Roussel's first "librarian trading card"

How do you like it? (btw, that's not my face - though I may look like that in a few years, haha. That is the Professor from "Gilligan's Island" as an old man during a dream sequence). The trading card program zeroed in on his face for some reason.

Mashup Madness Spectacular!

Well, last week I was introduced to the joys of Flickr. Although I had been to that site to look at people's pictures before, this was the first time I had signed up to use it myself. Hopefully I will continue to do so. Then I explored mashups (web application hybrids). Many of them used Flickr images in some way, but others used different applications altogether. It is amazing what they can do with these things, in ways that were never intended or envisioned by their creators. I'm sure some mashups arose as complete accidents. Although many of them are just for fun, I know many useful ones have been created for business applications.

I looked for mappr. com, but that site appears to have vanished. Also, I went to that "Flickr Montagr" page but it doesn't seem to function for me. Hmm. I was successful, however, in creating several trading cards and my very own "Librarian Trading Card." It is just a practice one, based on the first blog from this page. I will try to post it to this page in my next entry, as I don't want it to erase my blog entry like it did a few hours ago.

I found several fascinating mashups, including some from Jim Bumgardner's site: http://www.krazydad.com/colrpickr/ He has created some memorable ones, but my favorite so far is called "SF Cover Explorer" and is found here: http://www.coverpop.com/pop/visco/ It looks like a huge pile of old pulp magazines, and if you hover over one of them, it rises up so you can see it clearly, and tells you who the cover artist is and gives info on that magazine. If you click on the picture, it will take you to the site "Visco - The Visual Index of Science Fiction Cover Art" at http://www.sfcovers.net/ where you can learn all about that magazine. (I recently bought some cool old pulp magazines, including "Thrilling Wonder Stories" and "Astounding" from the 1920's & 30's).

Another one I liked was Stick Figures in Peril: http://www.coverpop.com/pop/flickr_stickfigures/ check it out and enjoy!

Posting a picture

Here I am with Nichelle Nichols, the most beautiful lady in the world! Her latest film is "Lady Magdalene's" and she will be appearing on "Heroes" soon.

Flickr!

Well, I've now finally gotten familiarized with Flickr, and I like it! My account is at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14162549@N02/

The first thing I did was post my pictures from Dragon*con 2007, which I had on a CD. I wasn't sure if I could upload pictures that I had scanned myself, or if I was limited to just digital camera pix. But I was pleased to find that I could upload pix I scanned also. So I uploaded one of me with Dr. Demento from a few years ago. I looked all around the MRRL Flickr page, which was pretty neato, and then read the various articles and tutorials. I had fun with the tags and groups and overall I like how smooth and easy Flickr seems to be. I plan to use it quite a bit to share pictures with friends in the future. I still don't have a digital camera but I think I am finally ready to get one. Flickr is an excellent tool for libraries and many other organizations (as well as individuals, of course) to use for sharing pictures with the public. I will now see if I can upload one of my pictures into this blog.
Well, Blogger seems to be locked up tonight, so I will try again tomorrow....

LibraryThing is way cool

http://www.librarything.com/profile/Anarchyvist

Here is my LibraryThing account! Yes, I am a booklover at heart and so naturally I loved this site! I guess you could also call me a cataloguer though I couldn't explain a MARC record to save my life! But several years ago some of my friends dubbed me "The Anarchyvist" due to my love of punk rock, anarchy, books, keeping lists & files, organizing things, and collecting (see? I'm doing it right now - making lists! sorry!). (you should see the cute little cataloguing tools I created and used when I was 8 years old. I still have a lot of that stuff in the closet).

Anyway, LibraryThing is another useful site for not only keeping track of your books but networking with other people and learning about similar interests. It is amazing how that software works. I have entered about 70 of my books so far and I see there are a number of people like me out there. (I am reminded of another booklovers' site I have used, and which I also recommend: http://www.bookcrossing.com/ ). (I have released several books "into the wild" and I look forward to doing more.)

