A few good books

I know it's a bit after summer but here are a few of my good reads to take us into fall. Many of these are on my LibraryThing but I wanted to add my thoughts on these. I hope to add a few more posts like this soon.

Austenland by Shannon Hale
This is a book published this year which was a great fun read. I am a Jane Austen nut so the story was right up my alley. The main character, Jane Hays gets to live out her Jane Austen fantasy at a period strict resort. A little contrived but fun all the way through.

Pride and Prejudice And Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
OK, I can't write about my good reads without including my favorites.

P&P is the classic romance tome with the wonderful language and wit of Mr. Darcy and Miss Elizabeth Bennett as they struggle with and against pride, prejudice and love. I have read and watched (many versions) so many times my husband doesn't know what to do with me. Each perusal bring something new so I just can't resist and it's just such a nice relaxing read.

Mansfield Park is such a different book. Romance and marriage are a key themes but there is much more to explore. Fanny Price is the poor offspring of a family with too many children sent to live with wealthy relations. Class divisions are very evident in this book but it creates a wonderfully woven story speaking to class, love, lust, and finding one's true self. I love this book for the triumph of goodness and for making the reader think about consequences of one's actions.

Pride and Prescience: Or, A Truth Universally Acknowledged by Carrie Bebris

I am a purist and don't always like to go beyond the story, but this was very different. A mystery story beginning right after Elizabeth Bennett becomes Mrs. Darcy. The plot isn't a classic who-done it but contains magical themes and grabs the reader with the familiar characters with a little bit more development.

Post 2.0

Now that I've finished this project, I'm trying to keep more up to date. A colleague emailed the page below on concepts all librarians need to know. It was very interesting but still a little techie for me. Definitely good to be aware of what all those acronyms mean and where to go for more information.

http://otherlibrarian.wordpress.com/2007/09/06/under-the-hood-of-web-20-the-top-ten-programming-concepts-for-librarians-to-understand/

Maryland Libraries Learning 2.0 - 23 Things DONE!

Well, I've finally made it to the last Thing: my overall thoughts. I have found this program to be both taxing and rewarding. It took at lot of time to finish the discovery exercises for some of the Things although some took more time because they were too much fun. As with all technology (and really anything in life), discovery is only the beginning. If you don't apply your knowledge from time to time you forget - does anyone remember how to do quadrilateral equations? Thus the Things that will stay with me the most are those that I use frequently which I suppose is the greatest challenge out of this program.

Blogging has been lots of fun and I plan on trying to post something at least every month. Now I can expand on more topics and maybe write about the books that I added to LibraryThing. I also think that the downloadable books part will be helpful for assisting and suggesting to customers for home use.

As for where to go from here, I think that we need to continuously review and expand on the Things explored here. To remain relevant in the library world we need to understand the technologies out there and how our customers can use them both in and outside of the library (often very different experiences).

This was a very unique way to continue my learning at my own pace and would love to do something similar again. Having several colleagues participating was a great motivation to keep moving as was my system's incentive and support.

Books & the digital world

As I get close to finishing my 23 Things, today I looked at our offerings for downloadable audio books. When I had a long commute, audio books were a staple for me but now that I spend so little time in the car, I just don't get the time although I really like them and their digital counterparts. The Overdrive Digital Media Guided Tour was long but was very informative for a novice. Netlibrary is similar but the Overdrive tour was so good that it made me try it out. It was very easy to sign on, locate some interesting books and download them. I don't have my digital player yet to use these most effectively so I just have to locate a CD-RW and I think I'll be in business. A long car ride should be much more interesting next time for the whole family.

Project Gutenberg was another site to explore but these books were digital copies to read. I like the computer but can't bring myself to read too much on the screen. Spending all day in front of a screen probably contributes to this aversion.

Podcasts

Podcasts are a great idea if you know what you want. I found that the sites I checked out were really hard to use if you just wanted to check it out. Their subjects were too broad and not clearly defined; key words gave me too many hits and too many false hits. Also the main page for each series was only as good as it's description and tags. There was one for booktalks with over 350 casts. It looked good at first but with only title and author I found it daunting to identify YA titles.

Looking at the Merlin site was much easier because it directed me to websites that I was interested in with podcasts that I wanted to hear. I really liked Kankakee Public Library's site which had casts for YA topics so I added this into my Bloglines. Once I get my MP3 player, I'll try my hand at downloading!?!

Podcast.net
Podcastalley.com
Yahoo Podcasts
MERLIN podcasting learning link

http://www.bloglines.com/public/jonesjennifere

No Cookies in the Library - Classic Sesame Street

I really like this video and have added it to my YouTube favorites. I was directed there years ago but can't remember by whom (sorry no citation). YouTube is one of my favorite 2.0 websites even if I don't think I'll ever upload anything.

There is so much neat stuff for entertainment but there's also so much more. It will be fascinating to see how upcoming elections are affected by use of this medium. I even got to see some BBC footage of flooding in Stratford-upon-Avon England from earlier this summer. How cool is it to be able to tap into sights and sounds around the world!

Award winning 2.0 sites

This Thing asked us to check out http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0 and explore some award winning 2.0 sites that are out there. I clicked on a few categories and found that most of the ones I was interested in, I had already heard of or used the award winners. I guess that means that I'm not so cutting edge, but that's not much of a surprise.

I also discovered that these sites are only as good as the users who contribute. Looking at City Guides & Reviews, http://www.yelp.com/, and Real Estate, http://www.housingmaps.com/, showed that the major cities have good coverage but it's hit or miss in other places, even in the suburbs outside of the big cities. This is a major drawback when looking for a different restaurant or choosing a house. As I've said before, many of these sites have potential but without proper execution and buy in, they end up just being time wasters instead.