CPL 2.0 Library Thing

I thought the site was user friendly and easy to navigate. I searched for a few titles that I had recently read and some old favorites and found them all.

It was interesting (to a point) to read the reviews and comments, but for some of the titles, the number of comments are overwhelming, and not very useful. I find that many of these social media sites contain contributions from many people who must have a surfeit of time on their hands, but not much to contribute. I know that sounds elitist, but I don't have time to wade through all the dross that is out there.

I can't see using this site at home -- I just don't have the time to sit on the computer that long. Now that I know more about it, I may be able to see some work applications at some point in the future.

CPL 2.0 Productivity Tools

I tried out Google docs. I don't see it replacing Word or other Microsoft Office products, since it is pretty basic. The automatic spell checker alone would drive me crazy, since it doesn't recognize contractions. I can see how Google docs would be useful for some people, who may be using a variety of different computers, or groups of people who want to access the documents (for example, students working together at university). I don't have a need to do that in my personal life, and if I want to do it at work, I use SharePoint.

Library customers might find it useful, but they may not want to use up their Internet time on documents when they could use productivity software and save their documents to a memory stick. I would be interested to know if customers would be able to upload documents they create in Word, PowerPoint or Excel into Google docs, but I suspect they can't. I tried to upload some of my documents on Central's I-drive into Google docs, but it didn't work, and I got was a "server error" message, which wasn't at all helpful. I also tried several times to copy and paste my test Google docs document into this blog, but that it wouldn't work either.

I might consider using Google calendar at home and syncing it with my Outlook calendar at work, but I find that sometimes these things are much more cumbersome and time consuming than just writing stuff in my daytimer. (And lately, Shaw's Internet service in my neighbourhood has been unavailable for several days at a stretch -- an Internet based calendar is not really useful when you can't access it!)

CPL 2.0 and Flickr, Youtube

This was the first time I'd visited the Flickr site, and I found it interesting and easy to search for photos. It's mind boggling how many photos are available. Some individuals appear to have all the time in the world to take pictures of their cat and post them on Flickr. It boggles the mind!

I've used Youtube before, for both work and personal reasons. It's also very easy to navigate. The quality of the videos really varies -- some are terrible, obviously shot on cell phones. However, there are a lot with very high quality production values and some that are really useful. I'm amazed by the number of "how to" videos on topics from knitting (and tatting, which I though only my Mum knew how to do!) to tap dancing to plumbing to French braiding hair. I think back to all the requests I used to get on French braiding at Fish Creek at this time of year (desperate mothers with kids in dance recitals) and how the one book we had in the system was always out, with lengthy hold lists. Now, customers can find a much more useful resource on the topic on Youtube. Unfortunately, there are sometimes also a lot of very bad videos to wade past to get to the gems.

CPL 2.0 and RSS Feeds

I was able to set up some RSS feeds, using both methods described in the CPL 2.0 blog. Since I was already logged into Bloglines, it probably made it easier to set up a feed from the actual web site, than it would have been had I not been logged in.

The process is pretty simple, the challenge will be selecting sites that give me information that is useful to me without swamping me with too much information. I can see that this service could be really useful (I was introduced to the concept during my pre-Internet library school years, but back then we called it SDI or selective dissemination of information), and I noticed that several of the sites on Bloglines 100 most popular list were book sites, or sites like Library Stuff and Librarian.net or book sites, which indicates to me that librarians like RSS feeds.

On the reading front, I've been reading alot of new children's fantasy during the past few weeks, and have been pleasantly surprised by the quality of what I've read. I hit three titles in a row that I've really enjoyed: Happenstance Found by P.W. Cantanese (first in the Books of Umber series), The Shifter by Janice Hardy (first in The Healing Wars series), and Bran Hambric: The Farfield curse by Kaleb Nation (it's likely to become a series, given the ending, but it lacks a series title at present). Bran Hambric has some echoes of Harry Potter, but the other two are quite original in their settings.

CPL 2.0 and Google

Trying to decide which part of Google to review is a challenge. I enjoy looking at Google Maps, especially the satellite images, since I love having that bird's eye view of places like my home town. If only the resolution were better! However, I must admit that I tend to use Mapquest more for basic maps to find addresses in Calgary that post-date my trusty printed city map. I have found Google Maps are often inaccurate, and the driving directions are often wrong or incomplete.

