I used Rollyo to create a search engine that searched all the sites I normally use to look for books (Amazon, librarything, and trading site called Bookmooch) and movies (Internet Movie Database and Amazon again). It was easy enough to put all the URLs in and 'create' I tested it out with a book I had just read, and quickly decided to take out Amazon - it dominated the results to the extent you could barely find the others. Besides, I figured it would be obvious nearly everything I could search for would be on Amazon. It worked a little better without. I do wish there was some way for it to 'know' which of the search results were most important - the actual item description page, for example. It seems to rate everything kind of equally. So I think there is a room for improvement, but it is still pretty neat.
Here is my search engine:
Monday, October 29, 2007
#11 LibraryThing
I've been a member of Librarything since January, and I really love it. I even paid the one time subscription fee to get a paid account. (NB: You don't have to pay for the site at all - it's free - but if you get really serious about it and want to catalog more than 200 books, you can pay to upgrade to an unlimited account). Librarything is interesting in that way, since they suggest that you pay $10 for a year's membership or $25 for a lifetime membership, but let you choose how much you pay: 9-20 for a year or 19-55 for lifetime. The creator of the site is pretty active in the forums and with keeping his blogs, and I've seen him say most people really do pay the suggested fee, or more.
This site is not only useful for keeping track of just how many books you own, but also what they are about, what other people think of them, and what other books on related subjects you might like. The site reccommends books according to what you already own - what books do other people with similar libraries to your own, that sort of thing, One thing I wish I could do, though, is go in and tell it to stop reccommending me so much manga. I like manga a lot, but not so much as I used to, but because I have a lot in my library, as well as books about Japanese history and culture, nearly 2/3 of my recs seem to be manga.
I mostly use the site to keep track of what books I own and haven't read yet. I use tags 'reading' and 'unread' to remember these. So whenever I feel like reading, I can just go to my bookmark of the 'unread' tag, and pick one. (The number of books with this tag is quite a large number, so I can't keep them all on their own shelf somewhere.
Another nice thing about the site is the groups, where people discuss their favorite genres of books, or many other kinds of topics. 'Librarians Who Librarything' is actually the largest one on the site, I believe. ;)
I feel a little weird about linking to my actual library, though. I don't mind thousands of strangers being able to know every book I own, but somehow I feel awkward letting people who actually know me see it. So instead, I made a new account, and added the books I currently have checked out from the library. I also went ahead and added tags, so everyone could see how I usually do that, too. If anyone has any questions about the site, feel free to ask me, because I'm on it pretty much every day.
This site is not only useful for keeping track of just how many books you own, but also what they are about, what other people think of them, and what other books on related subjects you might like. The site reccommends books according to what you already own - what books do other people with similar libraries to your own, that sort of thing, One thing I wish I could do, though, is go in and tell it to stop reccommending me so much manga. I like manga a lot, but not so much as I used to, but because I have a lot in my library, as well as books about Japanese history and culture, nearly 2/3 of my recs seem to be manga.
I mostly use the site to keep track of what books I own and haven't read yet. I use tags 'reading' and 'unread' to remember these. So whenever I feel like reading, I can just go to my bookmark of the 'unread' tag, and pick one. (The number of books with this tag is quite a large number, so I can't keep them all on their own shelf somewhere.
Another nice thing about the site is the groups, where people discuss their favorite genres of books, or many other kinds of topics. 'Librarians Who Librarything' is actually the largest one on the site, I believe. ;)
I feel a little weird about linking to my actual library, though. I don't mind thousands of strangers being able to know every book I own, but somehow I feel awkward letting people who actually know me see it. So instead, I made a new account, and added the books I currently have checked out from the library. I also went ahead and added tags, so everyone could see how I usually do that, too. If anyone has any questions about the site, feel free to ask me, because I'm on it pretty much every day.
