Trading Card Redux

Grace & iHCPL
Originally uploaded by hoosgracie

I decided to try doing another trading card - I wasn't overly thrilled with the first one. I'm much happier with this one.

Week 3: #7 Photo Editing

scraps
Originally uploaded by hoosgracie

This is one of my dogs - Scrappy. He's a dachshund mixed with something - maybe Beagle. His personality is a lot bigger than his body and he loves big toys.

I tried out Picnik and really liked it. I love that it ties in with my Flickr account and found it very easy to use. It has good basic editing tools and will even let you do some advanced color correction. It also has some nice extras like the frames and text.

Cool Slide Show

I came across this on one of the other participant's blogs and thought it was way cool. I'm wondering if we could use this on the website as it looks like it would do what we want in a good size.

Week 3: Post #6

trading card
Originally uploaded by hoosgracie

How cool is this, I have my own trading card. Mashups are way cool as they let you go beyond a basic tool and combine it with other online tools. When I have time I'll look at some of the other mashup tools.

iHCPL into Week 3

I am so pleased that everyone participating in iHCPL seems to be having a good time. The posts that I've seen on participant's blogs have shown enthusiasm and excitement for the program. We continue to get new registrations and are up to 209 registrations as of late this afternoon. This afternoon, we packaged bling to send out to 207 people - a lot of work, but rewarding. Looking forward to the next two exercises this week.

Week 3: Post #5

At the Monticello Fish Pond
Originally uploaded by hoosgracie

This is from my trip to Virginia in June and is a picture of me at the Monticello fish pond.. Patrick and I went to Monticello - Thomas Jefferson's home - when we visited Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia, my alma mater.

I've had a Flickr account for over a year and really enjoy it as a way to share photos with my friends and family who are pretty far away. I took this opportunity to set up posting direction from Flickr to my blog. If anyone is reading this and wondering how, just click "blog this" on a picture, on your account, and walk through the steps.

Wow

I spent a good portion of my day working on registrations for iHCPL. 115 staff members have set up their blogs, and some of the initial posts have been great. While there has been some frustration - based on the posts I've seen - it looks like a lot of people are working together to figure it out. So far so good!

A Great Start to iHCPL

Registration for iHCPL opened today. As of when I left, we already had 53 staff members registered from a wide variety of positions and branches. It looks like a few people were very challenged by creating a blog, while others had one or had done a blog before. Overall, the comments have been great. I'm definately looking forward to the rest of the program.

Week 2: #4 Online Safety

This is a topic I feel very familiar with at this point. I've been actively involved in the group preparing Internet safety programming for the library. As part of that, we developed a page - linked in the exercise - for the main website on Internet Safety. Being online opens you up to the wide world. On this blog, it should be pretty obvious to just about anyone from HCPL, who I am. I have used my first name and listed my position. That said, I don't show an email address or other personal information to protect myself.

I am currently exploring a couple of social networking sites. On those sites I am listed by first and last name, but again, my contact information is private. When exploring the wonders of the web, you need to decide how much to share of yourself.

Week 2: #3 Learning Styles

While by nature I am a really organized person, finding time to do iHCPL is difficult. I have meant to do the program while we were preparing for it, but never found the time. I am enjoying following along with the program we've been planning for 5 months. Even so, I find that I'm blogging at home, but I don't really mind that, especially since I'm making posts outside of iHCPL topics as well.

So what's my learning style. While the slide show doesn't really talk about it, I am a doer. I need to do something or write it down to have it sink in. I am a big note taker, but I rarely refer back to my notes. I also prefer to try something on my own rather than take a class - at least in most things.

Week 2: #3 Grab a Blog

So in this exercise we grab a blog. We'll have had this particular blog for a few years now, I just haven't done anything with it - I did for awhile, but then dropped off. So, iHCPL is a great incentive to start blogging again. Since I had a blog already, I've been tweaking the template, which I'm finally happy with, for a few weeks now and adding some extras. I will probably still add a few more things, but I'm happy with it for now.

A Book Is Not a Child

Interesting post on Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books about authors who mess with their characters and the fans who become angry. I know the author this made me think of first was Laurell K. Hamilton, which the post mentions. I started reading the Anita Blake series a couple of years ago, after a number of the books were already out. I fell in love with Anita and her quirkiness, the zombie raisings, the vampire hunting, and the great supporting cast of characters. The books were an amazing mashup of mystery, fantasy, science fiction, and romance.

