It could only happen in England.

Shakespearean public announcements in Newcastle and Gateshead

Creative writers ... Where art thou?

'Here stops the Gateshead train at platform nine,
Thou will find first class coaches down the line'

Next week (from Tuesday 20 October) sees the start of The Royal Shakespeare Company's annual residency in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. As well as performances of Shakespeare's As You Like It, Julius Caesar and The Winter's Tale in the Theatre Royal, The Comedy of Errors tour of primary schools and two new plays influenced by the Bard at Northern Stage, people in Newcastle and Gateshead may get a very different slice of Shakespeare when they are least expecting it.

The RSC and Wunderbar Festival are bringing Shakespeare's language bang up to date by creating a series of everyday public announcements influenced by Shakespeare's plays, themes, characters and verse.

'Fancy free', 'mum's the word', and 'all that glitters is not gold'. The English language is full of phrases influenced by Shakespeare. As far as the RSC and Wunderbar are aware, his language has never before been turned into everyday public announcements.

The announcements will be recorded by RSC actors including current members of the ensemble Peter Peverley and Paul Hamilton (both from the North East) as well as Chuk Iwuji, part of the Olivier Award winning Histories company from 2006-8. The announcements will be broadcast in and around Newcastle and Gateshead in Metro Stations, The Tyneside Cinema, The Theatre Royal and Northern Stage.

Triple if.comedy Award nominee Russell Kane is already busy creating some of the announcements and Wunderbar and The RSC are looking for help from the public.

To write or not to write, that is the question.
Ignite your mind, scribe it down and send us your suggestion!

For those more Shakespeare minded colleagues you can read more on the Wundebar website.

Choosing a book.

Elly recommended me to share the link below with you. It's a British website to help readers find a book to their taste without prior knowledge of a title. It serves a similar function to 'Romanadvies' on the Bibliotheek.nl website but of course only refers the reader to libraries in the U.K. It's fun to do and could be useful when readers come with vague questions about English language books.
Which Book?

'Mijn Bibliotheek'

No doubt my colleagues at the information desk have already seen this video but it was new to me so I thought I'd share it with everyone, or at least those colleagues who still read their netvibes page. This video shows an example of a concept for an eleven year old boy's library web page.




There is also a second video showing the possible web page of a 59 year old woman. If you wish to view it, here is a link to the VOB website where it is shown

23. 23 Dingen is voor mij ...

Following the 23 Things has been for me a very enriching experience. I've enjoyed reading all the information about Library 2.0, something which I confess I would never have done on my own.

I think that the course has had, on the whole, a positive effect on our organisation. It has brought colleagues closer together and I have really enjoyed learning more about the people with whom I work. It has been a pleasure to receive so much support and encouragement from my coach and from other colleagues.

Something which surprised me and which has been an unexpected benefit for me from this course is the self confidence it has given me to express my own opinions (much helped by the fact that I was allowed to write my blog in English).

In answer to the question, 'What can be done to improve the 23 Things?' perhaps it would encourage people to read more if more of the core information was translated into Dutch.

My favourite things on the course were Library Thing and my Netvibes page with RSS feeds and podcasts which I would now not be without! I'm sure that many of my colleagues will continue to use the social networking aspects of the course privately and I hope that it will be possible in the future for us to use our new found skills in the workplace.

22. Library 2.0

I have been reading the background information which is mainly written in English so I've no excuse not to read it. The general message seems to be that libraries must be open to all the technological changes going on in the information world and they must allow the library users to determine how information is to be relayed to them, not necessarily by physically coming to the library but rather via the web. I thought what Rick Anderson had to say in Nextspace, the OCLC newsletter most effectively summed up all the reservations and difficulties which I have with Library 2.0. He calls them "Icebergs." The idea that the library does not have a "just in case" collection of books is scary for me but I can see the logic, particularly with the informative and educational non-fiction work, in providing the users with the most up to date material.





