Thing 5 - Flickr

I already have a flickr account, but the only reason I have one is so that I could upload photos onto another site (it does not let you upload photos directly from your computer). So, most of the pictures on my flickr are of yarn or knitting projects. Also, I would like to clarify that the reason the pictures are of such terrible quality is because I had to use a bad camera and in order to get the color of the yarn right, I had to have the shutter open for longer than usual, making the pictures blurry. Anyway, I added a few more pictures from library events (and one of my BFF, Barack).

I am not a big fan of flickr. It is not very user friendly, and that means a lot coming from me. It is very frustrating and you must take very circuitous routes to get where you want to get. Flickr makes me mad. Sorry, it just does. I would much rather use facebook to share my photos with people. Okay, okay, I thought of one thing I do like about flickr - I like that you can search everyone's photos for something you want, kinda like google image search. I have found some great desktop images this way. But that's all that I like about it.

As far as using flickr in the library, I think it is a good idea for posting pictures of events. However, the issue of consent comes up because posting pictures of people on the internet is sometimes a touchy subject. Okay, I'm ready to be done with flickr for the moment...and now I will post a picture of my BFF to get me out of my rant:

Thing 4 - RSS and newsreaders

I hate to sound like I am bashing all the Things. There will be Things that I love - I promise.

RSS feeds. So, in theory, these are great. You can get all the new information from your favorite sites/blogs in one convenient place. Here's the thing...I feel like this just makes it easier to waste away your time on the internet. Likewise, if you read so many blogs that it is extremely inconvenient to check them all, chances are that you read too many blogs. One nice thing, however, is that this allows me to follow my coworkers' 23 Things blogs that are on sites other than Blogger. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

Thing 3 - blog search engines

Sooooo, I'm not crazy about this Thing. I have done it because it is one of the Things, but I don't really have any interest in finding blogs. I waste enough of my time that should be spent studying on the few blogs I do look at, I don't need to be looking at any others. Also, I don't really see why someone would need an entire search engine dedicated to blogs. You could probably just add the word "blog" to your search in Google and it would work. Also, I feel like any blog worth reading would be referenced in something in which you are already interested.

Okay, moving on to the actual Thing. I searched Technorati and Google Blog Search for blogs about knitting. First of all, Technorati let me search for blogs about knitting, while in Google Blog Search (advanced options), I could only search for blogs with "knitting" in the title of the blog. Half of the first 10 blogs that Technorati came up with didn't have "knitting" in the title so they wouldn't have come up on Google. Searching by blog title would only be useful if you knew a few words in a particular blog, but forgot the URL. Thus, should one want to find a new blog, this is useless. I don't have anymore mildly positive things to say about this Thing.

Thing 2 - Web 2.0 and Library 2.0

So, I looked over the information and links on the NEFLIN 23 Things blogs and my overall reactions is, DUH! I have said before that I am a product of the Net Generation, so it's not a big deal to me anyway. I was IMing and everything long before I could even drive. Anyway, my problem with these things is not Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 in and of themselves, but the fact that we seem to need a new term and concept for them. Okay, so originally computers and the internet were developed for what? Simple e-mail and complex computing. Now they are used for everything from taking classes to finding a date. But they are still used for simple e-mail and complex computing. Let's think about this from another angle; back in the day, there was the telegraph and it was used for relaying important, critical news across long distances. Then, the old-school telephone came along, then one with numbers you can punch, then cordless phones, then the original gigantic mobile phones, and now we have cell phones that can do pretty much everything anywhere and for many people, are absolutely depended upon. I just don't see what the big fuss is about.

Here are the questions posed on the 23 Things blog and my answers:

Why are you participating in 23 Things @ NEFLIN? What do you hope to learn? Primarily, I am doing 23 Things for the prizes, I'm not gonna lie. And perhaps to show off a bit. Also, I have found that there are a few things that I know about but didn't realize they had a name or the apparently big impact that they are having (i.e. Web 2.0).
How has the Internet and the vast resource it can be affected your use of time at work and/or at home? Well...I waste a lot more time messin' around on the internet when I should be studying or something else important. Other than that, a computer anad the internet is practically a requirement for students now so a large portion of my computer/internet time is spent working on homework, researching, or studying in general. Also, I frequent Wikipedia for general informataion for all the random things I come across and want to know more about and whenever I'm watching tv and there's an actor I recognize or something, I IMDB him/her. And I use Facebook. A lot. It has become quite a phenomenon among my age-group - Facebook is how we stalk our new dates, keep up with photos from the latest party, and just generally stay in touch. Nothing is official until it's on Facebook and if it says it on Facebook, it has to be true (psh, yea right!).
Where are you in your knowledge and use of Web 2.0 tools? I am pretty savvy with the Web 2.0 tools - I often get called over to help with said tools at work (and I'm just a page with very little reference authority). How about your library? We are becoming much more on top of Web 2.0 tools. Our branch took a great leap on this front when we got Heather as our new YA librarian. In order to even get some young adults into the library, using Facebook and Myspace is practically necessary in order to promote teen programs like the Twilight Prom.
What are you looking forward to in 23 Things @ NEFLIN? I am looking forward to not being the only one at work who knows how to help someone with Myspace or Yahoo! messenger. And the prizes :)

Thing 2 and the Protestant Reformation

This will be a quick post - I only have another 10 minutes on the desk at work. Okay, so I had this wonderful insight about Web 2.0 and Library 2.0.

