Blogging for a Good Book

I am in love with this blog -- Blogging for a Good Book. !! I guess there is a reason it won the 2009 Louis Shores/Greenwood Publishing Group Award given for excellence in book reviewing.

Just what I need is more books to read, but I can't seem to get enough. It is a great place to look for examples of what a good book review looks like -- not a review of a good book, but a well written review.

So I am off to read some reviews (I need a lot of practice) and to add to my list of TO READ books.

I feel naked

I borrowed the camera 3 weeks ago and have walked to work every day since with it in my hand (you never know when you will see something picture worthy). Joel borrowed it yesterday to take to Donna Gartenmann's award ceremony (a very good cause) and so I didn't have it with me on my way in.

I knew when I left the house this morning that because I did not have the camera I would see something that I wanted to photograph. And I did. As I walked past the Walrus on 11th and Walnut I happened to look in the window and saw something cool and gross. There was a huge pile of garbage on the floor. I guess the cleaning crew just pushes everything into the center of the room and picks up/throws out from there. I know it doesn't really sound that interesting, but you should have seen the size of this pile! It was Thursday night (college night) they were cleaning up after, so I guess it makes sense, but it was enormous. You will just have to believe me, since I couldn't document it.

When I got here today Joel returned the camera to me and I returned it to the gadgets cabinet. I think 3 weeks was enough this time around, though I do feel bereft, naked, like I have forgotten something important, like pants. I guess I am just going to have to put Digital camera on my wish list, for that day when I come into a ton of money...Or I could just wait a respectable amount of time and take the library camera out for a spin again.

Holds Process Spoofs on YouTube

I have an idea for a link on the your Hold request was successful page of our website. I want to educate the patrons on the entire holds process, and I want to use some of the cool toys we have. During our recent All Circ Staff Meeting I told my fellow coworkers about the serious ideas and then we went a little crazy and came up with some fun silly ideas.

I was telling Tony about my idea and the silly ones and he said it might be fun to actually do the funny ones and put them on YouTube.

I am hoping for some help here, so I sent an email to the circ staff, but I am now opening it up to all who read this blog (all none of you!!)

These are some of the ideas we talked about.

Spoof Holds:

Runner at computer station waiting for requests to come in. Sprinting to shelves and putting books on Holds Pickup shelves... Picture either serious runner or Pauly Bleeker (Juno) type guy.

Fleet of runners at the ready, announcement comes in, many run off to retrieve books...

Library worker at bus stop with big armload of books moving them from MDE to Main for holds...

Car with flashing lights and siren -- says "Library Holds" on side of car...

Feel free to run (ha) with these... Use these ideas or come up with your own. Have fun!!

LibraryThing v. GoodReads

I thought it was time for a good old fashioned showdown. LT and GR are going head to head right here, right now.Each has things I like and things I don't like.

LibraryThing Pros and Cons
+ I get to create all the tags I use to 'catalog' my books
+ I get to chose the cover (I like the covers to match the edition of the book I read/own)
+I get to organize my library in many different ways (author, title, year, however I want)
-Add books is a separate screen
-the social networking aspect of LT seems clunky
-LT allows you to add 200 books for free then wants a membership fee to add more

GoodReads Pros and Cons
+ easy to see what friends are reading, and to add their books to my list
+really easy to add books
+ GR is free
+ GR hav a trivia game
-has set 'shelves' and it seems like a lot of work to add new ones
-there does not seem to be a way to choose book covers
-there does not seem to be a way to choose how books are organized

To be fair I have not spent a lot of time messing around with finding friends on LibraryThing. I like these sights more for their ability to keep track of the books I want to read, have read, didn't finish, etc. and less for the social-ness of them.

I imported all my books from LibraryThing to GoodReads so instead of adding them one at a time, I had none then over 2,000. Some arrived at GR as books I have never heard of, I am still trying to go through list to delete the ones I do not want.

GoodReads

I lied. GoodReads is not one of the things I included when I was going through BPL 2.0. I hadn't signed up on my own and Melinda didn't ask me to to join until after I had finished BPL 2.0 so there are no old posts about GoodReads on this blog. I do talk about LibraryThing in a previous post.

So, to let people see what I had on the LearningAlliance wiki (one of the things that was taking up so much space) I am adding it here.

Learning Alliance wiki

I got permission today to put my blog (yes, this blog) on the Learning Alliance wiki BPL 2.0 in Action page.

I navigated to the Learning Alliance wiki from the HelpDesk page and logged in. I had added something 2 days ago the wiki (twice and it kept disappearing) so I thought I would try it one more time before I called in the big guns (Terzah). The disappearing link was not there, but I tried to add the new link anyway. It took forever to save. Then I realized that I had mixed up the title of the blog and needed to move some words around. I got a weird message. I stopped. Started again and got the same message (something about an overflow on line 140). Sighing, I picked up the phone to call in backup. Not a minute later Terzah was here to help. Luckily, she had never seen the message either, and was as confused as I about why we kept getting it. We think that all of the Action we have seen in BPL 2.0 has filled our quota and it is no9t allowing us to add more lines.

Well, it seems that I have been a bit of a space hog; I had my GoodReads list, a Flickr link and this blog listing. Whew, with all that you would think that I actually had something interesting to say. You would be wrong!! All that cool stuff is still around, you readers are just going to have to do a little work. My GoodReads and Flickr links are here in the blog.

Flickr and the camera

I took the camera home with me last night and left the house early this morning so I could take some pictures on my way to work. I am not a photographer, so some of the pictures look like I was running past the subject as I pushed the button (you will not see those, they have already been deleted).

Today I created a flickr account and successfully moved photos from camera to computer to flickr, no small feat, I am telling you! At first I couldn't get the computer to recognize the camera, I plugged and unplugged everything I could think of, then I realized that the camera needed to be in view picture mode, not take picture mode. After that it was a cake walk!

Flickr is very easy to use and I am filling up my free account very fast. Click here to see my masterpieces.

I plan on taking more pictures, experimenting with the camera to see what it can do, so check back soon.