L&P@CML: Twitter

Tweet, tweet!

At least one academic library (or so I have seen reported in the liteature) has begun to use Twitter with students, tweeting about new item arrivals and library hours and library closures due to weather (generally snow emergencies in their case--they used it for this purpose this past year).

It seems a good way to make the library visible, but they have a more captive audience than do we in the public library realm.

If we were to learn that enough customers were following our tweets, it could be a good way to market the collection ("New Janet Evanovich "Tortuous 24" arrived today--Get it at the Library!") or to advise about hours/closures, etc.

Personally, I wouldn't use Twitter, at least now. I'm strained enough to have time to do everything I need to do without taking an extra minute on top of it to tweet what I'm doing. I might someday set up a cell phone to receive tweets from others, if they wanted me to knwo what they were doing in this way.

What am I doing? I typing a tweet about how I'm using Twitter to type a tweet.

L&P@CML: Library Thing

I've known about LibraryThing for years and have visited it with the reference classes I teach, but I've never set up an account before. Maybe I'm not a big enough library geek (though how much bigger a geek could one ask for than someone who works in a library and teaches about librarianship too?) to want a catalog of my books--I hardly have time to do what is much more important, namely read them. At Dublin Branch, many of the librarians/LAs use LibraryThing to track what they have read to provide good reads for Reader's Advisory purposes. This is an excellent practical use for the site. I'm encouraging people to put reviews on our branch wiki as well to provide a pool of RA choices in one place, however, rather than having to know everyone's LibraryThing URL.

It's interesting that LibraryThing is entering into partnerships to be part of LibraryLand's various catalog overlays.

Here's my LibraryThing link, such as it is:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/aeolussurf

Michael

"A catalog is good, but knowledge is better."

L&P@CML Image Generators

Being what McLuhan called "print oriented," I've had more fun with word generators. And I like the post-modern joy of a blog creator for weary bloggers. Try it here: http://www.aussiebloggers.com.au/blogpost.html

Soon you to can have results like the following without having to think at all; you'll finally be able to satisfy that nagging need to blog while still having time for a life.

"Abject apologies I just returned from my daily swim on the beautiful Fijian beach and realised I have not updated this since Paris Hilton was in jail... You would not believe I spend all my time in front of a computer. Apologies to my regular readers! Even the little blue ones!.

I am absolutely consumed with only your readership as life preserver, choosing my retirement village, just generally being of great concern to the secret service, my day is dreadfully busy from the first cockadoodledoo from the rooster to I run out of alcohol. I am putting money aside so I can run away. it will be fun fun fun till they take my TBird away.

I won't promise anything to you but that when the weather turns bad, I will blog more often. No, really! This is for my ever faithful, devoted public."

No good? Well, at least it was quick and easy and fun.

Signed (it being International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and having used a pirate name generator),

Iron Black Mike

L&P@CML Finding Feeds

Blogline's search tool works easily to find popular feeds. Topix.net and Technorati weren't much use, at least to me, because they kept finding search terms as key words in posts that were unrelated to my topic rather than finding feeds that were on the subject of interest. Sindicat8.com didn't open at all despite several tries--must be popular. Maybe they ought to look into the bandwidth situation. The above feed finder's breakdowns of feed by directory weren't much use--the directories weren't detailed enough to help me.

Okay, time for true confessions.

I found better information on blogs/feeds on SUBJECTS faster with a Google Search than any of the above (they were good for showing me popular blogs on general or broad areas of interest). And why use Bloglines at all when one can simply use the browser Reader feature to get the same information faster and easier? I found I could subscribe to reads much more quickly with the reader than with Bloglines. I can get the information without logging to any sites. With 100 million (or however many bloggers there are) out there, making the likelihood of anyone I don't know caring about my feed list EXTREMELY small, does the social networking aspect provided by Bloglines make it worth the extra time to sign up and to log in? I want my feed information now and fast and with as little fuss as possible, and browser readers give it to me more efficiently than Bloglines.

It was fun to investigate. I do like the ability to get to my feeds from any computer buy logging into bloglines, for tiems I might not have a laptop with me.

Michael

L&P@CML: LISNews

Many of you probably already know this site; however, if you don't, it's yet another fun way to keep up with World Wide Library and Information Science News. You'll find postings on everything from book reviews to headlines that concern us all in the profession. LIS News Feeds are available. Keeping up with the news can be daunting: there's just too many ways to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information. This site helps one manage.

LearnNPlay at CML--Dublin's Children's Area

These are photos of Dublin's Children's Area--of our two showcases, O'Reilly the Bookworm and a window that looks out upon a garden. Notice, however, how bland everything else is. :-) We are re-modleing the entire Children's area, however, so stay tuned for future pix that will show what we've done--with BIG WOW Factor added!