Lolcats meets the iphone

For TADL Folk
Originally uploaded by mstephens7

For lolcats and iphone fans...

Marketing exec's take on Library 2.0

People outside of library land are talking about Library 2.0. Check out Rohit Bhargava over at Influential Marketing Blog. His recent entry, "Librarians Blogging And The Birth Of Library 2.0" speaks highly of librarianship as "one of the most important careers of the future." Bhargava, a VP of Marketing in Washington DC, comments that librarians are playing a role in organizing web content and making it more accessible to people. (I am reminded of the video. ("Web 2.0: the machine is us/ing us," created by Michael Wensch, an anthropologist at Kansas State University.) Bhargava also lists several 2.0 bloggers, including Michael Stephens, David Lee King, Meredith Farkas, and Jenny Levine. I thought this was particularly relevant to our group of library staff as we are in the midst of our Learning 2.0 journey. I liked his view of us. What do you think?

Found on LiB

RSS continued

The second lesson this week encouraged us to add more feeds. I didn't really need more feeds (as I mentioned in my earlier post), but I found myself reading other people's blogs this week, which led me to add another blog. (Thanks for the tip, Kelly!) I have previously used my Bloglines for news feeds and blogs, but today I thought of something else. While playing around in Flickr, I discovered that you can add a feed for comments and new photos. So, whenever one of my contacts adds a new photo or if someone comments on one of my photos, I will be updated via Bloglines. This was something I hadn't thought I using my Bloglines for until this week. Very nice!

RSS to the rescue

A few years ago, I was not sure about the whole blog thing. I thought blogs were just these personal diaries and I was not interested in reading people's personal diaries, much less creating my own. I didn't have the time nor the interest. Now, I can't imagine my professional life without them. RSS has made reading blogs and the news so much easier. I like that with my feeder, Bloglines, I can see the newest content in bold print, and can see the entire blog post without having to go to the blog. There are other feed readers, like Google Reader, but I am very pleased with Bloglines. I have been using Bloglines for almost two years now, but my feeds list has grown considerably in the last year. At some point, I am going to have to weed it, just like the outdated materials on the shelves...but alas, there is so much I want to know. :0) At least RSS brings it to me when I want it, lets me know what is new, and if I choose not to read it, I can simply click on the name of the blog or feed, and move on. I love RSS feeds!

Flickr Mashup

I was playing around this weekend with Flickr, my newest addiction. I love the color picker! What I like about this mashup is how it highlights some of the beautiful photographs on Flickr done by people who are not necessarily professionals, but who just love taking pictures. Bad thing about this is that one photo leads to more and more and more...that is why I called Flickr my new addiction. :0)

I found this photo, which was one of my favorites in the "purple" color wheel. (Photo by eason)

The Most Beautiful Place on Earth?

Isengard
Originally uploaded by southnz

If I could travel anywhere, I would love to go to New Zealand. So full of breathtaking landscape...I spent way too much time in Flickr looking through all of the photos that people had taken of NZ. I created a Flickr photo badge using public photos Milford Sound. I could just get mesmerized in those scenes. I've included just one below of NZ that captures several beautiful mountains, including Mt. Alfred and Mt. Earnslaw. Also in the pic is Diamond Lake. (Note: The pic is also showing the area that was a well-known scene from LOTR.)

Florida Fun--Week 3 Learning 2.0

This week we are exploring Flickr. I am a photo nut, so I really love exploring Flickr, so much so that I get mesmerized looking at other people's pictures. I have a few photos up on my Flickr account (I created one several months ago), but I prefer Picasa, mainly because of how it organizes the photos on my desktop and meshes so easily with my Google account. I can go almost seamlessly from my desktop to the web and post photos to share with my friends and family using Picasa. (I am sure that Flickr offers this, too, I just haven't used it enough to know.) I confess that this is one area in which privacy makes me more leary of venturing out too far, though. I have posted a few photos on Flickr and Picasa, but for some reason I am more worried about it here than I am on Facebook. I have no real explanation of why other than because it is photos and because most of my photos involve my kids. Silly, I know.

