Slammin' the boards?

Gee, I don't know about "slammin the boards". Sounds a bit too try hard to me. A touch of the "let's sound like cool and groovy librarians". Is it just me or do librarians trying to sound cool always sound lame? I think I'd rather watch paint dry.

Could be OK for training I suppose, or if you haven't got a life. Could be good if set up locally, or cooperatively. Ask a Librarian type thing. I can't see my Council wanting me to spend work time on Yahoo answers, as rivetting as that may be. Providing Bruce McAvaney with my most romantic getaway destination may not impress them as a great use of my professional time.

A great use of my time however is reading "Annoyed Librarian" Check out the article on "Library stress reduction" and others. A delightful style and sense of humour. Libraries....it's not a tough gig. We're not solving world peace and world poverty here. Relax and enjoy it.

By the way, did you like the cartoon? Check out "Unshelved - the library comic strip" for more library humour.

Widget wonderland

Found a widget to enable recent comments to be added at the bottom of each post. Now that the widget is installed, if you click on the title of any post, the comments on that post will appear underneath it. Neat.

I did a google search on "show comments" and eventually settled on this one. There may be more out there but this one seems to work fine.

The site looks pretty good, too. It's called "Tips for new bloggers". It's got a huuuuuge amount of customizable stuff for your blog. Got the code for the three column layout and other stuff from there. Check it out. Also, have a look at Blogger templates. Lots of stuff there, too.

It's not you, it's your LibraryThing!

Checked out the Kingston Library site (Thanks Bambino for the tip). Integrated LibraryThing into the catalogue. Neat. Tag clouds, lists of similar works from LibraryThing, etc. can't wait to get it into our catalogue.

Even created my own LibraryThing account. I'm getting a bit attached to it, adding a few items each day. It's strange looking at the things that I read grouped on a computer screen. On the bookshelves at home they are part of the furniture and I tend to take them for granted. Now that I'm adding them to my LibraryThing account, I'm going over them and starting to reread some.

I'm also asking myself, who is this person reading this stuff? Is that really me? Waxing a bit metaphysical here....... quick, back to reality. Well....sort of.....

I was reading an article in the Herald on the weekend about reading and relationships ( I know, I know... but it was a dull footy weekend, I'd had a couple of beers and I'd been watching grass grow for a while). It was called " It's not you, it's your books!" Literary taste can be seen as a guide to compatibility, but don't read too much into it, writes Rachel Donadio. So, I'm thinking LibraryThing could be a bit of a two edged sword for those out there looking for their one true love.

Fortunately the conclusion of the writer was "For most people, love conquers literary taste. " Just as well! I don't think my one true love reads anything that I read and vice versa. We just read different stuff and tell each other about . If we both had LibraryThings, I think the only common books on them would be the ones that we read to the kids when they were young. We've been married for 34 years and it works for us.

Mmmmm! del.icio.us.

I love del.icio.us.

All the bookmarks that I want to use everywhere are now in one place categorized in the way that I think. Simple and easy to use.

So far, I'm just using it for my strategic marketing planning links, but I'll eventually add other stuff to.

Mmmmmm.......wouldn't it be nice to have all our Homework help and FAQs on delicious, too.

YouTube me

I must admit, I do love YouTube. My youngest son (18 yo) and I often trawl throught the comedy videos, especially Bill Bailey who is a very talented and funny man.

Check out his theory that all classical music is derived from a few themes in cockney music.



I also found some interesting one minute marketing videos from Harris County Public Library in the US.



And check out this great clip from Pete Denahy called "Sort of dunno nothing". Me and my boys love it...although my wife is sick of us playing it and laughing so much, not to mention tapping out the riff on every solid surface we can find..

The wonderful world of

I'm in two minds about wikis. Having experimented with wordpress, it's clear that it isn't WYSIWYG and it is a little bit like the early days of the net with html, i.e. you still have to learn a bit about formatting. We were hoping to create a procedure manual, (like the Antioch University one) and spread the load of creation amongst many people rather than having one person do the lot, but wordpress was a little hard to use and the help files weren't that helpful. I'll download mediawiki, have a play with it, and see if that's better, more user friendly for the work context.

PB Wiki is pretty user friendly. I've just setup one fairly quickly and simply for my TAFE Consumer Behaviour students so they can access documents, links etc relevant to the course. However, it only allows 10mb of space. Wetpaint has a bit too much advertising. Wikispaces has 100mb of space for your wiki and docs. Zoho has the best interface and toolbars but the help page has tons of unanswered questions dating back months so that doesn't auger well for the future.

St Joseph County Public Library Subject Guides is a neat idea.

If you want to collaborate (with the public or colleagues or both), then a wiki looks like the way to go. If you want to do it cheaply, then a wiki is also the way to go. Website management software is not cheap. If you want to do it and bypass your Council IT people, then a wikispace could also be the way to go.

Like the ask a librarian instant messaging service using the various free messaging services, though. What a simple and direct solution.

Wookiepedia!!! Boom. Boom. Love it. Check out whiskipedia, too.

Feeding my RSS habit

Tried bloglines. OK site. I've been using IE7 for my feeds but having them available anywhere thru a web based account is better than only having them available at one desktop or having to set them up on every desktop or laptop that I use. I think I'll stick with Google reader, though. I've got the email account now and the blog. I don't really want to use a different service for each function. Gotta keep it simple. So Google will be my one stop shop for a while till something better comes along.