Thing #5

Here's a cool purple picture I found using flickr color pickr - the photo is by Giant Gingko and can be found at:
www.flickr.com/photos/giantginkgo/38108996/sizes/l/
Being a big fan of purple, I like this way of finding pictures.
and here's my title, courtesy of spell with flickr:...okay, nevermind. I can't figure out how to get that on here at the moment, and I'm running out of time. Anyway, I like flickr, although would probably like it even more if I EVER took pictures. Which I don't. But I can see the advantages of it, especially the ease with which things can be organized.

Thing #4

http://www.flickr.com/photos/torresteras/2413792458/
This was another slightly frustrating thing. 1st, I wasted a lot of time browsing through pictures, then, when I went to put one up here, I realized that none of the ones I'd been looking at were offered for use. I finally figured out to go to the creative commons, and got a picture from there, but then the directions for getting the url did not work. Even with our computer wise-woman helping me, I never did manage it following the directions given - she showed me a different way to do it though, so I'm going with that and calling it good. Thing 4 done.
oh - and the picture is by torrestoerasfotos on flickr. As I was doing this exercise, I felt a bit like there was some fruit on a tree branch, just out of my reach. grrr.

Thing #3 - a dangerous, distracting Thing

I have spent a fair amount of time on this one, and will probably spend even more time once I get home. RSS feeds are dangerous - sometimes it's better NOT to know what all is going on around you; I am now mere clicks away from overwhelming amounts of information about the slightest thing that catches my fancy. And my fancy is caught quite easily. Ah well. With that said, in general it was fun. I had some trouble at first, but once that smoothed out I managed to waste all my time browsing around. I haven't actually read that many of my subscriptions - I'll save that for when I'm at home.
So, I can see how it would be easy to keep up-to-date on what different libraries are doing, as well as on your own personal obsessions (I found more than one joss whedon related feed, and I haven't even tried looking for favorite author things). I'm not completely sure how media specialists and what-not might use it, not being entirely sure what all their jobs entail; however, I'm sure it makes finding up-to-date info on any topic easier.
I haven't experimented yet with different tools for finding feeds - so far just what was available on my page. Perhaps I will have brilliant discoveries to share later.
Over and out.

Thing #2 - feet on the ground, heads in the clouds

I suppose I had a lot of mixed feelings reading over the different writings. As will happen any time you step into the middle of a conversation, I felt like I was missing out on a lot of context. Blyberg says we need to reevaluate what libraries' mission might be? I'd like to see specific examples of past, present and possible future missions and some analysis of what the differences might be. Some of the L2 stuff just seems obvious to - of course the library home should include a homepage with access to places patrons/users/customers (I'm not deciding yet which term I prefer) can contribute their views. I'd love to have a place connected to my library where I can post "This is what I'm reading" and come into contact with others doing the same.
With that said, some of what I was reading really seemed to be looking out from a position in la-la land. The openness and trust issues in general seem to be glossed over and simplified - I'm not going to take time to brainstorm on some of the potential issues library sites might encounter, but I'm sure they are more than any of the articles alluded to. For example, Facebook was repeatedly referenced as a good thing, but what about the problem they and myspace have had with people creating profiles for others without their permission (or even their knowledge)? What ARE the copyright issues that we need to be thinking about, and the ethics with which we need to approach them?

Anyway - so I didn't see enough specific details....which really maybe shouldn't even be an issue, since we're trying to somewhat speed through this for this program. With that said, I really liked what I ready about Hennepin Library and would like to check out their site.


Blog prompts:

• We know time is always an issue--Stephen Abram shares some ideas on where to find the time for 23 Things. Where will you find the time?
• Why are you participating in 23 Things On a Stick? What do you hope to learn?
• How has the Internet and the vast resource it can be affected your use of time at work and/or at home?
• Where are you in your knowledge and use of Web 2.0 tools? How about your library?
• What are you looking forward to in 23 Things On a Stick?

1) I will try to ignore some of my work stacking up - I will not necessarily give up my break time though, which in part seems to be what Abram was recommending, and that kind of irritated me because EVERYBODY knows how important breaks are.

2) I'm participating in 23 Things because it looks interesting, I don't know how to do a number of the things it looks like it might cover, and I figure you can rarely know too much.
3) I suppose my use of time has changed dramatically over the last 5-10 years, although it would be hard to pinpoint a lot of it because I didn't necessarily know a pre-internet time all that well. I certainly use written communication more because of the internet - I wasn't a big letter writer before I regularly used email, but I write to friends (both near and far) daily now.
Crosswords are much less frustrating with the ability to google things (although there is that pesky guilt issue); it's much easier (and less time-consuming) to find the information I want, however I suspect that I come up with more information that I want and therefore don't necessarily save any time...instead I just end up with a lot of (questionably) useful information.

anyway, out of time...back to regular work

Thing #1 Finally Done!

I finally got back to this and got my avatar. That was the 1st time I've made one, and it was ridiculously fun. We'll see how often I think to mix it up. Anyway, so overall thing 1 was not too difficult, although it was hard deciding which options to use for the avatar. I still haven't taken the time to look through all of the background possibilities - something to do on a slow day (because they come along so often...sigh).
Off to thing #2!

1st post part 2: "creating a blog"

Just realized we're supposed to include the lesson we're on in the title. So, new title, but this is the same as the last post. Again, creating the blog went fine. Although when I went to sign in today it took me a while to remember what I had used as my username. But I figured it out.

going slow

So, I registered this a week ago, but am only now taking the time to write my blog. Everything went fine for the most part, except for my registration for the 23 things itself. I had a couple of questions about a few spots on the registration form; unfortunately, since I didn't take the time to blog then, I now don't remember exactly what they were. Nor do I have time to figure it out at the moment. grrr. It's nice getting time at work to do this, but how do you decide which part of your regular job gets put off?