Having fun with Creating Images

Now that I have caught up with the rest of you guys I decided to have some more fun creating another ALA mini-reads poster. The original photograph was sent to me by my daughter who lives in Brooklyn. She was passing a work-site when she came across this sign that had been placed near the chain link fence by someone who obviously was trying to educate the residents of Brooklyn.
Only in New York!

Thing #14 Why Library 2.0 ?

The Wikipedia entry for Library 2.0 contained a few sentences that really stood out to me. They refer to an argument against the project by someone called Walt Crawford. Mr. Crawford believes that Library 2.0 incorrectly places libraries as the appropriate source for users to gather information. Well, if libraries are not the appropriate sources to gather information what is? As library staff we must attempt to meet the growing demands of our patrons who are ( like everyone else) increasingly using technology in their daily lives.
Thus, I absolutely agree with the blog by David Lee King that Library 2.0 is useful in many respects but the most important one may be that we must be able to understand what our patrons are talking about when they approach us for help in using these net-based information systems. It is time we all learned this new "language".

Technorati Thing #13

Searching for Library 2.0 in blogs returned 761 results for me including some in German and French. I guess I need to find out how to limit results to English only! Most of these results did seem to be Library related in some way.
When I searched under posts I netted 401 tagged results for Lib. 2.0. There seemed to be a large amount of posts (tags) by a blogger named mstephens7 who appears to be a librarian or someone intrigued by libraries and who has too much time on their hands! Many of these posts appeared to have some vague connection to libraries but not 2.0 in particular.
Todays popular blogs and tags appear to revolve around politics with much chat about the new Obama administration and (not surprisingly) technology. In fact the top blog for today was The Huffington Post followed by Gizmodo the Gadget Guide! Just in time for Christmas!

Delicious Thing# 12

I can see that this site could be a very useful tool in research for teachers and college students etc. However, it seems like it would take some time to really get to know how to use this site to its best advantage. Just playing around with it for a while seemed to take me in many different directions. I intend to visit here again with one subject in mind which may actually help with my understanding of this site.

Schools out!

Today I learned that many area schools are already out for the Thanksgiving Holiday. It seemed as if most of the students decided to visit the library today and get stocked up on DVD's to watch over the holidays. We were really busy; I must have checked out about 4 dozen DVD's between 9.30 and 1pm today!

Library Thing #11

Wonderful site that catalogs all your favorite books. I read the Enid Blyton series of books as a young girl and was surprised to see that they still exist!

http://www.librarything.com/addbooks

Link for creating your own mini ALA READS poster

http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/hqops/publishing/graphics/READ_Mini_Posters.cfm

Playing around with online image generator Thing #10

After all the hassle I had with the RSS Feeds it was a pleasure to create this mini-poster for ALA Reads.

RSS Feeds Success! Thing# 9

Check out sidebar for RSS Feed that I added today- headlines from MSNBC.

RSS Feeds create a headache! Thing# 8

Today I have been struggling with adding some RSS feed links to my blog. Still have not figured out how to do this but I have subscribed to many news and political feeds via RSS Feeds on the Google website. I found myself going around in circles on the Bloglines site even though I successfully set up an account there. I intend to work on this problem later today and together with my faithful trainer Sue V. I'm sure we can figure out how to add this information to my blog. I have the feeling that I am missing one simple link!

Fall Leaves and Winter Snow

Today I learned that I should have finished raking the leaves last week! The unexpected snow that we had yesterday really does not go well with leaf raking.
Perhaps the weather will return to fall later in the week and I can finally get all those leaves off my lawn.

Thing #7

As a comparative newcomer to the world of technology, I am astounded by what is out there! It really is a whole new world. The frustrating thing is, it doesn't always work the way it is supposed to!
This week I discovered Flickr and tried to download a photo from the site; it seemed as if I was going around in circles and getting nowhere until I discovered a photo that showed the "blog this" icon above it. This was the key!
Once I had linked my blog to the Flickr site it was a piece of cake!
Looking forward to learning more (and probably having to tear my hair out again when I can't figure out where I have gone wrong).

Trading Card Thing# 6

Trading Card
Originally uploaded by janetthomas74

Today I learned how to create a trading card using Flickr Mashups. Here's the first in my series!

A Rose is just a Rose. Thing# 5

A Rose is just a Rose.
Originally uploaded by min51

Today I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to download an image to my Blog. Hopefully this lovely picture of a rose will soon appear on my Blog page!

I discovered that Flickr is a great site for obtaining a host of wonderful images. I am attempting to download a photo from my own daughter's Flickr page but not having a lot of luck. Looks like I will have to attend another training session for help with this one!

Thanksgiving on my Mind!

Today I learned a tasty new recipe for turkey stuffing that I intend to try this year (courtesy of Rachael Ray). I think I will amend it a little though, not sure about those pumpkin muffins!
I am really starting to enjoy this blogging thing and am attempting to get some of my family and friends to start reading mine!

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/pressed-herbs-and-spices-turkey-breast-pumpkin-zucchini-muffin-stuffin-with-chipotle-gravy-recipe/index.html

Enthusiasm Builds for 23 Things Thing#4

Lots of excitement at work today for those of us involved in 23 Things, especially those who had the experience of creating their first blog!
Habit 7: Teach/Mentor others was definitely a factor here with those staff members who had not yet created a blog being inspired to do so by those of us who had.

What I learned today? How to find a permalink and add it to my tracking log. Although I must fess up here and admit that my son gave me a little help with this one. (I think he might become a useful tool in my learning toolbox!)

Things I learned today (so far!) Thing# 2 and Thing#3

Today I learned: what an RSS Feed is, what exactly a blog is, how to set one up -and- that I have some catching up to do here! All this before 10am this morning!
So far it has been fun. My goal is to post at least one new thing that I have learned each day which may or may not be related to this work project. I often use the phrase "you learn something new every day" so now I really have to prove it!
P.S. How to be a lifelong learner: The easiest thing for me is accepting responsibility for me own learning.
No-one else can do this for me!
The hardest thing for me is going to be learning how to use technology to me own advantage.