Gypsyharper's 2.0 Voyages

Watching Grass Grow

2010-05-14T21:33:00.000-06:00

Today I watched grass grow. I lay on my stomach on the perfectly manicured lawn next to the business building on campus and watched. And it was beautiful.

Okay, so I didn't actually see any growth happen. And I wasn't just lying there watching. I was writing. About the grass. And the sun was warm on the back of my black jeans, and a soft breeze whispered over my skin. And I thought about grass growing. I thought of how it takes so long that we can't see it happen, but we know it does, because on the weekend we have to mow it. I heard the cars go by, and saw people rushing on the sidewalk. And I thought about how I always seem to be running places and there's always something that has to be done right now.

But I was very happy in that moment in the sun, in the grass. And I thought, maybe we would all be happier if we took time out more often to just be. To watch grass grow.

Little Things That Make Me Happy

2010-05-13T11:38:00.001-06:00

Pretty cupcakes. Tuesday I finished my final exams for spring. I went over to the University Center to get some lunch, and they had these gorgeously decorated little cupcakes. Now, cupcakes in general make me happy, but pretty cupcakes make me even happier. So I bought one. (Don't fret for my health, I had a sandwich too.) Then I took a picture of it with my phone, because I found I couldn't ingest such perfection without documenting it somehow. And then I ate it, and it was fabulous. It pretty much made my day.

Fun Musical soundtracks. Specifically [title of show]. (No, really, that's what it's called). I think this is probably one of the most brilliant shows written in the 21st century. It has poppy upbeat music and clever, roll-on-the-floor-laughing-out-loud lyrics. It's a musical about writing a musical - what's not to love? It makes me smile to listen to just one song. Of course it has moments of profound truth, too. My favorite song from the show is "Nine People's Favorite Thing" with the lyrics "I'd rather be nine people's favorite thing than a hundred people's ninth favorite thing." The song has a pretty powerful message about following your own artistic instincts instead of trying to please everyone. Since this is something I struggle with on a daily basis, this song makes me doubly happy.

Random acts of music and dancing. We had our very own flash mob in the library yesterday. I don't know who organized it, but ours was entirely violence free and definitely a little pick-me-up in the middle of finals week. I have to disagree with Wikipedia's statement that these groups always perform "pointless" acts, though. How can anything that relieves stress and puts smiles on so many peoples faces be pointless? Here's the video.

Goals 2010

2010-01-28T18:40:00.003-07:00

I've been thinking (and reading) a lot about goals this month. I don't usually make New Year's resolutions, but I do want to make some changes in my life and I like the idea of goals, and plans for achieving goals. I didn't come up with goals in time for the new year, but today is my birthday, the start of MY new year and it seems like a pretty good day to start the rest of my life. So here are my big picture goals. I've already broken down some of these into smaller pieces and started trying to create habits to make them a reality. I'll talk more about that later, but I wanted to get these posted now.

1) Get Healthier/Have More Energy

I work a full time job and attend graduate school. I also participate in several theatrical productions every year in conjunction with our local community theater, the university, and most recently, a newly formed professional theater company. I get sick a lot, and don't have time for that (who does, right?). I hope that developing a healthier lifestyle will help me avoid illness better and have more energy to cope with my hectic schedule. I'd also really like to lose a little weight.

2) Unclutter My House/Life

My house is a mess. I have way too much stuff and I can't find things I need. Also, I know that I'm happier when things are clean and organized. But the physical clutter is only part of the problem, so I want to unclutter my life as well. Obviously, this is a really big goal, so I want to set several smaller goals and I won't beat myself up if it's not complete at the end of the year, as long as I can make continuous progress.

3) Start a Happiness Project

I've been reading Gretchen Rubin's blog The Happiness Project and I've decided I'd like to have one of my own. To that end, I've signed up for her 2010 Happiness Challenge and I plan to pick up her book for my eReader. I think the first two goals I've set will feed into this one as well.

