The assignment: Write a brief summary of your experiences with either del.icio.us or google docs or both.

I LOVE del.icio.us -- the whole idea of it is great for outreach activities from our library, and it is soooo easy to create and manipulate. I only wish I could spell -- that's the hardest part for me (spelling delicious).

Google docs so far is working quite well.

del.icio.us account

OK - I now have a del.icio.us account, the address is http://del.icio.us/lmcdavison

I was really pleased with how easy it is to create & manage. I think this is a great tool - especially for reference, and outreach.

PBwiki creation

Well, I finally was able to create a pbwiki. I started on Sunday, but had a lot of problems -- in order to create the account, you must get a confirmation message in your email. My work email wouldn't deliver the message (it wouldn't even put it in spam folder), and my hotmail also filtered it out without letting me see it. So, I finally had to create a gmail account, and it worked fine. The address for my wiki is
http://pickiroro.pbwiki.com

I named it for my cats, Pickles and Rosie (big suprise huh?) ;-)

I looked at some of the Albany County Public Library wiki and also at Librarian Sarah's wiki. They are definitely good examples of using a wiki for work. I was especially impressed with the public library staff's wiki; and I recently learned that two of our ILL folks at the MCL have created a wiki about ILLiad! It's great!

Bloglines account created

I've successfully created a Bloglines account as the next part of our Library Blue 2.0 assignment. I added the Blue 2.0 Blog, the About Cats Blog, and the Dilbert Blog (I've always been a fan of Dogbert's Top Secret Managment Handbook).

I also added Michael Stephens "Tame the Blog" site - I often go there to view it, but think this will be easier having it in Bloglines.

This was a good experience setting up this account. I'm still working on creating a pb wiki though - for some reason I'm not receiving the email confirmation message that I have to have to finish the wiki...

Blue 2.0 assignment continues

So, now I'm to the part of the assignment where we're supposed to record our experience with the instant messaging portion of the program. For me -- it was not pretty. I found the AIM interface to be very user UN-friendly, and all of the ads & flashing gee-gaws distracting. Eventually, I did manage to create an account in AIM & was able to chat with a very patient and helpful co-worker (thanks Susan!). I've used MSN messenger in the past and didn't have nearly as many problems with it as I've experienced with AIM (so far).

Yes, I could see using this technology at work, particularly for short ref questions. I personally would not want to use it for friends & family - keeping up with their email is challenging enough, I would be concerned that IMing would become very time consuming, which would cut down on the time I have to take photos of my cats ...

back to the Blue 2.0 assignment

Oops - I forgot to do activity 3 "Blog It!" in our Blue 2.0 assignment -- this is where we're supposed to talk about our experience in creating our blog. I thought creating it was pretty easy, but coming up with a name and/or something to blog about was incredibly aggravating. Obviously, I don't meet the criteria of a person well suited to have a blog ;-) Still not sure what I'll be blogging about over the next few weeks, so you'll probably see more cat photos... As far as using a blog in my day-to-day work, I'm not seeing it yet. The majority of patrons in our library need clinical evidence based resources rather than personal opinions.

Pickles

As I was discussing my newly created blog at home last night, Pickles became concerned that she was not featured. So, here she is on the left, and on the right along side Rosemarie.

I'm not sure what my blog is going to be about - it wasn't intended to be about cats, but I can't seem to resist posting photos of them!