Thing #7 Scanning

Here's my dog, Chi, a few days after she was rescued from "death row" at an animal shelter. When this picture was taken she was a fiesty teenager, not very trusting of humans and 30 lbs underweight.

As far as we know, this was her first trip to the beach. If it's possible to get high from salt water and sea air, Chi did. It was fun trying to figure out what was going on in her brain. I wonder if somehow she knew she had a new lease, or pardon the bad pun, leash on life.

I like this picture because it reminds me that life can change in an instant and that good things can happen even when a situation appears hopeless.

Thing # 15 Library 2.0

Interesting essays, all with very differents points of view. "Away from the Icebergs" was probably the one that most challenged my way of thinking. The author's views on library collections and how it isn't necessary to have one in the future is something that I need to think about. While he makes some valid points about reaching future library users, I still think (or hope) that the future will hold a place for the actual physical building.

If I could pick our future, I'd go with the one described in the Library 4.0 section of "To a Temporary Place in Time". Mind gyms. Knowledge spas. Immersion in the luxury of ideas...it all sounds lovely.

Thing #14 Technorati

"[I] am compelled to think that the disaster that happens when democracy is for sale is nothing compared to what will happen when learning is for sale"

That's a quote I found using Technorati and doing a search on learning 2.o. It's from the blogger Ed Techie.

So perhaps while we are confronted new ways of thinking, new ways of organizing and using information and of course new technology, nothing really changes. Our essential library mission is still the same -- to facilitate, encourage and inspire lifelong learning for every individual in our society.

Thing #13 It's del.icio.us

If I had only done this sooner...

I had a great use for del.icio.us. A customer wanted some info that was on a webpage. It was a webpage that had a database on it so the url was one of those hundred- character- long -squiggly-filled web addresses, and it wasn't going to be easy to find this page again. I showed him on the reference desk, but he wanted to search the database on one of the cybraryn pcs. If I had signed up for de.icio.us, I could have bookmarked this and then gone onto the cybraryn pc and used de.icio.us to call it up.


I like tagging. It lets the person who created the document to be the one who comes up with the search terms. Controlled vocabulary is slow to change. There's nothing more frustrating that trying to use controlled vocabulary to find a new trend and discover that it's classified under some archane term. However, I do think that controlled vocabulary has it's advantages. All those 'see also' reference are quite useful and the heirarchical structure of controlled vocabulary makes searching easier.


In the future, I hope that we'll be able to figure out a way to combine the best of both worlds.

Thing #17 Sandbox

Playing in the sandbox is fun. I haven't actually graduated to making a change on the real thing. Perhaps someday soon, I will...

Thanks Jill, for letting me know that I didn't complete this. I think I was in the sandbox but somehow didn't quite get this right. But I played again. That's what sandboxes are for, I guess.

Thing #16 Wikis

The thing I like best about doing these projects is that they get me wanting to learn more. I started to read a few articles on wikis. Boy do people have strong opinions, especially about wikipedia. One article said that by not embracing wikipedia, we are creating an anti-intellectual counterculture, one that is bound to use the resource no matter what we do or say. Another author stated that even if it is as accurate as an encyclopedia, it's a tertiary resource, and shouldn't be used/cited in any papers or considered acurate.

I taught a computer class on Wikis last night, and it was interesting to see that moment when everyone realized exactly what a wiki was and how the information was created.
However, even after they said that they weren't sure they'd trust the info, when they looked at an article on a subject they were familiar with, they didn't find any obvious errors. Some said they were surprised by the level of detail. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens to wikipedia in the future.

Thing #9 Finding Feeds

I really enjoyed looking at Jill's public bloglines account. There were so many great blogs. I loved the names: the laughing librarian..the angry librarian...librarian avengers. I subscribed to the angry librarian. I enjoyed the snappy writing style, but I wonder if I'll get tired of the rants.

Out of Topix.net, syndic8.com and technorati, I liked technorati the best. I wish that syndic8 had some easier instructions and didn't find it as intuitive as technorati. I also enjoyed Technorati's "rising posts and stories" section and learned that YouTube has been out-of-order for the past 90 minutes. Good thing I'm not up to that part yet.