Helpful Blogs and News Feeds

Here are some helpful and hilarious things I found to put onto my blogroll:

Bloglines News-This was automatically added to my blogline feeds. I figure it may be useful in finding new things that bloglines offers.
Kids Lit-This website has book reviews of kids and YA books. I think this will be helpful in keeping up with popular children's literature.
Library Bytes-This blog is created by the woman who helped me learn about RSS feeds and so I figured she could provide additional helpful information. Her blog talks about new technology relating to libraries. Definitely a good useful source of information.
Merlin-This will provide me with more information on new technologies and a place to pose questions if I have any. And since its local it may prove to be the most important to me.
Mrs. B's Blog-This has story time ideas including what the author has done most recently in her own story times. I think this blog may help me come up with some new things to do at story time and I may find some good story time books through reading it.
The Reader's Club-This wonderful site has the latest books listed. Its a great way for me to keep up to date with literature and help with reader's advisory. It also will help me with picking books that I want to read.
The Shifted Librarian-This is blog is one of the most popular library blogs and was the only one listed on bloglines when I signed up. So I figure that this should prove to be a good resource for technology advice.
Teenlibrarian-Since I'm the YA chair it seemed like a good idea to keep up to date on YA related issues. After some searching I found this blog, which seemed a good choice.
Unshelved-I love this comic strip since I discovered it a few months ago. When I saw it was listed on the suggested feeds I quickly added it to mine. It also has book reviews, which may provide helpful.
Young Librarian-When I saw this blog listed on a list of library related blogs it sounded like a good choice for me to include. After all I'm young and a librarian. And it will provide me with information about recent events in the world of libraries.

RSS Feeds and Bloglines

I think this is the first thing that has challenged me! I had a blog before and used Flickr before but I didn't know much about RSS feeds and hadn't used bloglines. So I was excited to really expand my knowledge this week! And I did!
I watched the pod cast and followed the information about how to set up a bloglines account. But it took me a little while to figure out how to add things and I really wanted to post them onto my blog, because what's the point of having a bloglines if people don't see it on my blog? That took me awhile but finally I located the correct java script to add it. And I am pretty happy with the results.

Flickr

I really enjoy flickr! I've played around with it before and really like being able to share pictures with people in such an easy fashion. I think its much better then emailing pictures or Yahoo! pictures. I also like the small squares to give you a glimpse of the shots because sometimes those squares show a much more artistic and beautiful picture then you took. Of course other times they cut off people's heads. Yahoo! photos is also nice but you can't search if your looking for particular photos and it doesn't say the type of camera used to capture the image.

The various toys are lots of fun. I could play with those all day! Here are a few ones that I had the most fun and was happiest with the result. The trading card maker was fun although this like other Flickr toys require some degree of creativity, which I found difficult today. I decided to use my picture although I typically hate all pictures of me since I tend to have that deer caught in headlights with a way too big smile that looks fake look.

The captioner was lots of fun. I think of all the toys this was my favorite since it allowed you to adjust how you added things on the picture. I found lots of the ones that just did stuff to your picture without much ability to customize cut off important aspects of the picture. And if I went through all my pictures including the ones that came out pretty poorly I think I could have a lot of fun with this toy!

The on black toy was nice. It sure does make a picture look a lot nicer to see it on a black background. However it wasn't one of the more fun toys since you really aren't doing anything but seeing the picture on black. But nice nevertheless.

There were other toys that I enjoyed such as the random picture and the photo stream. Its fun looking at all the picture that I've uploaded. I'll probably end up fooling around some more with the various toys at home.

Digital Cameras

I have owned and operated a variety of digital cameras since my first one that I received when I was in tenth grade. My first digital camera was a Cannon Elf one and the best thing about it was that it was tiny. It was easy to carry everywhere I went and fit nicely in my purse. I can't recall the specifics about how good it was but lets just say the pictures were clear enough but nothing especially fabulous. Its zoom was just about nothing, which I hated but made do not having the ability to zoom in. It had a rechargeable battery, which I hated because it always seemed to run out when I wanted my camera the most! I took it to Europe twice though and that camera served me well. Finally it died a slow and painful death where I first lost the LCD screen then the door the battery compartment then finally it stopped working all together. Here are a few pictures taken with it:

My next camera was a hand me down camera from my dad. I'm not sure about any of the particulars except its pictures were clearer then my old one and it was a cannon. It was bigger but still small enough to carry around. Just not tiny like the elf. It used the same type of memory cards and took AA batteries, which was nice because I could always just carry batteries with me. However it went through them quickly and kept having problems. At one point you had to shake the camera before you could take a picture. I used both the elf and this one in hopes that one of them would work. Here are some pictures I took with it:

My current camera is my favorite by far. I researched it on epinions to make sure it was the right camera for me and would meet my requirements. I wanted it to take AAA so no rechargeable battery. And I wanted to have zoom since that was one of the things I thought would have made the elf a GREAT camera. I found all these things in the Kodak Easy Share Z740. The camera can take 5 mega pixels pictures and while its the largest camera I've owned its relatively small. There is even an attachment if you want to zoom in on a subject. I LOVE this camera, although I suppose as technology progresses and I get a new camera I will love that one even more. The camera was a gift from my 21st birthday although I didn't receive it until the summer because my dad wanted me to think about which camera I wanted and research it before we could buy one. Here are some pictures from this camera:

What camera would I like to own next? I've been told a Canon Digital Rebel is a great camera. I'd like to have more stabilization since sometimes my photos come out blurry. And I want it to take AAA batteries. Medium size would be good since most of the small ones are either really expensive or poor cameras.