I think a lot of librarians find it difficult to relinquish their position as sole provider of information and as teacher. Library 2.0 seems to lobby for more user friendly methods of information retrieval so that information flows more freely."from library to user, user to library, library to library and user to user."
I also found what I think it was David Lee King had to say about library blogs interesting too, that in order for the library to meet changing customer needs and to stay culturally relevant it has to keep it's digital space up to date.
Finally, what I found reassuring was the message, "Throw out the culture of Perfect" which I understood to mean that if we allow users more say in how information is accessed and it becomes a collaborative exercise between library staff and user then the user can not hold the library entirely responsible for providing information.Both library and user can learn from each other's mistakes and build on each other's successes
I was invited by a colleague to join Bibliotheek 2.0 Ning which I have done but I must explore it more thoroughly.
Whilst 'trawling' through the net I found some interesting information about virtual books (I hope this link works). This is , I think, the Library 3.0 which Dr Wendy Schultz describes in her article.
To sum up this post I would like to say that a lot of Library 2.0 still daunts me and some still verges on Science Fiction but I'm amazed how much I've learned over the past few weeks and it's all making much more sense to me as a way forward for libraries.

21. Aquabrowsing.

Is it my imagination or was there much more material to read this time? I keep clicking on links which lead me to other articles where there are countless more links and I become lost in an underwater labyrinth. I 'dived' in yesterday afternoon (Sunday) and it is already Monday afternoon, I've been frequently coming up for air! I'm really, really impressed with the Aquabrowser facility though even if I haven't quite got to grips with it yet.I'm also impressed with the online catalogue of OBA, Amsterdam Public Library.I've made my own 'My Discoveries' account(pleased to see instructions in English, when are we going to include that in our catalogue?)and added one children's book to my list(a bit confused as I thought this would not be made public but received the message that it would be) with tags, rating but no review as yet.I tried to access the '23 Dingen' account on Worldcat but was told that the password was invalid?? Perhaps I'll make my own account there too.
I found the article taken from bibliotheekblad- 2008/24 very interesting:'Als mensen willen vinden wat ze zoeken moeten ze ook weten wat ze willen zoeken. Mensen zijn daarvoor sterk afhankelijk van aanbevelingen. Aanbevelingen die op heel veel verschillende manieren georganiseerd kunnen worden. Dat kan de bibliothecaris verzorgen in de bibliotheek of op de website van de bibliotheek maar dat kan ook volautomatisch worden gegenereerd op basis van je aankoop- of leengedrag zoals bijvoorbeeld bij Amazon.com en bij onze eigen Muziekweb gebeurt. Maar je kunt je ook laten inspireren door wat gewone mensen van een boek, cd of dvd vinden.'
This raised for me the question as to how responsible libraries are for influencing the choice of reading matter for their public? I'm thinking aloud here and can answer my own question. A public library should provide readers for the most part with the sort of books/information/entertainment they want but 'popularity' should not be the only criterium for adding an item to the collection.If we are only influenced by those computer literate readers who are confident to contribute tags, ratings and reviews, will we ignore the needs of and therefore alienate others?
I'm certainly not finished with Thing 23 yet but for the moment will leave you with a glimpse of the future, also discovered in my 'aquatic exploration.'
Web 3.0!!!
“The Semantic Web is a set of technologies which are designed to enable a particular vision for the future of the Web – a future in which all knowledge exists on the Web in a format that software applications can understand and reason about. By making knowledge more accessible to software, software will essentially become able to understand knowledge, think about knowledge, and create new knowledge. In other words, software will be able to be more intelligent – not as intelligent as humans perhaps, but more intelligent than say, your word processor is today.” Nova Spivack
Spivack also says, in language I understand, that the Semantic web ,“helps individuals and communities mine and share information from Internet sites, blogs, and social media services, such as YouTube.” So, we're going to be replaced by robots after all!!

Book Festival Hay-on-Wye, Wales

I keep intending to begin reading 'ding 21' but am constantly distracted by reading my Netvibes page. Today I discovered a new (for me) podcast from Guardian Books about the Literary festival which takes place every year in Hay on Wye, Wales.It begins this weekend and goes on until 31st May. I've been listening to interviews with Sarah Waters (Fingersmith, Tipping the Vevet), my old tutor and ex poet laureate, Andrew Motion, the u.k children's laureate, Michael Rosen, A.S Byatt about her latest novel and the special guest this year, Desmond Tutu.
I was interested to read about a magazine called 'The Scribblers' which has been set up by the young people of Hay encouraging them to interview writers, write book reviews and recommend books to each other but also to write creatively themselves.The magazine is then sent to all the local schools. Perhaps we could encourage something like this in our Children's library in collaboration with the schools.
Also interesting for me is that this year my friend,Jo will be at the festival, promoting her short stories which have just been published in an anthology called "Chimera."

