Library Lynn's Blog

2011-09-03T09:52:00.000-07:00

New Post

2011-08-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

This is a new post. I am writing in the blogging class.

Test

2011-03-31T14:26:00.000-07:00

I am going to add a link. This is my dad's memory page.

John Boston Memorial Page

My Library

2011-03-22T16:06:00.000-07:00

This is a pitcure of Yorba Linda's first librarian: Gertrude Welch. She's sitting on an ostrich named President Taft at the Cawston Ostrich Farm in Pasadena.

This is a picture of the Yorba Linda Public Library.

The Attenbury Emeralds by Jill Patton Walsh

2011-03-22T15:06:00.001-07:00

It's been a long time since I've written a review here. Now I'll try to catch up.

The Attenbury Emeralds is a mystery novel based on the characters of Dorothy Sayers - yup, a Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane novel.

Unfortunately I read those novels so long ago that I don't know how well Patton's characters match Sayer's.

What I can tell you is that I did enjoy this book and I mostly liked the interplay between the couple and the way Patton describes the post-war period the book takes place in.

It starts out with Lord Peter and Bunter relating a tale of the Attenbury Emeralds to Harriet. This story started before the Sayers books/Lord Peter's first related case. The case comes into the present when it's revealed that the emerald(s) are more than they seem. Sort of. It's hard to describe without giving away too much.

This is the third in a series. The first one Thrones, Dominations I haven't read. The second one, Presumption of Death I have read and look here for a review sometime in the future. Thrones, Dominations is a continuation of a Sayers' novel. Presumption of Death was written based on Sayers' notes about life during WWII. The Attenbury Emeralds is Patton's first mystery in the series which owes nothing but the characters to Sayers.

An Irish Country Village by Patrick Taylor

2011-03-22T15:05:00.001-07:00

This book takes place in a small fictional village in Northern Ireland called Ballybucklebo. A doctor and his assistant doctor take care of the ills and woes of the village. That's mostly what happens.

Funny stuff happens (one man fleeces an Englishman by selling him an Irish coin of small value but with a horse on it by telling him it's a commemorative coin with some special horse on it).

It starts out rocky for the assistant doctor, Barry Laverty. A patient he helped has died of something medical. He needs some help to make sure the villagers will continue to trust him. Laverty also falls in love during the course of this book.

I liked this book because it was funny and sweet and a quiet book. It was perfect for a rainy day of pleasure reading

Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

2011-03-22T15:03:00.000-07:00

Now for something different. A non-fiction book. You probably have read or at least know a bit about this book because it's a #1 New York Times bestseller and because of the movie with Julia Roberts.

I loved the eat section of this book.

Elizabeth Gilbert is suffering through a nasty divorce and an on-again off-again relationship with a new boyfriend. She decides to take a year long trip to Italy (she loves the sound of the language), to India (because she's gotten into yoga and meditation and wants to spend time in her gurus ashram) and to Bali because she'd be to Bali for work and had met a medicine man who said she'd return.

So in the Italy section of the book, she eats and we also read a lot about her failed marriage and sticky divorce. We read about her relationship with her boyfriend that she had after the marriage broke up. I found this all very interesting. It was very personal and emotional.

In India, Elizabeth goes to the ashram. There she relates how she manages in the ashram. I felt it was all about her and that she was boasting about her experiences and spirituality. At the end of that section, it sounded as though she had finished her spiritual journey and was now perfect in this aspect of herself. Nothing else to learn. Bah. Didn't like this section (can you tell?).

She goes to Bali thinking she'll learn natural medicine from the medicine man, Ketut. I liked this section less than Italy and more than India. She learns things I can relate to (like how to love someone when it's hard and how to practice some tough love). Now for something different. A non-fiction book. You probably have read or at least know a bit about this book because it's a #1 New York Times bestseller and because of the movie with Julia Roberts.

I loved the eat section of this book.

Elizabeth Gilbert is suffering through a nasty divorce and an on-again off-again relationship with a new boyfriend. She decides to take a year long trip to Italy (she loves the sound of the language), to India (because she's gotten into yoga and meditation and wants to spend time in her gurus ashram) and to Bali because she'd be to Bali for work and had met a medicine man who said she'd return.

So in the Italy section of the book, she eats and we also read a lot about her failed marriage and sticky divorce. We read about her relationship with her boyfriend that she had after the marriage broke up. I found this all very interesting. It was very personal and emotional.

