Lakeland Libraries map

This links to the cool Google map created by Benjamin Boss at Grand Rapids Public Library. It shows the locations of all libraries in the Lakeland Library Cooperative, serving West Michigan. When many library administrators recently complained about not having a readily accessible map, this library assistant just up and created one!

toonlet

Here's my library cartoon from toonlet.com. And you can make your own, too!

2008 Outstanding International Books list

Here it is! - the list I and my colleagues worked so hard on last year and for which I suffered a train wreck to get to the final meeting...

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6527345.html

The Onion on reading

Area Eccentric Reads Entire Book

GREENWOOD,IN—"Instead of spending hours on YouTube every night, Mr. Meyer, unlike most healthy males, looks to books for gratification," said one psychologist.

#23 - 23 Things Summary

Yes! I did it! And in time to get a MP3 player, too! Yahoooo!
I am so happy to have gone throught these exercises and especially to have been given permission to play around and explore as part of my job. I will use so much of what I have been able to find - like blogging, rss and podcast feeds, and online productivity. I have already been able to assist library customers who need help understanding or discovering some of these tools. And I'm glad to have the conversation started about web 2.0 among the KDL family. I will definitely participate if something like this is offered again.

#22 Podcasts

Using Podcast Alley, I signed up for 3 podcast feeds in Bloglines:
Speaking of Faith,
Story Corps, and
Libraries Across Cultures
This last one looked very interesting, but it appears to have only one podcast (from July, 2006) about visiting a library in Toyota, Japan.

#21 YouTube

My son, Joel, on keyboard:




And Obama's Iowa victory speech:

Interesting article

Here's an article by Brett McCracken at Relevant Magazine, titled "Are Critics Relevant?" http://www.relevantmagazine.com/pc_article.php?id=7549 He's talking about movie critics, but his analysis could be applied to book critics as well, that is to those of us who make book recommendations and award prizes for literature. He sees the role of professional critics in this "Recommendation Age" as finding the good that might otherwise be ignored in our consumer culture, helping people sort through the "massive cacophony of chaff to find the wheat" as advisors rather than elitist gatekeepers. It makes sense to me, and gives me a sense of belonging as a librarian in this world of recommendation by tagging.

#20 "The Machine is Us/ing Us"

I liked the speedy history of webpage mark-up languages in this video.
4 1/2 minutes is a pretty fast history of anything, but the video gave a lot to think about.
Are we really so transformed just because so much of our lives are online? I would agree that digital text is radically different from linear text, but I don't know if that really means everything about us is transformed.
And, of course, the tagging-as-authority-source is a whole area of concern for professionals - an area that will continue to grow and into which we can only hope to have some input.

#19 Digital Music

I'm exploring Pandora (http://www.pandora.com/) and loving it. It may even be of help in creating a cd of honey and honey bee songs to use in a summer honey bee program. As I get a listing of possibilities, I may use a file sharing site to explore the songs more fully, but I'm not yet at that point. I just want to find the songs that I really want to use; then I plan to purchase them before cutting to a cd.
The Pandora streaming radio has lots of possibilities also, but it seems to limit stations to one type of music. I'm wondering if I will be able to create a station that has a variety of music on it. I will definitely do more experimenting (when I'm not on desk).

#18 Social Networking

Ah, well, the impact of social networks on the distribution of information has become so all-pervasive that talking about it is merely describing the normal. News, music, friends' and family updates - all come by way of online social networks. For the privacy downside, see this Wired magazine article:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-01/st_qa

Here is a part of my Facebook account:


My 2 daughters are also Facebook people, but my 2 sons are strictly MySpace users.

#17 Wikis

I have always loved Wikipedia, despite the bad rap it has among some educators, because I am all for collaborative learning rather than top-down authority.
I enjoyed (and wasted much time) looking at the ALA 2006 wiki photos; I copied quite a few of them.
And I know that a collaborative committee wiki will be very helpful for the work of the USBBY 2009 Outstanding International Books Committee, of which I am a member. We can only get together once and have much to decide upon before we actually meet.
Wikis might also work for some KDL committees, though it is often easier for us to meet face-to-face.