Then it all changed. Anita was no longer the fun, quirky character. Instead it was all about SEX. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind sex in books, but sheesh, this was ridiculous. In one of the most recent books, there was really no plot, it was just about Anita having sex.

In Candy's post, she has several things to think about:

• What was the last book you got angry about?
• Why were you angry?
• Were you mad at the book, or at the author--or both?
• Who do you think the characters truly belong to: the author? The readers? Both? Neither?

I don't know that I can say I'm mad, I'm more disappointed and maybe feel betrayed. It kind of feels like the author has taken a character who was awesome and done a 180 on the character's personality. I've read Laurell K. Hamilton's blog where at times she has defended the change in Anita and while I can understand that this is her character and as the author it has to come from her, I still think author's have a responsibility to their readers.

The Golden Compass

One of my favorite series of books is Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials. The first book, The Golden Compass, has been made into a movie, which will come out in December. I'll be curious to see how the book transfers to film. On the movie website, they have a Meet Your Daemon quiz. Daemons are physical representations of the soul in the His Dark Materials Universe.

10 Questions

There was an interesting post on the Sites and Soundbytes blog the other day about 10 questions to ask new administrators, which came from David Lee King's blog. I actually think based on the questions that we should go beyond just using this for administrators, what about other positions? Technology is simply too important today to ignore whether people use it or not. I can answer yes to most of these and hopefully most HCPL staff will be able to answer yes to at least some of them after iHCPL.

1. Do you read blogs. YES Which ones? Blogroll
   
2. Do you have a personal blog? YES. What’s it about? Right now I'm figuring that out, but it's a bit of a mish mash. I'll certainly be doing posts relating to iHCPL.
   
3. Do you participate in at least one social network? YES Which one? Facebook, LibraryThing
   
4. Have you ever uploaded a video online? YES What did you use to do it? YouTube
   
5. What’s your favorite search engine. Google Why? I've used it for years. I like that I can do a lot with it including image and news searches. I am very comfortable with it. I will use other search engines as needed.
   
6. Have you ever used an online classified service like craigslist? Yes, we've bought (Table Saw) and sold (riding mower) using Craigslist.
   
7. Besides making phone calls—how else do you use your mobile phone? I actually only use it to make phone calls.
   
8. Have you ever registered a domain name? Yes, I've registered several.
   
9. Do you use social bookmarks or tagging? Yes, I have a del.icio.us account.
   
10. Do you use a feed reader of some sort? Yes Which one? Bloglines Why? I like that it is online and can therefore use it anywhere. I email posts extensively from Bloglines to myself and other people. I was just trying out Bloglines Beta today and was happy to see they had added an email feature, although there are still several bugs to work out.

Booked by 3 Meme for September

Came across this and thought it was kind of cool, especially since I love LibraryThing.

I. Do you have a permanent record of your books?

1. Yes, I keep a manual listing or Excel file or something similar on paper or my computer.
2. Yes, I keep it online on a site like Library Thing or Shelfari.
3. No, who has the time?!

II. If you keep track of your books on a website, do you...

1. Have a free or paid account?
2. Use it to track books to be read as well as books owned, or do you use the site just for your To Be Read list or something else I can't think of? - I use it to keep track of books I have read, whether I own them or not.
   
3. Enter the data manually or did you get a barcode scanner so I can add books faster?

III. Miscellaneous questions.

1. If you use the online sites, do you just catalog your books or do you participate in forums, check other libraries, and otherwise network with other users?
2. If you don't use an online site, do you want to but don't have the time? N/A
   
3. If you use one of the sites, which one and what's your user name so the rest of us can check out your library? Hoosgracie @ LibraryThing - http://www.librarything.com/profile/hoosgracie
   

Link

Well, We're Off

After a great kick-off Friday & yesterday with Michelle Boule, iHCPL has finally begun. 170+ people have viewed the slide show on SlideShare, which is a good sign. Since I have been lazy and haven't actually done my blog posts, I will be following along with the program, even though I feel like I know most of it inside and out.