February 28, 2008 at 9:10 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: blog search, thing 8, thing 9
Technorati reminded me that it’s all too easy to start a blog. There certainly are a ton of them out there, and on so many different topics! Using my home town for a search showed just how many people have visited or created a YouTube video with that topic. I felt much more at home reading through Library Weblogs, and looking for old friends.
I’ve been reading librarian.net for a few years now, and adding or deleting blogs to my RSS list. If it takes me a couple of weeks to look at the articles, that’s a pretty clear sign this blog is not for me.
Doing the RSS feed assignment in thing 8 reminded me that there were features I still hadn’t tried in Sage. Sure enough, nice tools to reorganize the list using folders and separators. Now it’s pretty clear that libraries are my main interest (6 VT library blogs, including VLA, and 6 Not VT library blogs). I have 5 book review blogs I look at occasionally (favorite is the NY Times), 5 news feeds, and 2 just for fun.
My favorite blog search engine is still ask a friend. The news feeds came on when I started thinking about how to keep up on Vermont news. A friend suggested Green Mountain Daily (progressive Democratic voices) and Vermont Daily Briefing (Phillip Baruth). Bottom line: it would have taken me months to uncover these without the friendly guidance.
Second favorite blog search engine: noting the blogroll on my favorite blogs. It doesn’t always pan out, but after I see the same site on several blogs the shoe drops.
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February 25, 2008 at 9:20 pm (Uncategorized)
I didn’t duck this assignment– but I’m a Sage fan, and the information on the other RSS feeds didn’t convince me that it was time to change. Stephanie Chase introduced a bunch of us to Sage at the One Person Library workshop last summer; the personal recommendation plus the demo did the job for me. Before Sage, I used the Firefox live bookmarks. Unfortunately, I always had enough sites so I couldn’t see them all easily.
Is RSS better than e-mail subscription? I’d have to say yes. Looking through the feeds is quicker than clicking on an e-mail message. The layout on Sage, with the title of the article and its beginning paragraph, allows me to decide quickly what I want to read. Typically, I’ll take a look once or twice a week and then use the checkbox that marks every article in the feed “read,” so I know where I’ve left off.
Adopting RSS has made my e-mail more useful. I know that e-mail is usually from people who want to communicate with me, not with the VT library world or with their subscribers.
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February 24, 2008 at 8:37 pm (Catch the Reading Bug)
Tags: Flickr, thing 7
The summer reading program drifted across my mind while I was looking at mashups and Flickr. What if we gave teens some suggestions about using mashups as one of the library activities they could try? Or even tweens since many of them are so adept….
It took me a few tries to understand that Spell with flickr required ONLY that one type into the box and then copy the code to the blog. How easy is that? I wonder if the trading card mashup would appeal to the 12-15 year olds. I know a bunch that use Facebook, so a Flickr app for that site might be popular. I bet there are a million bug or butterfly images on Flickr. Maybe I’ll look at those next time.
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February 24, 2008 at 8:30 pm (Catch the Reading Bug)
Tags: thing 6
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February 23, 2008 at 2:43 am (Vermont library)
Tags: Baxter Memorial Library, Flickr, library, Rutland Jewish Center, thing 5
A Vermont library I never noticed– originally the Baxter Memorial Library, now operating as the Rutland Jewish Center. Beautiful faces carved into the stone, interesting arches, splendid juxtaposition of wood and stone.
I’m a little overwhelmed by Flickr. I realized that using keyword searches for Vermont or VT and library was taking me to different results. Sometimes the photos I found were just what the tags suggested– and then I found a photo of the Abbott Memorial Library in South Pomfret with the sole geographic tag “Appalachian Trail. ” Wouldn’t be the way I recalled the place!
I enjoyed exploring the Creative Commons and watching videos that explained copyright concepts new to me. I’d seen the label at WebJunction and also heard Mary Danko talk about searching for images she could use in a public presentation on parents and the internet. I like having the freedom to poke around without an immediate need– except to keep plugging away at 23 things.
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February 7, 2008 at 2:21 am (blogging)
Tags: presentation, themes, thing 3, thing 4
I’ve been working on understanding the Presentation aspects of WordPress blogging, egged on by the evidence that other bloggers in Vermont’s 23Things know much more than I. It took me a while to realize that using individual widgets wasn’t as easy as dragging them into the sidebar– I had to have something in the widget as well.
Frankly, the chameleon aspect of themes is something I like about WordPress. Knowing that the look could change just by selecting another theme saved me from deleting a trial blog.
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