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.