Wednesday, October 31, 2007

a funny thing happened behind the circ desk today...

...a patron came up to check out, and during the time I was taking care of them, they mentioned that they used to be able to keep track of books that they were interested in or had already read...B and I both commiserated with her over the fact that with our new system we could no longer do that. When suddenly, out of my wondering mouth these words popped out..."Well", I said, "I can't believe I'm even going to suggest this, but you could always open up a del.icio.us acct. and keep track of the books you were interested in that way...". Her response? She made a funny face and replied, "Huh, I want YOU (i.e the library) to do that for me!".



Two important things happened during that conversation. I realized that some of this "stuff" is starting to coalesce in my feeble brain re: 2pt0, AND, maybe more importantly, it was brought home to me that people still want us (read libraries) to provide the information they want/need WITHOUT PUTTING OUT THE EFFORT THEMSELVES! To me that means that many of our patrons still come into the physical space that is our library expecting US ( the warm bodies) to find the answers for THEM. Alot of them, like myself, are still kicking and screaming when it comes to all this whizbang stuff on the internet...



My "breakthrough" today, if you wish, which was figuring out how to actually create tags for different sites and deposit them on del.icio.us, came after many, many hours over the last several weeks, on my own time of trying to sift through all of the 2pt0 info to date that has been presented to us. I feel that there are still countless people out there who have neither the desire nor the time to learn this stuff. The wave of the future ??? I'm not sold yet.

Monday, October 29, 2007

del.icio.us...my head is spinning!

Yikes! Am I having fun yet???! Not too sure, to be honest. After a week of reading and reading and reading again the info re:del.icio.us, telling my husband( the compute nazi) that I needed to download some"buttons" to our home computer in order to continue with this project, then spending over 1 1/2 hours yesterday doing the project, I was all done in. I went well beyond sensory overload.

However, I think I actually managed to make a tag....

Outta time, more later.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Wowza, sensory overload...

Ok, I'm back for another try. I've just gone and re-read 3 of the first weeks assignments, and while I did find some interesting points, I'm truly feeling sensory overload. I find the whole internet format to affect me that way. I want my information to be right in front of me, something i can touch, feel, fondle, hold....in other words, a book or books. I find it difficult to process information from more than one "window" at a time. The opening and closing of windows, layering, etc, leaves me reeling. Maybe it's that I just don't enjoy looking at a computer screen....? (I think I feel a migraine coming on.) However, I guess I'll go check out some other folks blogs and post a comment or two.

Andiamo.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

I've joined the dark side...a work in progress.

I can't believe I've actually done this, the preliminary steps to making a blog...I am sooo out of my comfort zone right now that I should have a nosebleed; but I promised myself, kind of a New Years resolution, that I would try to become more comfortable with "the Net". I'm sure that I will do alot of stumbling along with the requisite kickinag and screaming...we'll see.