Thing 6 part 2

In playing around with things at big huge labs, I found a neat little thing to make name or photo badges. It would be easy to make name tags for a special story hour. I could have easily printed nametags for Friday's Story Hour with Harley's picture on them. cute. I tried posting an image, but it kept cutting off. I'm not going to spend more time on Thing 6, so I hope I'm done.

Thing 6

Ok, again the pets are proving to be very useful. They really don't care if their photos are plastered all over the Internet. Again, this proved to be very easy to use. I used images on our computer, rather than trying to work between Flickr and Big Labs. If I'd had time to work on this at the library, I would have used Flickr.

I've seen those library staff trading cards that the college librarians use to introduce themselves to students. Cute idea.

Perhaps I could create trading cards of book characters - but then that opens up the copyright questions. The Internet is still pretty well wide open, but I respect copyright restrictions.

At least if someone asked me about using some kind of image generator, I can say that these resources exist and that they are easy to use.

Trading Cards

Harley scarf sketch

Harley scarf sketch
Originally uploaded by janmpease

Becca and I used Jasc Paint Shop Pro to change a photo of Harley into a sketch of Harley to use as a coloring page when Harley visits the library on Friday.

Thing 5

Thing 5 involves playing around with photo sharing tools. Some of the "toys" needed a flash download; I am reluctant to download on this shared computer. Others wanted access to all of my flickr account - forget that. Another wanted to store something on the computer. Again, forget that. So I poked around bighugelabs, tried the jigsaw puzzle, made this mosaic. Looked at the lolcats and some others. I like the cube, and may try that, too.

It was slow uploading pictures directly from this computer, so I uploaded some more pictures to Flickr and easily worked from there.

Here is the mosaic from pictures I like best. These were taken by our daughter, Rebecca.

Mosaic: These are a few of my favorite things . . .

Now we look royal!

Now we look royal!
Originally uploaded by janmpease

Anna and Kristen put on their tiaras, and changed into these royal representatives of our community. I'm proud of them, especially since they are former Story Hour members!

Thing 4, final post

First, I have to say how nice our Children's Department looks! Just have to brag a little. We have nearly 280 children participating in the 2008 Summer Reading program. We offer three story hour programs, one program for students in grades K-5, and a monthly book club for students grades 3-6. We also have weekly visits from local day care providers, and we're enjoying a very busy summer.

These pictures, including the one tagged 23 Things on a Stick, were from a special story hour. Our local festival royalty were guests at Family Story Hour, each reading a book to the dazzled little girls.

I am using Flickr to begin to organize my personal and library photos. I can mark photos with children them private and still have easy access to them. I think I'll use Flickr at the library, and will explore ways to link more pictures to our website. The library has used Picasa, which also is easy to use, etc., but now that I've been introduced to Flickr, I might as well stick with it.

Now that the link is set up, it's ridiculously easy to post pictures. I'm still in the mindset of using URLs and code; clicking on a button, with my blog and Flickr linked like that is just amazing.

Of course, the other part of me, the side that learned a bit of code here and there and develops very, very strong, unique, passwords, is uneasy. All of this openness and sharing is a bit too much. A librarian friend calls this my optimistic negativism, an apt description.

Anyway, I've learned a lot with this Thing, since I have tended to leave photos to another staff member who actually enjoys working with them. I like the online editing tools. I can honestly say that I would not have explored Flickr without this assignment.

Queen Anna reads to children

Queen Anna reads to children
Originally uploaded by janmpease

Watercade Queen Anna Haugo visited Litchfield library for Family Story Hour on June 19th. The children were entranced by Anna, her crown, and her kindness to them!

Early Morning Fog

IMG_0295
Originally uploaded by janmpease

I used Flickr to edit this picture. It sharpened the trees in the foreground while leaving the fog nice and foggy.

Thing 4.2

Finally! I don't know how I missed doing this on all the other tries, but here it is. Now, when I'm back at work at the library, I'll try uploading the pics from story hour.

The library has a Picasa account, but I don't have the password. I think I'll use Flickr, because it is tied to my existing yahoo account. It's so much easier to use existing gmail and yahoo accounts for things. I'm experimenting with my personal photos. I can see using Flickr at the library, but we'll have to be careful about pictures of minors.

Fog on Lake Superior Beach

IMG_0294
Originally uploaded by janmpease

One of my favorite pictures, as fog crept in from Lake Superior.

Thing 4.1

I started slowly adding photos to my flickr account. It was surprisingly easy to edit a picture, set up my first set, etc. and I'm moving slightly from hatred to toleration. I still can't get my flickr account to let me put a picture here. When I grab the code, blogger says it's an invalid url, even though it opens if pasted into a note pad or Word doc. I'll keep trying, although I'm going to move on to thing 5 very, very soon.

