She Isn't Taking This Seriously

No! I want to take it seriously, really! But, you know...summer...and, I'm trying to write this long thing, and see, the best part about having a job and not being in school was no homework, and this is just like homework. And while I could, if I needed to, throw something together in school to meet a deadline and get a grade, this is different, 'cause the goal is not to look like an @#$. Plus stress makes me sleepy.

In the meantime, please do read the most awesome comic located here: http://www.drmcninja.com/

RIP Shojo Beat

To my surprise, although I suppose I shouldn't have been, Viz cancelled Shojo Beat and we'll all be a little poorer for having to wait longer to find out what happens in Vampire Knight (legally). Viz was stingy with the details on why the decision was made, which makes it hard not to think badly of them.

At any rate, with Anime Insider's unceremonious dumping a few months ago, this makes the second high interest YA magazine to make a recent fall. Bad times.

Tardy to the Party

I started One Piece several days ago now, and I'm COMPLETELY taken with it. I see why it's widely adored (I like my entertainment to be escapist). I'm on volume 14, and it's just swell. I'm in Pirate Love. I haven't wanted to be a pirate this badly since the fifth grade.

I don't think I can add anything to what's already been said about this series; Sleep is for the Weak has a nice review that sums it up well (they sum up most stuff pretty well). All that remains is for me to be properly embarrassed by how long it took for me to finally pick this one up.

I am seriously considering a One Piece themed tattoo.

Cobwebs in the Closet

I have been considering for several days now my poor neglected Closet, how I could make some use of it and whether I really have anything to add to the Innernets. Not that there aren't plenty of useless things on the Innernets. But still. The Closet might well serve some purpose beyond housing my fabulous digital shoe collection.

While I try to think of something useful to say, I will in the meantime unveil my plan for infesting the library with kodama (Princess Mononoke style). I'm not sure how I will achieve this. I imagine it will involve yarn and patience.

I Didn't Mean to Leave Forever

Really, I didn't.

Just checking in briefly to say, I'm pretty sure it's still "library," not "liberry." Why do I hear that so much?

Well, Well. And Here We Are.

Gee, it looks like I've reached the 23rd Thing. Gosh.

There really have been so many discoveries. For instance, I've discovered way more about Dan than I ever knew there was to know. And that my 23 Thinger has seen at least one anime that I have. Didi has never played Portal, but should. 'Cause everybody should. But all of these things just bring us closer as friends and colleagues! And that's really what 2.0 is all about, isn't it?

I've picked up some useful stuff. I use Google Reader now, and I check it every day. I think Google Docs will become more useful in the future as it gets a bit more tricked out, like Office (love me some Publisher and Powerpoint). I look foward to Twittering, even if the root is uncomfortably close to "twit." Rollyo sucks, but not everything is a winner.

I hope my posts have been at least mildly entertaining for you. It's been a good idea, and I apprieciate the chance to get nudged out of my comfort zones and explore--I don't get that opportunity much, so this has been fun.

NetLibrary and Overdrive, Nothing Clever Here

I looked at a picture book in NetLibrary, because that didn't seem to be the kind of thing that readily lent itself to ebook form. The book was The Burro and the Basket. The illustrations showed up pretty nicely, I assume, except for having to scroll to see all of the picture. The weird thing was, there were great gaps of white space just where I would have thought text should have been. The text was then typed, smaller than I'm used to for a picture book, and in a kind of weird way and sterile typeface: it seems to have been wiped out from its original location and retyped at the bottom for the digitization. Why? There is no paper copy in the system, so I can't check on how it looked in physical form. A great mystery.

I have been through the Overdrive tutorial. Hooray for anime downloads. Yay for Read or Die, which is just awesome. It really doesn't get much better than secret agents of the British Library saving the world, now, does it?

Attack of the Pod(cast) People!

It's really fortunate that we're getting to the end of 23 Things, 'cause I'm clearly running out of ideas for entry titles.

Ah, podcasts. I have long resisted podcasts, much longer than I have most other things on the Innernets, probably because I'm not really an auditory learner--it's hard on me to just hear, as opposed to having something to watch while I listen. Yes, I also mildly dislike talking on the phone. Yes, I know there are "video podcasts" or whatever.

ANYWAY. I did find some useful things! I listened to the Mugglecast (the podcast associated with the Harry Potter juggernaut fan site MuggleNet), and I also added Nancy Pearl's book review podcast to my Google Reader (and listened to her review of The Graveyard Book). I really think that listening to her reviews is going to be fun, and despite the fact that I couldn't manage to download a single episode of the podcast, it worked like a charm as soon as I added the RSS feed to my Reader. Woot.