#10 Image Generators
I went to the Generator Blog, and from there found the eLouai Harry Potter Doll Maker - so I thought I'd make myself as a Hogwarts student - Ravenclaw, of course.
#9 Feed Searching
I've never really searched specifically for feeds before. Usually I just check out blogs linked to blogs I already enjoy, and save the ones I like. But here are my thoughts on the sites:
Feedster: Not having any luck at all with this one. Maybe it's because I'm doing searches for things with the word 'library', but I seem to get mostly lists of books, and nothing else. Okay, actually, forget that - I just did a search for 'satire' and got another set of results like this. Granted, they are all satire books, but...it's a little ridiculous not to get any blogs with people talking about their opinions.
Topix - I'm not really sure how useful this one would be for me...I already know how to find news items in other ways, and that seems to be most of what it does.
Syndic8 - I couldn't make sense of this one at all. None of the subjects I entered brought back anything relevant, and when I tried just searching the names of some blogs I already enjoy nothing appeared either.
Technorati - not much luck with this one either. I do think the way the frontpage updates ever few seconds with a new blog post is pretty neat...I think it was making my browser lag like mad, but it was neat. I learned some interesting things this way, like a rumor from K-Fed's new girlfriend that Britney Spears used to breastfeed her kids while she was drunk.
Overall, I didn't have much luck with any of them. But maybe I just wasn't using them right. All in all, I still prefer the 'old-fashioned' method of searching - if you can consider Google 'old-fashioned' anyway. A simple search for 'library blogs' returns sites like: this one, which divides them up nicely by country and is a nice way to get worldwide perspectives, and this one, which divides things by various subjects including libraries and books.
Feedster: Not having any luck at all with this one. Maybe it's because I'm doing searches for things with the word 'library', but I seem to get mostly lists of books, and nothing else. Okay, actually, forget that - I just did a search for 'satire' and got another set of results like this. Granted, they are all satire books, but...it's a little ridiculous not to get any blogs with people talking about their opinions.
Topix - I'm not really sure how useful this one would be for me...I already know how to find news items in other ways, and that seems to be most of what it does.
Syndic8 - I couldn't make sense of this one at all. None of the subjects I entered brought back anything relevant, and when I tried just searching the names of some blogs I already enjoy nothing appeared either.
Technorati - not much luck with this one either. I do think the way the frontpage updates ever few seconds with a new blog post is pretty neat...I think it was making my browser lag like mad, but it was neat. I learned some interesting things this way, like a rumor from K-Fed's new girlfriend that Britney Spears used to breastfeed her kids while she was drunk.
Overall, I didn't have much luck with any of them. But maybe I just wasn't using them right. All in all, I still prefer the 'old-fashioned' method of searching - if you can consider Google 'old-fashioned' anyway. A simple search for 'library blogs' returns sites like: this one, which divides them up nicely by country and is a nice way to get worldwide perspectives, and this one, which divides things by various subjects including libraries and books.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Just in case you hadn't heard yet-
I feel this is important library related news!
Dumbledore is gay.
They even already have t-shirts for 'Dumbledore Pride'. I kind of want the left one, because, to tell the truth, I rather did suspect something between he and Grindlewald, when I read about their frequent intense late night letters to each other. But I probably shouldn't get the shirt because I don't want shocked parents throwing things at me when I'm shelving children's books. Especially the Harry Potter books themselves. I mean, ow.
Dumbledore is gay.
They even already have t-shirts for 'Dumbledore Pride'. I kind of want the left one, because, to tell the truth, I rather did suspect something between he and Grindlewald, when I read about their frequent intense late night letters to each other. But I probably shouldn't get the shirt because I don't want shocked parents throwing things at me when I'm shelving children's books. Especially the Harry Potter books themselves. I mean, ow.
#8 - RSS!