Redirect

2009-12-17T21:29:00.003-07:00

I've decided to re-purpose this blog. I originally started it as part of an online class on web 2.0 and how these emerging technologies might be useful in a library. The class is over (I didn't manage to finish all the lessons, but I did learn about a lot of cool stuff) but I still have this blog. And I can't quite bear to scrap it completely and start over. So I thought I'd just start using it to write about things I'm thinking about, my take on articles I've come across, books I'm reading, that sort of thing. Hopefully I'll manage to update it on a semi-regular basis. We shall see.

On Texting

2009-04-30T15:37:00.002-06:00

I'm trying to get caught up with reading everyone's blog posts and doing the assignments, but so far I'm a lot behind. Silly me, because this class started while I was on Spring Break, I thought I could get a jumpstart and keep up. Sigh.

Anyway, I just thought I'd share an interesting use of texting I found. I was searching WorldCat the other day to find other libraries who owned the score I was cataloging and see what call number they'd given it, and I found one library (don't remember which, Sorry!) where the user could click on a button to text the call number to themselves. At first I thought "why would I want to do that?" and then I thought about how I'm always hunting for scrap paper to write call numbers on before I go to the stacks. What if I could just push a button and have the number sent to my phone? No more slips of paper and writing, just the phone that I'm carrying around anyway. Kinda cool.

Communication 2.0 - Assignment 1

2009-04-27T16:44:00.004-06:00

At Mansfield Library, e-mail is pretty much an indispensable communication tool. Being a mid-size academic library, we have a lot of staff, so e-mail is a great way to make sure the same information gets out to everyone. We're also all on a Microsoft exchange server, so using Outlook as our e-mail client also allows us to view several people's schedules at once to facilitate finding a time when everyone is free for a meeting. And then you can send an invitation that automatically updates everyone's calendar. Pretty cool.

From a patron standpoint, I love that we get e-mails telling us when materials are due, or when requests are available from ILL (since I started graduate school this semester, I've been using ILL a lot!). It's so nice not to have to keep track of those little slips of paper.

As Lauren said, we have a Meebo chat box on our homepage. I don't work the reference desk, so I don't really have any first hand knowledge of how it works, but I hear it's gaining popularity (or at least usage is up, which must mean it's more popular, right?). I personally would prefer e-mail or chat to texting as distance reference tools, mostly because I'd rather use a full size keyboard, but I can see where some of our patrons who are more adept at that whole texting thing. I do think it's important to provide at least some of these 2.0 options for reference tools for our patrons though, both because it's the world many of them live in, and because it's just not always convenient or even possible for a patron to come to the library in person, and we still need to serve them.

I use IM only a little - I have MSN messenger installed and use it to send quick notes to my husband (lately these mostly involve library books that are due which I've forgotten to bring with me!) or to ask my coworkers quick questions when I'm working from home. I never thought I'd be a texter until I started graduate school, but it seems to be the way a lot of my classmates communicate, and I've grudgingly admitted that it's useful for things like telling my accompanist which practice room I'm in, or setting up a scene rehearsal for my acting class. So I guess I'm a convert of sorts. :)

Montana Library 2.0 round 2 (for me)

2009-03-25T13:51:00.002-06:00

Although I didn't actually make it through all of the lessons in the last round of Montana Library 2.0, I thought I'd try again. I've continued to use many of the tools we learned about last time, and am excited to see what new things we'll get to play with this time.

Some of the tools I've continued to use:

1) Flickr - I love Flickr. It's a great community of people overflowing with creativity on just about every subject imaginable. I've joined a lot of groups and met some wonderful people who've really helped me improve my photography. I use it mostly for my personal work, but you will find some pictures of good old Mansfield Library in my photostream. I've unfortunately not been very active on Flickr since I started graduate school this spring, but Spring Break is coming!!

2) RSS feeds - Best thing ever! I use Google Reader and love it. I tried Bloglines out for the purposes of the 2.0 assignment, but even though I'm sure it has some good features, it seemed like too much effort to switch over from something that was already working so well for me. I mostly use that to follow blogs that interest me personally (I have categories for singing, writing, organization, and photography, to name a few) as well as some comics that offer RSS feeds and even some photostreams on Flickr, but I do have a couple of library blogs in my feed as well. I also use the RSS feeder in Outlook to get feeds of the new books we've added in Mansfield in subject areas that interest me.