#16 Technorati and Blog Tags

Well, the informational viseo about Technorati features was from July, 2006, so it was not exactly relevant. Evidently the design has changed once again.
To search by way of the different modes (keyword, URL, tag, or blog directory), one must click on "advanced" next to the seach box in order to be taken to a separate page where such searches can be done. When I did that and searched for "library 2.0", keyword searching gave me 1346 results, tag searching gave 1198 results, and blog directory searching gave 670 results. The keyword and tag results were similar and included introductory statements about the blogs; many of the blogs had authority ratings. In contrast the blog directory results had little, if any, information about the listed blogs and most seemed to be by individuals who were doing a project for their own use.
Technorati seems like a useful blog search engine, and I am glad to have made its acquaintance.

#15 Del.icio.us

This is a fantastic tool! I am sure that I will use it from now on for organizing and accessing my personal bookmarks from my home and various work computers. I can also see it being useful for readers' advisory and research as I post relevant sites to this wonderful social aggregate.

#14 Web 2.0 best-of exploration

I explored www.picnik.com, an online photo editor. The free version was useful, but one has to pay for more advanced options. Also, in the trial that I did Picnik was not able to load my pictures from my PicasaWeb account. It would, nevertheless, be a useful tool for anyone wishing to experiment with some photo editing techniques (assuming that Picnik would be able to load their pictures).
I also used www.yourminis.com to post a couple of fun widgets to my Facebook account. Widgets are definitely going to be more and more pervasive, including on library web pages of course.

#13 - Online Poductivity

I experimented with Zoho Writer and Google Docs. I've started using Google Docs regularly - it's super convenient to access it through my Google account and is also a great way to coordinate work done at home with work at work.
I really like Google Calendar also. Here a miniature version of the Summer Reading Club portion (June / July only):

#12 - Google Co-up

I really liked these Google Co-up specialized searches -
One is for world information (look up "libraries" for library information from around the world):

The other is for "green" issues; it can be browsed as well as searched:
http://www.greenmaven.com/

I found that the Google customized search engine was more suited to my style than the Rollyo because it seemed more suited for exploration rather than for inventing something from scratch. Though if I do find the need sometime to limit searches to only a few sites, I will now know how to do it with Rollyo.

Toronto subway reader as posted on Sam Javabrouch's photoblog, daily dose of imagery

#11 LibraryThing

I added 5 books to Library Thing. See them here:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/helenkaylife
Here's another similar application:
http://www.shelfari.com/

#10

Library 2.0 - a method of interacting virtually with our customers and each other - a way to share and create information instantaneously and democratically - a way to network.

#9

I used Bloglines search tool to find feeds and to hone my feed list. I also switched some of my email subscriptions to Bloglines in order to stem the flood of daily emails. And I added a couple of staff blogs - one to keep up on my supervisor's progress and the other because wife2abadge has completed 23 Things, I like what she did, and I think her steps will continue to be useful as I make my way through the Things.

#8 Bloglines

I have FINALLY succeeded in posting my Bloglines subscriptions on this blog (see the left column)!

IFLA 2007 overview - Durban, South Africa

I wasn't there; this was posted on American Libraries Direct.

#7

Here's a mosaic of Toronto pictures from Flickr. I used the Mosaic Maker at FD Flickr Toys http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php

#6 librarian trading card

librarian trading card,
originally uploaded by helenkaylife.

A librarian trading card!

I created it at http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/deck.php

Facebook

I have started a Facebook page called Helen Kay. It's got some family pictures and some old pictures, too. And links to all 9 of my friends and a couple of library-related groups.
In this commune picture from 1970 I'm sitting in the front row next to my friend, Sue Ellen, who is on the far right.

#5 spencer library pics - summer 2007

Pictures of some programs at the Spencer Township Branch of Kent District Library (uploaded from Flickr for KDL 2.0):

#3 & 4 the blog begins

I've started this as a work assignment, hence the numbers.
The first assignment is to record the easiest and hardest tasks from a list of 7 1/2 lifelong learning habits.
To get this somewhat painful exercise over with asap, let me just say that the easiest is to accept responsibility for my own learning (who else really cares anyway?!); the hardest must be to use technology to my advantage (otherwise I would have a blog or two or three already set up, right?).
There will be more assignment-type things in this blog (all preceeded by numbers), but mainly pictures and thoughts as time goes relentlessly forward.