Listen Up!

Pay attention out there, I'm trying to learn how to add sound!

# 56: Potluck: To Tweet...

I do use technology, couldn't live without it really. I can see its good points, but I'm not a diary kind of person, so blogs have left me somewhat cold. I felt the same about Twitter - on a much smaller scale (140 characters, to be exact). I just felt it was a total black hole for time. However, my cousin sent me an article on Twitter from the New York Times, Jan. 15, 2009 "Twittering Tips for Beginners" by David Pogue which did show that Twitter can have remarkable value. To benefit from it you would have to be enough of a Twitterette, TwitterBug, Twitterite, Twitterer or whatever you want to call yourself to have a following. That way, you get answers back when you post questions. As Pogue says, "In the end, my impression of Twitter was right and wrong. Twitter IS a massive time drain. It IS yet another way to procrastinate, to make the hours fly by without getting work done, to battle for online status and massage your own ego.
But it’s also a brilliant channel for breaking news, asking questions, and attaining one step of separation from public figures you admire. No other communications channel can match its capacity for real-time, person-to-person broadcasting."

I spent quite a bit of time looking through Celebrity Tweets. I seem to be a long distance stalker. In Twello I looked up the various talk show hosts of shows I like and was disappointed Jon Stewart didn't Twitter. I bet his tweets would be interesting. I did check Roland Hedley - Doonesbury's Iraq-embedded journalist who is really a big doofus, but he's huge into Twitter and it is a new storyline in Doonesbury. Lo and behold he tweets! I subscribed! The best part of Twello and finding Twitterers was checking to see who they are following. That was very interesting! Check out someone you admire and see who they are keeping track of.

I'm not sure I'm connected enough to want to Twitter full time, although I did sign up for a Twitter account. The first person who responded was my son's roommate's mother who was the first person that I ever chatted with on AIM (other than my children). I'm not sure she will be someone I can turn to for answers to questions when I'm in a "need-to-know" situation. She's less technologically inclined than I am.

53 # 3 Books & Reading: download an ebook

Overdrive I love; and I can even do this myself. That means it is easy for anybody to use. I much prefer the audio portion of Overdrive - I want to read a book while holding it. I don't want to read it on my computer, PC or laptop. But I would listen to it - on a computer or a WMA device or an MP3 player.

That said, I have been very happy using ebooks when I needed help. I've worked on projects at home and needed manuals that I didn't have and rather than going back to the library I've found them online from Netlibrary or Safari and could find the information I needed in various chapters or pages from titles in the HCPL catalog. That has been a life-saver. But I only had to read the portion I needed: check the index, navigate to the appropriate page and find the information I needed. Then use the information and shut the book. That is the big advantage as far as I can see and it was huge at 11 at night.

I just can't get comfortable reading an electronic book like I can with a traditional book and would never choose a fiction title online if I had a choice. However, I read newspapers, magazines, etc. all the time online and really like the easy access to them. It is so easy to check in and see what is happening when you have just a few minutes. So it basically comes down to what I would be reading online - it seems like anything is good, as long as it isn't my leisure reading.

53 # 2: Books & Reading: find a book online

Barnes & Noble - Deerbrook Mall had Mr. Perfect in stock for $7.19 for members. Book Mooch had it for 10 books in trade. I didn't find it in audio or ebook format, although Harris County does have several of Linda Howard's other titles. I looked in World Public Library, Bartleby.com, and several of the sites listed in the Best Books to get free books. I bogged down - I didn't want to register for any sites - not crazy about that practice - probably because I've been a victim of identity theft and I just don't like spreading myself all over the internet.

53 # 1: Books & Reading - finding books

Using Houston.com and searching the directory of book stores in the category "North of Houston and Montgomery" listings, it is easy to find book stores in the area. Ideally, you could put in a zip code and search for bookstores that way - we can't have everything, I guess

Another great search tool is the "Search Nearby" function of maps.Google.com. While it listed some of the smaller, very specific bookstores, it didn't come up with the Half Price Book Store in Humble or the Hard to Find Books store in Humble. Both search tools found the Barnes and Noble.

Barnes & Noble Online gives editorial and customer reviews, let's you check if the title is in stock at this moment and to reserve it.

I'm way too wordy for this post.

52 # 4: Books and Reading - series

I used Novelist - it is one of the easiest. The series is Song of the Lioness and the titles in the series, in order, are:

Alanna: the first Adventure; 1
In the hands of the Goddess; 2
Women who rides like a man; 3
Lioness rampant; 4.

However, I would have gone directly to the author's website and looked for the series' lists rather than go in through a "resource". If the author's website doesn't list series, in order, then I would go through a "third party" to find the order of a series.

52 # 3: Books and Reading - Dean Koontz

This exercise was very easy. Novelist gave us Charles Grant, Dan Simmons and John Saul in the Dean Koontz Read A-like entry.

My new best source - LibraryBooklists.org - so easy to navigate revealed Bentley Little, Peter Straub and Davis Morrell among the writers similar to Koonts.

52 # 2 Books and reading: What to read?

Finding the 2 animal books for the 4th grade girl and the ghost books for the 13 year old boy was easy with Novelist. With the Advanced Search function you can specify a subject, choose a grade level and even a lexile if you wish. I was hoping for gender of reader as girls will read anything good while boys would rather have a guy as the main character.