3) YouTube - I used to only use YouTube to watch funny videos my friends sent me, but I've started to discover that it can actually be a valid research tool. In musical theater, it can be very interesting to find videos of how someone else has staged something, musically interpreted a song, or choreographed a dance. When I was working on a ballet variation for a performance, I was actually able to find video footage of the same performance we watched in class when we were learning it to remind myself of the sequence of steps. I know many libraries have used YouTube for promotional videos and things, but the most exciting thing use of YouTube I've seen by a library is Iowa State University's posting of some of their video archives. My cousin sent me a link to a video series they'd posted about a debate in the little town of Cambridge on whether or not they should keep their high school. My grandfather was actually the spokesperson for one of the options, so to see him as a relatively young man, participating in his community government was really exciting for me. My dad and my uncle also briefly appeared in the video as small children. I think that's a GREAT application of YouTube for libraries - sharing with the public these little pieces of history that people might otherwise not even know were there or be unable to travel in person to see.

4) Delicious - Love it! I can categorize links in more than one way and don't have to remember which folder I put it in. I also love the ability to leave little notes to myself (or anybody else that looks at my links, I guess) as to why I saved a certain page. I haven't used the social aspect of it as much - I mostly like it for its accessibility from any computer - but I can certainly see where that would be a useful function, especially for teachers wanting to give students a certain set of links, or for colleagues working on a project. I'm thinking about creating a list of music cataloging resources using delicious.

5) Blogs - I think blogging is really cool. Obviously I haven't really kept up with it, since this is the first post since I failed to complete the last round of Montana Library 2.0. You'll also notice if you look at my blogger profile that I have another blog that I set up, but which has no posts. Maybe I would do it more often if I would learn to be more succinct. Hmmm.

Anyway, I'm sure you can tell if you've put up with reading this far that I'm pretty excited about 2.0 tools. I'm really looking forward to this next round!

New Score Shelving - Flickr lesson a

2008-08-03T16:49:00.003-06:00

We finally got new shelving for our score collection! It has been a long time coming. It started with our previous Fine Arts librarian and what to do with the oversize scores. Here's a picture of the old shelving:

Not so bad for most of the collection - at least it's adjustable (since the typical score is a little larger than the typical book) and it has a back, so the little ones don't fall off. But the shelves are way too shallow for the oversize materials and didn't really provide enough support. Here's what we ended up doing with them in the old shelving:

I actually have quite a few in the back I haven't cataloged yet, just because there was no place for them to go.

But now we have shiny new shelving that will accommodate our collection in a respectful manner.

Here's the wide shot:

See how it has those nice dividers? Many scores are very narrow and fall over easily, so these will help give them extra support. And there's a wall in the back to keep them from sliding off. Yea!

And here, you can see we go a set of shelving with wider shelves, to support the really large scores (I think we have at least one that's 60 cm high!):

They haven't been moved up there yet, but we're very excited to see them in their new home. I'll have to take more pictures when they're all set up!

Too Good Not to Share

2008-08-03T14:00:00.004-06:00

Okay, so I didn't find this video by searching YouTube, because technically, I haven't done the YouTube lesson yet. Hey, technically, I haven't finished the Flickr lessons yet (I really must get on that!). But I came across this video on one of the blogs I subscribe to, and it's just to funny not to share. (The blog is called Write Now Is Good, and you can find it here: http://writenowisgood.typepad.com/write_now_is_good, if you're interested.)

Here's the video:

Libraries - Cool Old Books, Cool New Tech

2008-07-29T22:53:00.004-06:00

FI-309091 from minnie80
Originally uploaded by unfabulous_ena

I could spend hours with Flickr's interestingness feature! I found this great picture uploaded by unfabulous_ena using interestingness. It seems to be part of some kind of postcard exchange program. How cool is that!

This photo reminds me of finding old leather bound reference books in the little volunteer library in my hometown. I've always thought old books were interesting, and finding them on some back shelf is a little bit like finding some kind of buried treasure. I hope that even though libraries keep working to be on the cutting edge, delivering information and services to our patrons with all this new technology, that we'll always have some old leather bound books hanging around waiting for people like me to discover them!

RSS feeds

2008-07-29T12:42:00.004-06:00

When I first heard about RSS feeds, I thought "why would I want to do that? I already get my lists and things in my e-mail". Then I started reading several columns on this one website. Most of them didn't publish on a daily basis, but I never could remember when each one did publish so I checked every one of them every day - talk about a waste of time! Plus, I felt the need to read the other columns around them, even if I wasn't particularly interested, just because they were there, and I might miss something interesting if I didn't read them all (I know, I know, but I'm compulsive that way). Finding out that I could subscribe to them by RSS feed has been such a time-saver. Now I only subscribe read the ones I really like - the rest I didn't subscribe to, so they are out-of-sight, out-of-mind, and Google Reader tells me when each one has a new installment, so I don't have to check each one everyday. Now I'm all about the RSS feeder!

I use Google Reader, and I'm very happy with it - mostly because I love my iGoogle and my g-mail, so it's one stop shopping. However, in the interests of learning something new, I did sign up for a bloglines account, just to compare their features. I have to admit, bloglines is pretty snazzy. They have a lot of features - your own blog right with-in the system, forums and playlists (although I'm not actually sure what the "playlists" tab is for - there didn't seem to be an explanation in the tab itself, and no reference that I found in the FAQ. I didn't ask in the Forum). The clippings feature seems to be analogous to the starring feature in Google Reader, except that they'll actually let you categorize your clippings - my current annoyance in G-Reader is that I can't seem to sort my starred items in anyway, so I usually just save things I want to keep to del.icio.us, where I can tag them. I didn't spend a lot of time playing with Bloglines, and I could probably come to love it, given enough time. However, I don't think it will trump Google Reader just because of the sheer convenience of having all my toys (more or less) in one place.

Cool Web Site!

2008-07-28T15:27:00.004-06:00

I am so far behind in this class and I meant to try and catch up this weekend, but as usual didn't get as much done as I'd hoped (on anything).

Anyway, even though it's not one of the lessons, per se, I had to share this website with you all. It's www.pandora.com. It's a streaming radio website, but it lets you build your own radio stations. You enter the name of a song or artist you like, and they go to their database and find other similar songs - based on the musical qualities of the song or artist you picked! I think it's really cool that it actually matches based on things like harmonies and rhythms, and not just the traditional "other users who like this song also like..." formula (which is good, but given the eclecticness of human taste, not necessarily going to find similar items). Anyway, you should check it out!

Update: I added a little widget to my blog that shows what songs I've bookmarked on Pandora. Way cool!

A Little Blog Frustration

2008-07-17T12:53:00.003-06:00

So here's that whole viewing problems as challenges thing: when I signed up for the 2.0 challenge, I used a different e-mail address from my regular work and personal address. "This is sound advice," I thought. "Then all of my Montana Library 2.0 correspondence will be in one convenient location, and won't get mixed up with everything else. Plus, no new spam will be generated in my current accounts when I sign up for these new services. What a great idea!"

So I used my yahoo account - I automatically have one, because I've used some of yahoo's services (the Briefcase, before I go my AMAZING flash drive - death to the floppy disk!, Flickr, some groups, etc.), but I've never actually used it. All well and good.

Then, I went to set up my blog. Blogger, unfortunately, belongs to Google, so it wanted me to use my gmail account. No problem, they let you use a different account if you want to. Great! I sign up with my yahoo account, write my first post. All good.

And I went back to Google, where I have my iGoogle (which is really cool) set up with all these wonderful things I access on a regular basis. But, logging into a Google service (Blogger) with a different account logged me out of my iGoogle. Okkkaaay. Maybe I can change the address on my Blogger account. So I went back to Blogger. Nope. You can change everything but your login account. So I decided that my "problem" was actually a minor annoyance and that my solution would be to ignore it.

