Social Networking

I've had a Facebook for 2+ years. Initially, my daughter suggested that I get one as a quick way to communicate when she went away to college at Oberlin. At that time, it was a little more of an ordeal to sign up -- I needed to be associated with my university and get an email address from them. I joined somewhat reluctantly thinking I wouldn't really want to take the time to use the applications or fill out information about myself. That proved wrong!

I actually liked thinking about defining myself and what I like about Facebook is that I can control who sees my profile and how much they see. My daughter had a myspace briefly and I have navigated around myspace somewhat but it feels so exposed to me --it's an open site and I've always felt it had the potential to be predatory.

I look forward to checking my Facebook and I like playing with the different applications. You can be as active as you want to -- exchange messages with friends and write on their walls or just anonymously see what's happening in their lives. That sounds more like a stalker than it is.

I'm a friend of EPL's page, among others, and I like those associations and sharing the groups that I feel committed to with my friends. I do play a little too many mindjolt games but I have a healthy competition going with my younger daughter. I was worried that I'd have no friends but although I don't have the hundreds of friends that my daughters have, I have a decent number (and quite a few are my own age!). I was recently contacted my someone I worked with 25 years ago at the ADA, and that was so cool!

It hasn't turned out that she and I communicate primarily through Facebook, but it's a window on her life when she's away. I'll sign on and see that she's poked me and I know that she's thinking about me.

Japanese Rube Goldberg machines

These are super cool -- maybe we can make one for the Children's Room??!

When we moved into the new Children's space, I searched out time-lapse images on YouTube for our wall screen. It didn't turn out that we used them, but it was a fun exercise at the time. I find if you're looking for something specific, you can uncover a lot of interesting information, often pretty quickly.

I tend mostly to watch music videos on YouTube and my daughters showed me a lot of funny misheard lyrics sites. The quality is all over the place but my kids pass on good sites and I trade sites with some friends. It has become another point of connection and commonality.

Messing around with Flickr

Flickr one more time

I've put up my most recent spell with Flickr (I have spent way too much time spelling with Flickr!) and 2 different photostreams using an html badge and a flash badge.   Although I hadn't remembered where to locate the badge tool, I tend to approach this stuff like a dog with a bone -- I'm not getting off the computer until I figure it out.  Now I actually think some of the information is embedded in my brain.

Some of the mashups and 3rd party tools are pretty fun and intuitive so they're easy to use.  I did make a Librarian trading card but for now (maybe forever) it will remain unseen.  

I do like the idea of using photos for motivational posters on the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County's website-- that's very cool and  I could see EPL doing something like that to make our own READ posters. It would be an easy community project.

My friend Flickr

I thought I was new to Flickr and imagine my surprise when I went to the website and saw that I already  had an account from last year!   It's a little worrisome -- was I uploading in my sleep? Anyway, there were photos from Free Comic Book Day, May 2007 as well as 2 other photos (and yes, they were mine).   I have shaken off the weirdness of that and am determined to approach Flickr in a more mindful way.  

So far, I have uploaded 1 photo from my way too short trip to Hawaii in June -- it was very easy to upload directly to my blog but a super pain browsing in iphoto.  On the positive side, I have begun to organize my photos which usually reside in figurative ( i.e., computer) and literal shoe boxes.  More to come... 

Blue stop sign, Hawaii

Blue stop sign, Honolulu, originally uploaded by lkda.

It's blue!

Caterpillar to Monarch Butterfly - if you missed our's in real life.

I got to release one of our new butterflies outside today! Two little patrons accompanied me and were totally awed by the whole thing, especially walking out of the library with me carrying a butterfly on my finger!

GoodReads? Shelfari? LibraryThing? Everything?

There is a limit to how many things I can join, well, there should be a limit. There's definitely a limit to how many passwords and user names I can remember. Today I tried to join GoodReads (but, unless I'm wrong, blogger and GoodReads aren't friends) and settled for joining Shelfari (which I loved briefly) and LibraryThing (which I believe may be the real thing).

Anyway, I muddled through finding and inserting blog widgets, picking wood for my shelves before abandoning Shelfari altogether, and trading information, how-to's and clearly how not-to's with desk-mates, Gigi and Ted, which was both ridiculously fun and incredibly helpful. All this in between helping patrons and answering the phone! You could almost see the electricity between our heads (enough to power a small appliance?).

In the end, I inserted and deleted my widget a million times and finally settled on my LibraryThing. (It may be a short-lived relationship, so I'm saving my shelves.)

So cool working together! :)

RSS

I'm slogging through this one. Setting up a google reader account was easy and while the idea of having info come to me rather than going out to find it is appealing, finding feeds that I'm really interested in, well, that's something else. Initially, I subscribed to some bundled content subscriptions, but that's all over now. I did figure out how to post some articles from my feeds to my blog.