rss moments, or week 4 revisited

I found another blog to RSS; this time it was Sharon Lee's and full of references to her writing so I now know there is a new novel to look forward to. I've also subscribed to the new ALIA blog for The Librarians so we can all discuss how the series commencing next week makes us look! Obviously I couldn't miss that.
The funniest RSS moment however came when an I.T. visitor at our library services team meeting yesterday asked a room full of people doing Learning 2.0 if we knew what RSS was because he thought it could be useful on the library website. Yes, we cried, week 4! (Except for those who admitted they weren't up to it yet.) I think he was surprised. Certainly the discussion that followed couldn't have happened even a month ago.
The result is I'm going to look at putting RSS feeds on the Chinese and Vietnamese webpages so that patrons can be informed when the new materials lists go up.
City of Yarra doesn't have wikis however. What are those? our visitor asked.
Week 7, came the response.

Explaining EJO's popularity

I think there's a thesis in there somewhere. Monica Godfrey's biography which was published a few years ago might shed some light but I have to confess I've only read the intro and looked at the illustrations. In the intro she suggests EJO's enduring popularity relates to the connectedness of her stories, even the ones that are not strictly part of the Abbey series but still have some connection with them thus forming what she calls a "complicated canvas".

Gene Stratton Porter

My mother gave me Limberlost when I was about twelve; I think it was the closest I ever came to reading teenage angst books. I also read Freckles, and Michael O'Halloran, and Her Father's Daughter, and The White Flag to name my favourites. I haven't read any of them for years but I still have very clear memories of the stories because they were so often about things not being fair and when you're a teenager I think that is a very powerful hook. I've got them tucked away somewhere in the dining room so I'll have to pull them out and see how I find them twenty years later. Not Politically Correct I suspect. I remember Her Father's Daughter being quite rabidly racist about the Japanese and this was twenty years before Pearl Harbour.

D(orita) F(airlie) B(ruce) and the Series Factor

The two main criteria for success as a writer of girls' school stories are clearly the possession of three initials and a Series. Hence we have EBD of the Chalet series, EJO of the Abbey series and DFB best known for the Dimsie series although the Springdale series and the Nancy series also have a strong following. I personally prefer the Dimsie books because I like the antisoppists ( a society opposed to soppy behaviour) and they have a fabulous villain. I'm very partial to a good villain. Angela Brazil on the other hand who is quite erroneously credited with creating the genre languishes because she only has two initials and apart from a couple of pairs, her books are all singletons.

Visitng the sandbox (#17)

I was just going to polish off thing 17 before my working week starts tomorrow but I got hooked reading the favourites. I added my bit to the books and tv shows in passing. I have contibuted to a wiki before; I did a couple of school story writers for Wikipedia earlier this year. This was much more fun though.

Explaining EJO's omission

EJO's not one of my favourites though I love Hamlet Club and Roundheads. The early Abbey books are good but most of the later ones are dire. She's generally regarded as one of the big three in girls' school stories along with EBD and DFB (also missing from my list) but I don't think she is primarily a writer of school stories. Too many births, deaths and marriages.

experimenting

I'm not sure what happened with this. The GIF file copied as a link which doesn't seem to link. The JPEG at least is visible if a little smaller than I wanted. Now if I can just work out how to get rid of the GIF links.

Wiki (#16)

I use wikipedia for what I regard as popular content rather than the traditional encyclopedia content. A patron wanted Volume 17 of Battle Royale, a graphic novel series. I couldn't find it cited anywhere but a wikipedia search took me to an article all about the series which enabled me to establish that the first series of the title only went to vol 16 and that my patron needed to turn his attention to Battle Royale 2, the second series. For me the value of wikipedia lies in the expertise of enthusiasts and I know from my own area of enthusiasm (school stoies) that professionally produced guides - such as Connoly's Modern Children's First Editions - can be far more error prone. That said, I wouldn't use wikipedia for more fact-sensitive areas such as medicine or history, at least not without cross-checking with other sources.
In the library setting I like the idea of a book review wiki. The example from Princeton Public Library wasn't bad though limiting contributions to people who had signed up for the reading program seemed an unnecessary restriction; I would have thought library membership was sufficient.
I'd love to see a local history/local stories wiki at Collingwood. You get a lot of good stories working in a public library; you also get comments too short to be called stories but which could flesh out another story and wikis facilitate that sort of activity.

