Wikiness

This picture has absolutely nothing to do with wikis. This is me, "Happy Girl" at the Tim McGraw concert last weekend. My daughter was convinced that if she took me to a live Tim concert, paid for the expensive tickets, and bought me a pizze fritte, that I would stop talking about Tim and listening to "Southern Voice".

Unfortunately, that has not happened.

I have enjoyed using wikis for years. My son (who has been surrounded by librarians his whole life - his Mom, 2 neighbors, a former brother in law, and his cousin) is a huge supporter of Wikipedia. If I had a nickel for every time he has said, "Look it up on Wikipedia", I would be buying my own fried dough.

I think that wikis are great tools to be used in a variety of ways. I have used them many times to look up obscure minor league baseball players and trivia facts. This is not the highest level of research but as the Wikipedia people will tell you, "mass collaboration over time will produce high quality material". The links following the Wikipedia articles are also useful for further research as are the external links.

I have spent considerable time this week looking at both Wikipedia and Library Success - a best practices wiki.

Library success is an interesting wiki. The information is a bit scattered but can be quite entertaining if you are a library geek. I will try to add a link for the NYLA November conference at my earliest convenience.

Crack in the parking lot

Whenever I hear the word "pod" used in any of its many derivations, I do not get a warm fuzzy feeling. I remember seeing one of my first Sci-fi movies that included "the pod people". That caused me to have nightmares for a week. I also remember walking into a store in Rochester that was called "Pea in a Pod". I was in there a long time before I noticed that all of the clothes were either very stretchy or very LARGE. After some embarrassment from a sales clerk who asked "when are you due?" (I wasn't!!), I ran out and looked for the nearest "Jenny Craig".

I managed to escape the word "pod" for a long, long time.

And then I was transferred to North Syracuse where the word "POD" would stare out at me from the parking lot every day.

Of course the pod was very useful in housing books for the annual sale but I can't say that I was sorry to see it go.

Podcasts are a different thing altogether and I don't feel threatened by them at all. They are useful and I listened to a few last winter as part of an online class.

Today I listened to AnnK's original podcast and I wanted to tell AnnK that:

#1- I love the easy listening music intro

#2- Don't ya know, you don't sound like you are from Minnesota

#3- I think that the NS non-fiction section contains a Velveeta cheese cookbook from 1964 in case you are interested

#4- I am happy that women have the right to vote and I vote NO on pods in the parking lot!

#5- Your worry segment made me realize that by writing this, I will somehow cancel out my need to worry about pods any longer. So thanks Ann! You have made the 23things fly by.

Permanent Markings

I have been noticing a lot more tattoos lately. Maybe because it is summer and there is just more skin exposure? Maybe because I was transferred to North Syracuse which seems to be the capital of the tattooed world?

Maybe because I am over sixty and feel like my time to be tattooed has passed me by?

On one hand I am fascinated by them - the intricacies of the design, the time (and probably pain) involved, the physical permanency of it.

On the other hand, not so much.

What about when you are 50 with saggy cleavage, out eating a roast beef dinner with the word "vegan" peeking out the top of your shirt?

Will you feel weird, or hypocritical, or just old?

This is one of my favorite "tattoo" pictures.

Tim, of course, with the word "Faith" on his arm. I know this is his wife's name but I like to think it is also a statement of something else - a country boy who grew up without a father, only to find him when he was already a teenager.

I am hoping to get close enough to the stage tomorrow night, seeing Tim in concert, to ask about the tattoo.

Video attached here too - it was fun picking one out and learning to embed it.

Did you think it would be of anyone else??

Crack in the world

Flickr
My sister loved taking pictures.
She died in 1993 before Photoshop, Picasa or flickr were out there. She never had a laptop or a real cell phone. She never saw facebook, although many of her pictures are on there – on other people’s pages.
Her daughter has told me that she feels lucky to have all of the family pictures that my sister left behind and painstakingly captioned. Almost every picture has a date and names on the back. It is as if she knew that she would not be here to say, “Oh that was when Aunt Millie and I drove to Kingston”.

