Tagging: krl2pt0 assignment

I took me a while to understand how tags worked, but once I got it I realized that my del.icio.us list bundles could be much more organized than my favorites list. I put all of my vendor catalog websites in one bundle, and now I'm working on putting all of my OCLC websites into bundles-- one for MaRC manuals, another for Connexion documentation, etc. Other bloggers have mentioned that social-networking reference sites would be helpful to them, but probably nobody else is interested in cataloging websites.

I did add a couple of websites to the network-- iLibrarian, and Librarians internet index: websites you can trust. LII has lots of good websites divided into catagories like business, ready reference, recreation, etc. The acronyms and holidays websites are especially helpful.

Social networking seems better than our email groups-- we could pick and chose what we want to read, share things more easily, and keep them in better order.

I'm not happy with computers right now

Grrrrr.

Friday I tried to install the delicious buttons-- it didn't work. Very discouraging.

This morning I tried to ftp the first chunk of our catalog to OCLC-- first it took forever to get the file in a place the ftp program could access, and then once that was working, OCLC decided it wouldn't accept any of the passwords I had. And no one has replied to my email asking what I should do next.

This afternoon I tried to install UnitimeClient on my computer-- it didn't work. Nancy had to come and do it.

And it took me three tries to get into this blog.

Good books about dragons

Genetically enhanced dragons and their riders fight a serious threat on the planet Pern in the series by Anne McCaffrey. Start with Dragon flight.

The enchanted forest chronicles by Patricia Wrede are very funny children's books. Princess Cimorene gets so fed up with embroidery, dancing, and batting her eyes at princes that she runs away from home and ends up living with the dragons! The first book in the series is Dealing with dragons.

I just finished reading Dragonhaven, by Robin McKinley. It's a young adult book that I think would appeal to both boys and girls.

Web 2.0 and libraries: best practices for social software, by Michael Stephens

This is a publisher's listing for a book available from ALA, and the sample pages I looked at were interesting enough that I think the library should buy this book, and also his followup book-- Web 2.0 & libraries: trends and technologies. I'll pass the information along to Gail.

There was a silly thing in the author's blog (http://tametheweb.com/)-- he asked readers to vote for the shirt and tie he should wear when he gave a talk, and then he showed which one won.

There is a link in the author's blog to another blog called iLibrarian which included a very interesting article about creating subject headings for blogs. I've bookmarked it and I'll read it next week. http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/

Do libraries matter? by Talis

I found this paper very helpful in explaining what Library 2.0 can do for libraries, and how and why it could improve our service.

My interest is in the ILS, and after experience with three different companies and their patchy functionality, I really like the idea of connecting different components designed to deal with a "specific area of complexity" (think acquisitions and serials control) that can be "made available to any other component through an Application Programming Interface". With this we could put together an ILS that would really work for us! (Does anyone have any idea how soon this could happen?)

I do have to wonder about their recommendation that there be a single library catalog based on Amazon's pattern, though. When I'm in Amazon unless I search on something very specific, I get page after page of hits, and I don't have the time or patience to look at all of them. John once told me that a study he saw said that people were willing to look at only 40 things, and Martha recently said that 23% of our circulation comes from the new title shelves, which tells me that people want fewer things to look at, not more.