Second exploration: e-readers

It's 2011 and it's all about e-readers this week at the library:

How does this work?
Why can't I find my downloaded book?
Which e-reader should I buy?

Obviously patrons had a pretty electronic Christmas and are keen to use their new toys. I'm becoming very familiar with the e-library lib guide because I'm looking at it every day, and scrambling around trying to answer questions and help people with their gadgets. It's just like everything else though, nothing is quite as easy or quick as it seems like it ought to be. Luckily for me I received a Nook (slighty used) for Christmas myself and now am trying to find the time to really get familiar with the ins and outs.

Julia set it up for me, (nominally we were doing it together, sitting on the couch, but she held it in her hand - what a difference that makes to learning!!) and the first problem was actually finding a book to check out from Overdrive. Most of the titles we thought of were either not available or had hold lists. We eventually found one and proceeded - slowly - Overdrive was down (we tried and tried and eventually got a window of opportunity) - then the document went somewhere - finally found it on the Nook in "My Documents", not on my Book Shelf...... By the end of an hour of fiddling around we decided to go for a walk instead.

So the other evening (after a day of patron questions about these devices) I spent an hour and a half by myself playing with it. I think (because I haven't had an opportunity since to get back to it) 1. I have successfully purchased a e-book from B&N 2. I have borrowed something from Overdrive. Unfortunately, I couldn't actually open either of them but had quite had enough of the entire experience at that point and didn't want to call their 800 number for support. But here a couple of the pitfalls I have seen so far.

1. It's like every other electronic experience - nothing is quite as easy as it seems it might be.
2. The popular titles are all checked out, so you can't get the book that you want right now anyway.
3. Not all titles are available, so it may be that your second or third choice items might not be obtainable right now either.

Having said that - it's still really pretty (the back of my Nook is blue, and the leather cover is a lovely dark lavender shade). It's easy to read the screen - I can make the text size bigger and smaller. I can connect wirelessly and sort of search stuff. The little keyboard is challenging (I don't have a smart phone so the touch screen is new to me). The control buttons are pretty sensitive, so I seem to advance and retreat on the pages just by holding it. Maybe that's a good way to practice... So it's "just" a matter of spending the time and getting familiar with it. (Like every other new thing we do).

But - have I even thought about privacy issues? No! I can see, as we do incorporate these devices into our lives more and more that privacy and tracking and all of those big brother issues will gain in importance. But at this point I want to learn how to use my Nook so I can answer patron questions with greater authority. Frankly - I am still struggling with finding enough time to get through the stack of "real" books on my bedside table!

Finally - Project Runway is coming back!

Ok. Forget all the bad budget news, and summer ending, and all that sad stuff.
Project Runway starts again tonight and we are all ready... are you? Please participate in the poll on the right bar!

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2009/08/lifetime-hopes-to-get-fierce-with-project-runway.html

Summer Rain Crowd

What happened to hot lazy days? The library has been a zoo - smells like the hippo house, is as noisy as the small mammal house and it's just crazy, crazy, crazy. The rising damp adds another element - moulds growing and spreading - just makes me feel creepy all over. Probably will have washed my hands raw by the end of this week!

Although - our SRC kickoff was a lot of fun. Suz did a fab job of coming up with creative activities, and the kids seemed to have a lovely time.

It was interesting, at the decorate-a-crab station, which I was monitoring, watching the parents (or caregivers) and kids interacting. How many Moms controlled their impulses and let the kids do their own thing - and how many others (more nanny types in this group I think), just had to add some helpful suggestions (or worse, take the shell out of the kid's hand and print their message).

As usual it's the observing the human element that is what sticks.

Then wonderful to come home to peace and quiet and a good book.

Exploring

Web 2.0 exploring madness in our corner this afternoon. Whooee, sharing and muttering. Great fun.

Poetry Contest part 2

Sorry for the confusion - the poetry blog is at

http://www.rhymingreason.wordpress.com

Curiously!

Poetry Contest

Oh how could I forget to mention the Poetry Contest? I've added it to my blog list over on the right hand side (RhymingReason's blog) - but please take a look. We've had lots of entries, although no schools yet (am hoping to get a little pile of poems soon from at least one of the schools - I know, dream on).