Library Thing.

I've been looking again at Library Thing and saw our library in the list of venues on the local events page. Are we going to post our up coming talks by writers in the list of up coming local events as Bibliotheek Den Haag have done?

20.I've been Scrobbling!

'Music makes the world go round' by Laura

I've been playing around on Last.fm via the 23 dingen account because I didn't succeed in logging in myself. I tried all sorts of combinations of user names and passwords but couldn't access it. I wonder what I'm doing wrong?

This is a really nice way to broaden one's knowledge of music of all genres. Again I think some aspects of the site are more useful than others. For example, It's interesting to see on 'Events' where music by a particular composer is to be performed in the near future although I haven't found something in the Netherlands yet. For some jet setting colleagues that shouldn't form a hindrance!
Less useful for me are the comments by other listeners but I was very curious to investigate the profile of one Honarius because his photo' looked suspiciously like President Poetin of Russia. However, he says he comes from the States so I guess he's using an alias.

As I write, I'm listening to "Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis" by Ralph Vaughn Williams which I hope I've 'scrobbled', that is added to the 23 dingen list. I'm still not sure how you create a 'radio.' Music by Delius has now started to play but I'm going to stop now and next time I'm going to experiment with pop!

19. Social Networking

I seem to be losing my momentum when it comes to reading up on the 23 things. However, after some initial resistance, I'm beginning to see the usefulness of such sites as Facebook and Hyves. I've also been a visitor to Health forums on the internet before and found them very useful although it's important not to believe everything you read.
I have not made my own account on Facebook but, using the 23 Dingen account, I've reacted to the comments of a couple of colleagues.
I think it is inevitable that we, the library personnel will use the internet for social networking to communicate with colleagues and customers alike but it will take time for all of us to become comfortable with the medium.
I found the reference to the above book on Facebook and found it interesting to read around the subject of job stereotypes.

18. Catalogue your Bookcase with Library Thing

Library quilt by Beedle Um Bum.

Now Library Thing is more 'my thing' but incredibly time consuming! Like my coach I dived in at the deep end and started to use it before reading the literature. I've added 7 of my English language novels automatically downloading them from The British Library. It's nice to see the book covers but they don't correspond to the books I have so I then added a novel manually with date of publication and ISBN number but saw that the book cover displayed still differed from that of my own book. Not that it matters.

It could take some time to catalogue our entire book collection though. My husband and I are real bibliophiles and we have literally hundreds of books in nearly every room in the house. As most of my colleagues know, I studied English literature at University and therefore have a large collection of Classic English novels. My degree also covered Anglo Saxon Literature, Medieval to Restoration drama (including Shakespeare), Poetry (my Romantics lecturer, Andrew Motion was until recently Britain's poet laureate and the poet Philip Larkin was Head Librarian at Hull University Library where I studied)and finally Commonwealth literature including writers like Katherine Mansfield and Patrick White.
Although my husband is a mathematician he also enjoys reading about History, Philosophy and Politics too and has many more books than I do including many classic Dutch novels and books of poetry. He would have had more had he not generously decided to sell part of his collection of Maths books to fund the purchase of curtains for our house when our son was born.

Excuse this fit of nostalgia. I'm not sure I plan to catalogue our entire collection, It would take too long but it will be interesting to read reviews of other readers. Having said that, I am my usual cautious self when it comes to exposing myself to a flood of useless information. For example when searching for reader comments about the works of Austen and Bronte I read that they make one reader 'hurl'( amerikaans voor overgeven!) and another reader quipped that her husband only read Jane Eyre because he wanted to know how Rochester got his wife up into the attic!!

Reader reviews and the ability to recommend books to like minded readers would be a good facility for the library to offer to it's readers and 'reader circles.'

Oh, I forgot to give a link to my "library" and here I have a problem. I've called it 'carolinemaks' but would rather be more anonymous. When I tried to edit it I read the message that this was temporarily not possible. How temporary I wonder? I've also seen that some book covers are duplicated but I've only downloaded them once, honest. How do I delete the duplicates?
Finally, when I searched for both Larkin and Motion in Hull University Library I receieved a message not to panic but that no references could be found which seems strange, don't you think? I'll try again later but I'm going to be in the U.K for a week so may not be updating my blog for a while.

