22- Downloading Audio

I already do this...a lot.

I already wrote about loving my IPod Touch and audio books are my other love- together they are so useful!

Today I downloaded Cather's "My Antonia" beacause I love her lyrical language and my Dad's family is from Nebraska.

I have always felt this way about Nebraska. From the book- "There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made."

Being Creative with # 21

I cheated. I already knew about this blog and podcast. I heard about it at OLA summer reading training from Monty Harper himself. I just used Podcastalley and this assignmnet to listen to something I should to listen to anyway!

This is Monty Harper's podcast, OK children's singer/ songwriter, for librarians who plan programming, primarily with children. This year he is focusing on the CSLP 2009 summer reading theme, "Be Creative @ Your Library." They talk about about music, theater, visual art, dance, and more. Interviews, songs, and other resources you find here will help you help kids get creative this summer!

http://theprogramroom.blogspot.com/

Useful and fun!

Tulsa Kids magazine should do a podcast and the library should be a featured regular!

20- YouTube Wants to Eat Your Brains

Youtube is always fun and often dumb. I watch teens use their entire hour on the internet watching videos on youtube. I chose this video because it's genius and a library is behind it's creation and publication. This is the winner of a contest at a public library in Indiana.

What a way to use their bbbbbbbrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaiiiiiiinnnnnssssssssss!

We could do it too!

#19 2.0 Restuarant Reviews

http://www.urbanspoon.com/

It knows where you are and it may know if your sleeping or if you have been good! It definitely knows if you are hungry.

Urban Spoon is a restaurant review site that allows you to look at Tulsa restaurants by price, location and cuisine. I may be cheap, it's certainly possible but some of the "moderately" priced restaurants are not moderate in my opinion. It is fun to see what people think of some of my family's favorite place to eat like Cafe Ole', the White River Fish Market and Desi Wok.

This site does not have a particular library usage- but Tulsa does not have a Zagat's guide so, if the question came up, I would recc'd this site.

18- Google Docs Rocks

I am a Google Docs user.  It is so handy!  One online community that I belong to uses it exhaustively.  It is lovely for shared documents and editing responsibilities.

 

I could see co-authors writing a book this way too.

 

I have also used it to get library stuff accessible at home if I am too lazy to use my thumb drive!

Google Docs

# 18 Wiki, Wiki- Quickly

Wikis are goldmines of information you just have to be careful what your mining. I posted to the TCCL PBWiki about three of my 50,000 favorite books.

Asking a Librarian to name her favorite book is like asking a mother to pick her favorite child! It is me, right? Mom?

I can name a few and that is still hard!

DeBartolo, Tiffanie. "God-Shaped Hole."

Beatrice "Trixie" Jordan, a lonely, 27-year-old jewelry designer living in Los Angeles, responds to a personal ad from a man "seeking a friend for the end of the world." The man is Jacob Grace, a 30-year-old writer. They fall madly in love and believe they are soul mates. Abandoned by their fathers, they spend much of their time helping each other come to terms with their feelings. After enduring some emotionally desperate times, they hope better days are ahead and plan to leave L.A. and spend the rest of their lives together. However, when Beatrice was 12, a fortune-teller told her that her true love would die young. This is an edgy story of love in which a happy ending isn't guaranteed



Notaro, Laurie. "The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club: True Tales from a Magnificent and Clumsy Life."
Notaro, used to write a weekly humor column for the Arizona Republic, has collected some of those columns into her first book. Notaro is "everywoman" not quite pretty enough, not the popular one, not good at holding a job or a man. She tells her stories about public bathrooms and high school reunions with a wicked edge that keeps us laughing at her and, of course, at ourselves. On the dreaded reunion: " `It's time for your high school reunion!' the letter shrieked, and then went on to inform me that 546 of the people I hated most in the world were coming together at some lah-de-dah resort for the entire weekend to talk about the good old days." Ahhh...the good old days. This is a great, funny read that women will love. Do not read this in a public place- people will think you are nuts.



Fforde, Jasper. "The Eyre Affair"

Imagine this. Great Britain in 1985 is close to being a police state. The Crimean War has dragged on for more than 130 years and Wales is self-governing. The only recognizable thing about this England is her citizens' enduring love of literature. And the Third Most Wanted criminal, Acheron Hades, is stealing characters from England's cherished literary heritage and holding them for ransom. Bibliophiles will be enchanted, but not surprised, to learn that stealing a character from a book only changes that one book, but Hades has escalated his thievery. He has begun attacking the original manuscripts, thus changing all copies in print and enraging the reading public. That's why Special Operations Network has a Literary Division, and it is why one of its operatives, Thursday Next, is on the case.

Thursday is utterly delightful. She is vulnerable, smart, and, above all, literate. She has been trying to trace Hades ever since he stole Mr. Quaverley from the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and killed him. You will only remember Mr. Quaverley if you read Martin Chuzzlewit prior to 1985. But now Hades has set his sights on one of the plums of literature, Jane Eyre, and he must be stopped. How Thursday achieves this and manages to preserve one of the great books of the Western canon makes for delightfully hilarious reading. You do not have to be an English major to be pulled into this story. You'll be rooting for Thursday, Jane, Mr. Rochester--and a familiar ending.

16 Or What TCCL Children's staff could do with a storytime wiki

Wikis are essentially open web-pages, where anyone registered with the wiki can publish to it, amend it, and change it. Much as blogs, they are not of the same reliability as traditional resources, as the frequent discussions of Wikipedia in the library world well note; but this of course does not eliminate their value, it merely changes librarianship, complicates collection development and information literacy instruction.

