Bad blogger!

Well, it's now official - I am a terrible blogger! How do people find the time?

I did think the photo above was worth blogging about. Stuart & I saw the Burton Cummings concert at the River Rock Casino. I brought along my pictures from when I interviewed Burton in 1978 at UBC. I showed them to the manager and he added our name to the "meet and greet" list for after the concert. Burton is holding one of my old pictures. I will have to get them scanned and online. Thirty-one years ago we were both quite beautiful!

Burton put on a great concert. It was a lot of fun to hear (and sing along with) all his old hits.

Gabriola Island

Stuart & I spend a few days camping last week on Gabriola Island. We were very impressed. It's a lovely island with nice beaches and incredible sandstone formations. The photo above (not taken by us, unfortunately) is of "The Gabriola Galleries."
Ian stayed at home, and in his typical fashion, invited his friends to a big birthday party, at which a wonderful time was had by all! But, much to our relief, the house is still standing.

Grad 2009!

Here is a quick slideshow of the event of the year - Ian's grad!

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Finished the playground

Perhaps this is going to be a bit of cheating, but I took a look at podcasts and audiobooks, and already know some I'm going to download - when I get my MP3 player!!!(Hint, hint, Jacquie!)
I already download songs from iTunes to my iPod, so I figure the procedure can't be any more complicated than that.
Some podcasts I'm looking forward to downloading are Russell Peters and Flight of the Conchords. If you don't know about Flight of the Conchords, check out the DVD's the library has of their HBO television series. So funny!!!! You'll never think of New Zealand the same way again.

Yay!!! I'm finished!!!!

A Wookie, not a wiki

I am now determined to finish the playground! I looked back at what I had to do, and really I have now had some experience with all of these things.
Technorati - well, if I want to search blogs, this is the tool I would use. But I can't say it is something I use on a regular basis.
Social Networking - I guess I live in my own little world. If I want to get in touch with my friends, I phone or email them. I have asked lots of people, especially young ones, if they are on Facebook or whatever and a lot of them say it's just too time consuming. One person said, on Facebook, it's not the quality of friends you have but the quantity. I agree with this! However, having said that, I have watched Elizabeth pull up pictures of her distant relatives' wedding in Nassau from Facebook and was most impressed.
Wikis - who hasn't used Wikipedia? It is my first go-to source for an overview of just about anything. A wonderful use of the concept.
YouTube - I have wasted many an hour watching YouTube videos.

Ok, covered off 4 topics! Yeah! Now I just have podcasting and audiobooks to summarize.

BCLA Conference Report

I attended three sessions at the BCLA Conference on Friday, Apr 17.

Living Library

Two speakers, Hazel Postmas from Douglas College and Rhian Piprell from Coquitlam Public Library, spoke about their implementation of this program. The Living Library uses people (who are called "books") who have chosen to be a public representative of a certain group, and users can "check them out" to have a conversation with them and ask questions. The library finds people in their community who are willing to be "books", and typically is the coordinator of an event/events where several "books" gather to be available to be "checked out" in half-hour increments. Coquitlam and Douglas held such an event at their local Chapters. Their mayor came and was a very popular "book". The program's aim is to promote tolerance and understanding in the community. Go to: www.living-library.org for more information. From the website, I found that Calgary Public Library recently launched this program and theirs is the most ambititous for a single local organizer in the nine year history of the Living Library.

Seeking Synchronicity – Viewpoints of VRS Users, Librarians, and Non-Users on Live Chat Reference
This session was an overview of a survey undertaken by Marie Radford, Associate professor at Rutgers in New Jersey. Although survey results can be rather dry, Radford was an entertaining speaker and her talk highlighted some interesting viewpoints of users (and non-users) of live chat reference services (eg Askaway). For example, users of live chat reference, although they liked the convenience and hours of live chat, also said they were intimidated by "face-to-face" interaction with a librarian. However, non-users of live chat said they preferred the personal contact of face-to-face and would even go so far as to seek out a specific librarian! Another rather astonishing result was that the majority of both users and non-users of chat reference had never used (and were unaware of) phone reference and/or email reference. Radford recommended that libraries market the range of reference options to users, and when promoting live chat, emphasize convenience, safety (ie reference chat is not a chat room) and personal service.
For more information on the survey, go to: http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/synchronicity/reports/20080626-final.pdf

