#12 ROLLYO (Later) -- #13 - Del.icio.us

There is a lot of social networking going on -- many, many ways to keep me connected with others -- for many different reasons. There are my Twitter followers (well, actually my Facebook friends), my photo friends (Flickr), my LibraryThing friends, and now my Folksonomy (tagging) friends. I must admit, my first reaction to Del.icio.us was - I already have lots of bookmarks - all alphabetized and easy to find, why another technology? I dutifully listened to the both the podcast and the tutorial. Light began to dawn. Then, I followed the link to PLCMCL2's account, clicked on "tags", then on "reference" :). I went out and back a few times and discovered that the tags change very quickly. It's necessary to grab that link and save the bookmark. I could see that this could be useful - especially for sharing links with collaborators. I did not set up my own account at this time, but could definitely envision doing so in the future. Do you know I immediately found sites that I didn't know existed and certainly don't want to forget about. I found the comments and think they could be useful. Sharing tags with other librarians can help to keep up with reference resources -- but one does have to wonder how to keep up with the bookmarks?
P.S. I haven't been able to get into ROLLYO. But I will keep trying.

Library Thing (#11)

Learning 2.0: a discovery learning tool for librarians. I confess that I am finding too many personal uses for these tools. I'm sure that almost everyone else already probably knew about this, but I didn't. I am elated. Reading is a favorite pastime for many members of our family. Because my children know that I like to read certain authors, they like to give me gifts of those books. I actually have a rather large collection of Agatha Christie books started probably 35 years ago or so. At times, even I run across a book and wonder - do I have that one. I also enjoy reading Alexander McCall Smith (as well as many others). This is great! I can "catalog" my books, share the link (http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Suneydew) with my family, and they will know (and so will I) whether I have a certain book or not. Not only that, but they can do the same, since I also am known to give books as gifts -- and often have to consult with them to see if they have the book, thereby entirely removing the element of surprise. With a group forum for librarians, reviews and recommendations, plus the huge and growing number of cataloged books, the value to the librarian is obvious. Kudos to Tim Spalding for creating this tool.

Image Generator

It has been way too long since I have been here. I actually probably spent too much time with #10 -- online image generators. I can foresee that when I have a minute to breathe again, I will want to spend a little more time with this. There seems to be a tremendous amount of things you can do with this and I have only touched the surface. I am including a few motivational posters -- all family members (except that strange character who has taken my daughter hostage). This particular exercise reminds me of Flickr a great deal. I also noticed that the site where I created these (http://bighugelabs.com), one of the resources provided is "home of fd's Flickr Toys. I found sites where I could for instance, put my head on another body -- don't think that would help. I can think of a lot of ways these types of techniques could be useful for the library. How about READ posters, invitations to a book club, a mosaic of storytime children?