Week 4

Week 4

I started the 23 Things project last summer, but got sidetracked when two of us from our library took a website design class.  You can visit our new home page blog to see the result  here.

Now for RSS.  This assignment falls into the “news you can use” category.

I signed up for Google Reader since I already have a gmail account.  It was easy to subscribe and I was able to find several feeds I wanted to read regularly.     In addition to NPR Books, I picked a couple of library blogs, a couple of  knitting blogs, a blog by an organic farmer in Britain, “Read Roger” from Hornbook, and a blog by a woman who writes about all the books she’s reading.  I’m impressed by both the quality of the posts and the time people take to communicate with all  of their unknown readers.

I also watched a tutorial for Feedburner.  In doing so, I  realized that adding an RSS widget to our library website would cause our every update to be picked up by the aggregators. That might have the effect of innundating subscribers with frequent short updates when we tinker with wording or add the latest minutes of the library commissioners.  This seemed like detail overload.  At any rate, we decided to wait until we launch our book talk blog before setting up the subscription feature.

2008 Painted Ladies

2008 Painted Ladies

Originally uploaded by WPLVT

As part of the 2008 Catch the Reading Bug summer reading program, Waterbury Public Library hosted a butterfly habitat . All ten larvae turned into beautiful painted ladies! They were released as the highlight of Preschool Story Time on July 11.

Weeks 1 and 2

This is my first ever blog post.

Up to now I’ve been a silent reader of a few selected blogs, mostly having to do with knitting and sheep. I followed the winter session of Vermont’s 23 Things with curiosity. When/where could I find time to do all of this? How did everybody else manage? At some point I clicked on the link to 20 reasons why learning emerging technologies is part of every librarian’s job on the 23 Things site. This was the article that pushed me over the top. Like it or not, ready or not, I knew I had to try. Linda Braun’s workshop a few weeks ago fanned my enthusiasm and chatting with Mara reinforced my courage. Here goes…

Week 1. The lifelong learning presentation didn’t break new ground, but it was a good review. I appreciated being reminded that problems are challenges and opportunities. (Don’t we all have our share of those?) Thinking about the toolkit for successful learning was helpful, too. The main tools I need are time and the library’s high speed connection. It’s no fun from home on dial-up.The easiest thing for me was changing by attitude. Realizing I have a responsibility to try this stuff made sense. The hardest part will be keeping the time commitment.

Week 2. I played with photos, learned to group them to make a banner, set up my blog, and posted this stuff. It took me a while to get the hang of navigating the wordpress site. There are degrees of “intuitive” and my take on what’s intuitive is a little different. With a bit of practice, I’ll get there.