Flickr love

mehatwork,
originally uploaded by cupcakegrl.

Jill took this photo of me, and she blogged it on her 27Things blog. Look how much we are all learning!!!

#14 That Library Thing you do...

I actually already use these, and have accounts with Library Thing and Shelfari. In fact, I heard about Library Thing last year, and shared it with my coworkers. One in particular treasures it above all others, and has made friends through social networking within Library Thing.

Since I am already familiar with these two tools (and love them), I decided to try GuruLib, which I had not heard of. I really like the features that keep track of your book loaning, such as sending you emails when a book you have loaned out to someone is "due." There is also a "price watch," which allows you to set the price you want to pay for items in your wish list, and then alerts you when the item is available for that price. You can also catalog documents besides books, such as PDFs and DOCs.

Another nice thing is that you can retrieve book info with the bar code number, rather than having to wade through the multiple entries users have entered.

On the whole, though, the interface on Shelfari is the prettiest, and since Amazon just bought Shelfari, there are some unique capabilities there, too.

#13 Technorati

Technorati apparently is sensitive to phrase searching, so I got different results whether I used learning 2.0 or "learning 2.0" (incidentally, no quotes worked a bit better for the blog directory search, but worse for the blog posts search). An interesting site for searching, and I liked it much better than some of the other blog searching tools.

#12 Del.icio.us

I have halfheartedly looked at del.icio.us before, but never really gave it a chance. However, looking at it after listening to Kathleen Gilroy's podcast was a new experience. It's such a different networking space than something like MySpace. I like that it is all about sharing and learning, and that it is so easy to navigate.

I was thinking about the contrast between traditional library research and using something like del.icio.us. Del.icio.us is such an interactive world, where people create the organizational scheme that is most useful to them, rather than being shackled to a system that was developed with others (ahem, librarians) in mind. And the labyrinth you enter when you start to delve into the tags and links is amazing...you can find things that you never could on your own. It's so different from more traditional research, which tends to be a solitary activity.

What will this mean for libraries? Many of the technologies and interactive spaces online are completely detached from real places; they can be accessed from anywhere that has internet access: a cell phone, a blackberry, an airplane, a car...

Will the library become simply a connection point? Will it become unnecessary to have a mortar-and-bricks library at all?

#11 Make new friends...

Well, since I don't want to be friends with 27 Things on my real MySpace account, I ended up creating a dummy one for these exercises after all. I will delete it when I am through, since I don't want people to think that's really my page...how embarrassing! ;)

I added KCLS as my friend on said dummy page. Just so I could complete the exercise. See my previous post for how I feel about libraries and MySpace. This is not to say that some sort of social networking through the library would be good, just maybe not this particular outlet.

#10 MySpace...not yours

So....I already have a MySpace page. Here 'tis.

#9 MySpace...dun dun DUN!

Few other topics have distressed libraries as much as MySpace. Reading the comments on Librarian in Black's blog regarding the library's involvement on MySpace just confirms this.

I must say that I am a bit disturbed by the KCLS MySpace page. Like, why is the library 19 years old? And whose favorites are those? I mean, I get it, we are trying to use the new social networking technologies to go where our users are, but I think we aren't quite getting it yet. It just seems square for "the library" to have a MySpace page, and I certainly won't be its friend! How embarrassing! How much of a nebbish do you need to be to list the library as a social connection? Sorry if that's harsh, I mean, I'm a librarian, for heaven's sake, and even I don't want to be friends with the library...

I could be totally wrong. I just think KCLS will only have friends such as authors, staff, library school students, and MySpacers looking to get their friend count up.

#8 FEED ME SEYMORE!!!

Feed me all night long...

Okay, so I tried finding craft blogs using Bloglines Search and Feedster with no luck, but got what I wanted immediately with Google Blog Search (I really wanted the other ones to work better than Google, but there you go). Syndic8 got me some good stuff, too, but was interspersed with unrelated hits. Just as an experiment, I just did a regular Google search on cupcake blogs, and got exactly what I wanted right away...go figure.

Check out the cupcake blog and shopping blog I chose. I also subscribed to two library resources that I was already familiar with: Tales from the Liberry and the Librarian's Internet Index.

#7 RSS

I already have a Bloglines account, and actually, had already added the Learning 2.0 site (I am so on top of things!). I added LISNews, which I had previously viewed through my email, and Resource Shelf, which is something I really should read more frequently.

Next I chose my staff blogs, Beagle Rules the World (cuz who can resist cute doggies?) and Ms. Martina's Progress (quirky and fun).

I already had an email subscription to Unshelved, but changed to a feed so my inbox won't get so cluttered. I think that is definitely my favorite part of RSS: not having to fill my inbox with stuff that I just end up deleting anyway.

#6: Do the mashup potato

Yeah...so I tried Retrievr, and thought it was pretty dumb. I tried something simple like a heart shape, and got stuff that didn't seem to match at all...too bad, because it could have been really cool.

Montagr took too long, so I gave up (I am all about instant gratification!)

Now, FlckrChia Pet is cool! Check it out!

Flickr: Mom and Meh

Mom and Meh,
originally uploaded by cupcakegrl.

This is the photo I ended up using...

#5 - Flickr

So, I love Flickr. I use it all the time to look at other people's photos and find fun images. However, I hadn't ever actually signed up with my own account (we usually share photos through Sony Imagestation). The first photo I uploaded was this charming one from the Corbis database...but then I thought this might violate some copyright restrictions, so I trashed it and chose one of my mother and I instead (see Flickr blog post). Not as funny as the elephants eating birthday cake, but oh well...