Who Are We?

I love thinking about the future. Partly, this is because I love not having to think about how far behind I am in what I should have done today . . . but partly I love it because it allows for that higher-level thinking. I love dreaming, basically. The Current Professional Terminology (CPT) for this is being a Visionary. Whether you call it visionary thinking, daydreaming, dreaming for real or just plain imagination, I love it!

So, when I was given (thanks, E!) tickets to Thomas Friedman lecture at OSU, I jumped at the chance. (Ok, no actual jumping was involved, but in my mind I was jumping) Talk about a visionary! Friedman wrote The World is Flat, which I've read and enjoyed and which really has some excellent point in it about the Global Economy and what the US or any country should be thinking about in terms of staying a legitimate "player" in the market.

What does this have to do with Library 2.0? Well, I'll tell you my version! I'd love it if you read his book and have some comments and shared them. Anyway, his new book is Hot, Flat and Crowded, and it's about how we need to consider Green Technologies (GT), alternate fuel sources, etc, and bring back a culture of innovation in the US if we're going to be able to keep up . . .again, with the Global Economy thing! (see here for a discussion on his website)

One point that really resonated with me and with what we've been talking about is the idea that 20 years from now the whole world will be completely different from what we know today. Now, don't be thinking Wall-E, but also don't discount the truths that are underneath that animated movie. We need to get our head around the concepts of GT and be innovative in finding ways to live w/o leaving such a gosh darn big carbon footprint!

So - hold on here - I'm almost to my point . . .

Government regulation is something that Friedman says will help with this problem, because, he says, we should be charging people a Carbon Tax - something to compensate the world (and whose bank accounts?) for the cost of producing, say, the lovely AC that is currently making my office 68 degrees. He also says that our governmental system (all hail the glorious Democracy!) is NOT good at dealing with long-term, multigenerational changes (this I totally agree with!).

Who is good at handling mulitgenerational change? Well, I would propose that Libraries sometimes are . . . and maybe should always be. Think about the longevity of our institution. Think about CML and how long some of us have been working here. You know, sometimes change is hard to deal with at CML because some of us have been here so long, our experience and our natural human tendancy to think "but we've always done it this way" is slowing down our ability to be maneuverable in the market. On the other hand, we could choose to embrace that longevity and harness it to perhaps create multigenerational change in our world.

This, my friends, is where my brain is today. I am thinking about how we can make a huge difference 20 years from now because of what we're doing today. We can live with a smaller carbon footprint, build our new buildings to be more efficient, AND (those of you who know me should have seen this coming) get all of our local parents to accept responsibility as their children's first teachers . . . and 20 years from now the Columbus School System will be thriving, our children will be out of poverty, the crime rate will be down, etc.

Ahh, it's getting me dizzy, up here on my soapbox.

As for Library 2.0 and the future of libraries I'm ready to jump on the Vision train. I see our library as being a catalyst for effecting real change in our community, through the Ready to Read program, through continuing to be a valuable center for lifelong learning and research, through being a promoter of innovation and through providing people of all socio-economic levels the same great service and opportunities to learn and to access information.

You're It! Thing #13

Yup - I'm finally back to Learning and Playing at work. I'm on thing #13, which was really meant for last week, but . . . well . . . read my last post for my excuses. I'm checking out delicious, which is a social bookmarking sharing site. You keep your "favorites" list on this website instead of just in your browser, and you can access it from any computer instead of just your usual place. So, I can keep one list of sites that I can access from home, from my laptop at Panera and/or from work. I signed onto this site a year or two ago and it never really tripped my trigger. Now, however, looking back at it again, I'm thinking that I might give it a try! I'm doing more and more online work for all aspects of my life (Boy Scouts, PTA, my band, playing . . oh yea, and work), and this might help keep track of things I like better. We'll have to see.

So - take a look at my delicious list and see what you think. I'm not done, yet, with taking care of my big browser upload, but soon you'll be able to see most of my bookmarks. :-)

Handling all my old bookmarks again brought me back to my favorite online song cartoon, if you're into things like that. Take a few minutes and listen/watch! I like Heywood Banks!

Who's peeking out from under that stairway?

• 1.4 million people in Ohio w/o power
• 7,000 calls to my staff
• 5,000 calls from my boss
• 100s of trees down as we drive around
• 75 mph gusts of wind
• 70 hours w/o power at my branch
• 57 hours w/o power at home
• 4 days w/o school for Simon
• 3 hours spent in my car just to recharge my cell phone
• 2 bits of minor damage to our house
• 1 helluva windstorm

Donating, Picking, Slideshowing

Well, we'd intended to go to Via Colori so Simon and some other students at his school could do a square at the chalk art festival, but then his teacher got an email saying we didn't have a square. We could have, apparently, been "alternates" and gone down on the off-chance we'd get a square that others didn't want, but we decided to do other things instead.