Apparently I'm one of the few was already using this? Everyone I've talked to says they haven't before, so I guess I'll be helping some people this week (if they can pull me out of the book mines). Anyway, I'm glad everyone else is learning now, because it really is the most convenient thing ever. I must admit, I myself have only been using RSS feeds for a few months, but I'm already quite addicted. The feeds I subscribe to vary from comics, to library blogs, to news, to generally interesting articles of the day, to things that I really could not explain, except to say 'they're funny'. But I'd probably never read them without RSS, because who wants to go look at two dozen websites, every single day, just to see if they updated or not? With RSS, if the site updates, it comes right to you.
I've been using GoogleReader to read mine, because I use gmail and a Google personalized homepage, but for the sake of this exercise I opened a bloglines account and I think I'll test it out for a few weeks to see if it is better or worse than GoogleReader. Conclusion so far - they both seem equally good for my purposes. I was able to import all the feeds I read (22) at Google into my bloglines account pretty easily. Both sites had an easy to find 'import/export' area, so I was able to save a file over at Google and then upload it at bloglines. My feeds all appeared, still in their obsessive little categories. I then went ahead and added a bunch of my coworkers blogs, to their own special category.
As for how the library can use these things...I'll have to think about it. I see we already have a feed for news, which is a good idea. Making one for new books and DVDs may be a bit much, and would anyone read it? (Well, I don't know, I'd definitely read the DVD one. I need to know which DVDs to go put on hold before everyone else finds out about them and the hold list is 30 people long.) But as for, would anyone else use it...I don't know. Probably not, at least not now...but when RSS really catches on and more people start to use it, I think they would.
And if anyone cares, here's the link to the feeds I read.
I've been using GoogleReader to read mine, because I use gmail and a Google personalized homepage, but for the sake of this exercise I opened a bloglines account and I think I'll test it out for a few weeks to see if it is better or worse than GoogleReader. Conclusion so far - they both seem equally good for my purposes. I was able to import all the feeds I read (22) at Google into my bloglines account pretty easily. Both sites had an easy to find 'import/export' area, so I was able to save a file over at Google and then upload it at bloglines. My feeds all appeared, still in their obsessive little categories. I then went ahead and added a bunch of my coworkers blogs, to their own special category.
As for how the library can use these things...I'll have to think about it. I see we already have a feed for news, which is a good idea. Making one for new books and DVDs may be a bit much, and would anyone read it? (Well, I don't know, I'd definitely read the DVD one. I need to know which DVDs to go put on hold before everyone else finds out about them and the hold list is 30 people long.) But as for, would anyone else use it...I don't know. Probably not, at least not now...but when RSS really catches on and more people start to use it, I think they would.
And if anyone cares, here's the link to the feeds I read.
Friday, October 19, 2007
#7 Digital Archives
For this exercise, I chose the Nashville Public Library archives, and did a search for 'people'. I'm not sure how well that worked, as most of the results didn't seem to have people in them, and if they did they were small and what I wanted to see was older photographs of people close up. So I got a little more specific with 'women' and got a few interesting ones.
I especially like this one, of WWII pilot Cornelia Fort. Her story is a short but interesting one. She got her pilot's license, became Tennessee's only female flying instructor, was flying in the air over Honolulu when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, was one of the first members of the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, and became the first female pilot killed in the line of duty, all in three years, when she was barely older than I am now. And before that? She was a Nashville debutante.
More info on her here and here.
I especially like this one, of WWII pilot Cornelia Fort. Her story is a short but interesting one. She got her pilot's license, became Tennessee's only female flying instructor, was flying in the air over Honolulu when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, was one of the first members of the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, and became the first female pilot killed in the line of duty, all in three years, when she was barely older than I am now. And before that? She was a Nashville debutante.
More info on her here and here.
#6 Librarian Trading Card - The Page
I couldn't resist the trading card thing. Click on the picture to see it better, and to read the text.
Also in the description I have an uncalled for little speech about the 'biography section'. I hope you all understand, that is my most 'frequently asked question' and people always look so perplexed when I have to tell them there isn't one! (Or at least not one certain section.)