Thoughts on Library 2.0 (#15)

I was asked on the train last night what I thought of online books. The question came in the context of a discussion of the love of reading; we were talking about how we inveigle our children into reading. I know what she was expecting; a staunch support of traditional books. But I'd stayed up until midnight the previous evening reading the first chapter of Patricia Brigg's forthcoming book on her website. And every Wednesday I visit the Liad site to get the latest chapter of Fledgling. And when someone mentions a book or an author I generally head to a computer so I can check it out.
And the people who mention books to me these days live all over the planet. For the last ten years or so I have belonged to a Listserv which has brought together people who have an interest in children's books. It is seldom that a week goes by without me noting down another book to follow up on.
In these last few weeks I have discovered uses for rss feeds and bloglines, and have come to some understanding of the huge mass of information to be found in blogs. All these things enhance my enjoyment of reading from the first instance of "what can I read next?' to the last instance of "who can I talk to about this book I have just finished."
So I told my train companion that I loved the availability of books online and why. I also told her however that I saw all the advantages of the web as being a welcome addition to traditional books, not a substitute.
I think Web 2.0 functionality will do the same for libraries; enhance what we do without crowding out what we already do. And much of what the articles on Library 2.0 talk about we already do, things like getting our users to add value. Web 2.0 tools and toys will enable us to do them better, to reach a wider audience, to offer a library service 24 hours a day, seven days a weeks.

Simmering on time

I explored the popular tags on Technorati. I was particularly struck by the little "mentions by day" graphs which chart how often something/someone is mentioned in a blog. Is this the definition of celebrity in the blogosphere?
I haven't claimed my blog. It's partly the whole joining thing which is currently overloaded but I also haven't any commitment to longterm blogging and until I reach a decision on that, I'll let the question of claiming my blog on Technorati just simmer.
I have however corrected my time zone!

Thirsty horse ignores water (#14)

When I was exploring the Liaden tag on del.icio.us I found a blog called Journeyman which seemed to have nothing to do with the Liad books so I skipped past it. Today on Technorati doing a search on the same topic I was directed to the same site and decided to have a closer look. It turns out that Journeyman is the blog of Steve Miller, co-author of the Liad books. Which goes to show that del.icio.us and Technorati can lead the horse to water but if the horse doesn't recognise it as water, it's not going to drink.
Searching Technorati for EEW uncovered another person who has The Book ahead of publication but this one hadn't read it yet. It was her blog however that led me to the new Jaclyn Moriarty book, The Spell book of Listen Taylor, so I have put that on hold at the library on the premise that I'll need something else to read once I've read Long may she reign. I think I may use Technorati to identify blogs of people who read similar books to me. At this point I can't think of a good reason to join since use of the search engine doesn't appear restricted to members.

Hookey

I wasn't going to do anymore trading cards, at least not for a while, but I had a very stressful time posting my last post. I accidently saved it as a draft and then spent twenty minutes trying to work out how to publish it, the Help section being particularly unhelpful on this point. (Note to self - tick the edit box and double click)

So this card is what Liadens would call Balance.

The photo editing skills are definitely improving. I think.

ego trado (#13)

As I get deeper into thingdom I realise that it is only when I actually use the thing in question that I get it, get it in the sense of having a clue I mean. I was a little resistant to the idea of another account/username/password so when I got to thing number 13 I was rather pleased to find that learning not joining was the thing. Except I didn't get it. I followed all the links, I learned the mechanics of del.icio.us but I really didn't get the point. So after faffing around for five days I pushed the dread join-me-up link. IE didn't want to display my buttons but I beat it into submission and then I was ready to play. I tagged my favourite NCIS site first. It looked very nice, the tags listed neatly, everything worked. It was only when I followed up by tagging an online serial story by Steve Miller and Sharon Lee that the light finally dawned. Other people had already used Liaden as a tag. I followed the tag, I followed the links, I learned nothing new about Liad but I definitely got the idea. So naturally, given my current obsession, I tagged Ellen Emerson White's blog and went exploring. The tag trail led me to a blog by someone who had actually read the new book and reviewed it; a blog which included insightful little comments by EEW herself! So I admit it. This is another Good Thing. But I really, really don't want to have to join anything else for a while...