17. Microblogging with Twitter

I have read about Twitter and have come to the conclusion that it's really not for me. It's more suited to extrovert people I think and for people who don't mind sharing their thoughts and feelings with lots of other people. I can't help thinking that the people who came up with the idea did so as some elaborate joke,
(the Oxford English dictionary definition of to twitter is:"to talk rapidly in a nervous or trivial way.") Then, surprisingly enough, it caught on!

I've seen that Twitter is being used by politicians and celebrities. Much as I like Stephen Fry, I can't help thinking, after reading some of his recent tweets, that he is on one big ego trip, trying to see how many followers he can get.
Twitter can be compared to the mobile phone, a facility which can be useful, time saving, sometimes life saving! but which is so often misused and is therefore time wasting.Here I'd like to quote something very pertinent which I read but am now unable to locate in order to cite the name of the author: "In fact, a recent study at King's College, London found that emailing and text messaging (two interruption-driven tasks) may lower your IQ by ten points over the course of a day. Assuming that you never turn Twitter off, its IQ-destroying potential is absolutely terrifying. "
I'm not sure that it would work as a fruitful means of communication between library staff members,although I'm sure it would be popular on a personal level. However, Nana has suggested that it would be a very useful tool for the Art library to communicate with colleagues in the same field and if used on the basis of sharing knowledge with other professionals or bringing them up to date with recent developments then I am in favour of Twitter.
Therefore, just like the mobile phone, Twitter can be a useful tool and, if adopted as a means of communication within an organization will probably be ultimately indispensable, if it is used responsibly.

16. Discovering what You Tube has to offer.

My son introduced me to You Tube and up until recently he could be seen on You tube performing a piece by Dvorak on the piano. He was accompanying a friend on the violin and the friend's father had filmed them. Unfortunately, the film has now been removed.
I've heard that some people don't bother to watch tv anymore, they only watch You Tube.
I tend to use it for one big nostalgia trip. I look up tv series that I watched in my youth and I'm always amazed that most of the things I search for are there.
I suppose the library could use this medium for advertising purposes but filming events held in the library would require us to ask the permission of those filmed to broadcast them on You Tube.

Here is a video of my favourite comedy duo, French and Saunders in a situation which might still be recognizable to some.
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Easter Eggs.

I discovered something new this morning, which my technology savvy colleagues probably already know, my son did, but which I didn't. Apparently, a lot of office software but also computer games and dvd's have something hidden called an Easter egg. The software programmers hide something extra which can only be accessed by pressing certain keys in a particular order.
I thought it was appropriate to mention this as it's Easter Sunday. Here is a link for those interested in reading more about the subject.

15. Podcasts.

As an avid listener to BBC radio 4, I'm really pleased with the opportunity to podcast. I used to listen to programmes via the computer until we bought a digibox for the tv.
My new netvibes page is a bonus because I can now subscribe to certain programmes and listen to them on my computer at a time that suits me. I listened to an interesting programme from BBC radio 4 choice this morning about 'Britishness' which I'd put on my netvibes page last week.
I'm still reading all the info'.
I was interested to see, 'Amelia's awesome podcast,' on Lee LeFever's video. When did she find time to do that?

A killer blog?

"2 B or not 2B, that is the ?"
Specially for Meinblog.

14. Instant Messaging.

I have been reading about all aspects of Instant Messaging and I've attempted to chat with my coach but we never seem to be on line at the same time.
I decided to be adventurous and put a chat badge via Google Talk back onto my blog. I copied the html code as instructed but wasn't sure where to place it on my blog. I then thought better of the idea. Do I really want to chat to people on my blog? I prefer to simplify matters and confine the chatting to my gmail page.
My son really has to laugh at my awkwardness with the computer terminology! I'm still sometimes baffled by all the nick names and abbreviations. I found the Danish text on the Randers Public Library site easier to understand (only kidding.)
Seeing the ease at which my colleagues are "IMing" with each other I can see it will be useful for communication relating to admin', as long as it is secure.
I haven't had any experience with Al@din myself yet but I think it is well used by the librarians on the information desk. Promise to put a question to Al@din soon.
Whether or not Instant Messaging could be used by our staff to answer reader's questions is another matter. Here I have to endorse what is said by the author of the article:"Instant Messaging: it's not just for kids anymore."
"I believe that the success of chat based reference at least partially depends on the level of comfort that the librarian at the keyboard has with conventions of instant messaging and the informal and terse slang that comes with the territory."

