Saturday, February 23, 2008

Kid Notes

We have had a rather wild week here, for various reasons. I'm blaming it on the eclipse of the moon.

Boy-child fractured his wrist in some way on Thursday and will be getting a cast on Monday. He was horsing around with girl-child's boyfriend in theater class. Yes, it's his right hand and he's right handed. It's apparently in a bad spot and an orthopedic specialist is going to have to take care of it. I'll add a picture next week.

On a brighter note, girl-child received her letter of acceptance to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Don't know how we'll pay for it, but we are all beaming. Even if she ends up going elsewhere, I can always say that MY CHILD WAS ACCEPTED AT ONE OF THE BEST ART SCHOOLS IN THE COUNTRY.

So there!

Thing 3

Well, Thing 3 is RSS feeds, which is something I'm simply not interested in. Sorry. I set up an account some time ago, forgot my password, set up another, got some feeds going ... I'd rather stick with the information I'm trying to maintain now rather than set up 100 feeds and look through it all. The temptation to look at multiple news sources, multiple blogs, etc. is great, and I am weak.

My approach is a bit different, I guess, as I have my favorite news sources tagged in del.icio.us and I check them periodically. I have my favorite knit blogs tagged, and my favorite library related blogs, so I can check them as I wish. It's more focused and it works for me. If one of my favorite bloggers has written a long post and I have a short lunch, I can save it for later; it's not marked "read" and filed away. I even have two different del.icio.us pages, because one is for fun and the other more work related - that way I can steer away from excessive distraction. Sometimes.

If you think you can convince me otherwise, comment away!

Monday, February 18, 2008

Thing Two

Well, here I am, behind on the second thing of a 23 thing project. And imho, that's pretty much the essence of why people don't get more involved with Web 2.0; there aren't enough hours in the day. Yes, I know all about time management, and I watched Steven Abram's chat on Library 2.0, but as an example, things came up this weekend (we had the Second Annual Knit-Out at the Mall of America) and thus, I was unable to post as "scheduled" on Saturday.

I think that there are a lot of great applications for Web 2.0 in a library. I think that there are practical applications for users and librarians alike. We keep in touch through various venues – IMing, sharing favorites, opinions and comments, letting people participate in libraries no matter where they are. The interactive part keeps people “plugged in” to their library. Really, when you think about the dark ages, you wonder how anyone managed to wade through all that cumbersome paper, and (ugh!) those sluggish telephone calls, to find the information they were looking for or the expert they wanted to consult. I’m not sure I’d want to be the one monitoring the chatter on a public library FaceBook page for teen users, but I sincerely hope that the value it adds to services makes it worth it for the poor souls who do.

And that brings me back to why I’m doing 23 Things on a Stick – If I can familiarize myself with the tools, and think about how to use them, perhaps I can find a tool that will be useful to me and I can add it to my box.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Goals

My goal for the blog is to post at least once a week – maybe Saturday mornings, since I usually have Saturday mornings to myself.

My career goal is to have a professional job by the end of 2008. A more modest career goal is to finish the 23 Things on a Stick by April 16.

My extended family goal is to have my mother’s affairs streamlined so that I don’t have to do much more than pay her bills once a month and visit her once a week. She has just gone into assisted living and I have a lot to figure out.

My immediate family goal is to have my daughter in college in the fall without having to mortgage my house or my (modest) 401K.

Friday, February 8, 2008

Thing One, or Why I'm Blogging

Well, I'm an aspiring librarian, and there's a lot out there to know if you're a librarian. I might try it all out on my own at some point, but then again I might not. Right now there's a fun way to get involved with Web2.0 - it's called 23 Things on a Stick (see bloglist). Since I already belong to Ravelry (soxanne), have two del.icio.us pages (yes, one is soxanne) and photos on Flickr, I figure I may as well learn the rest of the stuff. It starts with the blog and ends with ... ? I'm not sure, I haven't checked the entire list.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

A Blog is Born

I've thought about doing this for a while ... now I'm on ...