup on Flickr is much too popular. So, soon I will post my photo saved on Flickr. Maybe tomorrow.