Here it is, the last day to finish 20 things and I wait until 8:45 at night to finish up. Granted, I had a tooth emergency today, but really I could have finished this over the weekend.

2o Things has been a good experience for me. I experimented with things I found fun - editing pictures, Library Thing and flickr. I am using Library Thing at home (I became a life member) and flickr is helping me figure out my pictures from Israel.

I am not sure I will ever look Rollyo again, but others have told me that they really like that. And please someone help me understand Technorati - I just haven't figured out how to use it.

I want to thank all the people who worked hard to make this a good experience. Fran, the other Sls, the reference department all helped with this project. Special thanks to the staff who played, finished or at least tried to finish. Life long learners are fun to work with.

Can't wait to see what other ways we can play on the Internets - Readers' Advisory blogging, anyone?

Patty

I am on a real roll here and have just done my third thing in one day. Only one more to do after this.

Podcasts are something I have been using for awhile. I can't always listen to my favorite NPR shows when they come on our local station, so I have listened to Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me and This American Life among others on my computer.

I just finished listening to the podcast that Nancy Pearl (super librarian) does for a Seattle radio station. I couldn't figure out how to download that RSS feed, so I downloaded the RSS feed for the New York Times podcast.

Podcasts seem to have become ubiquitous. If you search book reviews - podcasts on Google, there are lots of choices. I can't even imagine how many hits you get if you just search podcasts.

Okay, now I am up to the 18th thing.

In my usual fashion, I did not pay attention to Carolyn's warning that with so much to explore, we should just start with one.

She was right - I just lost about two hours looking at a variety of sites. I spent much of my time on Etsy. People's defintions of handmade are a bit elastic.

Also, I found some clothing that I think Humbert would have liked seeing Lolita in. I decided not to think too long or too hard about why this might be a popular clothing line.

However, there are lots of beautiful things and I could easily spend a lot of time and money at Etsy.

Hurray - I am finally tackling the 16th thing - wikis. I have been using Wikipedia for some time. There have been things for which is very helpful and other things that I just can't believe that anyone would post on.

Did you know that if you go to Wikipedia, you can find "To Kill a Mockingbird in popular culture"? This will tell you what comics, movies and television shows have referenced Harper Lee's book. How many people need to know that Debra in Everybody loves Raymond wrote her college thesis on this book? Since I don't watch this show, I can't even imagine why this might be a plot element.

So what else are Wikis good for? I would think that some of the collaborative work we do on policies and procedures might be done on a Wiki. I did see that a library did their long range plan on a wiki and I would like to know more about that. I need to get to our 17th thing and figure out why we might use Google docs instead of Wiki. That is next so I will write about that after I do that work.

By the way, I found this to be quite useful:
http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english
I also liked their zombie animation.

Library 2.0

Looking at all those articles that Carolyn suggested, I feel like we are very far behind. Most of them were posted in 2005 or 2006. So I went looking for some other things. I went to Taming the Web; Library Crunch; I googled Library 2.0. Once again I was looking at many things from 2005 and 2006. Is this all old news? Should I retire and give it up? I decided not.

I read on one of the blogs (Library Crunch) some comments on "radical trust". And I was glad to realize that I am not the only one to think that libraries have been doing this for quite sometime. When I was 10 and went to the public library by myself and the library staff let me check out that I was totally responsible for- that was radical trust. How did they know that I would even manage to get those books down the hill to my house, let alone back to the library several weeks later? I hope that this is one part of Library 2.0 that I have under control. I hope I never stop trusting our patrons. I also hope that I never stop trusting our staff either. That will definitely be the time for me to retire. We can't run a library system without the assistance of everyone and I mean everyone.

The other thing I read was that Library 2.0 involves constant change and evaluation. I think I may have a bit of experience here too. I hope that the changes we have implemented at Pamunkey during my tenure have been mostly good. The evaluation process may need some work, but change has been an integral part of doing good business at Pamunkey.

I am almost caught up. That is what happens when you do three tasks in one afternoon. If you go to the very bottom of my blog, you will see my Rollyo list.

Eventually, I will stop hoping that hand weaving and computers have any links to each other. I know that there are looms that are operated by computers, but there are very few links on the web to actual weaving and weavers. So my first Rollyo was not very helpful.

However I made a Rollyo on RA. I am hoping I find that more useful.

Merry Christmas to one and all!

My creation
Originally uploaded by weavinglibrarian

Three tries must be the charm. This is what I created with FD toys.

I played with Cool Text and the Generator Blog. As you can see to the left, I have managed to post a date from the Generator Blog. I made an image on the Cool Text generator, but could not make it do what I wanted it to do.

I wanted to post it here. I just couldn't make it work. So instead I tried another generator and I did no better with that one. I guess I will come back to this after I talk to some other staff.

At least I got the countdown to work.

So now, I am working on the 9th thing which makes me about four weeks behind on Pamunkey's 20 things. The 9th thing was feeds - again. I am not sure what I was supposed to gain here. I tried all four tools that were suggested and the first time round I used the term public libraries.

To be honest, I did not find much that interested me. I think it was the terms I used. Maybe public libraries are just not of great interest except to librarians. ;>)

So I went back and tried books and reading. Much, much better. I found a number of blogs to read; some best of 2007 lists and a couple of news articles. Obviously I have learned two things - try several terms and when people talk about libraries they may not mean a library like PRL.

I am so glad we have gotten to Library Thing. I never wanted to be a cataloger, but I love Library Thing. I have been a lifetime member since May 2007. I do not have all of my books in my library yet, but what is in there might surprise you.

I buy adult fiction for Pamunkey and have a great time doing it. Also if you looked at my reading log, you would see that I read mostly fiction. So wouldn't it make sense that my library at Library Thing would tend to be fiction?

I have put random books on the left hand side of this page. I think this service from Library Thing is fun. Plus it proves that I have added at least five books so I have completed my 8th thing.

However, when you look over there - what do you see? I have 271 books in my library and 260 of them have the tag non-fiction. This is a good reflection of my personal library. SO, what books did you add to Library Thing?

I wish I had thought of this video. I am now going to think about which books I would use if I did a similar thing.




I had played around on YouTube before - mostly when someone sent me a link. Today, I entered lots of different terms into the search box. This is the best video I found. I am not about to show you the worst.

Once again, this was fun!

So now I am supposed to tell you all which of the 71/2 habits of life long learners is the hardest and which is the easiest for me.

The easy one for me is creating a toolbox especially if it includes information. I love to gather facts and tidbits about a subject. (This is one of the reasons I am a librarian.)

Over the years, as I have taught myself various weaving techniques, I have gathered lots of books, magazines, websites, etc. that have been useful as I have learned double warps, overshot, and other things about weaving. Of course, besides lots of how-to information, I have gathered yarn (a closet full), two looms and lots of other tools. It would be better not to discuss all the stuff that I have accumulated with my family! They think my tool box is much too big.

The hardest life long learner skill for me is having confidence in myself as a learner. I am often second guessing my abilities and even though I have been weaving since 1978, I would hestiate and look up more information before I would offer to teach you to weave. Not that I would refuse, I just would want to brush up on those skills one more time before sitting down with a student.

Thanks for the opportunity to think this out. And thanks also to Pamunkey for the opportunity to play. This is fun.