Both her daughter and my daughter inherited her love of photography and the recording of family history. After our family reunion in 2009 they set up a new facebook page, dedicated to my father’s family so that the aunts, uncles, and cousins (there are 40 of us) and all of their children could keep in touch. There are over 200 pictures posted on that page now, in various albums (with captions, of course).
I feel lucky that Carrie and Danielle are so talented and think that it is important to keep a family history.

Sometimes it is hard for me to look at those pictures. I miss the people in those pictures who are no longer in this world but I am grateful to have the pictures so that I can remember. (the one at the top is one taken of my sister and Danielle over 30 years ago - Danielle captioned it and has it on her own page).

My sister took pictures of everyday events. She did not wait for special occasions. She would have been a snapfish and flickr queen. I am not sorry that she was ahead of her time, only that she did not have more time.

All of this has taught me to be grateful for the everyday things and not to let life pass me by... that we are constantly making memories, whether recorded or not; things that we will remember and the things that we will leave behind.

Mary Frances Nolan

1947-1993

Cracking up...again #14

While wading through Technorati, which is addictive itself, I came across Jason's blog (a male librarian with a wacky sense of humor). Jason published his "Friday fun link: 15 most addictive Web sites Ever"

http://www.urlesque.com/2010/07/30/addictive-websites/

Do NOT go to this website! I repeat: Do NOT go to this website, even though it is Friday and you are desperate for fun.

You will be hooked and will spend precious NOPL time in the name of the 23 things and your co-workers will be upset with you.

I also found a cool game: "Eat, Pray, Love Bingo"! This is a must for any Julia Robert's fan (and who isn't? Wasn't Pretty Woman an out of work librarian? Well, she could have been if she wore chunky shoes instead of those stiletto boots.

Anyway, have some fun on your own time and checkout the great blogs and Technorati.

And NOPL Bunko fans: how about a fast game of "Eat, Pray, Love Bingo"?

Has Millie fallen through the cracks?

Devoted fans: You may have wondered where I've been.


The 23 things have not been high on my list of library priorities this month. Patrons of all shapes, ages, and sizes (including this questioning triceratops) have been waiting for me when we open the doors at North Syracuse. They do not care that we are all "behind" in the 23 things or, as Jill wrote in her blog, asking ourselves "where are we?". These are questions that have haunted mankind (and triceratops) for centuries and honestly, there are no good answers except maybe from the text a librarian people.
Although the many facets of public librarianship have been my priorities this month I have managed to:
#10 + #11 Create a LinkedIn account and made connections with Jill, Nancy, other NOPL people and a woman who worked with me in my pre-Woodstock days. I can see that this site will be very useful when looking for a job or in receiving recommendations from others.

#12 - del.icio.us: I did not love this idea at first. As Carol W. can attest, I have email going back to the time of the orange triceratops. My bookmarks are a disaster. I never remember what I have bookmarked and I did not want to open a yahoo account and have yet another set of passwords to remember. That being said, I am probably the ideal candidate to use this site. It is also nifty that you can access your account from anywhere and tie into a huge database of web links with a few clicks.

#13- Sharing options: I have shared many interesting tidbits of Tim McGraw information with my daughter. She has never once thanked me. She is, however, taking me to see Tim in person on September 3rd!!

#17- Yes, I know I have skipped a few "things" in between but my experience with Overdrive requires immediate attention. I have overdrive software on "several" computers and sometimes receive email that instructs me that a book is "available". I don't remember ordering any of these books or even downloading the software multiple times but the NOPL network does not lie! I now have detailed, printed instructions and Carol's personal, double-secret cell phone number in case a patron needs help with Overdrive.

That's about it!
I am going out tonight to buy a new cowgirl hat and will not be working on the 23 things.

Cracking down the dress code

Uh Oh!
NOPL Librarians had better watch out.
Dress code police are roaming the streets as hot weather and the added pressure of summer reading are pushing librarians to the fashion edge.