Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Collection of Book & Reading Quotes

"A life without books is too horrible to contemplate." ~ Brainy Smurf - - Episode 270 (Bookworm Smurf)

"I crawled into my books and pulled the pages up over my head." ~Mary Russell in Laurie R. King's _A Monstrous Regiment of Women_

"I cannot live without books." - Thomas Jefferson

Henry James
"The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting."

Monday, March 16, 2009

TCCL 23 Things #22: Audio Books

I listen to Audio books in my vehicle all the time or on my portable CD player and I have checked out Playaways, the pre-loaded digital audiobooks in the Media Center. However, I don't have any of those fancy digital ipods, iphones, or MP3 players. Guess I'll have to win one in the drawings for the prizes. But I can attempt to download a TCCL digital book on my laptop at home. When I use the phrase, curl up with a good book, I somehow don't picture me and my computer. Am thinking of purchasing a Kindle for my son's 40th this year, but don't plan to get one myself until I retire and start traveling. Books can be heavy.

Eureka! I've completed Thing #22. First had to receive coaching from our wonderful IT Department on disabling the Google Tool Bar Notifier on my home laptop. For some reason, probably a challenge to my tech skills, it locked me out from gaining access to Internet Explorer and thus, the TCCL catalog. This morning Carey patiently coached me as to disabling all the Google options and then again trying to access Internet Explorer. Sped home at noon and got into TCCL catalog and successfully downloaded "The Gospel According to Oprah" and completed Discovery Exercise for Thing #22!! And I completed Thing #23: Survey. Gist was that "you can teach an old dog new tricks". AND for my final task, I notified and penned a description of my completed online experience to Continued Education. Is Hallelujah! too strong?

TCCL Library Thing #21: Podcasts

http://www.mugglenet.com/mugglecast/ put this feed on my Bloglines account. It's an informative talk show, a newsroundup on everything about Harry Potter. The one I listened to featured an interview with the U.S. Harry Potter illustrator. The Mugglecast is made up of young people in their early twenties attending a variety of colleges or are recent graduates. Only one Brit in the group. I'm sure I'll have the opportunity to share this podcast with some of our customers who are HP fans.

Also put on Dan Carlin's Hardcore History feed. He presents thought provoking questions and issues and interviews interesting historians.

The number of podcasts available is somewhat overwhelming, but I intended to continue to explore some of the choices, especially those library-related podcasts. It is very convenient to be able to put them as feeds on Bloglines. Really don't see how or why our library would incorporate, but it's food for thought.
librarylin

Sunday, March 15, 2009

TCCL Thing #20-Exploring YouTube



Ride Little Monkey Ride, A Taco John cowboy monkey commercial

librarylin

TCCL Thing #20: Explore YouTube

This is the one 2.0 website that I am somewhat familiar with, but really don't use that often because my nose is usually in a book when I go home or I'm playing with our Boston Terrier puppies. After being online helping customers all day, I just don't want to go online on my personal laptop.
Sometimes when friends are over, someone will suggest a YouTube site for us all to watch.



like Tacojohn commericials, starring Whiplash the cowboy monkey. Hilarious!

as for the library... We did use at Rudisill to entertain and be entertained by kids before the MLK Day parade. The kids danced to rap song videos. Did have to find ones with suitable lyrics. a library event could be videoed and published on YouTube, but right now I can't see the value. Actually TCCL could have filmed the Spring Employee family party where members of families explored the Teen simulated guitar games. That incident could be shared on a social network as an example of a fun library get together.
librarylin

Friday, March 13, 2009

TCCL Thing #19 Discovering Web 2.0 tools.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/toolbar/#topic=Books&url=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.dailymail.co.uk%252Fnews%252Farticle-1156973%252FThousands-scramble-free-books-Amazon-supplier-abandons-warehouse.html

