Thing 14 Technorati revisited

Just joined Technorati and "claimed" this blog. I can now see when others blog about my blog. Very narcissistic isn't it? But it is fun.

Once I did that I was able to go to the "Watchlist" tab in Technorati, add the URL for this blog, and then subscribe to an RSS feed to be made aware of future references. I'm watching you watching me.

Government blogging

Federal Computer Week published an interesting article on how various federal agencies are setting policy on employee and soldier blogging:

Army stumbles on blogging policy

Thing 2 and 18 together

I just noticed that Blogger says you can post to Blogger from Google Documents and Spreadsheets. This is merging thing 2 with thing 18, very convenient.

I'm just guessing here that all I have to do is click the Publish button and it will ask which of my blogs I want to publish it to. If that fails there is always Help.

I had been writing drafts of my blog posts in Google Docs and Spreadsheets, so this will be very convenient. Course, I've finished 22 of the 23 things so may not be posting more to the blog.

Time to hit that Publish button and see what happens.

Thing 22 - teach someone else

Today I hosted a session on blogs and Blogger.com in our computer lab.

After demonstrating how blogs are laid out and how to navigate within one I asked for a volunteer from the audience. I can’t quite recollect if I warned them that the volunteer would be creating their first blog for everyone else to see on the big screen. I probably left out that part during my request as our state librarian quickly raised her hand to be the guinea pig. I had her up and blogging in a matter of minutes and everyone else was able to see how easy it all was.

I will be conducting a repeat session tomorrow morning but doubt I will have such a willing volunteer. Thank you Susan for being such a good sport.

California libraries 23 things

I am so glad that Infopeople is hosting a Learning 2.0 23 things project. I look forward to working with others in my library in exploring web 2.0 technologies.

I've been playing for awhile but know that there is much more to discover.

One of the first tasks before getting to number 1 is to view the archive of Helene Blower's webcast. Though I watched the webcast live, I went to the arcive to see if our staff might have problems. I was able to view the webcast. I had major problems running the Wizard which checks to see if the PC can run the webcast. On three different PC's, running Windows 2000 and Windows XP and IE 6, both SP1 and SP2 the wizard crashed IE each and every time. I don't know if this is a local problem with our staff PC's or a problem with the wizard. If I have a chance I'll try the wizard from home on my PC running Vista and IE7.

Jury Duty

I have completed my jury service. This was my first time serving on a jury. The case was multiple felony counts. It was very disturbing, domestic abuse.

There was another librarian on the jury with me. Why do attorneys seem to like librarian's so much? All my co-workers have said that if they get called on a jury panel it is inevitable that they will be on the jury. I asked an old friend who happens to be a criminal defense attorney about this. She said that while she doesn't see many librarians in the jury pool, they do like readers as they tend to be thoughtful jurors. She said that teachers (at least in California) often get thrown because they have to report suspected crimes and therefore have strong law enforcement ties.

Stuck on a jury

I got called in to jury duty and am stuck on a multi-day (into next week) trial so will be falling a bit behind on week 4 assignments.

Blogger down when I'm primed to post

Wouldn't you know it, the Infopeople Web2.0 online workshop starts, our first assignment is to create a blog on blogger and blogger was down.

For a blog to bring me back it has to be updated regularly and with interesting content.

Of the sample blogs to view in Week 1, exercise 1, I most liked the Waterboro Public Library blog. Cute name, clean look.

I've mixed thoughts on the Thomas Ford Memorial Library Western Springs History Blog. Seems like an interesting implementation of a blog, kind of a photograph album. It's cool that current and former occupants of the houses have contributed information through comments but I'm concerned about privacy issues and identity theft. Maybe names of current occupants should be redacted?