TFN! (Ta ta for now)

13. Google Documents by a professional procrastinator.

I have approached Task 13 in my usual fashion. I read the material, watch the video(s), but put off trying it out myself. I'll just read what my colleagues have written, read my netvibes page, check my mail... Hours later I turn off the computer.
The next time, I read the material again. Shall I have a go?
No, just check if someone's written something new...turn off my computer.
Today is Sunday. There'll soon be two brand new exercises waiting to be read not to mention task 14.
Luckily, in the meantime my trusty coach has shown me her google document and another colleague has invited me to collaborate on a slide show.
I found the making a slide quite straightforward and I'm now going to attempt to make a document and share it...after I've made a sandwich!

12.Playing in the 23dingen sand pit.

I've added a comment to the wiki, 'Favoriete auteur,' under the name Hero. Thanks to Wallyg for the photo' on Flickr.

11. Discover Wiki's and how libraries use them.

Diagram by Yes!AndSpace on Flickr.

After a week away from the 23 things (my sister in England has an ancient Apple computer but has no desire to use it) I'm disappointed in myself that I can't seem to catch up again.
I've been reading all the given information about wiki's but have avoided reading what my colleagues have said in the hope of contributing something original.
My conclusions are that for wiki's to work for the library users there needs to be a community of common interest and potential contributors need to possess the skill to or be taught how to contribute. I have no doubt, when looking at the above diagram, that wiki's could improve communication, on a given topic, between members of the library staff.
I think wiki's could be useful in the Children's library as has already been demonstrated in Deventer with the Borgloschool project and could also be used in the Historical Information Centre.
Perhaps a wiki could be used for the campaign against illiteracy(Lees en Schrijf) with an emphasis on simple language and pictures.
Having looked at several examples of library wiki's in the U.S. and the Netherlands, I decided to search the internet for some British examples, starting with my home town of York. It would appear that there are many library professionals keeping blogs and using wiki's for training purposes but so far little is being done to encourage library user participation.
I watched an interesting and amusing (if a little long) slide show by Dave Pattern, Library systems manager of the University of Huddersfield. It's okay to play.
Finally, I looked at the '23 Dingen del.icio.us' page at the tag 'wiki' and I discovered, for all those of you who are already worrying about what to do with yourself after the 23 tasks have been completed, that there is a tag 'Wiki na 23 Dingen'!

What's in a name?

I was curious to know how 'Delicious' got it's name. Some of my colleagues probably already know but for those who don't, I read the following explanation from the site founder, Joshua Schacter in Wikipedia: "I'd registered the domain when .us opened the registry, and a quick test showed me the six letter suffixes that let me generate the most words. In early discussions, a friend referred to finding good links as 'eating cherries' and the metaphor stuck, I guess."
<sup>So the 'US"at the end stands for United States.

I'm reading a lot but not getting much further with using the site yet.

I'm editing this post having watched Rob's video and I've just added a bookmark for BBC learning English to the 23Dingen delicious site. My question is, if lots of other people use the same tags and expand my list of bookmarks, won't I eventually be confronted with too much information again and lose sight of my original findings?</sup>

10. Delicious

I've always found the Dutch word for delicious "a bit of a mouthful," if you'll excuse the pun!

I've been reading about the site,' Delicious,'
about tagging and I have looked at the
Delicious site for the '23 Dingen'.
I'm afraid I've had to leave it at that
for today.

8.Adapting Online Photo's.

I planned to spend an hour this afternoon looking at the different image generators. I started playing with badges on Web 2.0 badges and I logged into Picnik using the 23Dingen password. However, in the end I opted for the simplest exercise again and visited Fotoaanpassen.nl. In the theme of next week's Book week, I chose to play with a couple of photo's of sparrows and decorated them with an "original?" text!! Looking for the photo's was time consuming, there are 125,654 photo's of sparrows on Flickr, including quite a few of Nieuw-Zeeland fan's friend Johnny Depp in his famous role. Customising the photo's was fun though. I then saved them onto a paint document before publishing them on my blog. The little fella above is "House sparrow" by Marco K. and the "3,000 sparrows," below are by philliefan99.

9.Mijn visie op Web 2.0/ How I see Web 2.0.

Because this exercise will cost me some time, I've chosen to do it before exercise 8. I can use my Sunday afternoon to read and compose. Exercise 8. will follow!
Having read about my colleagues' disenchantment with reading items written in English, I'm reluctant to write a lot about my vision of Web 2.0 but I'm afraid it would take me far too much time to compose something in Dutch.

