Image Fun!

I love fooling around with pictures! I'd like to sign up for flickr myself. I wonder if any images are public use? For signs and posters? I love the way all three things just meshed with my book jacket. I've used Piknik before to fix up photos on our g drive but had forgotten about it. I think it's a lot easier than paint.Net but maybe Paint.Net is for experts. I managed to do this without too much help from Shelley so I'm feeling a little more confident.

Continuing the Adventure

Alright--this felt like a lot but no any one part was very hard. Thanks for continuing to challenge, engage and help us, Shelley!

* * * * *

As I mentioned in my comment on Shelley's post, I'm a completely devoted fan of Google and have been finding it more and more useful in more and more parts of my life. (I know our new Assistant Director would LOVE for us all to have corporate Google accounts, too, so that might be in the future for OPPL.)

I'd never used Google Alerts, though, so I added a couple: "lions" and "Peter Sarsgaard" (my favorite animal and my favorite celebrity crush). I'm not sure I really set the settings as well as I could though, because I've already gotten alerts to lots of websites which don't really even mention him. I think I'd better just set it to "news."

* * * * *

The Google Doc I'm sharing--IS LIVING WITH THE YUPPIES WORTH IT?--is something I put together a couple weeks ago after visiting the new apartment tower just above Trader Joe's. The vote's still out on whether my boyfriend and I will take the yup plunge, but I thought you might get a kick out of the pros/cons we're considering.



* * * * *
I've never used delicious.com, though I was familiar with it. I think my resistance comes from the same place as the part of me that decided to quit Twitter: sometimes I have to put in a locks and dams, mentally, to prevent myself from spending too much time (or, at least, too much FREE time) on the internetz. I also have other venues for sharing cool stuff: my blog, my e-newsletter about pop culture (remember! You should sign up for that by letting me know that...you know, you want to sign up for it!), and, of course, Facebook.

Anyway, it was still good to putz around delicious and it really was easy to add bookmarklets to my Firefox toolbar on my work computer. I added three for all of you to enjoy.

* * * * *
Sure, there are lots of stuff in this unit which we could use as a department or library (or already do use)...but I'm always worried about participation and burnout levels. For someone who uses a fair amount of technology and digital media to organize and inspire my own life, I find myself more and more resistant about including in my working life, or in libraries in general. Resistant--not quite reluctant :).

For example, I really dig (though I don't really "digg") the new teen website especially now that, for the purpose of this Technology Adventure, I've poked around it a bit more. But--and I hope I don't step on any toes here--I'm not convinced that a mid-size library's website needs to be this interactive. As far as I can tell, all of the content generation has been from staff so far.

I understand that you've got to build up interest and build up a backlog of stuff, but...that's a lot of staff time for something I doubt many patrons are looking for/at. Lots and lots of people are already feeling like they spend too much time online--even teens. And the time they do spend is already at social media sites (whether it be a behemoth like Facebook or a more niche, interest-based site like GoodReads) so what can we do to really attract them to spend much time at ours? And is it worth the effort? I suspect that the small number of kids who get involved will already be really library-centric, so it's probably not a promotion tool....

But, whatever. I wrote a review and submitted a review of a YA nonfiction title I read and loved this weekend.

* * * * *
Finally, I need to say this.

Technology Adventure, Unit Three

Unit three: Websites
3/7 - 3/20

OPPL Teen: This is the prototype for what our entire website will be like this time next year (hopefully). The backbone of this is interaction – polls, blog posts, book reviews, etc. Read through some of the recent blog posts and leave a comment. Read through some of the book reviews and leave one of your own. (Feel free to leave out your age and school.) If you want to see what the back end looks like, how to create a post, etc, ask Shelley for a demo.

Delicious: This is a site where you can save bookmarks and access it from any computer. We can use this to have a shared archive of useful or fun links. Like Flickr and Blogger, you can tag these for easy organization. I’ve gotten us started with a few links, but this is something we can all use.

Go to delicious.com and choose to sign in with a yahoo ID (the link is below the boxes for logging in.) Check your e-mail for the user name and password.

Go to Bookmarklets and follow the bookmarklet button directions for whichever browser you are using. (Note: for Internet Explorer, use Manual method instead of Easy.) Once you have this bookmarklet in your toolbar, all you need to do is click on this button when you are on a website you want to save, then up will pop a window where you tag it and give a description of what we will find there (in Notes). Save that, and delicious will automatically update to include it. Tags can’t include spaces. If you choose to make it private, only we will see it when we are logged in. Add a few tagged sites to share. Blogs you forgot to include in unit one, fun cracked.com article, whatever.

Of course, it’s hard to add a bookmarklet to the reference desk computers, since it resets every day. But you can go to delicious.com, log in, and click “save a new bookmark” in the top right blue box. Takes longer, same result.