Tick

My rss feed to Ellen Emerson White's blog resulted in me being notified of a Publisher's weekly interview with her about the new book - link as follows: http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6482982.html?nid=2788

This is not something I would have been likely to have come across otherwise so it's definitely a tick in the plus column for bloglines. The ebay feeds also continue to produce leading me to wonder how many copies of Cherry Tree Farm and Judy Patrol Leader were actually published.

non a res

Sunday being a day of rest, I made another hockey card. Obviously it is important to keep practising the skills I am acquiring.

I did have a look at del.icio.us but my toes proverbially curled up at even the notion of creating another account/username/password so I went out and weeded the garden instead.

Res Numerus Duodecim

Diablo sites were an obvious choice for my first Rollyo searchroll. I was surprised someone hadn't already done them. They had Starcraft and Warcraft, also Blizzard games, but not D2. Until now. Finding enough sites wasn't difficult; I only included the ones I use myself since in my experience quite a few of these sites lapse or become out-of-date. Creating the link to my blog was nice and simple too and it worked first time!

Search source set to 1 (Thing #11)

It started off so simply. Here was something I already knew. I'd joined Library Thing a while ago and though I hadn't got much further than experimenting with a few books my account was still active. I had fun for a while adding all my Nancy Brearys. I even borrowed Mary's camera and took photos of the covers but the files were too big and they wouldn't upload. Then I decided to put one of the widgets on my blog and since most of my books don't have nice photos yet (see above) I decided to use the search widget. And it didn't work. Three times I tried and three times I ended up with the html on my blog instead of the search box. It turned out I was leaving out the last word of the code when copying out of the tiny little text box on the Library Thing site. Problem finally sorted out I decided to try the search function only to discover that it wouldn't search my library but insisted on searching some group library. For anyone else who encounters this problem and doesn't live with a computer programmer (see photo), the code you copy from the tiny little box has a default search source option of 0. You need to change the 0 to a 1 and then it will search your library. I also had to change the width from 238 pixels to 225 to get a tidy fit.

Hockneyed seal

This began as a photo of a seal taken by Mary at the zoo a couple of weeks ago. I used the Hockeyizer Image generator with the no-frames option. The framed "polaroid" option proved to be a bit hit and miss. Thing #10 completed!

Rubik roses

Ohioana ho!

Lois McMaster Bujold has been awarded the 2007 Ohioana Career Award which knowledge came to me via her blog! I have no idea how to pronounce the award but I have successfully established a blogline feed from her site, a little success of my own.

Long may she reign

I've been searching for rss feeds and having some fun. Obviously my preference would have been to look for good, quality library science sites but I'm on holiday at the moment and felt ethically challenged at the idea. Instead I have compromised by finding author sites with rss functionality. The best so far is a feed from Ellen Emerson White's blog which I never knew existed so now I can share her angst about something called The Red Sox. I'm counting down the days until her new book is published - Long may she reign - which comes about twenty years after Long live the queen but who's counting.
I looked for Lois McMaster Bujold too but the Dendarii site doesn't appear to have an rss thingamabob. However my visit was not wasted as I employed the quotation generator to come up with the following gem:
A beautiful lady named Rian
hypnotized a Vor scion.
The little defective
thinks he's a detective,
but instead will be fed to the lion....

Miles gets limerickitus!
(Lois McMaster Bujold, Cetaganda)

I'll look for a Bujold blog next and hope for more luck re the rss thingy. And speaking of things, Thing #9 is now complete. I knew nothing about rss feeds when I started and there are still holes but the feeds from ebay are working brilliantly and I can see them having a life byond the scope of this training exercise.