I’ve been spending a little too much time perusing the wikipedia glossary. Of course now I know what a WikiGnome is (a Wikipedian who makes minor, helpful edits without clamoring for attention). Or that a stub is an article too short to give an adequate introduction to a subject.  But as my son would say, “That’s an hour I’m not getting back.”

OK, yes, we all know that Wikipedia is not the most reliable source. But since so many people use it (myself included), it’s helpful to know how it works – and how their articles are written/edited/vandalized.  

I realize that wikis aren’t designed to be works of art.  But I found many of them to be very text heavy and pretty uninviting.  Princeton Public Library’s BookLoversWiki was nicely designed,  and I love that kids submitted reviews as part of the summer reading program (nice raffle prizes too!). I liked the look of JMRL Reads and found some good reading lists.  And I agree with Deirdre that having the wikis edited by librarians seems like a very good idea. Library Success had lots of  helpful information. I laughed at this line directed to librarians:        Note: Please try to keep the list in alphabetical order. And I notice that their wiki now requires an email confirmation, because they’ve had problems with vandalism.

I think a wiki can be a wonderful tool for librarians – and for patrons.  I particularly like it as a place to share book selections and  reviews. It might also be helpful to have a wiki for sharing ideas for library programs and storytimes.  

And now it’s time for my Wikibreak.

 I’m not going to post all the the rules (you can find them on Deirdre’s blog, but basically the idea is to post 6 random things about yourself and then tag 6 people to do the same).  

So here are six random things  about me:

   1.  I took piano lessons for 11 years and still have the piano I learned to play on.                                                                                                                                                                                    2.  I used to work as a writer in advertising.             

3. I used to iron my hair.                              

4. I spent a year of my life dancing almost every day.                                  

5.   I went to a college with no grades, no required courses, no competitive sports teams (except ultimate frisbee) and no Republicans (well, maybe a few).      

6. My neighbor wrapped a snake around my neck while we were playing hide-and-seek (yes, I was a kid, and no, it did not stop me from letting my son get a pet cornsnake).

Well, I’m only going to tag two people (sorry, but it’s late and I still have a lot of reading to do):  

Debbie  and  Annieb71  

AND PLEASE, IF YOU DON’T FEEL LIKE PLAYING, IT’S  FINE!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

How wonderful to wake up to this!  

Hope you all stay safe and warm.

Happy Holidays to all my friends at WLS!

 By the way, what’s the protocol for using pictures from Google Images, Flickr, etc?  This bird photo is actually from PDPhoto, which  has tons of  public domain, stock photos. My Twitter account is here.

I’ve been playing around with lots of different image generators.  At the moment, I’m hooked on FDToys. I’m actually discovering lots of practical uses for the Warholizer, the Hockneyizer, Captionizer and Movie Poster.  I made the poster above for my Junior Critics book group.  I took a picture of our page (thanks, Susanne) reading the upcoming book, warholized it, and then used Movie Poster to put it together. Can you tell that I had fun?  And thanks John for warning us about the changes in WordPress.

Is there anybody out there who is not amused by ElfYourself ?  My son happened to be at the library when he opened up the ElfYourself that I sent him (the disco version, of course). And yes, almost everyone looks funny in an elf hat.

When I first began Web 2.0, I was too busy trying to figure things out to ponder the usefulness of any of this technology.  At times, I was frustrated by what I didn’t know.  I read posts from people who were on their second or third blog, and I was still trying to figure out how to change my avatar so it would look like

this (and no, I did not refer to it as an avatar, I called it that picture-thingy). 

Some days, I admit, I would like to hit technology over the head with a frying pan.  Those are the days when I inadvertently delete a 4-picture, 6-paragraph blog post (and yes, I learned my lesson). Or when I spend 20 minutes trying to log onto my email account because of course I can’t remember whether froggy is the screen name for yahoo, gmail, aol, wlsmail, or one of the other email accounts I’ve created.

But mostly, I am having so much fun playing.  I don’t think I’ll continue using everything I’ve learned. My family said they will disown me if I don’t stop twittering.  But that’s not really the point.  I’ve discovered some incredibly useful tools. I’m sharing photos with my family on flickr.   I will go through major withdrawal if I can’t continue blogging. And the best best best part of this is not being afraid of the things I don’t know.  Before I panic and assume I will never ever figure something out, I play around. I make a few dozen mistakes.  And usually I figure it out (or I send out an sos to another librarian!). 

And while all this technology doesn’t make me more creative, I love that it can be used creatively. 

I dunno.  But last week, we got to ask Tim Morehouse (left) and Jason Rogers (right).  They came to The Field Library Children’s Room to talk about the sport they love – sabre fencing – and what it’s like to be on the U.S. Olympic Fencing Team. And yup, they were pretty excited about those silver medals!

This is one of Tim’s favorite poses (an unusual pose, he admitted, but one that got him where he is today). 

By the way, Tim and Jason could not have been more encouraging to all the would-be fencers in our audience. 

 Here we are, only slightly star-struck.

And here’s the Silver Medal.  We didn’t get to keep it.  But we did get to touch it.  Thanks to Alex Acevedo (founder of The Peekskill Fencing Center) for arranging this terrific program! And thanks to Sally Bentley for the great photos.

RSS Feeding Frenzy

Thanks, John. Now I know what that lovely icon is. It took me a little time to get started with bloglines (it didn’t want to send a verification to my aol email, so I had to use my yahoo account — who knows why!).

I try (not too successfully) to limit the number of blogs I follow because they’re so addictive – and I have no willpower. I get sucked into one blog after another, only to realize that it’s 2 am and I can barely see straight. But I am enjoying all the WLS blogs (even if I don’t always remember to post comments).

Oh yeah, here’s my bloglines