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!