Thing #8 Embracing The Simple Life

Oh Great! More info being pushed at me.
That was my first reaction when asked to subscribe to some RSS feeds.
I like hunting for info. That's the fun part. I don't need RSS feeds. I was pretty sure that after completing this assignment, I would have no need to ever use Bloglines again.

Until I found some really cool blogs, and realized that it's nice to have the info all in one place. Here are some of the things I found:

a blog on creativity and writing
one on writing prompts (and they were pretty good prompts)
the shifted librarian (which is a blog I always forget I like so I never read)
a great blog that had an entry on overcoming writer's block (I'm always looking for info on that since I seemed to have developed a chronic case)

Yep, I could be hooked. I even started reading some articles on how libraries are using rss feeds. There are so many possibilities. Some libraries are putting rss feeds on subject guides, others are using it to allow customers to find new books or track favorite authors.

The cool thing about RSS feeds is that they can help us interact with our customers and can help create a sense of community on our website.

Thing #11: LibraryThing Revisited

This was recently posted on a friend's blog. I thought since it was LibraryThing related, I’d post it here.

I always considered myself a reader, but there are so many books that I haven’t read. Plus there are tons of books that I started and never finished. Sigh!

Below are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded.
- bold the ones you've read,
- underline the ones you read for classes (at least once),
- italicize the ones you started but didn't finish,
- * if it's actually on your bookcase and you haven't read it.
- + if you want to read it

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books +
Memoirs of a Geisha

Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

The Canterbury Tales
The Historian: A Novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera +
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible: A novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses +
Sense and Sensibility +
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Ligthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States : 1492-Present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved +
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves +
The Mists of Avalon +
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Thing #12:Vanity Searching, oh yeah and NetLibrary and WorldCat

Okay, I admit it. I vanity search. I love that term. It's perfect to describe the practice of looking for your own name on the net. I don't google my name or anything, but once every few months I hop onto WorldCat to see how many libraries have my book. (I co-wrote a book for teachers and librarians. It's published by Teachers Ideas Press/Libraries Unlimited). Currently there are 626 libraries that have the book available --either in electronic form or in print. The closest library is Rutgers. Checking WorldCat and getting royalty checks (even tiny ones) is one of the cool things about getting published.

I've always meant to sign up to NetLibrary. I'm glad that I finally did. Now I'll have something to read when I can't sleep. This could be tough competition for the TV show House Hunters at three o'clock in the morning.

Thing #11: Library Thing

I have a Shefari page, and this is similiar. It's interesting to see what others are reading. It's something I'd like to explore more.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/nanthelibrarian

Thing #10 Technology Blog: Blue Ants, Library Catalogs, and Mom

I drive a lot and sometimes I need to make a quick phone call. Of course, I’m law abiding and hands-free. I have a hands-free blue tooth product by BlueAnt called the Supertooth II that’s mounted magnetically to the car visor. It’s the inexpensive model.

My sister, Jane, taught me how to use it. My family is filled with technophiles. Jane is not one of them. I mean, the woman doesn’t even check her email daily. But it seemed like she mastered the Blue Ant and was eager to show me how simple it was to use.

“It’s easy,” she says, one Saturday when we’re driving along the Staten Island Expressway. “All you have to do is talk.” Jane connects it into my cell phone, snaps it on the visor and presses a button.

The Blue Ant lights up. “Please state your command.”

“Call,” Jane replies confidently.

“Please state the name or number,” says the electronic voice.

“Jane.” My sister smiles.

“Jane?” says Blue Ant. “Calling Jane,” and in a few seconds, Jane’s cell phone is ringing.

I’m anxious to give it a try.

“Please state your command.”

“Call.”

“Please state the name and number.”

“Kate.”

“Kate?” Blue Ant seems like it needs some reassurance, so I nod. Jane laughs, and I suddenly realize that I’m nodding to an electrical device. A few seconds later, Kate’s phone is ringing. Her voice mail answers my Blue Ant’s call.

Not all my conversations with Blue Ant are amicable. I soon learn it does not recognize all names easily. While it seems to be able to handle Jane and Kate and any other name that has a long “A” sound, it has problems with others.

“Please state your command.”

“Call.”

“Please state your name or number.”

“Debbie.”

“Dan?”

“No Debeeeee.”

“Command timed out. Please try again.”

“Call!!!”

“Please state your name or number.”

“DEEEBBBEEEEE!!!!!!”

“Dona?’

At this point, I utter words that are not appropriate for this blog. My rant ends with the word "dummy.”

Something inside the Blue Ant clicks “Debbie? Calling Debbie.”