YouTube! Broadcast...You Know...Everything

In the same way that GoodReads allows me to share a connection with my librarian friend on the far off East coast, YouTube provides a connection with a former film student friend on the West coast. Thanks to YouTube, a dear chum I don't see nearly enough of can periodically IM me links to videos for my amusement. If that's not the highest calling YouTube can claim, I surely don't know what is.

I believe I have mentioned before that I have seen people tag their own stuff with many completely irrelevant tags just to get more views--and I have seen this on YouTube. That is the worst, most annoying thing. Keywords that have nothing to do with the information object are in many ways the antithesis of what we do at libraries, obscuring information and making it inaccessible. HATE THAT.

There are some ways to incorporate YouTube into library Web sites; informational videos, building tours, the occasional advertisement about existence and services:



The usual.

And, I'm going to link here to a short video done by the film group of friend I mentioned above. I'm not going to try to describe it, but let's just say it reflects an, uh, interesting sense of humor, so, you know, be prepared.

2.0 Toolbox: Shoo-bee-doo-bee-doo-tweet-tweet!

TWITTER! I CHOOSE YOU!

I would, at this point, put in a graphic of the Twitter logo popping out of a pokeball, but frankly I just don't have that kind of time today.

Despite having read some questionable things recently about Twitter's commitment to user care, I am still excited to try it (although what I read was vastly disappointing--I hope that it results in enough introspection for Twitter to change its approach). I have liked the idea of tweeting for awhile now, after a brief period of warming up, but I believe what really put me over on Twitter was Neil Gaiman's incredible, heart-felt Tweet post-Newbery win. Go look it up. Seriously, it's just awesome.

I really like that you can text in your Tweet. Even though I haven't really gotten into it very far yet, Twitter looks sort of like a persistent texting hub. I am really looking forward to seeing how all this is managed.

As far as library applications...I'm not sure. Maybe it's possible to Tweet in reference questions? I'm completely unsure about that at this point, since I just barely got started. But we could absolutely Tweet out library news and services updates. It could be used to make the library seem much more like a living, active entity--which, of course, we are.

Newbery News

Ya know, I didn't mention anything about this on Monday, and I should have, because I was so excited when The Graveyard Book won the Newbery. Seriously, I was excited like I know Neil Gaiman personally and was going to call him later in the morning or something. Which of course I don't and of course I didn't. So I didn't have anything to do with that grand level of joy (except subject my coworkers to it). I do, though, adore that book intensely. It took me two days to read it. And now this wonderful book's won the Newbery, and I'm just so proud.

Neil Gaiman's been one of my favorite children's authors for a long time now (in the sense that I am just smitten with his children's/young adult/"all ages" books). I love his picture books, and Coraline is one of my all time favorites ever.

So, congratulations to Neil Gaiman. This librarian is mighty pleased with your Newbery win and the incredible story you told.

PS--I'd just like to indulge my smugness and point out that I put The Graveyard Book on the children's librarians' recommended reading spreadsheet after I finished it, so in a way I TOTALLY CALLED IT. GO ME.

Test Doc

THIS

 

IS

 

A

 

NEAT

 

THING

Google Docs: Not the New Option From Your HMO

Pretty neat, though. I wish the presentation option had a bit more of the PPT bells and whistles, but I was able to upload PPT slides into it (it mostly worked). And being able to store docs remotely like this, well, yeehaw, I say. I'm always worried about what's going to happen if my flashdrive meets with an unfortunate fate.

This is something that would be pretty dang helpful for anything one would like to squirrel away. I can think of all kinds of scenarios: travelling, simply not having your own computer, moving between locations frequently (which kind of sounds just like the first two)...

It kept telling me that it couldn't authenticate the username when I tried to Publish a test doc, but now it appears that IT WORKED. Awesome.


Hey, Didi or Assorted-Other-23-Things-Person: may I have a lesson check, please? Thanks!

The Sandbox...hey, I got wiki in my shoes

Well, obiviously if we used a wiki to keep track of requests for the Special Assignment Librarians, back when I was one, I have hands on experience tinkering with a wiki (it was even a pbwiki). So I didn't have any trouble going in there and adding the blog on the list with the WYSIWYG editor. You know what I like best about a WYSIWYG? Saying it. WYSIWYG!!

Anyway, it did look neat, like a mulitlayer message board with one whole page for "I WUZ HERE" graffiti. Pretty cool.

Wiki-Wiki-Woot

Alternate title: Wiki-Wiki-Tavi

So yeah!

I do think wikis are pretty useful. Despite Wikipedia's lack of official reliability, I start out there for basic information a lot (and I use the external links for a possible source of sites of official reliability).

