Testing testing

This is a test post. Let's see how it looks.

Isn't It Del.icio.us?

OK this is hard for me to admit. I think of myself as a social networking/Web 2.0/Library 2.0 savvy kind of person. I've introduced blogs into multiple workplaces. I have 500 books in my LibraryThing library. I spend way too much time on Facebook. But the sad truth is ... I'm afraid of Del.icio.us.

I've basically had the same reaction some of my friends have to Facebook: I don't get it. I've seen it, at work where one of my colleagues has used it to compile a list of recommended websites on all kinds of topics (she even included my personal blog there, bless her, before we were colleagues) and I've used the page Stephanie created for this course. But I just didn't get how it worked. And in my own defense, I have to say the name with all those periods in weird places is not exactly inviting. I had to check about five times to see if the dot came before or after the first i and I still got it wrong in the title to this post.

Now I've listened to a podcast tutorial recommended on the 23 Things site. I've created an account. I'm going to start tagging. And I think I get it. I'm still not sure how much I'll use it -- and I'm sure it's never going to reach Facebook-like cultural dominance. But that's cool. It looks like it could be really useful for tracking and sharing information.

In case you're wondering about the image ... it's from a 1956 book called Party Cake Houses, courtesy of one of the very first sites that made me love the interwebs, back in the dark ages of dialup and AOL -- James Lilek's brilliant Gallery of Regrettable Food. This, by the way, is just part of the ever-expanding always worthwhile online Lileks empire. If you have a job where you can waste time online, or you need to procrastinate on, say, an extra credit school assignment, you can't beat this site.

Man Versus Machine

Of all the many articles, blog posts and general rants I've read lately about the impact of technology on libraries (and on publishing, and on reading in general) the most interesting was the piece recently posted on the USF SLIS blog ... a piece that was written in 1938. The excerpt from  "Technics or Humanization in Librarianship" demonstrates something we all need to keep in mind as we surf through Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Kindles, Nooks, iPads and whatever the Next New Thing is going to be -- that as long as we're around, humans and our humanity are an important part of this equation and that no technology is going to replace human experience, emotion and ability to figure out what another human is trying to find/read/do. I'm not saying we should get rid of computers in libraries or throw all the Kindles on the scrap heap. Reacting as a Luddite and resisting new technologies as some terrible (new) development in human history is pointless and dumb -- computers in general and the Internet in particular offer huge advantages in communication and ability to store and retrieve information. I think I'm saying we should remember that computers are our tools, and we should deploy them as they best serve us -- and not either 1) try to replace all of human experience and expertise with terminals or 2) resist all use on the grounds that we will wind up in some kind of Space Odyssey situation.

Flickring on

Here's the thing about Flickr. I sort of thought it was going to be eclipsed by Picasa, the way Yahoo email was eclipsed by gmail. But the thing is, Flickr (like Yahoo email) has hung in there -- and even flourished. Clearly the site offers services that Picasa doesn't -- or it just managed to hold onto the critical mass necessary to remain relevant in World 2.0.

I have a couple Flickr sites of which I am particularly fond -- one is the site that holds historic photos from my library's collection -- and just recently surpassed 300,000 hits. That's a lot for a little library like us, but we happen to have a great collection that has been used by everyone from architects to historians to historical ecologists (who use historical data, including photos, to measure the impact that humans are having on the natural world). Another fun thing to do there, which I love pointing out to library patrons, is to run your address through the site; chances are decent you'll get a photo of your house from the 1950s or '60s, taken by the property appraiser's office. A volunteer just spent hundreds of hours scanning in those photos, one at a time, and labeling them with the individual addresses.

Another part of Flickr I like is the photoshare of Under the Sun, a public radio program out of WLRN in Miami. I'm not just saying that because they made the above photo, which I submitted on the Flickr group, their photo of the week recently. Hey, if you ask for chicken photos you're going to get stuff from Key West.

I (Heart) LibraryThing

I *love* LibraryThing. If you're a book nerd, especially if you don't happen to have a great book group or a lot of friends who read the same kind of stuff or you're just insatiable to find out about books and share opinions on them, this site is unbeatable. I'm a lifetime member. You can find me there, under the username keywestnan. I have cataloged 500 books and reviewed 60. I also use a few other social networking booksites -- Visual Bookshelf and weRead on Facebook and Shelfari -- but none of them can compare. Even though I don't personally know anyone else who is a big LibraryThing user, I still find it a great source of recommendations, reviews and general chatter about books, libraries and sometimes other subjects. I'm particularly fond of the "odd things found in the library" message threads among the Librarians Who LibraryThing group. They're unbelievable. Another cool thing about the site is that a lot of the users in general and librarians in particular seem to be from the UK and that gives you an interesting and different perspective on books, reading and librarianship. Long Live LT!

First post

Yep, this is a blog post. It's for a class exercise on 23 Things, a way for library staffers to learn about Web 2.0. Seems like a good idea to me.

This photograph bears absolutely no relevance to the subject at hand; I include it here because 1) I think all blog posts should include art 2) it happened to be on my computer and 3) it's not a bad shot. I took it at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, one of Florida's if not the world's most beautiful places in my opinion. The boats are called "chugs" and are there because refugees from Cuba used them to cross the Florida Straits. Under current U.S. policy (known as wetfoot/dryfoot) if they make it to U.S. soil (dryfoot) they get to stay. Dry Tortugas National Park is U.S. soil and it's a lot easier to reach (more remote, fewer patrols) than the Keys or mainland Florida so a lot of Cubans reach this country that way.

This is, I believe, the sixth blog I've created. All but the first still exist although one -- the Florida Keys Community College News & Events blog -- is now managed by other people. I'm going to include links to my other blogs. One of them, Key West Coffee, is not a "real" blog but something I created for a workshop on blogging at the Monroe County Public Library in Key West.