The Google Toolkit
Presenters: Kay Cahill and Michele Pye, both from VPL. This session took a look at some Google Tools, of which there are quite a number. One example was Google Trends, which allows the user to see, in a graph form, how often a specific term (input by the user) has been searched on Google. From these results, users can see when topics were in the news, or results can be used for market research. Cahill and Pye also went over such Google tools as: dictionary, calculator, currency conversion, stock ticker, weather, flight data, parcel tracker and Google 411 (business phone directory) All of the features they presented can be found here I very much enjoyed attending the conference and thank NVDPL for the financial support.

not about the playground

Well, after my last burst of activity in the Playground, I have found my attention wandering. I attended the BCLA Conference yesterday and went to three good sessions. However, instead of writing about them, I want to tell everyone to check out the website, "Mary Evans Picture Library" (just search that on Google). It is full of the most charming pictures of whatever you can think of. I searched for "flapper" and the image above was one of the results.

Not yet finished

Despite having completed the mandatory exercises, to be officially finished, I have to do them all. I have quite a list of tasks yet to do:

#11 Technorati
#12 Social networking
#14 wikis
#21 Youtube
#22 podcasts
#23 audiobooks

From reading other participants' blogs, I have picked up a lot of great info. Kudos to Els for making and posting to YouTube a very informative video (love the music!). Along with Bernie Madoff, the Drunk Bank is responsible for the collapse of the U.S. economy!!

Office 2007 & Shared Calendars

These are the two mandatory things on the Playground that were left, and I've now finished them! Does that make me officially finished?! (I'd still like to do Podcasts and Audiobooks, #22 & 23). I got a quick peek at Technorati (#11) and have wasted much time over the years watching YouTube (21). (See the "Otters holding hands" viral video above)

Ok, Office 2007: I went through the tutorials for Word 2007, and found them useful. I had been thrown into the pool, so to speak, one day when I sat down at the Info. desk and opened the Word program to find my old familiar friend had disappeared and in its place was a snazzy newcomer. I stumbled around and found the basic commands and was able to produce a document, but only just. The tuorials helped me become more familiar with the "new" Word - I particularly liked the tutorial in which you highlight a command on "old" Word and it shows you where that command is on "new" Word.

"Shared Calendars" My shared calendar consists of a paper copy hanging on my kitchen wall at home, where my husband, my son and I write our appointments, etc. It seems to work for us! But I can see that in a business environment with lots of meetings going on, the ability to look at others' schedule and book meetings via email would be invaluable.

Am I now officially finished the Playground???!!!

#19 Library subscription databases

I think most patrons don't know these databases even exist, and they are woefully underused. The ones I have had occasion to use are:

Auto Repair Centre
Canadian Newstand
Ebscohost (mainly MasterFile Premier)
Novelist
Patron Books in Print
Searchasaurus
World Book

I was rather disappointed when NVDPL cancelled their subscription to NextReads. I found it worked well for finding good books to read, and had recommended it to a number of patrons. But VPL still subscribes to it, so you can get it from them (you need a VPL card)

I have tried to use QPLegalEze, but must confess most legal reference questions defeat me. From now on, when I have a tough reference question, I'm going to use Askaway! (Is that cheating?) I tried Askaway during my last shift, and it was brilliant. I was given a Web address which contained - in a clear and understandable format - just the information I needed.

In my last post, I raved about Flickr. Another great thing from the Playground is LibraryThing. I use it on a regular basis - it's great for quickly and easily keeping track of all the titles I read.

Playground #17-20

These are the remaining items I have left in the Playground to look at. You'd think I'd be able to get through them before March 31st, wouldn't you? Well, stay tuned to see if I do it!