In case it isn't immediately obvious - the theme is "pets".

Twittering

Warm afternoon in the library and have spent (again) way too much time with web 2.0. Friend had an idea for twitter that finally made sense to me - twittering in haiku. I like it!! So I've started.
While at computers in libraries recently, was quite surprised at how many people twitter all the time. Can't say I really get it. I don't necessarily think people want to read my blog - why would they? So why would they want to hear my twits? I'm sure there are so called - important applications - but not that have anything to do with me.
So.
It's fun and silly, and quite frankly - that's enough reason to do it!!

Enjoy the sunshine you lucky non-working types!

ready to be delicious

Counting down this morning to an online class about delicious bookmarking. I've already confessed in my preclass assignment that during 23 things I just didn't "get" the point. That is, I can see how it would be lovely to access my bookmarks from any old computer, but when I go to the delicious site, it just seems confusing and overwhelming.

Here's the thing. My favorites give me an illusion of control over the web; I have these sites that I know I can count on for various things, right? Then I go to delicious and see the billion other sites that other folks have bookmarked, and wham, I'm back into the sea of knowing my little bit of knowledge is no "control" at all!

The older I get, the more I know that I know so little!

December musings

Haven't posted in a long time (longer than I thought). Things are busy everywhere!

But today I updated the bookbanter LibraryThing so thought I'd put a plug for it here. Check out the bookbanter library to see what AACPL branches have, are or will be discussing. Click on the Tags header to rearrange the selections - it will come back somewhat alphabetical by branch.

That's all for now - have been reading some recent posts by all of you - so many different approaches to blogging - so many different topics. Highly entertaining.

Happy Holidays all!

Flickring

Have been spending way too much time today in flickr, playing with photos.
Had some trouble posting photos to this blog.

Oddly enough I had no trouble sending a photo of Zorro to the blog I've been setting up for teen read week (should I do the big reveal here, now? why not - no, I'll wait for a bit). Anyway, we're hoping to hold another writing project for trw. This one won't be a contest, but figuring out how to describe it is a bit of a bother. I've settled on "project" but don't like that much. Anyway, posted a picture of our lovely Hallowe'en cat to that blog, but for some reason flickr won't pick up the address to this one. I've finally in desperation, sent an email message to the flickrs hoping they'll figur (sic) it out.

But then I did find the cool badge thing, so have stuck a bunch of little photos there, and am now content with my flickr expertise. It's good enough.
So be it.

(Although I may find myself back there playing a little more... later.....)

A cellular chorus

Ok. Here's the truth.

I'm really tired of the whole silence-the-cell-phone-while-in-the-library thing.

Never mind trying to figure out where the annoying ring tone is coming from. Never mind dirty-eyeing the patron trying to dash out the door while conversing at full volume. Never mind ferreting out the sneaky talkers hiding in the stacks. It's all a losing game anyway.

I'm tired of feeling guilty while shushing moms with toddlers - are they yakking with a pal? Or trouble-shooting problems with another child? Do they have to drag their kids out to the lobby while they talk, or is it better to abandon one child in the library while they scoot out the door to calm down the one at the other end of the line? I don't know. Why do I have to?

Let's call the whole thing off! Let's experiment! Let's have a cellular chorus and just ignore the phone question altogether. So what if it's noisy in the library! It's already noisy anyway. It might be amusing - there is such a variety of ring tones, and I see a fair amount of smirking going on at particular rings. It might be cacophonous. Well, so be it. If folks don't care enough to turn their phones off already, maybe they won't care.

After all, who is the quiet for? Us? Probably not, we already have to talk at volume with hard-of-hearing patrons on the phone, and in front of us. For other patrons? Well, perhaps, but they stand and chatter with each other for long periods of time, or call to each other across the library, so I'm not sure who we are trying to fool. There are still some people who seem to respect the traditional quiet rules of the library, but they are so few! What do they matter!

I say, let's give in and enjoy the chaos.

And that's my rant for this morning. Please feel free to participate in my poll!

As the world turns..

