Instant Messaging

I am way behind on my 23 Things Kansas, and I think this one is out of order, but I just need to get caught up! I already have an Instant Messaging account set up at work, and I use it frequently. I like it especially, because I work in Collection Development, and my office is in the basement, and I have to work closely with our Acquisitions and Cataloging folks, who are on the second floor of the library. There are 7 of us in Collection Development, and we share one centralized telephone. Since we have no phone at our desks, it is so nice to be able to "talk" to our co-workers upstairs, because at least with IM, we can have our computer in front of us, which is impossible when having to use the telephone. We use IM to converse back and forth about cataloging questions, acquisitions questions, etc., or just to check and make sure someone is at their desk before travelling all the way up to the second floor. It is very handy, and saves lots of time and steps. I have, of course, watched my kids do the IM thing when they were in high school, for a totally different purpose than I use it for! When they first set the IM up for us here at work, some thought it was pretty much the same thing as e-mail, but it really is not. The response is more immediate, and it really is like having a "conversation."
We still use e-mail too, but I do like IM!

I'm all a Twitter....not

Okay, I think I have my Twitter account set up. I found it very frustrating, I don't know why exactly. I really feel ambivalent about this form of social networking...as in, I can't quite imagine what this can really do for me. First of all, I don't have a cell phone with interenet capability, and it seems to me that you couldn't really do Twitter without that, if it is indeed a sort of minute by minute account of what one is doing. I chose about 6 things to follow initially, a few foodie folks, and New York Times books. So far, I'm not too interested in them. I've already deleted one. I had no luck at all just typing a person's name in, people I knew were twittering, and coming up with theirs. There were a couple of us trying to work on this together, and we just couldn't get anything to come up. So the ones I chose to follow all came from the recommendation lists.

Almost the second I got it set up, and had two followers, people I don't know and can't imagine how they found me...I find this kind of creepy.

I have used Twitter before to follow the proceedings of a meeting that I could not go to, and that worked okay. But I'm not sure I see how I would really use this in my day to day life. I don't see myself posting to it much, and what I have seen so far on the ones I chose to follow don't look all that interesting, so I don't know.
I think the jury is out on this one....

RSS Feeds

Oh, my, RSS feeds. I did get this set up. I tried Google Reader, which is okay, but I also set it up in my Outlook, which seems like it will be more practical. (This was on the advice of a co-worker who has hers set up this way). I set up subsciptions for a couple of things, one food blog which I like, called Orangette, and a subscription to our staff web page news update. Miraculously, there was an RSS feed already set up in my Outlook for Early Word, something I do look at but I had not really set up the RSS feed. It is fine that it is there, I just don't know how it got there. I don't know how much I will really use the RSS feeds. At this point, I don't feel like I look at enough things that regularly to warrant it, but maybe after I get used to it, I will find it beneficial. And maybe since they are in my Outlook, something I do have open every day, I will get in the habit of using them. At least I have a better understanding of how RSS feeds work and why, perhaps, one might want to use them. My new knowledge for today!

The Art of the Short (Story, that is)

I finally have gotten around to last week's assignment to listen to a webinar. I found a podcast on the California Infopeople by Michael Cart about Short Stories. http://www.infoblog.infopeople.org/2010/01/michael-cart-offers-a-salute-to-short-stories/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+infopeople+%28Infoblog%29 Another staff member and I did a presentation on Short Stories at our Reader's Advisory Conference last fall, so I thought it would be interesting to hear what Mr. Cart had to say.

Mr. Cart had many of the same observations about short stories that we did in our presentation, but his angle was short stories for young adults, so, in that respect, much different that ours in terms of audience and authors. He talked about thematic compilations of stories, as well as compilations by genre, and interlinked stories. A new term for me, in terms of a genre, was "speculative fiction." This apparently covers horror, fantasy, science fiction, etc.

The point of our presentation about short stories was that there is a new generation of great writers writing very fine fiction in the short story form. And, according to Mr. Cart, this is true for writers of young adult fiction also. I enjoyed his presentation, and have more authors and titles to add to my list of don't miss collections of short stories!

I am going to attempt to put the link to my facebook here. http://www.facebook.com/#/profile.php?ref=name&id=100000705154504 I think I've done it! I plan to have my daughter show me more about Facebook this weekend. I am feeling totally overwhelmed by it all.

A Foray Into Facebook

Well, I think I have a Facebook account set up. I can hardly believe it. I'm not sure how I am going to like it. I must say I was stunned when suggestions for possible friends popped up and one of my best friends from high school was one of the first ones! How does it do that?! Amazing. And then there were many others....so basically I had a little trip down memory lane. I think I had envisioned "friending" a couple of co-workers, so that is why I am so amazed. It is just a little bit mind-boggling. But, I am at least set up, and have a couple of friends already, including my old friend from high school. So far, I am a bigger fan of blogging than facebooking, but we'll see. I will put my facebook link in tomorrow.

A Serendipitous Library Experience

Here at TSCPL, we are always striving for new ways for our customers to have more of a serendipitous browsing experience. We have, for the last couple of years, been establishing "neighborhoods" to help with this endeavor. We have a travel neighborhood, a health neighborhood, and a jobs and career neighborhood. And we are working on new neighborhoods for this year--cooking, lawn and garden, home improvement, and pets.

But today, I was working the Reference desk, and I had a customer who had an unexpected serendipitous experience! He came to the Reference desk and asked where the books on love poems were. I looked up several options for him, and off he went to the 800's. I walked past him a bit later, and he was having trouble finding one that I had written down, so I stopped to help him. He was very excited. He had found several books of love poems, but ALSO (his serendipitous experience) he found a book by Larry the Cable Guy, and he was REALLY excited about that. You just never know what a serendipitous experience might entail.....love poems and Larry the Cable Guy. And one satisified customer.