Summer Adventures

Thus far, this summer has been full of learning and fun!

In less than a week I'll be doing my first half marathon with one of my roommates. I counted up my training miles yesterday and in the last 7 weeks I've run 135 miles! I'm looking forward to seeing the finish line :)

I'm also in a Learn to Row course at the Winnipeg Rowing Club. After a bit of a hiatus due to flooding (rain, rain, go away!) I was back on the water last night for class #3. It's a wonderful feeling to glide along the river, but my arms sure are sore today.

Back in May I spent some time at the Manitoba Libraries Conference. I attended the pre-session "Understanding Your Creative Side at Work" with Stephen Abram. With Play-Doh, pipe cleaners, paper and crayons, Mr. Abram helped us to see how creativity can be an important and energizing part of any kind of work. The keynote address with Gerry Meek had some big ideas about connecting with the community to celebrate the library. In Calgary, the public library partnered with groups like public transit and the police force to help the community and bring people into the library. I also attended the session "The Power of Library Partnerships" with Stephen Abram. The most memorable part of this session was the idea that in today's changing world, libraries need to focus on their people power. To paraphrase Mr. Abram, law has lawyers, medicine has doctors, and information has librarians. (And hopefully library techs, too!) I also spent a bit of time volunteering at the registration desk, and attended the MALT Annual General Meeting.

This summer I have been working for my brother and his wife at Kampphotography. My main project has been keywording wedding photos. After some discussion with Jake and Jess I created a fixed vocabulary of sorts in order to tag the people, location, time, and vendors of each wedding. I have also been taking care of print orders and responding to new client contact forms. It has been a lovely experience working with the two of them :)

Other than that I've been relaxing, reading, crossword puzzling, baking, and spending time with friends both old and new.

In the next little bit I will be attending a few days of the Winnipeg Folk Festival, taking a Francais Oral course (if I can still fit it in), and spending some time at the Pitblado library.

Cheers!

The Man of the House

For all you cat lovers:



Toffee! He showed up on my parents deck one fall with his frost-shortened tail and ears, and very few teeth. So we fed him and loved him :)

He was a friendly cat, but lacking in manners. He ate a quarter of a chocolate cake on the counter on day. He even ate the bristles off a pastry brush that had been used to spread barbecue sauce on meat. We had to learn to keep the counters clear of anything remotely edible.

Today he shares an apartment with me, my sister, and two friends. His manners have improved greatly and he adds some character to our humble abode.

Social Networking

I am not a complete stranger to social networking. I have been using Facebook for three years and it is a like/hate relationship. It does help me stay in contact with some of my friends that I otherwise might have lost touch with. But after that, it just gets messy with all the applications and 'friends' that want to add you (even though you didn't speak to each other once in high school).

For this lab I signed up for Twitter. I am following a few classmates and my brother. I thought I would dislike it, but I am not finding it abhorrent. I appreciate that it is simple, clean, and to the point. I was also able to customize my page with a photo and a different background.

I don't think I will ever learn anything revelatory on Twitter, but I’ll keep trying it for a while.

I checked out a few libraries and they did have followers so it is an outreach tool to keep in mind(what’s new in the library, library events etc.) Libraries can use Twitter to keep in touch with patrons; however, I feel that this information is largely redundant as it is likely to be on the library’s website.

Request for Followers

I have joined Twitter for our lab in social networks. In order to have the full experience I would like to follow a few people I know and have a few followers myself.

If you are also on Twitter find me under my user name: moventure

Social Bookmarking

Another first in my adventures with Library 2.0!
Social bookmarking is a new concept to me. At least the social part, if not the bookmarking and tagging part. I've bookmarked a website or two in my laptop's web browser, and noticed tags or labels on blog entries. However, with a website like delicious.com, people can bookmark and tag websites, see what other websites are being tagged, and who is tagging which websites. It is an intriguing concept because of the user generated tagging. Instead of a controlled vocabulary of subject headings, a person can tag a website in any way they see fit.

Activity One:
I typed "pilates" into delicious.com. I came up with 9000 results. Of the 50 or so that I glanced over, most appeared to be instructions or descriptions of some sort. I found wikipedia articles, about.com articles, podcasts, and youtube videos. Most of the other tags on these results mentioned exercise, fitness,and health which were all expected.

The same search in google yielded 4 million results. These results tended to be associations (e.g. The Pilates Association of Canada), certain systems (Stott Pilates or Winsor Pilates), and pilates studios in various locations.

In broad terms, at least for a topic like pilates, the sites that people are tagging in delicious seem to be more "how to" than the sites that seek to gain in google (i.e. that you'll pay to join the studio Guelph or Kitsilano).

Activity Two:
I signed up for delicious, and saved a few websites. Honestly, I don't see myself using this website for bookmarking since it's generally not an activity I take part in. It's simply a personal preference, because I do appreciate the theory behind social bookmarking.

I can, however, see myself using the site to explore some of the tags. For example, in preparation for my oral presentation, I can now read the pages that "louisethelibrarian" has tagged on information literacy. Then I can see the pages all delicious users have tagged on information literacy. Nifty! I feel like it brings the serendipity back into searching.

There is one thing I am curious about... when I search for a tag, why do the results display as they do? It seems that the results are not sorted alphabetically, by number of tags, or by number of users saving it. Is there some kind of relevance system?

For Your Listening and Viewing Pleasure

I am inspired to share a few tidbits today.

First, the NAXOS Music Library. If you ever have a hankering to hear Brahms Fourth Symphony but do no have ready access to a physical music library, like me, then NAXOS will be a welcome resource. From the Winnipeg Public Library website, under the "Find It Online" tab, click on "Search NAXOS Music". Five hundred thousand "classical" tracks are available, but don't be frightened away! Try searching "Christos Hatzis Constantinople" and listen to a track or two. "Old Photographs" is a good one to start with.

Second, my brother's photo blog. His wife's brother and sister-in-law just had a baby girl and the photos are "awwwww!" inspiring.

Enjoy!

Online Applications

Today I had a chance to try out Google Documents. Simply put, it was fun. I suppose this had more to do with the situation than the application itself. You can see the fun in adding:

• A sentence to our story about Sue--one that does not rhyme
• My classmates' favorite symbol to the collaborative presentation
• A Feist song to our party play list

I am interested in trying Google docs in serious project; perhaps one where, because of time or location, i cannot work side-by-side with a collaborator. It would be advantageous to have all the information in one place rather than in a multitude of email attachments. In addition, no one will have their lock stolen as they did in the class wiki.

The chat feature is a smart tool--in the midst of writing their lab report, "Johnny" and "Bobby" can decide whether they should mention that their Bunsen burner exploded--and they won't have to phone each other or log on to another chat service to have this discussion.

I found Google documents fairly intuitive, or at least similar to Microsoft Office (which I am used to). I had a bit of difficulty getting some of the tools to load (e.g. the picture upload), but I am not sure if this was the application or my computer being slow.

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Later on, I tried another application. I opted for Shelfari, which is another easy-to-use tool. I created a profile in moments; and began adding books I have read, am reading, or would like to read. I found out who else had read the same books as me, and what they thought of them. I even added a shelfari widget to my blog, which you are cordially invited to view. I am not sure if I will continue to use this tool; however, it would be a neat application to use in libraries as an informal book club or readers' advisory.