In India, Elizabeth goes to the ashram. There she relates how she manages in the ashram. I felt it was all about her and that she was boasting about her experiences and spirituality. At the end of that section, it sounded as though she had finished her spiritual journey and was now perfect in this aspect of herself. Nothing else to learn. Bah. Didn't like this section (can you tell?).

She goes to Bali thinking she'll learn natural medicine from the medicine man, Ketut. I liked this section less than Italy and more than India. She learns things I can relate to (like how to love someone when it's hard and how to practice some tough love).

Death of a Chimney Sweep by M.C. Beaton

2011-03-22T14:55:00.000-07:00

I love the books by M.C. Beaton. That being said this is probably one of the weaker ones. Yes, I still enjoyed it immensely. Maybe I read it too quickly. Maybe I didn't pay a lot of attention to the plot (entirely likely).

But maybe, also, the plot wanders a bit.

At the start a couple moves into a nice home in Drim, a dull and dreary town in Hamish Macbeth's beat. They eventually need a chimney sweep, who does of course die. A blortload of other people die too. We wander the world watching people die as a result of the original murder.

But the epilogue is great. I thought that was the best part of the story.

Thing #23, thoughts on this project

2008-01-31T10:53:00.000-08:00

Overall, I really liked this project. I learned a lot.

One thing I learned was to try new things on the internet - most of them are easy to use. There are so many new applications popping up and we as librarians should be on the look out for the ones that we can use in our work and lives.

#22, Teach someone

2008-01-31T10:50:00.000-08:00

I really like Library Thing and thought my mother in law would too. So I taught her the basics of it. It took less than 10 minutes and she was thrilled. I taught her how to log in and out, how to add a book and the different ways of viewing and organizing the books.

She wants to use it to catalog her entire collection of books!

Thing #21, tools for locating podcasts

2008-01-25T10:46:00.000-08:00

Of course, iTunes is the place for finding iTunes podcasts.

I looked at Yahoo Audio which was useful. I liked the fact that you can look for online music stores, or on the web, or at podcasts.

I thought podcastalley.com and its directory to be a bit more useful. It wasn't incredibly inuitive to use. But I liked what I was able to find.

Thing #20, YouTube and other such sites

2008-01-25T10:38:00.000-08:00

I looked at YouTube, the most popular site for videos that people upload. I also looked at google video which not only is a site for uploading videos, but it also lets you seach for "all videos" on the net. I liked metacafe.com's slide preview option. You don't have to watch the video in order to get an idea what it is about. Metatube says it searches 100 video sharing sites. But mostly I just got results for YouTube.

Thing #19, My Maps on Google Maps

2008-01-24T16:51:00.000-08:00

This was the hardest thing for me so far. I could easily make a map on Google and save it. I could upload a picture to Flickr.com. But putting the 2 together was agonizing for me. P. had to help me - twice. I made 2 maps: one for the library and 1 for my house (the one for the house is private - email me if you want me to put you on the list of people who can access it). I had to make sure I at least got the concept.

As for use in LibraryLand: well, it is nice that people could see what the lbrary looks like if they use google maps to find it.

Thing #18, Google Docs

2008-01-24T11:24:00.000-08:00

So I looked at google docs and created a document. I want to be to share the document with my computer classes volunteer. (It's a document saying when the classes are.) I think it's great because they'd never be able to use the excuse that they lost the paper version as a reason not to show up.

Thing #17, Add an entry to InfoPeople's Wiki

2008-01-22T15:50:00.000-08:00

Well, that was easy. Log in, click on edit and type away. The hardest part was figuring out what to say. In the end I repeated part of my last post about interesting wikis done by libraries.

Thing #16, Learn about Wikis

2008-01-22T14:57:00.000-08:00

The definition of wiki according to wikipedia.org is

"A wiki is software that allows users to create, edit, and link web pages easily. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites."

Lots of libraries use wikis. There were two popular uses I found: 1) descriptive/informational wikis (where is the library, holdings, history of the library etc) and 2) subject guides or pathfinders.