If you decided to do a storytime on lions, why should a children's staffer head to Google? If TCCL Children's Librarians and Associates had a wiki, a hub of their combined knowledge, that wiki would be a 1 stop shop for storytime planning!

http://librarianresources-readytogo.wikispaces.com/Children%27s+Storytime

or

http://nfplchildrens.blogspot.com/

15 or Thinking 2.0

Although I grew up as a heavy library user and still really enjoy browsing in libraries, I will be the first to admit that my time in them would be much more limited nowadays if I didn’t work in one. My first response to any information need or want is to go online. Google is my first stop, just like it is for many others. I don’t have the time to use a traditional library to its fullest. I know I’m not alone. I believe in libraries; I think libraries are important, but realistically they are not as convenient as I would wish.

I like browsing, but rarely have time for it. Much has been written about this, but I think libraries have a lot to learn from the NetFlix model. NetFlix would not have been so successful if the founders hadn’t figured out that people are just too darn busy to go to the video store. Google is successful because it brings information (and we can certainly argue the authority of that information) directly to the user. Any aspect of a library that forces the user to come to them, rather than the other way ‘round, is problematic. Not every library allows their patrons to renew or order books online. That would be a start. For their next trick, I would just adore it if my books came to my front door after I ordered them online. (Yes, I know that’s a whole other ballgame, but I can wish.) Generally speaking, libraries have to truly put the customer first. Make things as convenient as possible—I’m there.

Libraries have so much! We are a one-stop-shop for so many things. We can do more than what a retail bookstore does, can provide more reliable information than Google, create quality children’s programming, teach job skills to immigrants, bring my grandmother up to speed on using Microsoft Word…the list goes on and on and on, and absolutely NO other entity can do all of this. The problem is marketing this message and also in learning to make connections in the ways recent generations communicate. Libraries need to find better ways to tell people they do all this stuff. And to show that what they do is still relevant.

I think it’s time for libraries to realize that they need some truly professional-level PR services (i.e: large marketing agency) to market themselves collectively. Libraries keep selling themselves individually. That has some merit of course, except that I believe the public is slowly losing the context for that kind of advertising. First, we need to show the public why they need libraries. Then worry about promoting individual programs at individual libraries. Something I hear often is that libraries need a “Got Milk?” type of campaign. First, sell the idea of milk. Then start advertising individual dairies.

Fearless 14- Technorati

Is the Technorati anything like the Illuminati?

Technorati is amazing and seriously detailed. I claimed my blog. The favorites were suprising- lots of celebrity gossip and web hacks. It's actually a nice news aggregate too.

news

Delicious 13

With all these numbers, I feel like Evanovich!

I love Delicious and was a user when it was hard to spell and punctuate del.ici.ous or something like that. It's fabulous! I have multiple accounts one for work, personal use and one for home renovation sites. It's so useful. The tagging makes it searchable and you can set your own search terms.

# 12- Rollyo is Coolio!

Select Search Engine...Storytime SourcesSearch The Web

Powered by Rollyo

This is a great tool. I already put it to work for me at work. I used all my storytime links and sources to create a search roll. It is pretty incredible!

Thing 11 and Library Thing

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/mail.comkristenkong

I truly aspire to catalog my home book collection someday. I know I have duplicates but I have never had enough shelving space to display it all!

It's a great site. I also like http://www.shelfari.com/. It's prettier and I am easily distracted by appearances.

# 10, Ten Things I like about Image Generators

1. Oh the possibilities!

2. The internet truly has a quirky sense of humor.

3. You an be very creative!

4. The escapism possibilities (see Clive Owen on my marquee) ...

5. movie marquee generator http://www.addletters.com/theater-sign-generator.htm

6. warning sign generator http://www.addletters.com/warning-sign-generator.htm

7. church sign generator http://www.churchsigngenerator.com/

8. license plate generator http://license.plates.txt2pic.com/

9. protest sign generator http://captions.illmeyer.com/

10. card catalog generator http://www.blyberg.net/card-generator/

Dressed to Nines- Thing # 9

I thing Bloglines search interface is really easy to use. Technorati is true to its name and was more technically oriented. Syndic8 is hard to use IMO. I love that blogs can be as frivolous as I am- like comic strips, celebrity gossip and recipes. When you are visiting your regular web haunts, keep your eyes peeled for that bright orange button. My newest discovery (and obsession) is http://thepioneerwoman.com/. She is a rural Oklahoma domestic diva and she cooks too http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/.

RSsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss or # 8 with a bullet

The uses of this technology are limitless. RSS feeds and blog readers are a big timesaver for busy people- it's like scanning the front page of a newspaper or reading the ticker while watching Headline News. I use it to keep up with old friends, shopping deals, travel excursions and great ideas for storytime. I primarily use Google Reader because Google is slowly taking over my life!

Using a blog reader regularly also freed up my Delicious account for shopping!

Thing # 7 Or An Ode to my IPod Touch

IPods are amazing as is- practically limitless amount of music (provided you have the dough) in a box the size of a deck of cards. Santa brought me an IPod Touch for Christmas and my mind was blown! Truthfully, the Touch does more than I need! Certainly, it stores and plays music but it also stores pictures and videos, plus accesses your email and the internet, plus has a personal calendar!

You can download applications- read games, services and activities to your IPod touch via Itunes. Most are free but there are some really cool games to buy. My favorite feature is the touch screen. No menus to cruise through or stylus to lose, you just select what you want with your finger. It's picture driven and much easier to use than a Nano or traditional IPod- at least to me. The touch screen adds a new domension to these games- imagine a handheld whack-a-mole game! You can also download books and use your Touch as an e-reader.

My preciossssssss! I loves it.