A wiki to the rescue?

At our library we just sponsored our second (annual?) event where we recognize and thank all the people and organizations that make our community a great place to live. This year finding the best times when most of the planning committee could meet seemed to be especially challenging. I'm thinking that using a wiki might help! Ideas could be added to the wiki, people could suggest "tweaks" to those ideas, and for those members who are unable to attend a particular meeting there would be an interactive place to still add input and see what was accomplished at the meeting.

Editing my edit!

O.k. so I was bragging to one of my kids about editing Wikipedia, and she informs me that links within a Wikipedia article are only supposed to link to another Wikipedia article. Oops! Back to the drawing board, and another edit. Well now, who's going to start that entry for our library???

Wikipedia edit

I checked out my community on Wikipedia and although our library had a link in the list at the end of the article, in the "Social" paragraph it was only mentioned as "a library." After many, many previews of my "edits" I took the plunge and saved my first contribution to Wikipedia! I added a link to our website and our proper name in place of the "a library" as well as adding the details of "conveniently located downtown and offers adult and children's programs." Check it out here!

Bundles of tags

I picked three interests and made three bundles of tags: Tea Time, Orchids, and Terrariums. They are all pretty new interests I've acquired and I'm a definite newbie in all three areas, but I like the idea of keeping websites that I find helpful and encouraging in tagged bundles for easy referral. Here's they are: http://del.icio.us/madler54

Yeh Tags!

I like the idea of social bookmarking. I think it is a great way for people in general, to label sites in meaningful ways, and a great way for libraries in particular to then collect those websites with tags and share them with their patrons through del.icio.us. I like the differnt way the tags were bundled by the various libraries. I think I like the alphabetical by topic style the best. On the webpage for teens, the use of the tag cloud was very cool!

It's Halloween!

Monkey Island came twice this year! Be sad if you missed it. :(

I really liked the suggestions I received for other books to read. They are right on track as far as the kinds of things I would like. Unfortunately,(or maybe fortunately) the Unsuggester also came up with a lot of stuff that sounded good, as I like sci-fi, but I have to admit I haven't actually read any of the "bad" recommended titles.

LibraryThing is extremely easy to use and I think it would be very handy for home libraries or organization's libraries. Also, I'm thinking you could print a list of a specific series of books that you collect, and take it along with you when you hit the resale stores like Goodwill or St. Vinny's. I would like to pick up copies of books that my daughter is collecting, but I never know which ones she already has. So if she used LibraryThning to catalog them, and then shared the link with me, I'd be all set to go shopping!

IT'S A BEAUTIFUL THANG!

Flickr at the Library

We are getting ready to make our room booking/event scheduling software Evanced available to the public. Coincidentally, our IT guru used Flickr to add pictures of the performer/guest/events to the registration form for the public to see. What a great PR use of the Flickr software for our library.

Off to college!

Boy this was fun!!

More of Vanessa's photos

Vanessa also asked me to share her myspace page so here it is!

calm little Liddy

calm little Liddy, originally uploaded by Vanessa D.

Well I'm one of those people who does not yet have a digital camera and has had no experience with photos online. I searched Flickr to try and find an image that perhaps I would know the owner. I found my daugter Jaime's little dog Liddy in a picture taken at her doggie day care! I flickr mailed the photographer and got her permission to use Liddy's picture on my blog. She asked me to credit her by name, Vanessa Dorff, and link to her photography website as well.

Thanks Vanessa for sharing!

sloganizer rocks and so does my heart

I tried sloganizer and I love it. If you haven't tried it yet,you should, you'll like it. Man, I can't seem to get away from the whole Alka-selTzer campaign!

I've shared before that I have a coil in my brain, so I put in coil in the sloganizer and got things like:

I want more, I want coil ****** Where's your coil? ****** Heal the world with coil***** Coil - empowering people****** Nonstop coil ***** Don't play with fire, play with coil ****and there was actually one that said Coil, you'll love it

SOMEONE HELP ME I CAN'T STOP SLOGANIZING!!!!! THEY'RE ALL SO TRUE!!!!


Mucho good news concerning the ole ticker. Cardiac Doc says it's in ticktock shape and he doesn't want to see me again!

I got a comment back on the journal entry I posted on the cardia health website. I didn't reply right away because it was from a "Dr. Tango" and I'm thinking, o.k. are you really a doctor because I can't find that you are officially associated with this website at all. But now that I had good news I finally replied to his comment on my original post; at this point even if he is the stalker wannabee BFF of Tila Tequila I guess it's o.k. to recognize his post! :)

Thanks for the comments and warm wishes,
maria

Survey Monkey

I've used Survey Monkey quite a few times for SCLS issues in that I've completed the surveys set up by someone else. I never knew or thought that it was software that I could use myself. Now I'm thinking that some of those burning questions about library services could be presented in a Survey Monkey set up on our website. For example, some questions about Adult Programming, i.e. what day - time of day- is best for programs, are refreshments appreciated, how do you usually find out about adult programs at the library, etc.
Thanks project play people!

So I tried it. Thought I was going to die.

O.K. I'm just kidding,



1971 Alka-Seltzer commercial http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/19/business/media/19adco.html



No seriously, I just checked out my 11 feeds today and thoughly enjoyed Unshelved, New Urban Legends, Dilbert, etc. It's pretty cool that the info comes to me instead of me having to hunt for it, which if I had to I wouldn't and then look at all the fun stuff I'd be missing!



About Literature even gave me an interesting non-fiction title to order for our collection.




Ball, a Dog, and a Monkey : 1957- The Space Race Begins
D'Antonio, Michael
ISBN / ISBN-13:
0743294319 / 9780743294317





On a related personal connection...my doctor ordered a cardiac stress test for me, which I just found out is positive, so I'll be seeing a cardiologist on Monday. I search online for a cardiac RSS and found one that looks very informative. I not only subscribed to it, but after I registered on the site, I started a journal on the site as well. http://www.healthcentral.com/heart-disease/c/all/?ic=4027



Now see what y'all have started! :) Muchas gracias, Maria

Try it you'll like it

Remember that old tv commercial...try it you'll like it. What was that for anyway? I picked out my RSS feeds, so I'll give them a try. You never know!

I've already been warned

O.k. I've already been warned about using online translators, but for me my blog name worked either way , English to Spanish or Spanish to English, when I created it using http://www.worldlingo.com/



Coiled Mary or Mary in spiral



It's all been an upward spiral since my neurosurgeon occluded by ruptured brain aneurysm with a platinum coil three years ago. http://www.brainaneurysm.com/aneurysm-treatment.html