Some of the more unique ways of using wikis were:

a Library 2.0 learning wiki (Arlington Public Library)
a Worldcat search function on a wiki (Bull Run Library)
Book Lovers' Wiki where people reviewed books (Princeton Public Library)
handouts and outlines of classes (Akron-Summit County Public Library
library volunteers wiki (Tulsa County Library)
the library policies and procedures as a wiki (Taunton Public Library)

Thing #15: perspectives on Library 2.0

2008-01-21T20:00:00.000-08:00

I read the 2 suggested readings and here is my blog about them.

First of all, I've decided that Library 2.0 is a vague term and no one can agree on what it means. Without a solid definition, you can't really talk about it. So I've decided what it means to me. It's those web applications which are often open-source and collaborative, that can be brought into the library for use on our computers and which serve our patrons in some way, and may even involve patrons.

I am omitting coffee counters and rock concerts and gaming tournaments from the definition. I think those are great ways to serve patrons, but aren't really Library 2.0.

Wikis, folksonomies/tagging and social networking can all be called part of Library 2.0. And there are more. The idea is to bring better and more varied service to more people via the Web.

We need also to think about those who have no computer, but that's beyond Library 2.0 in my definition.

There are some caveats mentioned on page 19 of the Library 2.0 and the future of libraries article (the Charles W Bailey Jr section). If a library is to have a blog or wiki which is then open to alteration or comments by the public, you really have to watch out for some things. The three mentioned are libel, fiction presented as facts and intellectual property violations. I think that is one of the most important points I came away with. Libraries are trusted sources of information. I wouldn't want to damage that reputation.

I thought one idea mentioned was worthy of looking into for Yorba Linda Public Library. One is based on "Picture Ann Arbor". I'd love to see patrons and users letting us scan in pictures of an older Yorba Linda for all to see on the web site. I'd also like to see written stories of old Yorba Linda.

Thing #14, Technorati

2008-01-19T14:15:00.000-08:00

Of all the things I've looked at so far, this was the least useful.

I explored Technorati both by doing searches and also by clicking on the tags. But I'm not sure I learned "how tags work with blog posts."

One thing is that I decided to tag my own posts.

Thing #13, del.icio.us

2008-01-19T13:56:00.000-08:00

I have now tagged some library 2.0 websites. It was quite easy. What I foudn difficult was to tag other sites which do not have the del.icio.us icon on them. My understanding is that I would put it on the computer I'm using and then it would be easy. Since I'm sharing a computer, it seemed unfair to add something like that without permission.

I can certainly see the value of del.icio.us. I'd like to be able to use all my bookmarks no matter which computer I'm using. I think it'd also be useful to combine them into a Yorba Linda Public Library set and have subject specialists add bookmarks as indicated.

Thing #12 Rollyo and Ning

2008-01-17T16:09:00.000-08:00

ROLLYO

I went to the Rollyo site today. I experimented with searching with the pre-made Rollyo searches and also made my own.

I can see how this would be pretty cool. If we have a lot of questions of a certain type, then we could use this to do "hand-made" searches of particular web-sites.

The one I made was for science fiction and fantasy works and issues (of course).

This would be really handy if our subject specialists could make Rollyo search sites and then all the rest of us could use them. We could have a business one, a local history/genealogy one, a law one, and so forth.

NING

I really had fun with Ning. I decided to add a Yorba Linda history ning community. I'm all excited because I could add pictures. I could also put up information on the Pink Lady (alledged ghost in a YL cemetery) as well as anything else I could think of.

Since it's a social site, others (like maybe the Historical Society) might want to join and add information. We could link to it from our library website/YL history web site. I already put a link to the yorbalindahistory.org web site on the ning community.

Thing #11 - LibraryThing

2008-01-17T13:42:00.000-08:00

I loved LibraryThing. I think it's a great way to 1) keep a record of what I buy and 2) keep a record of what I read from the library.

I don't know if there's a way to connect OPACs to LibraryThing but what a lovely way to record reviews and tags.

Thing #10

2007-12-18T16:26:00.000-08:00

As you can see, I've been playing with image and text generators. They're awfully fun.

It's very easy to do. Each page seems to have its own instructions about how to copy the html to your blog. After doing it once, though, it was almost all the same.

To find them, I just typed in text generator or image generator into a search engine and got lots of hits.

I'm not sure there's an application for image and text generators in the library world.

A different text generator.

2007-12-18T16:17:00.000-08:00

Text Generator play

2007-12-18T16:13:00.000-08:00

Text Generator - Leaf Text - Counters - YourGen.com

What's your fortune?