How and where can web logs be used?

I do think that web logs can be (and are increasingly being) used by libraries, both internally, by the library professionals and externally, as a means of relaying information to the library users and receiving feed back from them.

Internally, we can use the web log to improve communication between colleagues, particularly as many of the staff work on a part time basis. This is not only relevant for those in management, who can use it to exchange information with fellow professionals but also for myself and the other administrative staff within the library.
For example, the log book which we use at the issue desk could be digitalised and become an "uitleen weblog," to which we could all add current information as we go along.We could have a section on "Tips en Trucs met de klant,"(as long as only we can read it!) which we usually discuss at meetings. Any 'storingen' or 'aanpassingen' in BICAT could be added too. It would need to have a manager though.
Another aspect of internal use could be of a more personal nature, paying attention to birthdays or brainstorming ideas for our 'Dagje uit.'

Externally,we can provide our users with the most up to date information. The staff on the Information desk will benefit from keeping a blog with current RSS feeds, links to websites and wiki's, not to mention ebooks and ejournals.
The individual subject librarians will be able to use a web log for marketing our library events and resources. They can use the Photo' editors for making announcements and recording events, as has just been shown by Loesje's slide presentation of last year's 'Kinderboekenweekfeest.'
We will need to keep up to date with all aspects of copyright and privacy though.

Finally, I think that the Children's library is perhaps the area in which the web log can be used most effectively. I've previously been sceptical about the 'Google generation,' believing that computers are interfering with children's ability to develop core skills such as reading and writing but I have to accept that children respond well to computers. They see them as,'cool' and as Penny Garrod writes in her article,"Web logs: Do they belong in libraries?"
'Web logging in a controlled environment can provide young people with a safe, shared web space in which to develop writing skills and share experiences.' This is how they are being used in schools and we could use a web log for children to write book reviews and to recommend books to each other. Children could have creative blogs where they compose poems together(as Michael Rosen has encouraged in the U.K)
Penny Garrod concludes her article,
'Web logs can, and should be , fun- which is perhaps why they appeal to children and are being used by children's libraries.'
The photo' is from Flickr, 'Kids using the computer by San Jose library.'

Experimenting again.

Atlast I've found a picture which is not too small to copy to my blog. I followed Rob's advice to search under 'creative commons' and used the right hand mouse button to see what the picture would look like.This picture was taken by Fabian B and he asks people to copy it.
Should we "Beware of the book?"
Rather,"Beware of the computer!"

6. Exploring Flickr. Exercise option 'a'.

I have been reading some of the background information about Flickr and the enthusiastic comments from librarians about how useful a tool it can be for advertising and recording events in the library, communicating with other libraries and providing the opportunity for customers to use Flickr themselves.
I chose not to open my own account because I am one of the few people who does not yet own a digital camera. Having searched in Flickr under the term 'Books,' I found this lovely photo', taken by someone called Bluemarla.She calls it 'Rainbow books.'She's organised her own library by placing books of the same colour together. I didn't ask permission to publish it on my blog but at the end of the URL were the letters 'gif'. I seem to remember reading somewhere that this meant you are allowed to copy the image.
At first I had to think about the old joke where a man comes into the library and asks for,'that new book, you know the one with the red cover.' Colour coding like this wouldn't work on a large scale.It is working for the' 4you' collection, I know. What is really good is the possibility with Flickr to add comments to your photo's and Bluemarla has illuminated some of the books which are particularly interesting.

I got clicky!

Why doesn't anything work the way it's supposed to do? Having lost the tracking code at a crucial moment when initially trying to install statistics on my log I ended up with an account with Get Clicky but no access to it from my weblog. I contacted them via gmail and they were kind enough to send me the tracking code again but in installing them onto my weblog I seem to have ended up with six orange icons instead of one. I really did get clicky didn't I?!!!

5.Finding RSS Feeds.

