Thursday, November 20, 2008

WIKI WIKI WIKI

Can someone please tell me the name of that tune from the early 80's? It was kind of an electo-hip hop thang. Tom Tom Club, perhaps? Anyway, LearnNplay, thanks for the earworm! lol.

Checked out the Booklovers wiki. Looks like they're just getting their feet wet with this -not much there. Good luck to em.

Also looked at the Library Outreach Wiki. Meh.

DELICIOUS AND SOCIAL NETWORKING

Pretty cool idea. I can see how this can allow you to navigate to pages you may like. Nice way to channel info.

TWITTER

M'kay. I'm HickOmatic. It seems to me that twitter is mostly for those that need even more constant ( but low-quality and stunted) connection than is provided by a cell phone. Guess that's good if that's what you like. Seems kind of a pointless waste of time to me. Twitter me and let me know what you think about that! (just kidding).

YOUTUBE

ZO FOR PRESIDENT 2012

Monday, November 17, 2008

IMAGE GENERATORS sure are fun!


RSS FEEDS

I set up a bloglines accnt. and subscribed to some feeds, pasting in the url's. However some sites, when I right clicked on the "syndicate" line, it would not GIVE me the option of saving the link.

In addition I am clueless as to how to get one them there cute lil' rss things on my blog.

I sure would like to figure this all out as it seems pretty awesome, but seeing as I spend most of my time on desk here to serve our patrons, I guess I better call it a day on this one. Too focused on figuring this out and not enough focus on pro-active reference.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

LIBRARIES 2.0 'N SUCH

One article I read was "To a temporary place in time..."

While I can certainly appreciate the "transformational" effect of all the
acid people ate in the sixties, it has become obvious that this generation has
been transformed in creepy ways that they are seemingly blind too. "the
aesthetic economy, the dream society" ? Well thank God (apologies for any
offense that word may cause) we will no long have need for police officers,
construction workers or impertinent plumbers- it will just be a world of
happy, floating dreamers!

Most of us have been schooled to live in disconnected deconstructionist,
post-modern ivory towers. Its a pretty, glittering hall of mirrors reflecting
myriads of images of our oh-so-highly-evolved selves. Pretty! Shiny! There is no
"truth," reality is just what we say it is. We aren't religious, we're
"spiritual" so that we can pick and choose whatever justifies what we want to
do.

The "forward looking, intelligent elite" have become arrogant enough
to believe that they can engineer evil out of the human soul and build heaven on
earth. You would think that after the good work that other Utopians such as Lenin,
Pol Pot and Mao did to build more "caring" and "fair" societies the brilliant
elite in this country would realize that the result of such continually failed
thinking is not heaven, but hell on earth.

Good intentions may give one
a good "spiritual buzz" but they do not equal good results.
But who the hell cares. It's all about feeeeeling good, isn't it?

The other article I read was "Away from the Icebergs."

I agree with some of what he has to say. I agree that you don't need
a large "just in case" collection of non-fiction, for the most part.
Fiction, however is another story. Most people I have spoken to only like
to read on screen if it's a few pages, at most. After that, they prefer an
actual book.

One thing I don't think he addressed, is the emerging mind-set that says
the only good books are popular books. Yes, I know, it is not the
libraries duty to "elevate" the public by choosing what they should read.
I agree. But in only providing what is most popular at the expense of
other material, diversity is degraded and we have joined the over-whelmingly popular race to
the bottom. What of the serendipitous stumbling upon a book the patron may
have never otherwise thought to look for? What of breadth and depth?
Should we have such a narrow focus? Having enough copies of the current
hooker romance to go around is great, but not if less wildly popular titles are
eliminated to provide them.
(note: anyone that can school me as to why this posting has those wacky, mid-sentence breaks all the way through, I sure would appreciate it. Looks fine in the edit window....)