Week Five - LibraryThing

LibraryThing is the thing. Love lists and having access to other people's lists, reviews, and recommendations. Will I Like It? & Unsuggester are two of my favorite features, and there are heaps more to discover. I enjoy that it's global and you can check out local libraries wherever you plan to be. I plan to use this for my book club to keep a list of what we've read, along with future good reads and dates.

Back to Week Three

So much was going on week 3, and it wasn't really obvious that I'd done some image generating, so I'll post another one. One of my favorite photo subjects: birds, this one a whitehead from Tiritiri Matangi.

Week 4 - In the Know

Choosing RSS Feeds involving international news, books & book reviews, music, art, but then I reached my max. As with most internet activities = too addictive. Thank goodness it was a rainy, muggy week up until Friday so that it was a pleasure to be tied to the computer. Here's a link to my newsreader with feeds from some of my favorites, such as The New York Times Sunday Book Review.
Don't know if this is possible in the library: setting up dedicated computers that have feeds, like 1) News on the ground floor by the large TV screen, or in the newspaper reading room, 2) On first floor: Arts/Music/Dance Feeds in those areas; Business/Economics in that area, and so on, 3) Ground Floor: Book Review Feeds, latest releases, etc. On the ACL website , maybe include feeds relevant to whatever is happening at the time. Professionally, it's great to be connected, whether through Library Thing or other library-related feeds. In short, it's good practise to be "in the know".
As for Twitter, I'm not yet convinced; maybe it's an age thing and I'm just not with it, but here's my account anyway. I've looked into TweetDeck, which seems a decent way of keeping posted and, again, "in the know."

Trading Cards

I recently enjoyed a trip to Tiritiri Matangi and made some trading cards from photos of birds I saw there. Too easy. I enjoyed checking out other mashups and applications, making montages on maps, posters, book covers - all great tools.

Week Three - Photos on Flickr & Picasa

I recently started using Picasa Web Albums to manage my personal photos. Using Flickr is a little different, and I uploaded a photo "Week3exterior" to the aclelgar account. It has a cool outline shape, thanks to the Picnik editing/playing with contrast/sharpen features, though I couldn't figure out how to edit out the soda can on the ground. Still working on that, since I know that there are "photoshop" software tools that can do that. Image generating was a challenge, and I created an image of a grassy field with a funny message, but I couldn't complete the link. I kept getting the message: "Your HTML cannot be accepted: Tag is broken" no matter how many tmes I tried to link it properly. That was with JellyMuffin, so I tried CustomSignGenerator and FotoTrix, and could post a captioned library photo. Next time I'll use a different font for the caption; this one's hard to read.

Week Two - Can I Start Over?

I vow to read directions more carefully and try to complete the assignments before I let loose with my own musings. This week I wrote two random posts not pertaining to the weekly assignment, but now I've also had the chance to check out the social networking sites, of which Facebook is my favorite. It's especially suitable for "older" users like myself, and would be an excellent tool for advertising library events. It looks to be currently under-utilized. And LinkedIn is a great professional networking site. Here's a link that I enjoyed, about the importance of early childhood programs (an earlier occupation of mine): http://http//www.linkedin.com/news?viewArticle=&articleID=106835978&gid=123435&articleURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Einvisiblechildren%2Eorg%2F2010%2F02%2F02%2Fcutting-early-childhood-programs-is-expensive-and-ruins-lives%2F&urlhash=Mqwx&trk=news_discuss

Starting a Book Club Reading List

It's been many months since the idea first sprouted to create a list(s) of recommended books for local book clubs, that is, books of which there are ample copies in the library system. I've compiled one for my book club in a very pains-taking fashion: looking up each selection to check how many copies are in the system and currently available, and including details such as a short synopsis, publication date, publishing house, etc., but now I'm on the hunt for an easier, more efficient method. Does anyone have ideas/suggestions?
We could compile a number of lists of recommended book club readings, categorized by genre: Around the World, NZ/Australian Authors, Oldies but Goodies, and so on.

We love to encourage reading and this is an excellent way, by helping local book clubs access quality selections that we have at Aukland City Libaries in ample supply.