Also in the description I have an uncalled for little speech about the 'biography section'. I hope you all understand, that is my most 'frequently asked question' and people always look so perplexed when I have to tell them there isn't one! (Or at least not one certain section.)
#5 Flickr
Is it cheating to post one of my own pictures from over a year ago? I've used Flickr for a long time now, it was really a great help in Japan. My family, excluding my sister, isn't very tech-savvy, but most of them can look at a web page. So before I left I opened the account and bookmarked my gallery on all their computers. Then all they had to do was check it every few days to see what new pictures I'd put up. And I took a -lot- of pictures....so many in fact that I purchased a paid account for a while, because if you post over several hundred a month they start trying to restrict you. ; ) I'm not paying for the account anymore, so most of my Japan pictures are archived, but I managed to save the ones of my favorite city, Uji.
The last ten chapters of Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji take place in Uji, so there are lots of attractions in the city related to it (though the city is also known for it's tea and the World Heritage site Buddhist temple, Byodo-in. This statue commemorates the Uji chapters of Genji, and depicts the character Ukifune and one of the two men that loved her - I forget which. The entire book is a spider web of relationships anyway! Anyhow, I always really loved this statue and the nearby one of Murasaki herself, as they somehow depict the flowing layered robes of the Heian period in -stone-. It's pretty neat.
The last ten chapters of Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji take place in Uji, so there are lots of attractions in the city related to it (though the city is also known for it's tea and the World Heritage site Buddhist temple, Byodo-in. This statue commemorates the Uji chapters of Genji, and depicts the character Ukifune and one of the two men that loved her - I forget which. The entire book is a spider web of relationships anyway! Anyhow, I always really loved this statue and the nearby one of Murasaki herself, as they somehow depict the flowing layered robes of the Heian period in -stone-. It's pretty neat.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
#4 Gale Biography Resource Center
For the online resources, I chose to explore the Gale Biography Resource. I'm not sure why exactly I chose this, but looking for small biographical articles is something I find myself doing a lot (generally when I'm watching a historical movie or novel, and want to find out more about the real person depicted), so this should be useful enough in the future. This database gives library patrons access to biographical articles from many sources.
First I did a search for Murasaki Shikibu, the author of my favorite book, The Tale of Genji. There was only one article, about 900 words, but it was a pretty good one. I've done tons of research on her because I was always picking her to write papers about in university, and I can say that I only know of one book source that was better than the article retrieved, and it was better than several of the ones I always had to use. Not very much is known about Murasaki's life, after all - not even her real name. And if you click on the tabs in the search results, you can also see magazine articles and websites about the person. There were no magazine articles about Murasaki, but there were a few websites. The most useful one was probably Murasaki's diary, which is in the public domain so translations are available online.
I did a search for Jane Austen next, and of course there were too many results to be counted. Among the long biography articles, I was amused to see a 11,602 word article from the Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography. I can only wonder what would have been considered not-concise for them.
This is a great resource that I only wish I had known about in high school (if it was around then) and university. Especially problematic is that I'd always pick some obscure topic that it was hard to find sources for. Teachers were always asking for a certain number of sources, with a limit on how many could be online searches. The rest had to be from real books, they'd insist, and I always knew there were sources online that were just as good. Here is the proof - articles from "real" books, but archived online. I'd definitely recommend this to students needing many good sources about subjects for which there may not be many physical books around.
First I did a search for Murasaki Shikibu, the author of my favorite book, The Tale of Genji. There was only one article, about 900 words, but it was a pretty good one. I've done tons of research on her because I was always picking her to write papers about in university, and I can say that I only know of one book source that was better than the article retrieved, and it was better than several of the ones I always had to use. Not very much is known about Murasaki's life, after all - not even her real name. And if you click on the tabs in the search results, you can also see magazine articles and websites about the person. There were no magazine articles about Murasaki, but there were a few websites. The most useful one was probably Murasaki's diary, which is in the public domain so translations are available online.