We just got back from our vacation in Florida, though, and I thought I would share some of my photos that I uploaded to Flickr.
(These are on my Flickr site, but I had to upload them manually
here because they aren't "public.") One of the highlights was our fishing trip out on the Gulf of Mexico. Me, my hubby, and my mom's husband went out on his boat and all three of us caught sharks. Unfortunately, my camera malfunctioned and I was only able to get pictures of two of the three sharks. (Of course it would be MY catch that would be missed...) Anyway, it was a thrill to get to fish on the gulf. Even if I don't have the picture to prove it, I won't soon forget catching a shark!

Learning 2.0--Facebook

It has been fun this past week to see people exploring Facebook. I have added a few new friends and even seen a few sheep being thrown! The neat thing about Facebook is that it is a nice mix of business and pleasure. I have met other librarians on Facebook that I wouldn't have met in other venues, and I have found friends from high school that I haven't seen in years. I like that the Facebook creators have opened the source code up so that almost anyone can create fun and useful applications, like the UIUC Search, the Marketplace (one of my favorites), and the Superpoke. I prefer Facebook over MySpace, though I think MySpace has an audience with a particular demographic that Facebook doesn't. Lots of public libraries are taking advantage of that, and I applaud their efforts to reach out to that group of patrons, to go where they like to "hang out" and to put a friendly face on the library so that those users will see that the library is a relevant place for them. If we want to educate all users, then social networks are one way to market our services and resources to certain groups, not to mention the fun you can have there, too!

35 Perspectives on Online Social Networking

35 Perspectives on Online Social Networking

In light of our Learning 2.0 lesson this week on social networking, I thought this article was timely and could provide some interesting discussion for the brownbag lunch at the end of the week.

Big Brother

This is a 1978 Leyland Mini next to my hubby's 2001 F350. A friend from my brother's church bought this off ebay a while back and had it imported from the UK. We drew quite a few stares and even had random people taking photos in the parking lot when we parked next to the mini. I was surprised that the teeny truck was very comfortable to sit in (it has racing seats), though the practical side of me (read: old, mom) couldn't help but think about what it would be like to be in an accident in one of these things.

It was very neat little vehicle, though. Because it was just their size, my kids thought it was made just for them!

Learning 2.0--Social Networking

Libraries and MySpace profiles: What I like most about libraries having MySpace profiles is that they have them! OK, that seems like a cop-out answer, but it is true. As it was pointed out (by Stephen Abram, I believe) at an ALA session I recently attended, what matters is that libraries are trying these new things. Teens and young adults are in these environments, and Stephen Abram is very deliberate about calling them environments and not just sites. Libraries can learn from one another by creating inviting environments for teens to be in. These profile pages are a great place to market our services to an audience whose attention we might not normally have. If you look at the examples listed in the Learning 2.0 blog, you can see how libraries, including academic libraries, are able to list hours, promote services, link to special collections, post photos, and even link to tutorials and instructional videos.

A MySpace profile is a great way to add a "cool" and fun image to the library, not to mention a "human" side. Let's engage with our users in those virtual spaces that they enjoy being in. Implications for us at EKU? Not sure that MySpace is where we want to invest our time and efforts since most of our students are probably in Facebook, but we should certainly consider working on a Facebook profile (group) and trying to market ourselves that way. I want to take advantage of promoting our services in places where students meet and socialize and to give our library a friendly, familiar face.

Library 2.0 in 15 minutes a day

Our library has recently embarked on a Learning 2.0 adventure, following in the footsteps of PLCMC library and so many others. If you have been wanting to do a Learning 2.0 program, but think you don't have time to put one together, think again! There is a great resource over at the Library Instruction wiki just for you. As it states on their front page, the wiki page was designed to give libraries interested in such a program a curriculum from which to build a 2.0 program on. For that matter, anyone can just go straight to the wiki and follow the activities to become more familiar with web 2.0 tools. Thanks to the supercrazylibrarianguy (Sam Wallin) for creating the wiki!

And thanks to the LiB for pointing us to the wiki. :0)