2007-12-18T16:09:00.001-08:00

wmode="transparent" align="middle" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" />

Get a Fortune Cookie for your page!

2007-12-18T16:04:00.000-08:00

bgcolor="ffffff" align="middle" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" />

Thing #9 - Twitter

2007-12-17T18:54:00.001-08:00

Well, I've got a Twitter account and have entered something into it. None of my friends in my Yahoo mail account have a Twitter account so I can't follow any friends. My username is librarylynn.

Twitter would be especially useful for a librarian who is the mouthpiece of the library to talk about what's going on at the library.

Things #7 and 8

2007-12-17T18:33:00.000-08:00

#7 was to get a bloglines account which I already had from a long time ago.

#8 was to add some feeds. I had forgotten how, and had to re-teach myself. It was quite easy.

I think that this is a great way to get news and blogs without having to make each one a bookmark on every computer you use. Just go to bloglines and pow! read up on everything since you visited before. This is especially handy since I don't want to force my bookmarks on other people who use the same computers I do.

Thing #6

2007-12-04T11:34:00.000-08:00

Okay, I figured out I was numbering everything wrong. Now I'm on track.

For #6, I'm supposed to look at some library web sites which are using Web 2.0 and blog about anything Web 2.0 that I think would be useful for our library.

Of the four libraries mentioned in the document I'm working from, the one I'm most impressed with is the Ann Arbor District Library.

Ann Arbor District Library has 2 things which I'd love to include on our web site (catalog). 1) Catalog tags. Wouldn't it be totally cool for the public to be able to tag a book or dvd or whatever? That's another way for people to search for items they're interested in and it's a way of involving the public. That got me excited. 2) AADL has a card catalog view of the MARC record. On it there are 3 places where a patron can write their opinion of the book or dvd, etc. So for Bride and Prejudice people wrote that it had good dancing, it's a fun movie, and that it's a great entree into Bollywood films.

Thing #2 (again), Flickr Mashups

2007-11-30T15:55:00.000-08:00

Well, I tried four Flickr mashups this week.

It involved first finding out what a mashup is. In this case, what a mashup is is a program that takes Flickr and does something else with the pictures and tags. I look at it as like an overhead with a transparency on the bottom called Flickr and one lying over it which is the mashup. It creates something new.

1) Retrievr: What you do here is draw a picture (or supply the website with a picture, which I didn't do) and Retrievr tries to find pictures to match what you drew. I think this is more fun that useful. I got lots of pictures with the color scheme that I drew in. I got lots of pretty results. But I didn't get lots of pertinent results. You also can't draw fine lines which I think is a drawback.

2) Spell with Flickr: I didn't spend too much time with this one. You enter a word and the mashup takes each letter and inserts a picture of the letter from Flickr. Fun for kidnappers, I call it.

3) Tagnautica: You enter a word/tag, and the program creates a circle of tags and pictures related to your tag. So "Hello Kitty" resulted in related tags like pink and toy and a bunch more. It was mesmerizing. I had so much fun doing this until I found out you can't click on the resulting tags and find more pictures with that tag.

4) Captionr!: I thought this one would be so much fun and I was disappointed. The pictures I chose always got turned sideways on the screen even though they were right side up in Flickr. Then when I tried to put in the caption, I couldn't turn the bubble to orient the same way as the picture. I just couldn't figure it out, so I gave up.

Thing #2 Flickr

2007-11-27T14:44:00.000-08:00

I signed up for a Flickr account today and joined some groups. Signing up was way easy. So was joining the groups. (They have groups for everything!) I think the purpose is so I can post to the discussions and so I can post pictures to the group.

I think I will borrow my husband's digital camera and take some pictures and upload them. Just to see what it's like.

What I really enjoyed was looking at the tags and exploring pictures people took that way.

Next I need to look at mashups. I did a google search to find out what are mashups and I found a site which lists the 10 best Flickr mashups. What it looks like from the article is that programmers create some sort of toy or useful program for Flickr.

To Begin

2007-11-19T17:34:00.000-08:00

I am a librarian learning Web 2.0 programs, by participating in a program called 23 Things. My first assignment is to set up a blog and post something.

Setting up this blog was quite easy. I have a gmail account and with that and a little more info, I was in! I also have a Live Journal account. If you go to library_lynn.livejournal.com you'll see books I've read and reviewed over a few years.

My second assignment is to explore Flickr.