If more than one person bookmarks a site, the numbers appear in a blue box. You can click the box to see who else liked it, what they tagged it, and follow their tags to find similar cool things.

RSS feed/Google Reader: Many of you already discovered that RSS feed readers make blog reading easier, because it sends all the posts from most blogs you like into one place for you to read. There are different choices that do the same thing, so pick your favorite. Ideas are Google Reader, Bloglines, or FeedDemon. It’s understandable to be concerned with giving Google so much control over your online life, but they do have a good service here and it’s also integrated with your Blogger account – you can read it at Google or Blogger.

If you don't already have a feed reader set up, create an account and add some blogs. For Google Reader, you click on Add Subscription on the far left. You can search by keyword for blogs to get some ideas, or browse Google’s bundles of topic suggestions. If you want to add a specific blog, you can go to its website and click on the orange box in the URL field. Choose to add it to your RSS feed and follow the prompts. You can add blogs and websites that update regularly with content, such as news sites or even our delicious account.

Google Docs: Google also has word processing programs online. These include spreadsheets, slideshow presentations, forms, etc, which can be private, open for all to see or shared with specific people. Choose a format and create...something. Share it with everyone in the department by going to Share on the top right side, and choosing sharing settings. You can open it to the public, to anyone you give the link to, or specific people, as well as choose if others can edit it. Check out what everyone has done and edit where allowed. (If you’re both viewing the document as they edit, you’ll see it change letter by letter. It can be fun.)

Bonus:
Google Alert: Ever wonder how Debby finds all the news articles that mention us? Chances are she uses an alert program. If you use Google Alerts to get notified of every time a website mentions Oak Park Public Library (or Doctor Who or Newbery Medal, etc), you can also have the notifications sent to your Google Reader.

Tumblr.: Kind of a blog, kind of a social media thing. It has the ease of sharing content that Twitter has, with added support for pictures and sounds. People were very very sad when it went down for a few days earlier this winter. As one person put it (and dozens of others reblogged): The difference between Facebook and Tumblr. Explore!

Write a post talking about your experiences. What do you think of OPPL Teens? Think Delicious will be useful? How could we use Google Docs, or even Tumblr., as a dept?

Wow. I can't believe I actually was able to do this. Great directions, Shelley! I tried some of the Flickr groups, like the "Library Signage" one and they are very helpful. It's a great way to browse through very specific images about a library topic, without all the extra weird hits you get through google image searches. One of the hardest parts for me is figuring out where images go after you save them. Sometimes you're given the option of picking a file to put them (Picnik) and sometimes not (Flickr), so that part confused me the most. I really loved Picnik and had never heard of it before. It really is super intuitive and pretty fun too, with the "buttering sandwiches" and "growing grass" uploading messages. We could use this tool for fun display signs, by printing out mock book covers for the kids that are eye-catching and funny (and have Oak Park specific jokes). We also could use these skills to create our SRP final report with a digital photo scrapbook for the Friends and maybe even the public?

So Much Snow - Revisited

Fun project! I don’t think my title goes well with my picture. One is inspirational and the other is somewhat depressing. It is hard to tell what the tone of the story will be. I’ll admit I did have some trouble with the textbox feature in Paint as far as aligning it and editing my text. I’ll have to make some more time to play around with it. I downloaded it to my laptop, so I have it handy.

JN's lesson 1 and 2

Oooh--- Mysterious...
DR will be jealous that my random quote title is from a Vonnegut quote:
"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward."

I really enjoyed playing around with Picnik, and could have spent all afternoon with the fonts alone. Color Fields is amazing. I hadn't known about the Flickr App Garden, and look forward to exploring it more.

And (playing catch-up BIG TIME here) the following are some blogs I frequent for fun:
Jezebel
Jezebel for Boys
and this
& this never disappoint.
I also love Robert.

and it goes without saying...

late adventuring (unit 1)

Despite liking blogs, I don't use Google Reader or another feed or aggregator. That's mainly because I don't "follow" blogs; I like to check up on them every once in a while, but not devotedly.

For kiddie lit, my fave is Betsy Bird's SLJ spot, which others have mentioned.

The Atlantic's website has some bloggers I enjoy, including Andrew Sullivan, whose Daily Dish is moving to the Daily Beast next month.

Like Danny, I also like some sports sites with bloggers, such as ESPN and Deadspin.

Future Printz Winner Here

Like a lot of you, I really like Picnik's user interface. So many options, so easy to use! At home, I do all my photo editing with PaintShopPro (so much cheaper than Photoshop), but this is great for quick, on the fly edits.

I'm a long time Flickr user, so I love the constantly updated App Garden because there's always cool new stuff coming out. My favorite site is fd's toys, especially the Color Palette Generator, which is super useful for designing, and Motivator, which is just fun.

I've never tried their jigsaw puzzle before, but it could be neat to create a Ramona Nibblesmith puzzle for the kids!