Thing 5: Flickr Mashups

Spell with Flickr is pretty fun. See my business name at the bottom of the blog. I love this because if you don't like a certain letter you can just click on it and you'll get a new one. Take it for a test drive: http://metaatem.net/words/ Just put whatever words you want in the "spell" box and you'll get your image. This and the other mashups would be great if you have a visual problem you're trying to solve in the library.

I think sharing photos online is great. I need to get over the old way of thinking about copyright issues and my feelings of protecting my work. As long as no one is out there making money off someone else's stuff no harm can be done, right? Right??

FrogMuseum2's Link

Let me try posting that link again to the Science Library diorama: http://www.flickr.com/photos/frogmuseum2/1760650451/

Thing 4: Fun with Flickr

Ok, who wants to go make dioramas of their favorite libraries with me? Flickr is a great place to start brainstorming for ideas for anything you might have to do at your library: displays, posters, new ways of doing things, layouts, whatever your job of the day is. The only problem is it's so easy to wander away from what you were there initially for, but it can also bring up brand new ideas. It had never occurred to me before that making a library diorama might be a fun and useful project sometime.

One challenge I can see with Flickr is that finding images will only work if the tagger is paying close attention to what he/she is doing. To find this image I had been looking at library photos and saw one labeled "dorama." Not the correct spelling, I'm afraid. But it was enough to pique my interest and lead me to FrogMuseum2's very interesting world. Check it out when you have time. 

Thing Three: RSS Feeds

RSS feeds are so 2003. I embraced these fully and quickly five years ago to get new information daily at my previous job. But I've set another one up for this exercise and it's interesting to see how much more is available now than before. A pretty handy tool, to say the least.

The "Real" Avatar Returns

As hoped for, the Avatar I created, not my daughter's, has returned to watch over the blog. 

Annoying Avatar

Ok, that's the last time I let my preschooler explore the 23 Things. She messed around with Yahoo Avatars for almost an hour today and now my hip, glasses-wearing urban explorer has been replaced by some cheeseball holding a candle and wearing a pink hat in a ski lodge. That is not me - that is my daughter in about 20 years. I have gone back and re-created my original avatar and attempted to replace it several times to no avail. I am hoping that it will magically reappear just as my daughter's did earlier today.

Thing Two: Watching and Reading

I'm starting to feel like I know Stephen Abram better than my husband. Is it just me or is he everywhere? The subject of time for the 23 things came up in his video. Here's how I find the time (with a little background): I'm currently on what I'm calling an extended leave or sabbatical from a "regular" job until both our children are in school. In the meantime, I'm staying as active as possible in my association (SLA) and am doing a bit of freelance on the side (thus, Knowledge Nomads was recently born). 

My day goes a bit like this - the toddler starts crying in his crib about 6:30 in the morning and needs attention until the preschooler gets to preschool at 9 am. Toddler is entertained until preschooler gets picked up at 11:30. Lunch for both, toddler goes down for nap and preschooler gets entertained until toddler wakes up. Both are entertained until Dad comes home at 6:30, dinner is made, served, cleaned up, and both kids are in bed and sleeping by 9 pm.

Time for 23 things starts at 9:01.

The time is there. You just have to make yourself do it. Yes, I'd rather be watching Cashmere Mafia and drinking wine. But I'm not.

If I want to be relevant for my triumphant return to a special library I need to know this stuff.

The funny thing is, I'm actually looking forward to it after a day with my brain in KidZone.

It will be interesting to learn applications for a special library. My background is in ad agencies where everyone is perpetually 24 (and I'm not anymore - how did that happen???). Which means the people coming to me for information have been using the internet their entire lives (tween to adulthood, anyway). And Google has now been around for most of that. 

From the requests I'm getting from LinkedIn, I know my future coworkers will have their profiles all over the place and 2.0 will be second nature to them. I can't be left behind.

An article in AdWeek last week said that traditional advertising is dead and agencies need to get with the program with the social networking stuff so that commercial messages are imbedded and people are more open to receiving them. From what I've heard agencies know this already but the clients are the harder sell. Hmmm, somewhere in here I smell an opportunity...

Creation of the Avatar

Making the Avatar was fun. A few complaints about Yahoo's options: No real desert backgrounds??? At least they do have a few libraries and an ALA-branded shirt. Getting it posted to the blog was interesting. It never gave me a "saved" message, just an ongoing "saving..." so I tried it a few times, finally logged out, went back in and discovered about five avatars all over the blog. Got rid of those and now there's just one and a half. So I can now move on to Thing 2. Woo hoo!

Thing One Achieved!

I'm taking part in the 23 Things program to so I can have more tools at my disposal as I wander the earth providing information and knowledge to people who need it. Thing One - the blog - achieved!