Library Humor

by poesygalore | Create your own Cartoon at www.toondoo.com

Having this cartoon show up in my bloglines list always brightens my day.

That Can't Be Good for the Planet

I note that Oriental Trading offers a wealth of projects, prizes, and trinkets suitable for Earth Day.

Suitable if you don't think that metal earth key chain or plastic globe pencil sharpener isn't going into the landfill after bouncing around in the minivan for a few weeks.

I won't even discuss whether I think craft foam is made with environmentally friendly dyes, in low-emssion factories.

More Research on Teens & Computers

Teenagers who are preoccupied with their Internet time may be more prone to aggressive behavior, researchers reported Monday.

Read more at Reuters, here.

This brief summary of a recent study seems to show correlations, not causality. Kids who hit are also kids obsessed with being online.

New to Me: Hashtags

The Washington Post's "Personal Technology" column is a great way to keep up. Today, author Rob Pegoraro answers a question about webcams, and defines hashtags - tagging for posts with Twitter and similar services.

What I Learned Today

A frequent patron wanted a book about the Boston Molasses Flood. Who knew? Well, WorldCat knew, so I requested it via ILL.

Week 2: Blogs

For Week Two of CHPLearning, we take on blogs. I have been blogging with Blogger since February 2003, when I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. I told scary tales of substitute teaching, logged library school adventures, and I share stories about my life and Richmond with far-flung friends. (Well, until I joined Facebook - that's my main stay-in-touch tool, now, and I use my personal blog mostly for longer stories.) I also have a LiveJournal account, and my best friend set up a WordPress blog for me, but I definitely like Blogger best. In the six years I have been using it, it has become more intuitive. I used to use a fair bit of html, but now it's all buttons and widgets. Still, I am glad for the tiny bit of html I learned in library school because it helps me tinker with blogs and other web 2.0y things.

This week's CHPLearning entry prodded me to visit Technocrati and Google's blog search. I knew about them, but hadn't had the need to use them. I can't quite picture a patron asking "how can I find a blog about such-and-such," but you never know.

Speaking of patrons, early in my CHPL career, a patron asked how he could share pictures of his old car with other car collectors and I helped him set up a blog. I thought it would be a great solution and coached him along. For a week or two, I checked back on that URL: he hadn't updated it. Did he forget his password? Was it the wrong solution for his need? I learned Flickr right after that, so I could help any future patrons with a need like that, but patrons never ask us for that level of support. Most folks need to learn how to attach a resume to an email or figure out how to do an online job application. Is it because people who want to blog will just play with it or ask their friend who blogs how to do it? Is it because library staff aren't perceived as knowledgeable about such "advanced" things? Let's keep it from being the latter!

Not That Anyone Asked

Elizabeth Burns writes here about being on the Printz Award committee - how she started with notes on her notes for what to read for, and by the end had criteria memorized. I don't think I could do that kind of reading. Not that I've been asked.

On Taking New Media Seriously

The Shifted Librarian (Jenny) writes here of a recent occasion when she acted as a bridge between generations. The gist: someone posted a call for a change on a blog; some criticized him for not using more "proper" channels. At first, Jenny writes, she agreed with that latter point, but then she saw how the blog comment spark more comments, and change happened: "writing a blog post these days is a pretty high level of engagement," and is certainly worth attention. She sums up:

lesson from these recent experiences is that it’s important for associations (and libraries) to understand that every blog post, every tweet, every FF comment is like a letter to the editor or someone standing up in a membership meeting and voicing a complaint. They’re the 21st century equivalent of a phone call or a conversation in the hallway at a conference, and we have to take them just as seriously and respond to them the same way we would those 20th century methods of communication.

I agree. I bet I'd hear from lots more teens if they could approach me electronically instead of (scary!) in person.

Reader

Here's an article from Wired on a new reader that's magazine-shaped, rather than chunky, like the Kindle.

Firefox + WorldCat = Awesomeness

I love the FireFox add on that lets me keep my favorite search engines handy. A woman just brought up a paperback copy of Lord of the Flies - she was worried it was missing pages.

Click, I made WorldCat what I'll search via the box in my browser. I scanned the barcode number of the book she gave me into the search box, and WorldCat took me straight to the same version of the book. I clicked the "details" tab to see the catalog record. The number of pages there matched the number in the book in hand.

"Yes, m'am, it's got all the pages."