"A dog's life" by Ann Martin and "Snakes don't miss their mothers" by M.E. Karr for the girl.

"Down came a blackbird" by Nicholase Wilde and "Gothic: ten original dark tales" fot the boy.

52: # 1 Books and Reading

Our mission was to find read-alikes for a favorite title. I used Mr. Perfect by Linda Howard as it was the perfect blend of humor, romance and mystery and because it had me laughing out loud when I read it. It was not a great choice for read-alikes as Linda Howard doesn't limit her books to humorous romantic mystery. So checking an author read-alike really sucked at finding similar titles.

Novelist came close by choosing American humor and then continuing to limit the search.

"What do I read next?" was very frustrating because I kept getting errors when I searched it. I wanted to kick the computer into the next room - however, I refrained as it was not mine.

Library Booklists and Bibliographies was a great find. I liked its ease of use - I could click until I got a list of Adult Fiction Read A-likes.

I wish I had picked a better title for this exercise.

# 54 Books, Readers and Beyond: Social Networking through books - Posts 2 & 3

There always seem to be such good ideas for book clubs when I read about them. To paraphrase the old saying, "So many book clubs, not enough time." I love the ideas of genres, food and books, meeting weekly and discussing them by chapters. The reality is who has the time for that. The title I would choose - 2 very different people have recommended it to me - is "Lamb; the gospel according to Biff" by Christopher Moore.

Reading Group Guides even has a reading guide for it, although it didn't really review the book. Goodreads had a lot of reviews on the book; it seemed more weighted on favorable reviews, although those who did not like it really did not like it. LibraryThing also reviewed it and those were mostly favorable. The language in Goodreads is quite a bit more risque than on LibraryThing. I wonder if the LibraryThing members are just that much more refined?

I seem to be doing this backwards. I'll go out of order and now go to Post # 52

# 54 Books, Readers and Beyond: Social Networking through books

If I've been involved in a book group it was so long ago I don't remember it. If I were to join one I would join one in person as I need the immediate interaction with others. I need to see their faces and hear the inflection and tone of their voices. That is always very important to me.

That is one reason on-line networking does not have as much appeal to me. I've always asked for what someone's tone and voice inflection waswhen a conversation was being recounted. And I need to see faces and gestures.

# 30 - Take a load off drives!

OK; here is where we really need to concentrate. KW is not full of techies; they've not all embraced technology (we're a branch full of Neo-Luddites). So, thankfully we don't have a lot of pictures, large files, etc. to clean up. What we do have are duplicate files - in our zeal to organize we may have 3 files: 1, the original document, 2, the document placed into a folder and 3, that same document placed in the newly created folder that is more precise. That is our challenge. Unfortunately, this is where differences in learning styles, thinking processes, etc. come into play. Where one person may think to look for a document is so totally out of sync with where another person thinks to look. And that type of problem does not go away. Like I said - it's a challenge!

#28 - Spring Cleaning & # 29 - Email

I did enjoy the readings. They validated my feelings on "touching things once". Where I fall apart is in the booklists that I want to go back to look at. I should just delete them if I can't get to them at the time. It was nice to see a method to apply to this "take care of it NOW!"
I keep my trash cleaned out; I use the sent folder as a quick glance to see if my questions have been answered, and then they are sent to trash. I can't live without my folders. But I have gone back in those folders to see what is now found in policy online, where once it wasn't; was it for a program, version, etc. HCPL no longer has; it is just plain out-of-date. That was an eye-opener. I saw names I haven't thought of in years. I just didn't realize we have had email this long.

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Week 10: #23 THE END!!!!!

Well, I ran the gamut of emotions with this exercise. I was excited about the prospect of learning new technologies - anticipation was high! The reality of some of the discovery exercises plunged me into the depths of despair - I was technologically impaired, there was no hope for me, I had become my mother!

I would have to say that overall I enjoyed this program of "discovery", although I know that I'd have given up on some if I hadn't needed to complete all for the training hours. Some of these I will never use again, but I will not swear to that. I learned my lesson with children, to never swear, "I would never do (use) that!"

Zoho writer has been useful already, but I can't wait to delete my bloglines account, or Library Elf. There have been way too many user names and passwords to remember. I think Mike has a program that keeps track of them for you - perhaps that should be one of the sites we learn about next!

I do think we should continue this as a training opportunity, but with changes. After listening to the staff, here are a few suggestions that perhaps should be incorporated into the exercise.

• Start earlier in the year.
• Let each exercise last 1 month, with only one new activity introduced each week that builds upon the original concept - that way there is a better climate for really learning the exercise.
• Let each exercise be independent of the others, if staff want to do one but not another, let them accrue training hours for the ones they actually did.

Bling is not really necessary - the training hours should be enough incentive. Or else it should be sooooo spectacular that everyone wants to complete all the exercises in order to get bling (perhaps WMA player to go along with Overdrive - or better yet, you complete the exercises and your name goes into a drawing for a chance as one of 5 winners of a WMA player). Maybe flash drives could be the bling for completing all the exercises along with the training hours. Those who only complete selected exercises, only get the training hours. Fair.