patron finds next book to read

After I had helped a patron to find a biography of the duchess of Shewsbury, I asked her how she chose new books to read. She said that she actively consulted book reviews in the Sunday papers. The biography that she was taking though she had seen while visiting an historic house in England, decided that it was too heavy to buy there (and carry around for the rest of her holiday), so remembered it's details and came in to borrow it from us when she returned home to the Shore.

My husband listens to National Radio and picks up on some of the reviews there, leaves me little notes with suggestions to borrow and or buy for NS libraries to buy. The spelling of the author's names can be a bit wrong but he usually gets enough title info to be able to find the book. We nearly always have the book in stock or ardered already.

Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce. - 2008

Liam is only twelve, but looks much older. Being a postitive and curious individual, he exploits this, taking a class-mate on father/daughter outings and having a great unsupervised time in theme parks. His real fascination is with space exploration and he cons a rather wacky space program to take him on as an trainee astronout. Brilliant descriptions of zero gravity effects and the fall-out of massive deceptions that come unstuck. All through reading this I thought, "Why wouldn't you!"

Wiki wiki

I now know two words in Hawaiian, aloha (Hello) and wiki (Quickly). Though I think that the on-line, everyone contributing to it encyclopedia meaning of the word is already the dominent meaning. This quote from why wiki works describes and ideal and expresses it well.

"A wiki is a body of writing that a community is willing to know and maintain. That community has every right to be cautiously selective in what it will groom. This particular wiki has been blessed with thoughtful, diligent, diverse and open-minded volunteers, who have invested years learning what works here and what doesn't. When volunteers tire and depart, others take their place. I remain amazed that this works without mechanically enforced authority. Possibly it works because there is no mechanically enforced authority. " -- WardCunningham

I would find a wiki on indexing useful, perhaps one by the rowans group (North Shore, Rodney and Waitakere libraries indexing local newspapers. the difficulty being having the time to contribute to it as well as doing the actual indexing.

Technorati

8,420 posts, 939 blogs on learning 2.0! This is not a site that I would come back to. The popularity contest side of it (number people who have marked it as 'fave') does not appeal at all.

everyone becomes a cataloguer!

Del.icio.us COULD be a great way to cut out lots of irrelevant stuff on the internet. I like the idea of being able to use other people's tags to find sites that somebody else has found really valuable. Of course lots of detours and diversions occur too. I can see myself using this site in the future.

Excercise 7

Better late than never! Finally got a handle on RSS. I've got a couple of Librarian type sites which I'm not sure are really valuable. They seem really computer focused and all are so far American oreintated, but it is early days yet, they might get more interesting. I'm also getting feeds from NY Times the Scotsman and BBC. I've specified Science/Nature catergories. I read 'Unshelved' on my ordinary email, I'll keep it that way because it gives me an incentive to open and read my emails. I liked Topix.net best, Syndic8.com was a wordy mess.

New technology

20th Century technology seemed to be all about saving time and energy. People didn't have to spend hours up to their elbows in sudsy water, or filing catalogue, issue cards for hours on end, or labourisly handwriting everything. This century's technlogy seems to be designed to fill up our time. Hours could be spent making clever pictures and organising them. How many people indexed their photoalbums in the old days?