Thing #20

Oh, boy was this a dangerous exercise! I found more videos on beading than I thought was possible. So much fun, so little time. I suppose I should have searched for something a little more work related but this was too tempting. A beading friend had asked me about online videos like she finds for knitting but I hadn't thought about YouTube. Next I plan to check out cooking videos! Bad library specialist! I can't believe what all people put out for the public to access. I tried to find the peeps in the library one for Deirdre but when I googled it I found that it was no longer available. OK, on to Thing #21. I added a YouTube video a little later.

Thing #19

I found the Web 2.0 awards list to be less confusing than Recipes for Success. I loved that Delicious was the #1 bookmarking site. I had used Lulu in the past. One of the email groups I belong to is about beading and one of the women has several of her books there. I liked that I could download the book instead of waiting for it to be delivered in the mail. I'm very impatient! I looked at the photo calendar possibilities here and didn't think the price was bad. My sister has a Snapfish account and did a calendar of our dog for my mom last year. I've got several ideas knocking around in my head.
I also signed up for the iFood.tv site - it's #3 in the Food category. Hey, how cool is this - Blogger has autosaved my draft three times since I started writing. iFood.tv is a great site but not one to be viewed at a public service desk since you need the sound up. I like being able to select which food I want to watch being created. I've bookmarked many food blogs with tons of photos but every now and again it's nice to see the way various cooks put things together.
It's interesting to see the way my personal life is aiding my work life.

I'm using Google Docs to write this a...

I'm using Google Docs to write this article.  I like some of the templates and tools but confess to getting rather confused about a few things - I tried the calendar template for a photo calendar but I'm not sure about all of the settings so the pages didn't all look the same.  I'd like to work on that some more.  I do a monthly calendar of my work schedule for my mom and my sister with phone numbers so they know how to find me during work.  I'm new to spreadsheets - and that's an understatement.  My sister helped me set up an excel spreadsheet for my delica beads so I know what I already have and don't buy something I don't need. I wish I'd had that when I was cross stitching for my floss.  I can see where these tools would be great for people who don't want to spend the money for office - it was expensive when we bought it for home several years ago.

Thing #16

I went to the SJCPL - St. Joseph County Public Library, which I believe is in Michigan and I loved their site! Their subject site was wonderful. They had Local Authors; House History Research - which had a tutorial as well as listings of sites to check; under Crafts, they listed new craft books - all of this would be very useful for our patrons on an Omaha wiki. Local information, web sites and helpful information.
Of course, Book Lovers Wiki was interesting to me. Maybe this is something we could do with our winter reading club to make it more interesting.
These gave me an insight into the uses of wikis as they applied to libraries.

Another Book Review

Harmony by C.F. Bentley

I started checking on this author as I was halfway through the book because I was wondering how I had missed out on her. Turns out this book is the first of a new series – Huzzah!
The main characters are Jake, a human from the Confederated Star System or CSS. He’s a pilot who has lost his parents and sibling to an attack by the alien Marillon Empire and when he spots one while on a flight drill, he disobeys orders and goes after it. Instead of being happy that he’s saved the station from being rammed, he’s told that he killed a fellow pilot on a recovery mission. This turns out to be a lie so that he can be put to use by the female spymaster and turned into someone for her use as a spy, because what the CSS needs is the Badger Metal that the Harmonic Empire produces. But Harmony left Earth to be separate and just want to be left alone. On Harmony we meet the other main character, Sissy, a young woman working in a factory doing delicate work with black crystal chips in navigation units. She has a special affinity to crystals and the work she does helps her family live in two apartments that are connected. Family includes her parents, multiple siblings and both sets of grandparents. When the planet starts quaking, the priests of Harmony discover that Sissy has managed to spare her factory by bonding with the crystals. They also discover that she has all seven of the caste symbols on her face. She immediately becomes the new High Priestess and her gift of prophecy is a help to some and a burden to others. What haven’t the priests been telling people all of these years?
A bit of spy thriller, science fiction and romance, but very light in this area, this will appeal to a wide audience. I’m looking forward to the next book.

New review: Lost Girls by George D. Shuman

I've been in one of my reading funks lately. I pick up a book, get about 40 pages into it and toss it aside. I was beginning to dispair but then I picked up this George D. Shuman book and it grabbed me and held my interest. Not the best subject matter but it was gritty and horrifyingly real.
Sherry Moore is blind, but she has the ability to touch a dead person and see the last few seconds of their lives. In "Lost Girls", she has been asked to go on a risky mission to a mountain in Alaska in the hopes that the dead man hanging off a cliff can provide some clue as to where the lost daughter of a Senator is. The Senator's son, a Navy SEAL, is along to provide help getting her on and off the mountain. They are successful in finding the daughter but Sherry also gets some horrific glimpses of scenes of sexual slavery and torture. This worries her and when she is given a chance to help out a mother looking for her lost daughter in Haiti, she agrees to help. This brings her right into the center of the whole mess.
I would read more by this author.

Thing #15

Our directions were to blog about Library 2.0 for this exercise. I liked the idea of allowing patrons to write reviews of the books that they read on our catalog. I'm sure we'd need some sort of filter, given what I've seen on some pages as I've been passing to and from restrooms. This could be like the Amazon site with its reviews. I checked out Writely and 37signals only to discover that Google now has Writely as part of their Google docs. 37signals could bear a further exploration.
I understand about the "long tail" with readalikes and the fact that we offer patrons the ability to "Suggest a Title" for purchase. As the one purchasing the fiction, I know just how popular that link is - particularly for certain Millard patrons and retired library staff! As I process the new fiction I frequently check the holds requests and find that the majority of the requests have been placed through the web. This has been increasing lately and I expect it will continue to do so.

Thing #14

What a scary comment "Edit HTML". As if I'd have the least idea how to do this? Too technical for me!! I went through the process of the tags and different searches but couldn't find too much that interested me. I use tags in my delicious account and so far, that's it. I promise I'll try some more to see if I can find something for this exercise.

Keeping up to date

I can't believe that we are already into week 6! This is going faster than I thought. Thanks to Jason Kaspar I have added a RSS feed to my blog. This was especially a learning experience since I did it incorrectly to begin with and had to quickly learn how to delete. Now I just have to discover more areas of interest with RSS feeds to add.

Jason was the one who taught me about delicious several months ago when I discovered that he had tons of web address on his delicious account, mainly to use for school, but I was impressed. I love the fact that I can discover a site at home, add it to my delicious and then bring it up at work - or the other way around. I'll be exploring more on the Technorati front later this week. I played with the Generator website. I could spend hours there. I love the Wordle and want to work with it a little more but I'm not sure about signing up for yet more online accounts. I have trouble remembering passwords as it is - I've got them for Crocs, Fire Mountain Gems, Amazon UK and more - I need a book!

Rollyo

OK, I'm trying out the photos part of this exercise and I keep getting porn! What's up with that?

LibraryThing

April Earl introduced me to this site quite a while ago, then I faded out of it. I've added my newest books and did short, short reviews but now I'm up to date. My address is:http://www.librarything.com/catalog/arfie57

This was hard, thanks to Bloglines!

I've been trying for over a week to get Bloglines but they don't want to send me a confirmation email so I gave up and used the Google Reader. I used the search using the word library and found some interesting sites to add - Montana libraries, for instance. The Topix, Syndic8 and Technorati left me cold. Too much info and hard to understand. I need the KISS - keep it simple stupid approach. But, I have accomplished Thing #8 and Thing #9. Now I'm on to Thing #10 - isn't this play? Deirdre promised this was the hardest!