Askaway (#20): I've always been curious about this and would love to receive the training. The whole virtual, live chat, whatever you want to call it, reference model has (of course) good points and bad. From the asker's point of view, the "live but anonymous" aspect of it has the potential be great - but from talking to librarians who have worked on Askaway, it seems a good percentage of the questions are trivial and/or silly. There's a session at the upcoming BC Library Ass'n Conference:

"Seeking Synchronicity – Viewpoints of VRS Users, Librarians, and Non-Users on Live Chat Reference
Sustainability is a critical issue for BC's virtual reference service in this time of extremely tight budgets, rapidly changing technology, and continually evolving service models. "Seeking Synchronicity," is an international study that aims to innovatively address current issues concerning the evaluation, sustainability, and ultimately, relevance of chat reference for libraries."

So, maybe Askaway will be no more? Who can say?!

By the way, I now have a paid account on Flickr. There is a limited amount of storage a free account will provide and I found Flickr such a useful and fun way of storing, sharing and manipulating photos I decided to subscribe. I think Flickr is by far and away the best thing I have learned from the Playground. The photo at the top is from my Flickr "photostream." It's "Ka Lae" ("the point" in Hawaiian), also known as "South Point" and is the southernmost point on the Island of Hawaii and therefore the southernmost point in the United States.

Moving forward

After a quick trip to Las Vegas, where among other things, I saw The Blue Man Group Show (fantastic!), I must move on with the Playground. I have tackled 14 & 15 (wikis) and then realized I'd better get on with the mandatory things, so I read "Email best practices." I was interested in the "All About Phishing" section. It's amazing how much skill the perpetrators of these things will put into making them look legitimate. They must be fooling someone!

still plugging away

Ok, I skipped Technorati and Social Networking for now - hope to go back to them later. I know a little about Social Networking but nothing at all about Technorati, so that will be interesting.
A few years ago, I started hearing about "Libraries 2.0", so I figured I'd better get onside and find out what that was all about. I see it in my rather simplistic way as this: people are using the Web and technology more and more. Just think, we spend time doing all these things that even 10 years ago were not a big part of our everyday lives: emailing, IM'ing, blogging, bidding, buying, browsing, printing, gaming, chatting, flaming, flirting, posting, networking, tagging, webcasting, podcasting, downloading, uploading, surfing and so much more! And if libraries want to remain relevant, they have to facilitate people doing all this stuff. The Web and technology change so quickly, it's difficult to keep current and especially to decide what to incorporate into library services and what's just going to be a passing trend. And I do have to say, I'm glad NVDPL's circ. statistics are healthy. I still just can't see books becoming obsolete!
By the way, the picture above is of a "steampunk" style laptop. "Steampunk" is a style that's sort of Victorian-era Gothic technology.

running out of time

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
Here is a very hastily put together slideshow called "Wild Flowers/Plants of Hawaii", taken on our Xmas vacation.

Yikes! I had better stop fooling around and get a move on with the Playground - time is running out. I looked at "delicous" (can't be bothered with all those periods), which is an interesting concept. I can't say I'm going to immediately start using it, but it's a good thing to know about.

The Vancouver Aquarium library's catalogue is now on the Web and available to anyone to search. Apparently they used some public domain software called "koha" (you techie types might be interested in that). I found it interesting because it's the first time I've seen a "tag cloud" in a library catalogue. I'm guessing the new NVDPL will have "tag clouds" too. So many things to keep up with!

A New Year

Here is a picture from our Hawaii trip - a green sea turtle on a black sand beach. I loved the Island of Hawaii and would go back there any time. It was amazing to see the live volcano and lava flow!
I have been feeling guilty about making no progress on the Playground. I have, however, been doing my usual exploration of quirky web sites. Once I discovered is:
www.ecofont.eu It allows you to download an ecofriendly font invented by a Dutch company - there are little holes in the letters so that they use less ink! A very neat idea: