Book lover/bird lady avatar!

It was fun to create my own avatar from Tektek, although it is a little corny (I tried DoppelMe as well, and thought those avatars were cornier).

I am pleased to find out that my alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, offers a four-week course about Virtual World Librarianship in Second Life. I have always been extremely proud that I obtained my M.S. in Library Science from their Graduate School of Library and Information Science, consistently ranked as #1 in the country throughout the years!

It was fun to watch videos of the Second Life world - some of them were quite good!

What do I think about our virtual selves vs. our “real” selves? I think we need to spend more time with the latter, not the former.

Do I already live in Second Life? No.
Would I like to live in Second Life? No.
Why not? See my answer above concerning our virtual selves vs. our "real" selves.
I'm sorry, but a Second Life world just doesn't interest me - I'd rather live in the real one.

Cockatoos are cool

Cockatoos are cool - beautiful, smart, playful and affectionate.

I published this to my blog through Zoho Writer and also converted it to a PDF file.

I like the concept of Online Applications & Tools. Your documents, spreadsheets, etc. are not restricted to access at one computer only; you can log in at any computer anywhere and add/edit documents online. Also, the idea of shared collaboration in creation/editing of documents is wonderful - there is one document and one document only to which editors can make changes! How many headaches will that one little feature prevent??

Cockatoos are cool

Cockatoos are cool - beautiful, smart, playful and affectionate.

I published this to my blog through Google Docs.

Search Engines and Male Moluccan Cockatoos

I tried Rollyo, Mamma, and Dogpile, searching for articles about Moluccan cockatoos. In Mamma I found a wonderful article about male Moluccan cockatoos titled "Magnificent Male Moluccan". I also like the concept behind Rollyo - creating your own customized search engine, or searchroll, which can eliminate a lot of unwanted information from websites you don't really care about.

Podcasting - Rare books, great books, and Botticelli

This is my first experience with podcasts. I have had no previous experience listening to, or creating podcasts.

The library podcasts I listened to were Bibliophilia and Great Books - A Free Podcast of Masterpieces from the World of Literature and Poetry. Additionally, I chose Art History Podcast for my own interest (I went to Florence, Italy last year - talk about art!).

Bibliophilia is a podcast about rare, antiquarian, and first edition books. I listened to a description of a 4-volume set of poetry by Robert Burns. For the Great Books podcast I listened to Chapter 1 of Kafka's Metamorphosis. The Art History Podcast provided me with detailed information about Botticelli's Birth of Venus (which I saw in Florence at the Uffizi Gallery!). Listening to all of these podcasts was very enlightening. I know I will return to all of them since they are now added to my Google Reader.

Podcasting can definitely be a useful tool for Sno-Isle Libraries. It can be a means to produce audio content such as recordings of programs or library tours, thus making that content more widely available.

For patrons who can't make it to the library for a particular program, a podcast just might be the answer. They can listen to the program after the fact through the library website, so no need to worry about missing it.

Ideas about which topics our patrons might be interested in hearing: How about a tour of the library? Or book reviews? Or listening to what the Friends of the Library are up to?