Thing 5: Flickr

Isn't this the absolute best thing you've ever seen? And it's for lunch!

I have to thank the lovely Britta for sharing this with me...photo from kickedintheheadcomic.

Where the Wild Things Are Bento. Amazing! AND, to be found on Flickr! How appropriate! (Enter cheers here).

I have a Flickr account, the upgraded one, because I have way too many awesome photos of my kids. I love to take pictures and I have an older computer (boo hiss) with not a lot of storage space. I fancy myself an amateur photographer, here’s a pretty photograph I took of some friends at their wedding. Aren't they smashing?

Flickr was great for sharing wedding photos, I could post a link and everyone could oooh and ahhh as many times as they wanted to. I just checked and the photos from the wedding were viewed 240 times. Neat!

Thing 4: RSS and Newsreaders

Here’s a scenario…friendly Librarian Lisa is standing outside the door of the library every day, with a sandwich board and a stack of flyers to hand out. Think NYC street corners - but without the 90% off banners and flyers littering the road.

Stay with me, here’s where it gets good (and somewhat relevant).

She’s doing her best to hand everyone a flyer – they are advertising the good stuff we do…storytime programs, new book lists, community service meetings, legal reference – it’s ALL good stuff and you MUST take a flyer. “Please??!!” she says, waving her arms frantically.

Some take pity on her and take one. Others mumble at her under their breaths. Some ask her out for a coffee and sandwich.

RSS is the sandwich board/flyer approach of Library 2.0. We can PUSH our message to everyone who wants it; and politely ignore those who decline. Those to want to stay in touch with our happenings can get the best we have to offer in an easy to read format.

I’ve registered for Google Reader (go Google, go Google…). I like it, although they’ve found a way to sneak in ads underneath some posts. (bad Google, bad Google...).

Newsreaders can be addictive and it’s easy to subscribe to everything. “I’ll take one of THOSE and one of THOSE, and add one of THOSE too!” Before you know it, your Newsreader looks like the front page of the Times. Not necessarily a bad thing, I suppose.

I've grown pretty fond of my Google Reader page and I'm happy to hang up the sandwich board. Viva la RSS!

Thing 3: Blog Search Engines

I love, love, love Google Blog search. I tried Technorati, but it didn’t grab me. Too much text, too many tabbed pages, too much sifting around to find what I want…just too much. Perhaps if I had a bunch of time to play with the interface I’d grow to love it, but on first glance it wasn’t me.

Google Blog search was quick and dirty – took me right to my favorite blog, wantnot.net, with little hassle. It also pulled up some interesting results on vegetarian cooking, juicing and equipment reviews. Not sure why, but I’ve been contemplating getting a good juicer and the blog posts on juicing are interesting…juicing cures cancer! It wipes out arthritis! It changed my life! Seriously? Seriously!

I thought these blog search engines were effective and useful. Thanks 23 things for teaching me something new!

Thing 2: Web 2.0 to Library 2.0

Just last night, my husband (who is a new LIS student at FSU) and I were discussing the changes in information seeking behaviors of youth in the past few years.

Generally we are a lot more fun at home, but with a Librarian and a librarian-in-training, these discussions are bound to come up every once in a while. It was over a glass of wine, so it wasn’t as stuffy as it sounds…

He was assigned to study an article outlining the information sharing trends of youth that was authored in 2005. He was amazed at how dated the article was; specifically, the article downplayed texting on cell phones and social networking sites were not even mentioned in the top five ways youth communicate. We had fun compiling our own list of ways youth share information and discussing the merits of each. My husband works at a local community college library and I work as a children’s librarian in a public library…we are both experiencing the change to Library 2.0, albeit with variations between public and academic library services.

Just in the past few years information sharing has gotten faster, more common, and just plain interesting. My new favorite term is “micro-blogging” for services such as Twitter and the status updates in MySpace and Facebook. No one wants to hear a long story of your life, they want a quick and easy answer to the question, “What’s up?” I love it. I’ve found myself trying to encapsulate my mood in one sentence…

But I digress.

I have mixed feelings about Library 2.0 – I feel the pride of librarians past and love the hallowed sacred space libraries can be. They are depositories of the world’s treasures and accomplishments, free for all without barriers to income, education or race. I’m deeply in love with all books can do to enlighten and improve ourselves as human beings…there’s something about that deep connection between the author and reader; it moves me.

BUT, I know that in order to survive libraries must adapt to meet our patrons’ needs. We need to provide enticements to see the library in a new way. We need to be significant to our patrons’ everyday lives. We just need to be MORE to more people.

My micro-blog status update:

Lisa is hopeful about her Neflin 23 Things blog and wonders if anyone will actually read it.

Welcome to my new blog created for Neflin's 23 things project!