We took a donation to Ronald McDonald House. We thought about taking a picture, but decided to let Simon be a little more incognito. This is money he collected at his Birthday party, in lieu of gifts. It was cool! The women working the front desk were REALLY nice and doted on him a bit, and gave us a quick tour around the facility. I hope Simon feels even half the pride that I feel in him doing this!

We also went apple-picking. It was great! I tried to upload some photos for you, but for some reason it isn't working. They're pics Mike took, and I'm wondering if the files are just really big or something.

Anyway, because of work, I'm still playing around with Flickr apps, so here is a slideshow of hats and scarves that I've made - lol.

Things 11 and 12

I've been using LibraryThing and Twitter for a while now. I added both as widgets to my blog a while ago, too. You can see them to the right!

I like LibraryThing because it is allowing me to track my reading. What I don't like is that it doesn't allow for showing how much of the book you've read. For instance, I'd like to be able to post a book and then show how far I've gotten in the book when I go to update. I can do that with my knitting projects on Ravelry.com, and I like it! My reading isn't usually just one book at a time, ya know? I've heard some folks talk well of goodreads.com, so I might take a look at that soon. I just don't want to get engulfed in yet another social online site. They become so time-consuming!

Lazy Blogger's Post

I just found this cool generator for Lazy Blog Posting, and I created this:

Wholy smoke I just had a cup of tea and realised I have not updated this since they invented sliced bread... You would not believe how hard it is being waited on hand and foot and generally lounging around. But I'm sorry you'll just have to take my word for it..I am lost in a sea of pseudo-olde-english with a weight-lifting regime, watching Dexter, just generally being an embarrassment to my cats, my day is long and tiring from sun up to sun down and beyond. I am so tired of my kids wanting me to give them attention and stuff. life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get.I go, my lords and ladies; just that when the weather turns bad, I will blog more often. No, really! This is for my ever faithful, devoted public.


Funny! It's like Mad Libs, techno-style!

More Fun with Flickr - Thing #10

I've been having all kinds of fun with Flickr this morning. I've been playing at Big Huge Labs, using their tools. See what I've done?

First, I made myself a smart-alecky name tag . . . I love the pink! Actually, this could be a fairly useful tool. I'm thinking of encouraging my PTA officers to make name tags for themselves. If I make one for that, I'll be on my Flickr photostream.

Next, I played with the beaded photo thingy. One thing I like about these applications is that you can take pics from your computer - you don't have to load them to Flickr first. Cool.

Finally, I couldn't resist the thought bubbles. Ha! I saw the app for making trading cards, but I thought all of these looked like more fun. Maybe I'll do trading cards later. I'm thinking it could be really cool to make trading cards for each staff person for our next all-team meeting!

Twilight Fans

Those of you enamored of the Twilight Series (Parson's staff, this means YOU) - have you seen this comic?

flickr toys

More toys, suggested by Gerald 2.0 :
First, a contestant for my banner, if I can figure out how to put it into the template in the right spot. This comes from Spell with Flickr



Next time, I'll go to the trading card thingy he suggests. Right now, I'm going to go back to my regularly scheduled day off and watch an episode of Firefly.

How much is enough? (#9 of 23 things)

How much is too much news? How much is enough? How much time should I spend reading news each day? These are questions I've always had in my head . . . well, maybe not always, but for a really long time.

I have never been one to read a lot of news. It's depressing, often, and it takes time when I could be DOING things. So when asked to explore news feeds I thought to myself "gack! I don't even like to READ the news!"

But I have found that some well-chosen RSS feeds of headlines is a helpful way to cut down on the time it takes to read the news while still being aware of what is going on in the world. So now I have some headline feeds that are easily accessible from my browser toolbar. I can scroll down the list of headlines and just pick the few that interest me. The rest I can ignore. yay! Ignoring is fun!

For all of my friends who are news junkies (you know who you are!) - happy now?

#8 RSS Feeds and Blogrolls

Hmm - say it again - "blogrolls". Does that sound yummy to anyone else? This week's Learn & Play stuff starts out with some great information on what an RSS feed is and how to use them. I already use Google Reader to keep track of all the blogs I follow. Am I a faithful follower? Nah, not really. I like how GR will give me the first line of the post and I can use that to determine if I want to open it and read it or not. I do read a lot of blogs, though, so don't think I'm not reading!

I have about 80-90 blogs that I watch. Some are mostly dead, while other blogs have new posts every day. What's great about the Reader is that I no longer have to go to each one and see what is going on. I can just look at those who've updated. LOVE IT! Saves me so much time, and it helps me keep up better!

I should probably add a newsfeed or two - but I haven't yet. I don't generally like reading the news - it's often depressing. But I guess that's just a personal problem I have!

So - in the spirit of Learning and Playing at work, I've also investigated Bloglines. I started an account and added some feeds. It's neat! I like being able to easily share your blogroll with others. Here is my public blogroll - yippee!