It's all about books, seriously

I actually explored Shelfari and signed up for Library Thing. Library Thing had quite a bit of information. In the Zeitgeist Overview there are several lists provided, including the 25 most reviewed books, top 75 authors, and top books. There are talk topics for those who want to discuss the books they have read and there are a variety of groups established: librarians, science fiction, non-fiction, to name a few. This site would be useful for Reader's Advisory, collection development and for small or personal libraries as a cataloging tool.

What a list of award sites. I looked at a few of them. Google docs made the list, we have been recommending it to people who are doing word processing as a method of saving their information and being able to access it later, instead of having them ask to use flash drives (which isn't allowed right now). It seems to be a good solution, several people have been really glad to know about it.

There were some genealogy sites that were interesting. Setting up the accounts is free. You can build your family tree, post pictures, and on the My Heritage site if you post a picture of yourself you can do a face recognition collage and see what celebrity you look like. On Geni you can build your family tree but only people in your family tree can see your profile. Amiglia is billed as Facebook for your family tree. There were many, many, many interesting sites. Too many to view in a short amount of time.

After a second attempt my trading card showed up. How cool!

Shelfari

I can see Shelfari becoming a useful Reader's Advisory tool, for my personal use and to recommend to customers. It is a good way to keep track of what you have read and to list what you want to read. Evidently in my exploration I added two bookshelves to my blog, eventually I will get the hang of it and consolidate.

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds, what a concept! Instead of going to individual websites on an ongoing basis, those websites can be set up to come to you in one central location. There is a directory of free RSS feeds called Feedzilla where there are a variety of topics listed under different categories (even celebrity feeds) if you don’t have time to browse sites to add.

There are any number of ways the library could use RSS feeds. Using the news feeds would be helpful in selecting books for the “In the News” display. Including a site like Reader’s Club would help customers select new reads. Using RSS feeds on the library webpage would be a great marketing tool by providing feeds to library news, events, book lists, etc.

It would be great to tell all of our customers about RSS feeds, but I will probably start with a few friends and try to become more familiar with it myself.

7 1/2 Habits

A good paraphrase for the video would be "how do we learn, let me count the ways." Learning is a daily thing. In some form I think I learn something new every day, I'm not sure about retaining it (that might go along with the confidence habit).

In reviewing the list I made to determine what I felt was a like / dislike. I concluded that #3 would be a something I like and #4 would be not really a dislike, but an area to work on.
3. Views problems as challenges. Problems are actually opportunities. Coming up with a solution is often an exercise in creativity.

4. Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner. I've always felt like I could do whatever I set my mind to do. But there is that retention thing.