A synopsis of 13 things assignment.

Here is a synopsis of the 13 things I got to explore about library 2.0 for work this summer, well, starting with # 5. 


5: RSS
RSS... repeating the same stuff...
I like the way it's set up to read, it's like your own compiled newspaper from only the authors you want, on a web page... except everything I want to read (blogs, news, etc.) I already read somewhere else. I login to google reader and it says I have so many unread posts... except I already read them on igoogle or have them set to come to my gmail. Hence the 'repeating the same stuff' definition of RSS. I doubt I'll use it. There's still something appealing about skimming the Morning Sun in paper form.

I did find a fun feed entitled 'The Inspired Library School Student'. Maybe it will give me something to read when I'm bored listening to my 'Intro to the profession' lectures...

http://lwb-online.org/?feed=rss2
http://churchlibrarians.ning.com/group/evangelicalchurchlibraryassociation/forum/topic/list?feed=yes&xn_auth=no
http://themorningsun.com/?rss=opinion

6: Photo Sharing
I started a flickr account 5 years ago, and used it for about a year... Only because a friend (who takes a lot better pictures than me!) used it.

I really dislike yahoo... and flicker is affiliated with yahoo. Facebook works well enough for the twice a year I post someone else's pictures... You just cant download pictures conveniently with facebook.

If I get a camera and have pictures to post I'll probably use picasa (yay google affilation!) because my mom does.

7: Podcasts
I've had a couple 'i-thingys' (an iPod touch, and now I've 'downsized' to a 2nd generation teeny tiny shuffle) - and that works extremely well for me using itunes to listen to whatever podcasts I want. There's only really 2 I've listened to - one by a favorite musician, Andrew Peterson called the Rabbit Room and one trilogy of talks that involved another favorite musician, Sara Groves from iTunes U from some talks she gave at a university about social justice and the arts. I also found some 'how to speak Hebrew' podcasts that I never quite got into...

I guess, podcasts and all this stuff is great, but it's finding the content you want that's really the important thing (why we all have jobs, eh?) Seems like all this (RSS, blogs, podcasts...) is just another route (or should I say delivery method) to find and recieve the stuff you want to listen to and learn about. Well, maybe it's more finding the content you want in a way you can digest it. (LP vs regular, audio vs print, video vs audio, web vs. print, etc etc..)

8: Tagging
The coolest (and most library-relevant) tagging experience I"ve had is from librarything. If you create an account and sign in, you can play a 'game' where you tag books based on the cover art - so, you'd tag 'Twilight' something like 'black, apple, hands'.

You can search for books by user tags at librarything too. Go here: http://www.librarything.com/search and use the 3rd box down on the left (from the top it lets you search by works, authors, tags!).
I didn't have tons of success searching for books by tags that describe their covers (my roommate thinks that because I work at the library I can find the title and author of a book if she tells me what the cover art looks like...) Well, we're getting closer... but I didn't get 'Twilight' when I searched tag combinations like 'apple, hands' or even 'apple, vampire'. I DID however come up with 'Dogsong' when I searched for tags 'sled, blue'. Who knew?
Technorati seems pointless in a world of facebook and librarything once click-no code tagging. Who will use it? If they made it more 'clickey' and less 'codey', maybe...

9: Digital Downloads
I searched and downloaded an e-audio book from home. I waited to do this at home so I could put the book on my ipod - which was a little dissapointing. The first book I came across that I wanted to read didn't support ipods, just the windows media files with the digital rights management... But I found something else to download and listen to. I don't know if I'll ever get into listening to to books though, I like the printed word... easier to slow down, speed up, skim, re-read a cool part. :)

the process for downloading from net-library seemed a little tricky. It is true we have to setup a user-name and password to be able to download books with them? I thought I already had one from looking at e-books a while ago... but of course I couldn't remember it. So I made another one, that I probably won't remember when I want to use netlibrary again 6 months from now or so... which was after I'd signed in with my library card number to the CRDL site and accessed netlibrary from there.
And, I downloaded an mp3... with no DRM, will that ever dissappear from my computer? Or will it just stay there till I delete it? Clearly downloading anything without DRM is potentially a hairy mess for anything involving copyright law... I wonder what my LIS classes are going to have to say about this.. :)10: Chat
10: Chat & IM
I use google (talk) to 'chat'. (and I call it google chat.) I use facebook less frequently, but certain people I see on facebook that I don't with google. I've been trying to get a windows live id up and running with the messenger software on the computer here at Blanchard... It's up and running (finally) after having to mess with downloading some newer version of messenger software (I dislike being required to download anything when google and facebook don't make me.) Then I had to add contacts, because even though I signed in and linked it to my facebook, it doesn't automatically pull in contacts, that I can figure. Since I'm (probably) not going to use windows live messenger (I own a mac! come on!) I stopped there.

11: bookmarking & Delicious
I... like it. I doubt I will use it. If I was still in school without a computer of my own, using computer labs and libraries, probably more likely. Like Erica, everything that's important I just.. remember. And, I have iGoogle... which I can put any links I use a lot in. They even have a widget for your links. Of course, the widget doesn't allow for the 'social networking' aspect of links. But if I want to 'social network' a website I just link to it on facebook anyway. If facebook joined google they would probably take over the world. At least, until the chinese got mad at them.

12: Mapping.  (or, I love google maps.)
Mostly. I added a 'google maps' widget to my iGoogle page. I think the only thing I don't like about google maps is that whenever I try to use the scrolly mouse button to scroll down or up in the map... it zooms in or out. Oops. You'd think I'd learn by now.
My favorite is using google satellite and looking at the route I kayak on the chip from winn rd to vandecar rd.
I've also created google maps of routes I run, mostly so it will caluclate the miles for me if I run through mill pond park or something goofy.

I found about 5 libraries close to Yakima, Washington where a friend of mine just moved. If I go visit her while she's in school I'll probably hang out in at least one of them while I wait for her to get out of work.

Thing 13: Games!
So, I've played bejeweled, solitaire, tetris etc online, but never something like Runescape, so thought I should try it out for this assignment.

The music is sweet, I'll give you that! I could definately get sucked into this... and start wasting too much time.

The game did take a while to load. Drawback.