Having successfully opened a Netvibes account I've been fustrated to find the last couple of days that I have to repeatedly sign in to access it. Karin gave me a good tip today to place it in my favourites list.
I've also been struggling with step 5.Every day the pattern is the same. I sit down behind my computer and start to build up all the components I need to find the RSS feeds. First, I log on to gmail, then I log on to my blog, then I access the 23 things for all the instructions and then I open my netvibes. The bar is full, I'm hungry for information. I start to click on all Rob's links and then it happens again. The computer seizes up! I have to shut the computer down then start it up all over again or go hungry for another day.Today I did manage to look at Bloglines and searched in the Google Blogsearch under the term,'Google Generatie.'"Studenten die alles kunnen opzoeken op het internet maar niet meer over voldoende basisvaardigheden beschikken." Apparently this is a myth, according to a report by the British Library and University College London. There is an interesting article about this in the NRC Handelsblad. Interesting for me is a blog in English dealing with information science. You can view it here.
It was reassuring to read that, even amongst the Google generation,only a minority of people love Web 2.0 and are blogging or twittering or on Facebook every day. The majority will use it for specific purposes e.g accessing a blog about a topic in which they are interested and another minority (I thought this was funny) won't touch Web 2.0 with a bargepole!
In which category are you?

Michael Rosen

The Children's laureate in the U.K is a very funny man called Michael Rosen. He is busy campaigning for Children in Britain to read more books. I watched an interesting BBC4 documentary yesterday evening about his attempts to encourage Primary schools in Britain to promote reading in school, at home and in the library. I came to the conclusion that we are doing it much better over here. Here he is on You Tube.

Adding a Feed

With a struggle I've succeeded (I think) in adding a feed from the Royal Shakespeare Company and Elly's netvibes to my netvibe page. Is anyone else, like me put off by the amount of information presented to be read? Now the art is indeed being able to identify what is relevant to me and being able to ignore the rest!

Rss Feeds

Following a colleague's good advice, I tried to take a rest from "blogging" yesterday. I seem to spend hours reading what others have written and although I find it often inspiring to see how well my colleagues are progressing, it can sometimes be disheartening too. It's a little like throwing a party for lots of people and trying to pay the same amount of attention to each guest...exhausting. It makes me wonder how my fellow 'HSP' colleagues are coping. It is fun too though and for those of you who are reluctant to take part, don't be!! I do think it is important that we, the library personnel are familiar with the latest techniques in accessing information because, as we are discovering, there is so much information available to us via the internet. I think our role will be, as always, to help people refine their search in order to search more efficiently. Perhaps we should offer courses on the 23 things to our users?
I did subscribe to Netvibes yesterday but didn't get very far. I intend to watch Rob's videos about how to access the rss feeds again and complete that task today.

Super Librarian

I found this video on Youtube and wondered if this was something we could do?! ;)

Sebastian kindly downloaded the video from the Youtube website onto his laptop because my Windows 98 computer doesn't have the software to do that. Then all I had to do was click on the "Add Video" icon and transfer the video details from his computer and give it a title. I had to wait a while for the video to upload, but I'm pleased with the result.

Time settings

I have just read Rob's tips and, in my typically chaotic fashion, have chosen to implement the last tip first, that is to change the time settings. Like my fellow bloggers I noticed that the time displayed on my postings didn't correspond to the actual time of publishing. Let's see if this has worked.

Mijn eerste bericht!

Ik waarschuw alvast mijn collega's dat ik veel taal- en spelfouten ga maken. Ik zal waarschijnlijk niet zo veel schrijven. Ik heb geluk dat veel van de 23 dingen in het engels zijn geschreven en gesproken.

Frightened rabbit

I certainly look like a frightened rabbit on the photo' Rob took of me on Monday. This task seems very daunting to me and that is why I've decided to write my blogs in English. Rob didn't have a problem with that and I hope my colleagues won't either.

Our Mission Statement

Rijswijk library gives everyone the opportunity to develop themselves and inspires people in a stimulating and accessible environment with a current and appealing collection and a varied programme of activities.
Rijswijk library is skilled in providing information, is customer friendly, is independent and collaborates with partners.

My home town

Week one, Exercise one

I decided to make a blog at home before the first meeting with Rob and, being English, thought I would be very original by calling my blog '23 things.' Ha ha! Of course, the original concept is American so that title has been used countless times before. Miep helped me to change the title, or so we thought. We had inadvertently created a second blog. I spent Wednesday afternoon exploring some possibilities for my blog and added two gadgets. I felt very proud of myself until I discovered that I had worked on the old blog not the one for which Elly and Rob have an address. I hope that I have copied the original postings to the new site. Feeling disheartened. Will try again tomorrow.