It also wants me to make a blog there, which just isn't going to happen. How many blogs is enough? (The answer is: none.)

Thing 4.0

OK. I've taken several good looks at Flickr, have barely scratched the surface, and may I say again how much I hate working with pictures and graphics?

It just isn't an easy match.

I easily uploaded my first picture, but all the other stuff - the tagging, the licenses, the groups, the pools, the sharing my photos with strangers, all of that just raises my anxiety level.

It was a great big stretch for me to just start taking the occasional digital photo - the previous post mentioned the camera at work, but didn't state that it hadn't visited the library before. Ever. I'm not ready for this much sharing of my private life. Granted, there isn't that much that would be all that interesting.

Thing 3.75

Working on Thing 4, but not very quickly.

As a prelude to blogging about thing 4, I took some photos at story hour. The local royalty from Litchfield's Watercade Festival visited Family Story Hour and read to the children. The children, who happened to all be little girls, were entranced.

The next morning, I took more pictures at Preschool Story Hour. We were rocking to the music from Punk Farm. The author welcomes pictures and letters from young fans, so I might just email him about our story time.

I signed up for an account at flickr, which was very easy since it's part of yahoo now. The ubiquitous yahoo, still a web presence after all these years.

This directly addresses one of my concerns about privacy vs. the new open attitude of web 2.0. I am not comfortable posting pictures from our children's programs online, even with parental permission. The Watercade Royalty I don't worry about, since they are in photos all the time.

Another issue is that currently the library camera isn't working. So I dashed home and brought my digital camera. Whose job is it to make sure a digital camera is available for library use? Not mine. :)

Thing 3.5

My Daughter introduced me to meez.com. It's a site where you can play around with making an avatar, play games, etc. While I don't plan to be a regular there, this was an interesting exercise! www.meez.com

I'm always a little paranoid about sites offering code; sometimes very nasty little bugs get passed around that way.

I like this picture so much, I think it will be my avatar for awhile. I often dream I'm playing a grand piano, and I like the setting.

Me?

Thing Three

As part of Thing #3, I set up my Google Reader account. The first blog I subscribed to was Margaret's, because she is acting as our mentor. Looking around for PLS users, I started randomly adding PLS libraries. I was at a workshop at MLA a couple of years ago that featured the shifted librarian - I think she was there herself. So I added her blog. So far, that makes six.

I've always heard about RSS, but didn't realize how easy it is to use. I haven't been a big fan of blogs; honestly, do we all really have that much to say? But in the spirit of cooperation, I pledge to lay aside my curmudgeon ways and join in.

Just for fun, I joined the PLS user group. Not much action there. :)

23 Things Badge

Visit 23 Things on a Stick

Thing Two

My goodness, that was a lot of reading. I found myself waffling back and forth between “Wow! We could do this!” While asking, “what about privacy and confidentiality?”

I’m not ready to really live my life “out there,” but I did post a picture of myself in my profile. It’s a start.

Finding time to do this is difficult. Our supervisor offered us one hour per week to work on it at the library; I find myself working on this at night, sometimes after everyone else is in bed, to minimize distraction and get some time on a shared computer.

To tell the truth, I’m doing the 23 things because our supervisor said we should do them. I looked at them the first round and decided that I just didn’t have time to do them justice. I still don’t.

I am an Internet Junkie in recovery. Virtual life fascinated me for awhile; I even helped moderate a couple of bulletin boards. My real life has become more complicated, and I’m not all that interested in spending more time online.

BUT…….

While doing some prep work for story hour, I happened on an illustrator’s website, which included links to his blog, his My Space page, his Facebook page, the pages he created for characters from his books, and links to pictures posted at flickr. He welcomes pictures and comments from children. This is quite a contrast from the old days of trying to reach a beloved author or illustrator by writing to a publisher. Not surprising, this artist is 25 years younger than I. There is a definite correlation there.

The proverbial old dog learning new tricks comes to mind. It is possible to teach the old dog new tricks, but it takes time, consistency, and some kind of tangible reward. Is knowledge really its own reward?

Thing One: First post, fresh start

After a workshop on library 2.0, we tried setting up a blog for our library. We ran into all kinds of silly difficulties, couldn't think of anything to say, and gave up.

This blog was extremely easy to set up, seems to be very easy to use, etc. but I still don't really have anything to say.

It looks like I've finished all of Thing One. Blog is set up, played with the template, font, set up an avatar, etc. BTW, Yahoo no longer displays my avatar when I sign in, so now it's preserved here.

I registered the blog with the program, and that's all I'm doing for today.