I think of smaller scale wikis as bulletin boards, without the danger that your flyer's gonna get ripped down and lost forever (hooray for page roll back). And, of course, you don't have to actually swing by the building that the bulletin board is located in. Handy dandy, that.

I made a wiki for the Special Assignment Librarians way back when to help us keep track of assignment requests, and who was where, and so on. Useful! So I do like them quite a bit.

Thing the 15: Library 2.0

Ya know, I'd love to talk about "Library 2.0," but I'm not sure I fully grasp it as a thing to which we move. Does that make sense? Hmm...

At any rate, even with all the talk of decreased circulation, do any of us truly believe that print is dead? Despite what Rick Anderson's piece says about looking "skeptically at the very idea of a library 'collection,'" have any of us managed to get along without a print collection yet? (It's not retortical--I'm not aware of a library doing that myself; tell me if there is one.) I also seem to recall reading recently, although I don't know how current the article was, that there have been problems with some digitizing: footnotes have been left out, that sort of thing. Information has been left incomplete, which is sloppy and shortsighted.

Staying current and relevant is going to involve embracing the idea of evolving, though--I like "living, breathing technology" plans. I like connected. Wee!

But I think success means a melding of the building and the page with the electronic and the digital. Most of us who work here, we've already got a foot in each pond as users ourselves, I'm willing to bet.

Technorati: Better Than "Technosia"

I will admit that I was slightly surprised by the Technorati Popular lists. Maybe not the top five blogs. That didn't really surprise me. But the top searches? Yeah. Vanessa Minnillo? Has she done something recently that I am unaware of? To be fair, if she has done something recently, I am more likely than not to be unaware of it. But I see my share of gossip headlines and such. If she's in the top 10 search list of anything, she surely should have done something that would have crossed my awareness threshold. Number five on the list is "men," which seems kind of cryptic to me. As in, "chemical components"? "Locations of"? "Known weaknesses?" "A Primer on"? What?



None of the video clips caught my attention as particularly unexpected...until I got to the NBS Nightly News with Ted Phillips from March 11, 1970. I became extraordinary paranoid that something way significant happened that day, and I had no idea. I Googled it, then watched the clip: it's viral marketing for Watchmen. Haha. Watch it. It's actually pretty cool. And because it's been three posts since I had any pictures, here's one related to Watchmen:






Yay! I haven't read it yet, but I'm about to. I wasn't really a fan of V for Vendetta, so we'll see how I like this one.

SAPLL2

Mmmm...Del.icio.us

I DO THIS TOO! YAY!!

Okay. So, yes. Del.icio.us can be a useful tool. You can potentially find useful things in that other people have tagged. BUT--I am really suspicious of letting just anybody create tags for pieces of information. It's all well and good, until you're poking through clips on YouTube, for example. I have seen cases where people really want their own clips viewed, and so they pack the tag field with all kinds of tags that have nothing to do with their videos. Now, I understand that such things probably offend me more deeply than they do normal people. But that is EXACTLY the kind of thing that will PLUNGE the world into darkness and bring on the apocalypse.

Rollyo: Now All I Can Think About Are Rollo Candies

Hmm, I didn't really like Rollyo that much. I thought that the results were really redundant; Google is pretty good at minimizing that. I know, for example, that some of the sites I put in have scads of information on the search terms I entered. I don't need returns to every single mention. And, those sites dominated the search returns, so in the end, I didn't get anything helpful out of it.

All the same, here's my link. Yes, I reinvented the wheel, but I already had a bunch of these sources bookmarked. I can report that I'm pretty hooked on RSS feeds now though.

Goodreads is Goodreadiness!

Okay, this was an EASY one! 'Cause I already HAD a Goodreads! My friend Suzanne, who went to library school under my influence (isn't that awesome? I should get a merit badge! Or maybe go to jail. But she seems happy!), introduced me to it! Now, even though we live many states apart, I can still feel inferior to the amount she reads and knits all while have twice the amount of kids I do.

Goodreads is, in this way, very helpful! If a little damaging in the self esteem department. It is, though, really cool to be able to keep up with Suzanne like this. Some people write nice little traditional reviews of the books they read, which is great, but since there are so many of those types, I just tend to bang out a couple of sentences based purely on the book's raw emotional value for me. Don't expect much, is what I'm saying.

The Goodreads widgets sure are nifty doohickeys! See the sidebar!

Lesson the Tenth: Image Generators!

Sorry, Didi: the answer to the "Cake and Companion Cube" question is that it's from the truly wonderful game, Portal. If you like puzzle games, and you do not own this, it is really a steal at something like ten bucks.


For this one, I made the trading card:

And also, I'm sorry it's been so long since I posted. I didn't mean to get so dang busy. I'm gonna try to sprint my way to the end of the 23 Things before the end of the month. Wish me luck.