I spent some time on Google Scholar. I hadn't realized that you could search patents on Google Scholar. I was able to find four patents my Dad had taken out in the early 1970s on a sawmill edger he had designed, and see the different articles and patents that cited his patents. The actual patent has been reproduced. Something for show my son, who keeps asking "was Grandad really an inventor?"

I wouldn't recommend Google Scholar for articles, however, for a couple of reasons:

1. it's still basic keyword searching, with no subject analysis or authorities, leading to a huge number of hits.
2. on the sample searches I did, payment was required to access the full text.

We have better resources in the E-Library -- the ability to search by subject descriptors makes searching much more precise and in most cases full text is available to library members.

CPL 2.0 Social networking sites

I think facebook is a bit of a time "eater" for me at this stage in my life. I can see the appeal of being able to connect with people you haven't heard from in years, but I just don't have the time to put into it. I do admit, it was interesting to see the members of my high school grad class who are on facebook, especially those profiles with pictures, but at least half of the profiles that came up weren't from my grad class (since we only had about 120 grads, it's easy to remember who was and who wasn't). I was amused to see the picture of one of the guys -- really, Ken, you have a slight resemblance to Kevin Costner, but not enough to justify putting his photo on your profile!

My family members are not really into computers -- my parents have an Internet connection that they never use, and although my siblings have the Internet, they are not that interested in computers -- so it is not like I would use facebook to keep up with family news. Perhaps it is a generational thing.

I tried to add myself as a fan of CPL, but I'm not sure it worked. I did add a post to the wall, however.

No book recommendations this week -- I'm still reading, but haven't finished since last Friday!

CPL 2.0 Wikipedia and an Earlier Life

I was happy and a little bit surprised to find a very brief article (two sentences) on my home town in Wikipedia,since it is so small that it doesn't rate an entry in the Canadian Encyclopedia. I was able to add a little bit more information to the article on "Lone Butte, British Columbia", and even managed to insert a reference, in good librarian fashion. I then found the article on the neighbouring "big town" and noticed that although that article mentioned Lone Butte, it didn't have a link to the article, so I added that.

Although adding the information to the article was easy, inserting the reference took multiple tries. The help pages were not very helpful, but I managed in the end -- I'm not sure how.

I looked at a few articles and found no signs of spelling or grammatical errors, but these were mainly to do with history and geography. I would expect the pop culture articles to contain more of those types of errors -- and having just checked the article on Britney Spears and found two grammatical errors in one sentence, I think that's a valid assumption!

On the book front:

I've finished Darksolstice, the second in Sam Llewellyn's Lyonesse series. It's a great read for older kids, whether or not they are familiar with Arthurian legend. Llewellyn does a great job of retelling the legend in a unique setting.

I'm just about finished Al Capone shines my shoes by Gennifer Choldenko, the sequel to Al Capone does my shirts. With its strong characterization, vivid depiction of Alcatraz,and compelling storyline, it is a worthy sequel.

On the adult side, I've just finished Sharpe's tiger by Bernard Cornwell. Chronologically, it's the first in the Sharpe novels. I got into Sharpe through the TV series (CPL holds all but one in DVD, but luckily for me my mother has the entire series on video). I'm a little bit in love with Sean Bean as Sharpe, but I also love historical fiction, so I'm going to read my way through the series in chronological order. One down, twenty more to go! Unfortunately, the second in the series is now only in LPE. (At least it's a paperback.)

Cornwell's newest series (The Saxon chronicles) is a good read, especially for those of us that liked Rosemary Sutcliff's books about Saxon Britain. It chronicles the life of Uhtred of Bebbanburg, Northumbria, who as a boy is captured by Danes. Despite killing Uhtred's father, Ragnor treats Uhtred as his own son. Uhtred becomes, for a time the warlord of Alfred of Wessex. The series starts with The last kingdom. The burning land is the latest.

I'm about to read the new Louise Penny mystery (The brutal telling) and catch up on some titles by David Hewson. He writes mysteries set in contemporary Rome and I really enjoyed the ones I've read.