There are drawbacks to being a booklover, though, as my recent conversation with my supervisor shows:
SUPERVISOR: Now, Mr. R., I shall come to the point of this interview. I shall arrive via the following route, which is namely what constitutes an efficient member of this public library. A library page who knows his job and performs it - i.e., a man who functions within an organization. You, Mr. R., do not function within the organization! You are neither an efficient library page nor a proficient employee! You, Mr. R., are a reader!
ME: A reader?
SUPERVISOR: A reader!! A reader of books, magazines, periodicals, newspapers! I see you constantly going downstairs into the Annex basement during your lunch hour. An ultimatum, Mr. R.! You will henceforth devote your time to your job and forget reading or you'll find yourself outdoors on a park bench reading from morning til night for want of having a job. Do I make myself perfectly clear?
ME: Oh, that's perfectly clear, ma'am, it's just that …
SUPERVISOR: Just that what, R.? Make it quick and get back to your book cart!

and so forth...

Tagging is fun!

Well, I've been gone from the blog for so long it's hard to get back into the swing of things. I intended primarily to work on my Library Learning 2.0 lessons at work but the past few months have been so busy at the library I had to keep putting 2.0 on the back burner. However, I have been doing some of the lessons that involve reading, exploring, and watching tutorials....I just haven't been blogging about it. That was a mistake, as I have forgotten some of the brilliant observations that occurred to me at the time ("yeah, right!" you say). In retrospect, I wish I had skipped over the "tagging" section temporarily and come back to it as some of the others did. It is somewhat complicated, but not overwhelmingly so as I had feared. It just involves a new way of thinking about things.

A lot of my problems would be solved if I just spent more time exploring the Internet and keeping up with the new technologies - without having to become immersed in them. Several years ago, my links aka "Favorites" area on AOL sort of broke down. Actually, the software has gotten corrupted several times which caused problems, but mainly what I am referring to here is that I stopped putting my links into the proper categories and it didn't take long to get hopelessly buried in unclassified links. Now I see that there is a whole new way of making connections and I must relearn how I think about keeping track of things I like. I no longer need to rely on AOL to maintain my Favorites lists.

I have already used tags to a limited extent but now I have learned a great deal via http://del.icio.us/ and http://technorati.com/ - these are wonderful resources to use and you could easily spend hours on those sites (days, weeks, months, years?). I think I have a pretty good basic understanding of tags now, although to truly learn I need to practice using them and keep doing it regularly. I need to make reading blogs and blogging part of my regular routine, though I certainly don't want to blog just for the sake of blogging - I want my remarks to be interesting to somebody besides me! Hopefully, once I get past the lesson stage of my blog, I can start commenting on lots of different interesting subjects. I do have several decent blogs on my Myspace page, though I have neglected that one as well. I like what they are doing on Technorati - the video tour was useful. The use of pictures and video with tagging is cool. I look forward to starting accounts with both of these resources soon. One thing I need to work on is using and transferring HTML code - so far I'm pretty sloppy at that and I have an imperfect understanding of how that works. del.icio.us is amazingly versatile and I find the drawbacks interesting but not insurmountable. I have noticed on Wikipedia that frequently the wrong tag is given to a term and I imagine that this happens on other tagging sites as well, but all it needs is for someone to correct it.

I have been reading other people's blogs on this subject (tagging) and there is nothing new or different I can think of to comment on at the moment - but I will come back to it later.

Online networking in libraries

I've been reading about online social networking at libraries, with an emphasis on MySpace. Despite a few drawbacks, overall I think it is an excellent idea. It is a good way to reach many people and particularly teens with news about library events and resources. There are so many safeguards in place now that I don't think there is any reason for librarians or parents to worry. I have seen some great library MySpace pages that exceeded what I thought they were capable of. And of course, there are other networking sites and programs that should be used by libraries as well.