23 things accomplished

I have found this a fascinating but also rather stressful exercise. It has been difficult to find the time to complete all the tasks and sometimes frustrating. But it has been worthwhile perservering and I do feel rather pleased with myself for having done it. I have found a couple of areas more useful than others. I think I could very easily run a blog. I have already developed a wiki site so I knew I could do that. I feel more in touch with what kids are getting into. Although I do have some concerns about what is posted on some of these social networking sites - as a private person, I would not choose to lay myself open in such a manner. I think I am addicted to Last.fm. And how am I ever going to get the time to read all my rss feeds.
Things to do differently - I think many people needed to be given a little more time to complete 23 things. I am going travelling next year and am wondering about doing a blog while I'm away where everyone can keep up with where I am (It saves emailing lots of people!!). There are some things that I doubt I'll ever look at again unless I am forced to.

Downloadable ebooks 2

I also had a look at the Historical Childrens ebooks. Meant to say I'd prefer a non-American accent to listen to but I guess this is a bit of a quibble. I suspect you really have to pick and choose what you download as some things are very visual.

Downloadable e-books

I had a look at World ebook Fair and Project Gutenburg's downloadable e-books and listened to my favourite Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale - The little match girl. A beautiful story although I have to confess I missed the illustrations. Such a poignant story and of course it is exactly the right time being Christmas. I always think of one of my favourite Chalet School books when I read The little match girl - Jo of the Chalet School when Joey, Madge and Robin go to have Christmas in Innsbruk and Joey of course has her little match girl experience - a very touching moment. I have always wanted Christmas in Innsbruk ever since first reading this book. Oh well, one day.

Podcasts

I listened to a couple of podcasts including an interesting on I found on the newshour with jim Lehrer about how the number of book review sections being cut in American newspapers. It was from 2001 but was rather interesting. I have subscribed to the abc podcasts in my bloglines account as they have good ones too - the news, etc. Podcasts could be really useful in a library setting - we could podcast book reviews and events in the library, storytimes maybe.

YouTube and the Yolngu Zorba

I saw Zorba the greek Yolngu Style on the television news a few weeks ago and thought I would use it as my YouTube example as it loked awesome. Sadly, it was very broken up by the video stopping and starting every ten seconds or so which was very disappointing. I'm not sure if that's our poor bandwith or what here at work. As I wanted to see if this was the case on all videos on YouTube, I decided to search for...you guessed it, Pavlov's Dog. There are a number of videos with PD performances, particularly from the recent Greek tour. However, the same stop/start affair occurred. The sound on Julia was actually pretty good although it was nearly impossible to see David and the band. But I then tried Theme from Subway Sue which was absolutely abyssmal. And again the video stopped and started every 5 seconds or so. Unwatchable and unlistenable. How can anyone watch this stuff! We could not use this in a library setting unless whatever bandwith or other issues are causing the problems are fixed. It's just crappy otherwise.

Last.fm

When I had a look at the winners of the Web 2.0 awards, I naturally went to the music area. Sadly, Pandora couldn't help me as they cannot do anything with people not from the US. So I went to the site that was awarded second place - Last.fm. I typed in Pavlov's Dog and it began playing me Episode from the first album Pampered Menial. It also recommended I try a number of other bands including Curved Air. Interestingly, when I had a listen to Curved air (female lead singer and electric violinist) Caravan came up as a similar artist. I love Caravan - great British prog rock band who are still performing and making great music after 40 years together. I have added last.fm to my favourites, needless to say. I think I have just become addicted....

Functionality of zoho writer

Having now had a look at Zoho writer, I can se this has quite a bit more functionality than the first notebook i looked at. You can bold and italicise words and lots of other stuff including exporting stuff to your blog which i am about to try. So if you are viewing this in my blog, it means it's all worked for me.

Zoho and thing 18

I'm having a go at thing 18 today and have published a "book" on Zoho writer. The address to access my "book" is: You can access at
http://notebook.zoho.com/nb/public/doggydone/book/64685000000002039

Having been a long time user of word and having office 2007 at work, I found this notebook pretty basic but relatively easy to use.

Wikis

I have had a look at a few of the Wikis mentioned. I found Library Success a really useful tool and am quite sure I will use it in my work. I found Princeton Univeristy's Book Lover's wiki somewhat useful but quite American in its focus which is less useful in an Australian public library. Our borrowers still favour British writers although this flavour is gradually changing with a definite rise in the popularity of Australian authors. I created a wiki earlier this year: workingandflowing.wetpaint.com which we were using to set up our policies and procedures on an Intranet. Unbelievably we are still waiting upon an Intranet for this organisation! Very frustrating.