I’ve learned something. If I speak to the Blue Ant the same way it speaks to me, we get along better. For example, when I say “call Mom” it insists on calling “mobile one”, and frankly, I don’t even know who that is. When it finally gets the right number, I noticed that Blue Ant seems to read the “o” sound in “Mom” as a “u” sound. So now, I mimic the way it says a name to help it understand.

“Please state your command.”

“Call.”

“Please state your name or number.”

Instead of my normal Long Island accent, the tone I take is decidedly British. “Mum.”

“Mum?” says the Blue Ant. “Calling Mum”

And that’s the thing I like least about technology: having to change my own behavior to adapt to it. Sure in some cases it’s no big deal. I can call my mother “mum” so the Blue Ant will understand. But there are times when technology demands too much. And not everyone can keep up.

Sometimes those of us who are comfortable with technology fail to realize the changes it requires people to make. Take the library catalog, for instance. We all love the way an electronic catalog performs complex searches, slicing and dicing database records faster than a Ginsu knife can cut through a tomato. You can get pretty fancy with your search strategies. It's a wonderful thing. But what about the people who couldn't make the change from the card catalog to the electronic version? How do they find what they need in a library?

At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, there was something ingenious about the card catalog. You learned how to use it in about third grade. Once you mastered the skill, you were library literate. You could go into practically any library in the country and find your book.

Sure, at OCL we teach people how to use computers. I’m in constant awe of the people who sign up for our beginner computer courses. I think they are courageous. For some of them, mastering the mouse, learning a new vocabulary and surfing the net are huge accomplishments. But there’s a whole group out there we’re not reaching. My mother is part of that group of 'unreachables'.

My Mom is in her eighties. She is sharp. She knows the price of her stocks, her FICO score, and how to use a telephone to get information on just about anything. But she has no desire to learn how to use a PC. Trust me. Her sons, who are all technophiles, have tried to teach her. She’s turned down offers of free lessons and free computers.

When she was a child, she was library literate. In the 1930’s she was taught how to use a card catalog and for about 60 years, it worked for her. She could find things on her own. Now, she has to ask for help when she goes into the library. I can sense her frustration. I've seen it in some of our library customers too.

I’m not saying that we should go back to card catalogs. Although I have to admit, from a decorative point of view, they seemed cozier than a computer terminal. And of course, libraries need to be in the cutting edge of change. Web 2.0. Web 3.0. Web 5.0. Bring it on! It offers exciting possibilities. But we need to be sensitive to those who don’t share our feelings. When we look at new technology and new ways of doing things, we need to make sure it’s really “user-friendly”. It’s our responsibility to promote information literacy and to make sure that the changes we make don’t allow for more people to slip through the cracks. It’s important to make sure that we bring everyone along.

Well, I think I’ve rambled enough about technology. Maybe it’s time to go give Mum a call.

My friend Flickr?

You don't have to be an expert to make changes to your photos. Anyone with a pc and a little technological know-how can crop, lighten, darken, and even take away those alien-looking red eyes. If you think you look great in the dress you wore to your cousin's wedding, but now the person standing next to you is your ex, zap him out of the picture. Snip and crop until he doesn't exist.

What happens to the art of photography now that we can enhance and change photos? I know a man who stood on a beach for hours to get just the right amount of daylight in his nature pics. Now, he doesn't have to.

Are you really looking at a photo of sunlight streaming through leaves or was it a foggy day that's been, um, altered? At what point does the authenticity of the moment turn into a technological manipulation? Does it matter?

Thing 2: 7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners

You could change the name of any library to The Center for LifeLong Learning because libraries inspire, foster creativity, teach people to appreciate diversity, promote critical thinking and they're a gathering place for anyone craving a knowledge fix. Libraries rock!

I like the 7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners.

1. Begin and end in the mind
2. Accept responsibility for your own learning
3. View problems as a challenge
4. Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner
5. Create your own learning toolbox
6. Use technology to your advantage
7. Teach/mentor others
7 1/2 Play

For me, the hardest is the first one, especially when it comes to learning new technology. If I can see an authentic reason for doing it, then I'm on board. But if I need to learn something just because it's a new technology, then my luddite tendencies creep in and I find learning difficult.

Why is my favorite habit "play" only a 1/2 habit? I take play very seriously. It gets your creative juices going and lets you think with both sides of your brain. Play deserves to be a whole number. If we make play the 8th habit, then we lose the "play" on the Stephen Covey book. But there are other steps that could turn to a half step. Keep play whole.

Here are two quotes about play and I think they do a good job illustrating why it's essential:

"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. " Carl Jung

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. " George Bernard Shaw

By the way, one of my hobbies is collecting quotes so this blog will be filled with them.