23 Things: Thing #6 (more fun with Flickr)

Here are my own non-23 things trading cards.





It's of my daughter getting her catching gear on before an inning. It's titled "The Silver Bullet" because that's the color of her batting helmet. For a long time, she was the only one in her league that wore a silver helmet, so she tended to stand out. Here's a trading card with her in her helmet, going out to the on-deck circle:






I can see how a person might lose a couple hours creating (and fine-tuning) a trading card.

23 Things: Things #4 & #5: Exploring Flickr

I've used Flickr in the past, but didn't know there were so many cool things that a person could DO with it, if so inclined.

The photostream for the Winsted Library is: winstedlibrary29

I uploaded some images from the library as well as from our Summer Reading 2008 Kickoff Party.

For Thing 5 (actually doing something with Flickr), I spelled out Winsted Library.



I really like how that widget works! How cool is that to just click on a letter for it to change? Hats off to the person who put together that combination of PHP and javascript (both of which are somewhat difficult on their own).

As for how I will use this-
Well, I think that it's pretty cool to be able to upload the photos so that any of our patrons can view and share them. For home, I tend to use Kodak EasyShare to upload and share our photos, but I have to send an e-mail invitation directly to people so that they can view them. But, that's not really an efficient option for the library...

I am good with Microsoft Office, and can create lots of things, but the documents are fairly limited clipart- & picture-wise. By using Flickr, they can be greatly enhanced.

23 Things-Library Thing #3 (RSS)

I chose to use Google Reader because I can also access it from either the library or school. I will also be using it for an upcoming Library 2.0 class this fall term, so it was good to be able to dink around with it at my own pace rather than rush to get everything all set up and not fully understand what in the world was going on.

I like that all the content comes to one place and I don't have to go to my eleventy-zillion bookmarks to see whether or not a site has been updated. There's also a way on Google Reader to get RSS updates from sites that don't have an actual feed subscription, which is handy. All I had to do was add the URL of the site, and then sort it into whatever folder I'd set up for that category.

I'm still undecided as to whether I will use the Google Reader much in my personal life. I can definitely see how it will help in my professional & school life. I have lots of bookmarked Favorites on both home & work computers, and sometimes they get lost in the shuffle of everyday life, even though I have them organized into Folders. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by how MUCH knowledge there is in the collective world culture, but I also know as a librarian in today's digital culture, I don't have the luxury of hiding under a rock!

So, what did I put in my Google Reader? I started by subscribing to their News bundle, but deleted all but BBC and Google News (the only 2 I read on a consistent basis). Then, I started going through all my bookmarked Favorites on my home computer to see what I had that would be good- I came up with 5 others. I skipped over the ones that frequently updated-I think for now that would be WAY too overwhelming. I may add and delete over the upcoming weeks, especially after I start school.