Wednesday, December 26, 2007

me no likey wiki

Ewwww. I'm not sure I'm sold on the whole wiki thing. I have used wikipedia before for general quick facts - it's sometimes easier to find that information than trying a general google search. But I wouldn't use it for real research or anything I was clueless about. It's just not trustworthy enough.

I tried surfing around on the Stevens County wiki for some ideas of how we might use them in our organization. Frankly, I found it rather boring. I would really worry about putting all of that information in the public collaborative domain - who's to say that someone wouldn't just go in and delete everything? Plus, from what I found out trying to play with the fake KRL wiki page, it's a lot harder than it looks and I prefer leaving it up to the talented professionals who can get the information out there and make it look pretty and easy to navigate at the same time.

The Book Lust wiki was a bit more interesting. I suppose if we had a patron-supported wiki for reading recommendations, that might feasible. I just know that we'd have to have staff regulating the contributions constantly for content and I don't know that it would really be worth the trade-off.

Also, it was a lot more complicated to contribute to the wiki than I had thought! I thought it would be more like blogging somehow, which I guess it is in a way. But I was afraid to leave it in edit mode for too long, so I typed my text in a word file and tried to copy and paste. Apparently, it's not so simple. I managed to make my contribution, eventually, but to me it's really not worth the trouble and I wouldn't have bothered if I didn't have to.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

iTube

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays to all!

I've been using youtube for awhile now - so this is not really new for me. I had fun exploring, but once again am not really sure how this will help me to do my job at KRL - especially since these videos cannot be watched in our branches due to our slow conneciton speed and lack of ability to play videos with sound.

One thing I am always disappointed with is youtube's search engine quality. It never seems to be able to find me the videos I am looking for, and if you narrow down your search too much it won't find anything at all. I was hoping that when google bought the company, they would help with that feature but so far I haven't seen any improvement.

Also, you end up spending a lot of time watching bad videos. I'm finding myself searching more on some of the other video sites - especially "Funny or Die". It's got some great shorts submitted by hollywood types, including the all-time classic "The Landlord" (beware, though, it's not g-rated if you're sensitive to that). That video can be found here: http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/74 .

I did enjoy the two KRL-produced videos. Y'all are so talented! To complete my assignment, here's a link to a funny library-themed video that was originally sent to me by Angie, formerly one of our fabulous Poulsbo staff and now away attending library school in pursuit of her MLS degree: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RbG1jHewWw . One thing I've notice while watching all of these library videos posted online - we sure are a homogenous bunch, aren't we?

And, since it's part of the optional extras, I have to pay homage to my "otak saya sakit" [brain hurting] niece in the photo on my page and offer up one of her youtube starring roles here as well. So, here she is in all her glory:

Monday, December 24, 2007

LibraryThings happen

I heart librarything! That was fun - definitely something I as a library worker can sink my teeth into. And it fits right in with the advice we received at KRL's training day to keep a list of everything you read. To me, that seemed like one more list which I don't need. But I can actually imagine doing it on library thing - and I love that it's easier to sort and organize your list, apply star ratings to the books that you like, and write short reviews of them to jog your memory or share your love with others.

I even figured out the widget-thingy in less than half an hour! (A big improvement in my typically techie-challenged life). It should be over on the right side of my blog...albeit a wee bit late for the extras drawings. But I'm okay with that - I was lucky enough to win a t-shirt earlier on, so now the pressure's off!

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Flickr - Finally!

So...after nearly 2 months away the prodigal blogger returns. I'm going to try to catch up a bit on the 2pt0 assigments amidst all of the family gatherings and events this time of year.

Anyhoo - back on track. Flickr is pretty darn cool. I've had an account since for about a year, which I set up originally after I went to a wedding and wanted to share my photos with the other bridesmaids. And I haven't done anything with it since then. ha ha ha - typical me. One thing I discovered is that it works really well - it's easy to create slideshows and upload a large number of photos, sorting them with tags (which I didn't know how to do then). But, just like blogging, it's WAY too easy to spend hours coming up with captions and titles to customize your page. Just for the sake of examples ('cause I'm sure none of you are actually interested) my Flickr account is located here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/96387926@N00/


I had some fun with this assignment though and started to surf around on my friends' flickr sites and exploring some of the tags they had created. I clicked onto a "Poulsbo" tag and found some neat local photos ... and searched around on the map application they have that links photos with the places they were taken. All in all, love flickr but just don't think I can take on one more-time sucking device. I'll leave that to my artist brother-in-law who gets to work from home [jealous, are we?]. He posted this childhood photo, which includes my handsome husband at the top right. ;)


I'm not so sure how to use this for KRL - but it was fun to play with on my own time. I guess the ability to share photos easily and to set them as private or public might be good for teen events and the like, but I'm not too involved in those sorts of things in my position.