Friday, March 30, 2007

LibraryThing exploration

I've been resisting trying this out, as I was afraid I would lose hours and hours of time to it. Will have to see how the weekend plays out ;)

It certainly is really easy to use, and I could see it being a great book recommendation tool, since you see what other people who have your books like, too.

But at the same time, I've been trying to limit my possessions, and cutting down on books is a big part of this. I really feel that I don't need books I can easily get from the library...especially when there are always at least 300 books on my list of things I'm interested in reading! In a way, LibraryThing could be helpful here...because it could make me question if I want to be recognized as the sort of person who owns particular books ;)

I'll have to play with this one more at home, for sure.

Oh...I forgot to post my mini-catalog

Del.icio.us exploration

I'm excited about del.icio.us, but a bit nervous to dip my toes in, too. But I do like the idea of using this with groups of kids for specific purposes...the most immediate one to my life would be in posting a booklist of everything discussed by my bookgroup, so the teens could refer to them quickly. I could even do this during the meeting!

I like the idea of using it to organize recipes, but I will resist using it for this purpose in my own life, as I have WAY too many recipes floating around already.

Some of the articles were very helpful for imagining new uses too. I'll definitely have to play with this more.

a very exciting teen area


I would love to see something this exciting done at our Bellevue Branch!

Monday, March 26, 2007

MySpace and I

I've had MySpace accounts for some time now...I won't claim to be an early innovator, but my branch was one of the first to have a space for our TeenZone, and I've had a private account before that. I find MySpace to be kind of fun, but I confess there are a few issues I have with the whole social networking thing. First, I find it dizzying how quickly the trends occur, and how frustrating it can be to try and keep up! Also, I find the whole collecting friends thing to be a bit weird. I have no problem friending people I know, or adding local teens to my branch's page...but when total strangers try and friend me, I find that just weird! And that makes me feel old ;)

Here is the Lake Hills TeenZone MySpace page.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

how Wii works

Does your branch have a Wii as part of their Game On program? Ever wondered just how it works? Popular Science has an explanation here.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Voluntary Mortification - teen diaries read aloud!

My co-worker Darcy shared this article about adults who are voluntarily stepping foward to read from their teen writings...diaries, letters, etc. Nowdays teens often post their diaries on the internet for everyone to read, so it is interesting to think about what used to be our darkest secrets, and how they look now.

Did you write much as a teen?

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

teen slang

Ok, so this is according to the Guardian, "language of the MySpace generation". From my experience with teens, once books get to the newspapers, they are seriously gone already from their vocabulary, but who knows...perhaps some of these haven't drifted from England to us yet :)

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Something I'm proud of...


Here is a article featured on the Diamond Comics website about the committee I had the honor of chairing for its maiden year: YALSA Honors Graphic Novels with 2007 Recommendations. It was a great experience working with this committee, and I got to read a ton of terrific books (ok, and some lousy ones too ;)

If you ever want a recommendation for a graphic novel, just ask!

Monday, March 19, 2007

Learning about RSS feeds

I confess, I sorta knew what these were before, but really hadn't utilized them much. I just set up a Google Reader account last month, but so far I like Bloglines better. I've always been frustrated with how hard it is to keep track of people's blogs, but this makes it super easy to keep track of all sorts of stuff. I can see this being handy in all sorts of ways, both for my personal and professional life. I love it!

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

fun with flickr mashups


my trading card
Originally uploaded by DawnOfTheRead.
I went ahead and made my own trading card. I just realized it has been years since that picture was taken now! I feel old :(

I've also been trying to figure out how to post to flickr with my cell phone, but apparently I haven't gotten that down yet.

There are so many flickr related applications out there...I had no idea. Unfortuantely, I couldn't get a lot of them to work, and many of them didn't seem terribly useful to me, but I would love to hear about people's favorites.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Summer Reading Commercial

I would love to start doing this sort of thing for KCLS!

Monday, March 5, 2007

Golden Compass toys!

Check it out: Golden Compass toys based on the upcoming movie.

TeenZone @ Lake Hills


TeenZone
Originally uploaded by DawnOfTheRead.
For 27 Things, one of the things we have to do is use a flickr account. I confess, I've had one for a while, but never really learned how to use it. I'm really excited to be figuring it out now. It is a lot easier than I realized, and a great place to share information.