This is a fresh start to an old blog with new colors, new name (thanks Marie!) and a little more experience with some of the 23 things.

The Machine is Us/ing Us video has been modified since I first watched it. But the powerful message continues to impress. Actually I really am stunned at how effective this simple video portrays the zooming changes that have happened to text and communication. And my bewilderment at how we can hope to keep up has not abated.

So.... I've become somewhat more comfortable with blogs, and youtube videos and RSS feeds. So what! There's a lot of other new stuff happening that I don't have a clue about. Even LibraryThing, which I was quite taken with last year, seems to be outdated already. I've tried Shelfari, but it's cumbersome and not easy to correct mistakes with. (well, I'll hold off on all that till I get back to that thing in Web 2.0 exploring).

As far as the interactive web goes - 3D? phew. Libraries with no collections? What! I don't think we're there yet. We still (ok I've said this before) have many patrons (customers) who need us to interpret the low-tech stuff for them, placing holds for them, assisting them with the catalog etc. We can't abandon them.

And for the high-tech stuff? We haven't figured out a way to help the growing population that are struggling with completing on-line job applications! How do we balance showing, helping, and doing for these folks?

We've got our hands full. But after all that is said and done, I do agree - we must continually look forward to reach new library users - we just can't abandon traditional patrons in the process.

Have I completely answered your question?

Golden compass daemon

Here's your chance to see if you think the daemon assigned to me fits. Please do!

Library Thing

Is anybody still out there?
Finally had some time to start on a pet project. I've been thinking that it would be good to have a community something for our libraries' Book Banters. So tonight, since it was kind of quiet, I've entered in all the books we've Bantered at all the bantering branches that I could find from previous Library Happenings. I got a little bogged down with the very first set because I can't find that issue. We did The Number One Ladies' Detective Angency here at Annapolis, and somebody did The Rule of Four - and there were others. Does anyone remember? I've tagged the entries with our 3 letter library codes so we can reorder the Thing Lists by branch (or however else you'd like).
Please take a look at the link here on the blog. If you'd like to add to it as Book Bantering continues then that would be great. I'd really like to see somewhere that we could collaborate on selecting titles etc. Guess I'll post that idea in the Programming Blog and see what response I get there.
Hey, this is pretty cool - actually using a 23 thing for library things - talk about transfer of training. Happy Joanne?

Jurassic Park in 5 Seconds

Uh oh - look at what I've found now - a whole series of movies in 5 seconds, but this is my favorite so far. Check it out!

You tube success

OKAY!!! The You tube video showed up as it's own post. Well, that's interesting and not what I wanted, but what the heck. Watch it anyway.

sudoku

You tube

I've been seeing things on You Tube for quite some time, and had been looking for something to show here. Most of the "funny" tubes that I've watched haven't been really funny to me. But then, accidentally, I came across this sudoku thing, that did make me grin. It was during a conversation we were having at the desk about megasudoku - a mixture of letters and numbers that of course is way beyond me. (I am very happy with my own enthusiasm about plain sudoku puzzles). Anyway, the whole post is at http://squidoo.com/megasudoku should you be interested in that level of difficulty.
If you just want to catch a quick chuckle (30 seconds) then check out this You Tube. (if it shows up here) hmmmmm guess that's one of the points of this 23 thing.

Zoho 2

So here I am at a different computer, and able to log in, retrieve my first doc (Trying out Zoho), and able to carry on without floppies, thumbdrives or even a sharp pencil.

Pretty nifty. 

Zo how do you do!!

Trying out Zoho

First impressions:

This is a little tricky without reading the directions. But who reads directions? Seems that one should be able to click and go, once familiar with a similar program.

Let's put more smilies in

Yay! that was fun.

let's take this to the n^th degree

I like the subscript superscript buttons, but how do I turn off the highlighting

Whoa, fun colors too

Is it gone?The orange bands are "quotes" I think.

You can switch to other Zoho functions as well. Very cool. I like the look of Zoho planner. It seems quicker to set up than Outlook!!

Unfortunately this exploration is all I have time for at the moment. I wonder if I can send this to post on Deb's blog???