Library 2.0/Web 2.0

I had a read of three articles listed in the Discovery exercise. In many ways they said much the same thing but with different foci. They are quite correct that libraries and the staff in them cannot simply row the boat as one said, they have to adapt and grow with our user's needs. And technology is a means to an end - it means that we can connext with our users in such simple and easy ways with little inconvenience to anyone. Some staff will need to take a seizmic shift in their thinking while others are already there. I am remembering when a staff member and I created a Wiki earlier this year, panic seemed to spread through the management team, it was extraordinary.

Del-icio-us musings

I had a look at Delicious and created Doggydone's favourites there with a music theme naturally. Also had a look at PLCMLC2 on Delicious and had a look at the Shifted Librarian which is in fact a Wiki where comments can be made. This had some very interesting stuff including library management systems that have a live rss feed available. Information such as that found here has great potential for a variety of projects we have on in our library Corporation. So much to look at...so little time!

Doggy's music pages

I had a play on Rollyo and create a Doggy's music search engine which i have now added to my blog. This was fun - enjoy searching my music web pages of choice. Naturally with a Dog flavour.

Librarything

Librarything is fun - I added my holdings of five of my favourite books and tags to the catalogue record too. I added my holdings to: Little women; Swallows and amazons; Harry Potter and the half-blood prince; The school at the chalet; and Rilla of Ingleside. I am also adding a link to Librarything on my blog.

Image Generators

I uploaded my Pavlov's Dog photo into the Generator Blog and got a shattered image of them. I saved this to my hard drive and am now going to try to upload it into my blog. The image is on your left. This is really nifty - I now understand how they get those divorced and split images in magazines!

RSS feeds and newsfeeders

I've been working on my RSS feeds today and have subscribed to Bloglines. I've added some BBC news rss feeds and Rolling Stone rss feeds to my bloglines account and also to my Yahoo account. I have also added the Victorian Public Libraries Learning 2.0 to my Bloglines account. It's great getting the latest headlines.
This is fun but also quite dangerous - how long will I spend looking at all this stuff?..And how will I find the time? It will be rather useful though to join various professional feeds and receive updates as they occur. It would be great for libraries to utilise rss feeds as our borrowers could subscribe and then be advised when their are updates to the website like events happening, etc.

Book review - The camel bookmobile

I can't resist popping in my first book review. And of course discussing the music it sent me to.

The camel bookmobile by Masha Hamilton
I read The camel bookmobile in a day, borrowing it mainly as I had seen an article on the real camel bookmobile in a library journal several years ago.
An American librarian, Fiona Sweeney, has volunteered to get the camel bookmobile off the ground and goes to Kenya to visit small desert communities with donated books transported around the desert on camels.
The novel focuses upon the experiences of the small semi-nomadic village of Mididima whose tribal ways are challenged by the infusion of books, ideas and a world beyond the village fence. The tribal elders are very suspicious of losing traditional tribal values and ways of life. Younger villagers welcome the opportunity to experience vicariously the world outside Mididima through the words and images portrayed in the donated books. Others like Scar Boy, a boy damaged in an attack by a hyena, use the books in ways not forseen by Fi, her boss and the villagers. In the middle is the teacher, Matani, who has experienced both worlds and has chosen to return to his village and try to educate the children of the village. Fiona seeks to help and educate others and finds herself receiving a life education in return. She will never be the same again.
Beautifully written, this novel is about love, loss and a collision of cultures. The story will resonate with you long after you’ve finished reading it.

This book quite literally sent me back to U2 for the rest of the weekend. I hadn't played All that you can't leave behind for quite a few months yet the themes of love and loss resonate through this album as they do through The camel bookmobile. In the end I felt compelled to play all my U2 albums (in order naturally - can't you tell I'm a librarian!)

Fd's Flickr toys and Trading Cards

Well I have used fd's Flickr toys to create a Dog trading card using my Dog photo labelled with that famous quote from the cover sleeve of the second album At the Sound of the Bell. The quote comes from a play titled Richelieu written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in the nineteenth century.

Too many things with signins

Is anyone else as sick as I am of all the different accounts, signins and passwords you have to establish. How does anyone remember it all? I am having pages of lists for yahoo, google, flickr,etc...
I feel better now I've whinged. Nothing like doggy droppings, huh!

Pavlov's Dog Photo

Naturally I feel a compulsion to have a Pavlov's Dog photo on my blog named in honor of this great band. so this is what I did for my Flickr photo.

Welcome

Welcome to The Pampered Menial named after the great 1970s band Pavlov's DogI'm going to talk about books and music as they go so well together and well, why not!Don't you think about what album might fit the book you are reading or have just read? I do and it can be a fascinating journey sometimes to see what a book makes you listen to.