Most people think that the Prostestant Reformation was just a bunch of people led by Martin Luther who objected to the ideas and practices of the Catholic church. In reality, it was much more than that, and in fact very philosophical. Before the Prostestant Reformation, it was only the priests and Pope who had access to God and the Bible. This power eventually led to corruption within the church in the form of the Vatican charging for the absolving of one's sins. Martin Luther, among many others, recognized the root underlying this corruption. Aside from the fact that few in the 1500s were literate, the Bible and church services were given in Latin, which only the educated few knew, as opposed to the local language or dialect. The Protestant Reformation, however, paved the way for one to have a personal relationship with God without having to go through a priest. Likewise, any person could read the Bible and interpret it for him or herself.

Thus, Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 have made resources more available for anyone, not just techies and those literate in HTML (I'm not even literate in HTML). Likewise, and I am by no means saying that librarians are obsolete or heading in that directions, but library patrons can access resources and do research on their own. Library resources and how one would go about accessing them have become much more user friendly. In the same vein, I do not think this minor paradigm shift is any different from the switch from card catalogs to computer cataloging. I also don't think that this advance in technology warrants as much attention that it appears to be getting. Libraries, like everything else in the world, are evolving and adjusting to new technologies. More on this later....

Thing 1 part 2

So, after making my first post, I set about customizing my blog. I cannot find where I can make my links open in a new window (yes, a new window, I hate tabs). I do not think it is available, but you can always right-click and choose to open the link in a new window (or tab, if you like). This option would probably be available on a more advanced blog site.

I also added a few gadgets, but found the process to be mildly annoying. First, the search for gadgets doesn't seem very good. When I search "knitting", for example, the results come up and say "1-11 of 7 for knitting." This obviously does not make sense - okay and now, for no reason, the font just changed on me here in this post. Also, the results don't seem to show up in any order, like making the most relevant appear first. Nonetheless, I found a couple that I wanted to add to my blog and I didn't like that the gadget doesn't default to the correct size to accommodate said gadget. Perhaps this is because of the computer I am using; I'm not sure.

Thing 1 - Blogs

I first heard of the 23 Things from my mom, a library media specialist. After she told me about it, I looked up what the Things were and found that I have already done at least half of them and the ones I hadn't didn't seem interesting to me so I wasn't interested in participating. However, after I heard that there will be prizes for completing the 23 Things, I changed my mind.

About me: I am a page at the Tower Road branch library and I am finishing up my Bachelors at UF this semester - my major is Religon with a minor in Art History. At the moment, I am in the process of applying to grad school for a Masters of Library Science. I am 22 years old, so I have grown up with the internet and what it apparently called Web 2.0 (I will get to that in its appropriate Thing). Thus, I am, as my mom has dubbed me, a digital native (like a native language speaker). I am good with computers and the internet in general and I end up being called over for help at work often. I plan on not only attempting, but accomplishing all of the challenges that go along with the Things. I can help with the Things I know about and probabaly the Things I don't as well.

Okay, now for the actual Thing 1 assignment. I don't really think there really is anything to know about blogs. They are just like an online journal, I think. I did, however, like the "Blogs in Plain English" video posted on the 23 Things blog. But, I feel like the video presents blogs as something that was originally used for news purposes (in the classic sense) and then became something that individuals caught on to in order to create public journals. I think it has been the other way around, but I could be a bit biased since as a teenager, all my friends had online diaries on livejournal.com and whatnot to post all their OMG! moments and I wasn't terribly interested in "official" news at the time. I started a few of these online journals, but I never cared enough to keep up with them (don't worry, that won't happen here).

As far as setting up the blog went (I'm not crazy about the word "blog", by the way - it just sounds ugly), it was very easy. But, like I said, I may be a little biased. I am a fan of a few blogs, some of which don't offer much in the way of text, but they are blogs nonetheless.
A few of my favorites:
http://hanksyarn.blogspot.com/ - the local yarn store here in Gainesville (I'm a knitter)
http://ooh-shiny.net/ - a blog created just to show off neat merchandise on the internet; I have discovered so many cool online shops from this website, it has become an invaluable resource; the one drawback about this blog is that I am not attracted to everything zombie and pirate like the blogger, but I just skip over those posts
http://icanhascheezburger.com/ and http://ihasahotdog.com/ - anyone who knows me is aware of my love for animals, especially puppies
I could keep going but I'm sure a number of others will be mentioned in my later Thing posts.