Flickering

I seem to be able to get to the "27 things" less than once a month, being mostly harbored at Skyway and barely able to accomplish my standard assigned tasks, LA/LTA stuff and magazines/lost and found, but here I am at Tukwila for a sub shift and I finally managed to complete Week 5. I had previously signed up for a Flicker account, which was really no different from signing into my Yahoo account. Even without a Yahoo account it would be very simple to get a new Flicker account.

Where I ran into problems was in figuring out how to upload pictures I'd taken from my phone while doing this at work. It would have been relatively simple to upload my pictures from the phone to my personal "pc", and from there upload them to Flicker, but I didn't have the mini-usb cord needed to accomplish that here. Today I was able to go online to complete the necessary steps to send photos taken with my phone directly to Flicker. Once I had that accomplished it was a very simple task to upload the photo, tag it and add a description. The one I chose for this exercise is a picture of the entrance to Tukwila Library, and I managed to use Flicker's built in photo editing service to do some minimal photo editing. As with most things on the web or on the computer, what is most necessary is to read the screen and follow directions.

Now that I've completed this part I'll now be off to continue with my learning process. I'm impressed with the simplicity of these exercises, but sometimes overwhelmed by the amout of information that is available. As Americans we have all been led to believe that happiness and freedom are the result of a multiplicity of choices, but my readings in Zen, most notably by Steven Hagen and Charlotte "Joko" Beck, suggest that a multitude of choices will lead rather to suffering than to happiness. Interesting how two different cultures can see the same circumstances so differently.

Wiki's and how!!!

I've finally found time to get back to the 27 Things, and am now at number 15, Wiki's You'll Know and Love. I visited the link to What Is a Wiki, the wiki about wiki's and have a much better idea of what wiki's are and how they might best be put to use. As I'm trying to do this at work and being constantly distracted I still have a somewhat disjointed conception of how this all works and its usefulness, but must say I appreciated the discussion at What Is A Wiki.

I then visited the St Joseph County Public Library's subject guides wiki, Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki, and the Book Lover's Wiki at the Princeton Public Library.

I can begin to see the value of Wiki's for quickly being able to add and edit information as it emerges, without the tediousness of emailing or hosting a separate web page. I was intrigued to learn what "wiki" meant (it means quick in Hawiaan). It was interesting to note that The Book Lover's Wiki was an event specific wiki and that the posting of reviews of books was available to their patrons from their catalogue, as it is now with KCLS. As an aside I've posted an online review of a book written by a good friend concerning her experience starting a non-profit organization, and really liked that tool.

For Librarians and LA's I can also see that the Library Success Wiki has a wealth of information that is easily accessable by anyone using a computer. I did not have enough time to check it out completely, but it appears that editing is limited to Librarians, which is specifically true for the SJCPL's Subject Guide Wiki.

I've been exploring wiki's on my own for some time, but this is the most comprehensive overview I've ever had of them, and I'm looking forward to exploring more and getting up the nerve to add some content and do some editing on my own.

Back to the stacks for now.

Stan

Lesson 4 Blog

I was quite excited when I set this up, and fully thought that I would be actively posting as the days went by. As it turns out, this has not been the case, not through lack of desire, but due to lack of time to do this at work. Between snow storms, new schedules, sickness of co-workers and what not there just has not been adequate time to do this work. I'm hoping that this changes, as I can see that this course will answer questions that I've tried to piece together answers for when patrons bring them up (downloading music comes to mind).

I'm also finding myself in a bit of a spin due to trying to keep straight all the proceedures at three branches, subbing ouside my home cluster and working other odd jobs just to make ends meet. I'm enjoying the challenge of the King County system, but often leave feeling like the ball bearing from a pin ball game (for those of you old enough to recall pin-ball games).

I just finished reading Lesson 4, and have a number of questions regarding the progress log. As the program is now long over it seems that the progress log is not active now, so I printed out the form and am keeping track on the hard copy. I expect I'll be checking back in shortly, but it's time to get back to work now.

Adios compadres.