Teamwork Room

This is the last room where I had to respond to questions so it'll be my last orientation post unless I end up coming back to reflect upon it later or an unfinished part is finished and blog questions are added. Anyways this room was very easy and not too informative for me but that's mainly because I'm already on two system wide teams and the team leader for a branch team. And when I became a team leader the branch manager gave me oodles to read about teams and teamwork, which covered everything in this room and more. Nevertheless I think the information here was good especially for somebody newer who hadn't yet joined a team.
Here is a link the Umbrella Group's most recent wiki page where you can review their minutes and see team updates.
The names of two system wide teams that are currently operating are Summer reading and the proactive customer service team. I'm a member of both of these teams. With summer reading we plan out the summer reading program (which kicked off on Saturday) and organize everything for it. This is quite a bit of stuff to do because performers need to be booked, we get incentives donated and lots more. But its a very fun team to be a member of and the program seems to be off to a good start, which is really nice to see. The proactive customer service team addresses new ideas about customer service and looks to bring them to our library system. At the moment we're very focused on bringing roving reference to our library system. I like this team a lot too because I think we have a great chance to really improve the customer service here (although its already very, very good). Being on this team also keeps me up to date with brand new customer service ideas that are happening in other systems. One team in my branch is the YA team, which I'm the team leader. We're having our first meeting on Friday and that's when we'll start planning programing and other wonderful things for the Young Adults that come to our library. Anyways this final blog post was probably supposed to be a few sentences yet I've just gone on and on! Oops!

Life Long Learners

There are seven and a half habits of life long learning:

1. Begin with the end in mind.

2. Accept Responsibility for your own learning.

3. View problems as challenges.

4. Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner.

5. Create your own learning toolbox.

6. Use technology to your advantage.

7. Teach and mentor other.

7.5 Play!

My favorite one is play because its fun and just playing around with things you really can learn a lot particularly when it comes to technology. I think that most of what I know about technology and how to use it comes from just playing around with things. That's mainly how I've figured out the bit of html that I know and do different things with the computer. I am really looking forward to the 23 things because a lot of things are interesting and it will be playing yet I'm sure I'll be learning quite a bit!

HR Room

I am now working on the HR room of orientation, which means I'm nearly finished it! Anyways there are some questions in that room that I'm supposed to blog about. Let's see the first thing that I am supposed to blog about is my favorite part of employee self service. Although the time card is the most useful part and the part of employee self service that I use most frequently I think my favorite would be the time off section. Even though I haven't taken (and don't plan to) a lot of time off it is interesting to watch it build up as I continue working here. Since I'm a pretty healthy person I am particularly interested in seeing how little sick leave I'll be using (so far only one day in the over six months that I've worked here). I can't wait to add my sick leave the sick leave bank for people who actually need that much sick leave once I've accrued enough sick leave to be allowed to share it. Also since I'm planning on getting married next year and will therefore need to use a some of my time off at that time and its very helpful for planning to know how much annual leave I'll have in July 2008.
The other blog question for the HR room was who are the members of the staff and my favorite prop. The members of the HR staff are Muffie Smith, Terri Simmons and Kathy Smith according to the intro to the HR staff. However I received an email about Kathy leaving near the end of this months so that info will very soon be outdated. My favorite prop is the cow because we have a cow puppet just like that at my branch and its a very soft and cuddly puppet.

Corky

My information question to CTR was when did Corky make his first apperance. Unfortunately nobody at CTR knew so they forwarded the question onward to another librarian who was able to provide an answer. Corky has been the mascot since 1990! I was impressed by how quickly my question was answered despite the need to ask multiple people. Very interesting!

More Orientation Responses

This is part of orientation. I submitted a question to CTR about how long has Corky been the mascot. The contact us portion was very simple and straightforward. Its easy to locate on the website although I think most patrons with a burning question will be calling or coming into the branch so I wonder how many questions they get via email at CTR.
For Ask Us Now! I picked a bit more fun question after consulting about what to ask with a co-worker I asked the Frederick County Librarian who was in the chat what the weirdest question they'd ever been asked. He said it was a young lady asking if he could take her to her prom when he was just starting out as a librarian. The chat method is easy to use and quick too! And would definately be good if you just need a bit of assistance in finding some information or had a very general library question.
I think these services are really great although I would imagine that phone CTR would be the most helpful since it seems a lot of people struggle with technology and want an immediate response.