I did a search for Jane Austen next, and of course there were too many results to be counted. Among the long biography articles, I was amused to see a 11,602 word article from the Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography. I can only wonder what would have been considered not-concise for them.
This is a great resource that I only wish I had known about in high school (if it was around then) and university. Especially problematic is that I'd always pick some obscure topic that it was hard to find sources for. Teachers were always asking for a certain number of sources, with a limit on how many could be online searches. The rest had to be from real books, they'd insist, and I always knew there were sources online that were just as good. Here is the proof - articles from "real" books, but archived online. I'd definitely recommend this to students needing many good sources about subjects for which there may not be many physical books around.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
#2 7 and 1/2 Habits
The easiest task for me is almost definitely #6, using technology to my advantage. I've been lucky enough to be born and grow up at just the right time - I got into things like the Internet in my early teens, and never had the chance for them to be scary and daunting. Of course new things have been constantly developing since then, but since that's the way it's been for my whole life - accepting new technologies is just part of the process for me, if that makes sense. I expect it and look forward to it. If I meet with a topic I'm less familiar with, I know all I have to do is check Wikipedia for a general overview, then head on over to Amazon or the library website for a more concrete source, google for some pictures or news articles, maybe search youtube for some videos about it. There are dozens of different ways to find out more, and I'm learning about new ones each day - it's kind of fun, I could almost link it to Habit 7 1/2.
Unfortunately, with all this coming so easily to me, the hardest habit for me is 7, teaching and mentoring others. As easy as a lot of technology is for me (maybe because it is so easy) I find it quite difficult to teach others. Imagine someone coming up to you asking:
"How do you breathe? Please teach me how to breathe."
"Well, fill your lungs up with air and-"
"Wait! Lungs? Air? You're going to fast for me here!"
...this is kind of how I feel when my mother asks me how to operate a touchpad mouse, or save a picture online to a certain folder. I can get through it, it just takes me a while to break it down enough for someone who is new to the topic to understand, because I learned it myself in a touch and go, no thoughts, intuitive way. I have a great deal of respect for anyone teaching the technology classes, because I know I'd just be standing there, trying not to twitch!
Unfortunately, with all this coming so easily to me, the hardest habit for me is 7, teaching and mentoring others. As easy as a lot of technology is for me (maybe because it is so easy) I find it quite difficult to teach others. Imagine someone coming up to you asking:
"How do you breathe? Please teach me how to breathe."
"Well, fill your lungs up with air and-"
"Wait! Lungs? Air? You're going to fast for me here!"
...this is kind of how I feel when my mother asks me how to operate a touchpad mouse, or save a picture online to a certain folder. I can get through it, it just takes me a while to break it down enough for someone who is new to the topic to understand, because I learned it myself in a touch and go, no thoughts, intuitive way. I have a great deal of respect for anyone teaching the technology classes, because I know I'd just be standing there, trying not to twitch!
Monday, October 8, 2007
#3 Test Entry and Introduction
I've had a little experience with this sort of thing before...I keep a more private journal that only my friends can read over at another website, and I think I've even used Blogger before (in Japanese class, I think it was). I should really track that old blog down and see what I was always writing about. I don't think it was too in depth, though, as we always had to write in Japanese!
About the title of this, whenever I'm about to go to work I tell friends that I'm going 'Back to the book mines'...or if I just got back I might say it was a long day at the book mines. I may be the only one that finds this funny, but! - it was the only thing I could think of resembling a clever title. And after all, I really do push around never-ending carts of books all day.
About the title of this, whenever I'm about to go to work I tell friends that I'm going 'Back to the book mines'...or if I just got back I might say it was a long day at the book mines. I may be the only one that finds this funny, but! - it was the only thing I could think of resembling a clever title. And after all, I really do push around never-ending carts of books all day.
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