Facebook and Twitter

I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. I use it for personal social networking and have reconnected with people I literally haven't seen in more than 25 years. I get a little frustrated by getting a notice every time a friend plays a game. I learned how to block them, but I still get frustrated by some of the things people deem post-worthy. I also feel a little uncomfortable with the blurring of my personal and professional life, especially with youth. I have honored two requests from high schoolers to allow them to be my friend on Facebook. I really don't post much, I am pretty private. I only respond to them with brief encouraging words. I am seeing their personal life, however. More than I wish to see.

I signed up by YS Department for Twitter and I am immediately drawn to the briefness of the tweets. I don't have a lot of time to read blogs and I don't have enough time to create a well written visually interesting blog for my Department. tweeting about upcoming events to remind people what they have signed up for and informing people about what's going on locally seems to be right up my alley. I just have to decide if it would be better to create a Facebook page for the YS Department, which are patrons seem to be using, or begin tweeting.

Flickr

I am going to use my new flickr account to organize all of this year's summer reading pictures! We always take lots of pictures and some video on the flip camera and then never do anything with it. This thing is proding me to share them with patrons. I am on vacation next week, so I will do the tagging later. I actually found a picture of my library on flickr that someone had taken by searching tags. I am beginning to realize that I know more than I think I do. I still don't think I' a "techie," but I am embracing change and having fun.

ImageChef is yummy!

I had so much fun playing! This can really suck time, but even my daughters (4 and 9) wanted to to get in on it. Here is a video I created to advertise our first selection for our "Girls Rock Book Club"!

Embedding a video

This is a video one of my staff members made to appeal to our state legislators. We are very proud of it. Embedding video was easy to do. I can see using it in the future. I can use videos and pictures to spice up my library blog and try again. Maybe it will catch people's eye better. I have already embedded images, including by "wimpy librarian" avatar when the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" movie came out. This make me happy!

Firefox, my friend, I never knew you...

I have been using firefox for many years at home. We began using firefox at my library two years ago at my prompting. My husband had installed it at home, since IE was full of more holes than swiss cheese and we were always getting viruses. He set up add-ons and and told me what to do with them if I was confused by the look of the screen. Our techie work added it, and I just went along as before. I never knew about the thousands of add-ons available to customize. Right now I will not add any add-ons, because I don't want to mess anything up for my husband at home. This is something I will use after the class. It reminds me of the i phones and all of the available apps. I don't use my cell phone for anything but making phone calls, so I won't go crazy. I may talk to my staff and have my more tech savvy ones pick out some add-ons for the YS Desk.

Wikis

I have used wikispaces before to create wikis. I loved the childlit wiki and I signed up to add to it! I can see the uses for wikis if people get involved and use them. When I last logged on to the wiki for "Every Child Ready to Read," I was disappointed by how little it had been used. Of course I am as guilty as everyone else for not using it. Since I have created wikis before, I have decided for this lesson to create content for the childlit wiki and "Every Child Ready to Read" wiki, since it is a subject I am passionate about!

I'm back finally!

I finally finished week 2! The last two weeks of summer reading intruded on my time to learn. Of the three tracking options, I found google alerts and social mention to be the most interesting. They brought me information specifically about my library. I think the social mention will be the most useful to see how people our interaction to our blogs, facebook pages, etc. Addictomatic brought a lot of stuff not related to our library up. I am on the attempting week three and catching up! I hope to be back on track by the end of the week.