Yesterday, I decided to add all my classmates wonderful blogs to my Google Reader. And as I was doing that, I found a post I wanted to leave a comment on. But wait, to do that I have to log in with yahoo instead of gmail. Okay. I did that, left my comment and went back to adding blogs to Reader - except that I was still logged in under yahoo, so it saved them under that instead. Suddenly, my "minor annoyance" reverted back to "problem".

Anyway, long story - well, still long. I'm not sure I met it with the appropriate attitude of challenge versus problem, but I did find a solution. It involved inviting my gmail self to be a contributor on my yahoo self's blog, and then deleting my yahoo self as a contributor. There was much logging into this and out of that and vice versa, and much grumbling accompanied it, but I have now happily united all of my services under my gmail account, and no longer get logged out of my iGoogle.

What have I learned? Possibly that web 2.0 is meant to play together, and in attempting to separate things, I cause myself more trouble than anything else!

Life-Long Learning

2008-07-16T10:58:00.000-06:00

I've always thought of myself as a life-long learner. When I was in high-school, I told my mother my goal was to learn everything in the world. She, being a very practical minded sort (but also a life-long learner), told me that was impossible. I replied, "I know, but at least if I keep trying to learn everything, I'll always be learning something." Fifteen years later, learning "everything" has become a little overwhelming, so I've revised my goal to "always learning something" of my original response. And yet, even with my constant drive to learn something, I found to my surprise that several of the habits of life-long learners were things I find very challenging.

Easiest for me, I think, is beginning with the end in mind. I almost always have a goal. But, I do sometimes (okay, frequently) get lost along the way, and sometimes the end looks nothing like I thought it would at the beginning.

Some of the others are a bit more challenging. As I'm preparing to go back to school and earn a Master's degree, I've chosen to focus on improving my ability to accept responsibility for my own learning and having confidence in myself as a competent learner. Perhaps as a holdover from my unrealistic goal of wanting to learn "everything", I sometimes find it difficult to give myself credit for the things I have learned, because I always look ahead to how much there is left to learn. And sometimes it seems that the more I learn, the more I don't know! Which on a good day can be an exciting prospect, but on a bad one tends to be rather discouraging. Also, while I love to read and use the internet on a regular basis because I've run across something I "have" to know more about, when I take classes, I find that I subconsciously expect them to give me all the information I need. I often have difficulty thinking of additional questions to ask, because the instructor (speaker, author, whatever) has given me so much information already, what else could I need to know? An example: when I graduated from college, I had all this new knowledge, and a shiny piece of paper to say I had a Bachelor of Arts, major in Fine Arts, option Music, and not a clue what to do with myself. Where was the class that taught me to craft a performance resume? How to look for auditions? What to do when I found one? Sure, I knew how to sing, and lots of music history and theory, but where did I even start to look for a job?

I eventually found my way to a library job where I catalog music. Hooray for combining using my degree with a place I've always loved to hang out! But I've finally realized that it wasn't the lack of a class or workshop that left me at a loss after graduation, but my own failure to accept responsibility for my own learning. So as I head off to grad school, I'm going to try my best to remedy that.

First Post! or Why voyage?

2008-06-17T12:40:00.000-06:00

Way back in the days when you had to do all the coding yourself, I wanted a website. My brother gave me 15 minute a crash course in html code and helped me set up an account at a free hosting service. Technically, they did have "easy web creation" templates, but then your site would look just like everyone else's and I wanted to have design control. I didn't really have any content, so I made a lot of graphics. And I had a lot of plans for sections of my website - all about my interests and so on, but design was so time consuming, I never really got that far.

Anyway, one of the sections I intended to have was to be called "Voyages on the Argo". Argo is the name of my truck, so my thought was that I would take little trips in my truck, take pictures, and then write about our adventures or "voyages" and I thought my mythological reference very clever. Of course, I never really went anywhere, and that was also before digital cameras were so prevalent, so I would have had to develop and scan all the pictures, and writing on the web wasn't nearly as easy as it is now with blogging. But I still like the whole idea of voyaging and new adventures, so here we go on Voyage 2.0! (Also, our library's ILS is Voyager - yea for double word plays!).