Thing 6

And my trading card is - guess what! I do have a fondness for these creatures and have been feeding several that live near our house (under the porch actually) to get them through the winter.

I thought this was another fun exercise with good instructions. I can't think of a good library use for trading cards just at the moment but I'm sure someone in my division or the group as a whole could. I also can't think of any other images illustrating my 23 Things activities but I'll keep pondering on it.

Thing 5 - More Flickr

This was not an easy exercise. I wanted to do something with Color Pickr but couldn't figure out how to upload it. I just don't have a lot of time to spend at this so used Splashr. Here are some Australian possums to enjoy.

These tools would definitely be fun to learn about and use to jazz up our website and/or department pages.

Thing 4 - Photosharing with Flickr

Flickr is an interesting experience. The cutesy spelling and word-making is a bit off-putting but there are definitely some useful tools there. I found a lot of interesting photos and a lot of pretentious ones. I still find it hard to understand why so many people think the entire world wants to see what they've been doing but I guess I'm just not in that mindset.

The Clemens library display was really great. What a creative use of this product! I definitely can see uses for our library there.

While searching Flickr I found a series of cute photos of possums. Possums are a most interesting critter and now that they seem to be a permanent part of the Minnesota landscape it's fun to find out more about them.

I had a lot of trouble uploading this image. This photo is from Possum Lady. It's not mine, just found on Flicker and the instructions aren't very complete.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22814387@N03/2209456497/sizes/s/ is the best I can do. There was no jpg link even though it seems to be in the public domain.

Thing 3 - RSS

This is a very, very handy bit of technology. It's easy to do and manage. If I want to keep up with news or research on a particular topic I can do so. This was a fun exercise.

Thing 2 Library 2.0

I read through quite a few articles. My reaction is "plus ca change....". 30 years ago OCLC and MARC were revolutionary, then online catalogs and ILSs. The library world has always adapted to and used new technology. Changes come faster these days but eventually a certain level of change will come to all libraries. Web 2.0/Library 2.o, whatever you call it it's a good opportunity to keep the library relevant to the high-tech oriented segment of our population. We do, however, have to remain relevant to those who aren't as comfortable with these changes. The baby-boomers will remain an enormous population bulge for years to come but there is also another huge population peak coming along as the birthrate in the US spikes so we will need to be aware of ALL our users not just the technolgically sophisticated ones.

23in08

Thing 1, Blogger. The instructions made it fairly simple to set up this blog. I can see the attraction for people to share comments but I do wonder where they get all their time! The avatar took too long and I don't think it's really necessary. Perhaps I didn't explore enough but all the images were young and unrealistically thin. A poor example for our young people, particularly girls.