First I just explored a variety of Categories and posted above link to an article I "stumbled upon" and found interesting.
Then for my actual Discovery Exercise using search engine tools to find a site that would have applications for use in a library setting, I chose the Category "Books".
"Lulu" was the 1st place winner, but I found it to be too commercial a site since I already use and am familiar with Amazon.
The 2nd Place winner was "Biblio" which is for used or rare books so I could refer customers to it.
The 3rd place winner was "VuFind", a resource portal software for Academic libraries developed by Villanova University of PA. The goal of VuFind is to enable users to search and browse thought library resources by replacing the traditional OPAC. Many major Universities are using or testing.
"Worldcat" and "LibraryThing" received Honorable Mention Awards. I learned that Worldcat is becoming more and more accesible to the general public, and while I was again exploring "LibraryThing" (Thing #11), I added another title to my book list.

librarylin

TCCL Thing #18: Web-based apps: They're not just for desktops

http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=dd33hmxm_2hm9jq3hb&preview=true

Created account in Google Docs and copied and pasted the text of the sign I created.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

TCCL Thing #17: Playing around with PBWiki

Accessed the TCCL wiki and created an account and added my blog address. Added a note about my new puppies and about my favorite organic winery. Hope someone will post a note about another one for me to try. Replied to another blogger blog about playing chess. librarylin

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Library 23 Things #16 - Wikis

Really, Really enjoyed exploring all the library wikis, expecially the one featuring 2005 ALA Conference in Chicago initiated by librarian Meredith Farkas. She has written a book entitled "Social Software in Libraries" that I want to read. Particularly liked that "Every Child Ready to Read" was included for librarians to share info or links. I actually signed up on the Library Success: A Best practices wiki for librarians to share their best practies. The Bull Run Library Wikki in Virginia had a great Spanish for Staff site and their page could also be viewed in German. Liked their Gnooks Gnod tool to find and discuss music, books, and movies. Wowbrary for free alerts by email or feeds was spam free and useful for reserving best sellers. They had great subject guide info on special needs, family history, geneology, & even finding birth parents. The Book Lovers Wiki developed by the Princeton Public Library had cool info about their Summer Reading Club for Adults with a Library Lounge Blog for discussion purposes. Their list of Awards was impressive as was their Religious Book Subject Search and all could be switched to be read "En Espanol". Only thing I couldn't access were the Flickr shared photos which our system filter doesn't allow. Usually stick to Google for exploring but the Wikis certainly opened up several new avenues to explore. libraryin

Monday, March 9, 2009

TCCL Library Thing #15

For the Discovery Exercise for Library Thing #15 I read the articles referring to Library 2.0. I realized immediately that TCCL is implementing many of the suggestions cited such as having AskIt text users when that is their “preferred environment” and offers online chats. The Media Center has actively been enhancing their digital collection and the Children’s department is exploring types of ebooks to add to their collection. TCCLS’s Online list of electronic databases is constantly being reviewed and updated. Our Catalog encourages customers to share personal lists with other readers, has instructions for adding World Cat to their mobile phones, finding feeds, and where to locate items in libraries nearby. All types of Blogs are available. We Wikki. I think the Openworldcat Project is particularly exciting and feel certain that joint catalogs will be seen more and more, especially in the academic area. Definitely dynamic change and exchange is where Libraries are heading. I appreciate that our Technical Committee is encouraging staff to become familiar with 2.0 by offering Con Ed credit plus neat prizes. Also appreciate the frequent material updates from the Research Library in particular. And found today's Unshelved cartoon particularly timely. Check it out. larnett
Unshelved for Monday, March 09, 2009 by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
http://www.unshelved.com/archive.aspx?strip=20090309

Saturday, March 7, 2009

TCCL Thing #14 Exploring Technorati

The #1 Blog by fans on Technorati is "Boing Boing" which I already have as a feed on my Bloglines site. The #1 Blog by Authority on Technorati is the "Huffington Report" which I also already have on my Bloglines site.



I took the optional challenge and tagged my post and also joined Technorati and claimed my Blog.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Exploring Thing #13, DELICIOUS

Didn't really find many of the most popular Delicous bookmarks to be ones I would want to visit on regular basis. That said, I did stumble on a couple of political sites that were interesting to learn about, this being such an exciting political time. But when it came down to choosing URLs to bookmark, I chose ones dealing with the TCCL 23 Things project. This should help me relocate them fairly quickly. Even though I have most marked as "Favorites", I was able to add some helpful notes. Now let's hope that the network badge feature worked and the HTML pasted properly. Cheers, Librarylin