One way to get readers…

My colleague, Becky, recently sent me this email:

Sarah Monette (author) linked to my review of her book in her blog!

http://truepenny.livejournal.com/

My blog received 114 hits yesterday, most of them because of her link. :)

That’s one way to get blog readership!

Public vs. Private

I talked a while back about making the distinction between your public and private lives online, and it’s coming up again: we’re asking all our Learning 2.0 bloggers to check in with us on whether they want their blogs listed on our public ACPL2.0 site, on our password-protected intranet, on both, or on neither. It gets me to thinking about how other bloggers I know separate things out. Here are some examples, just from the more widely read knitting blogs:

• Alison, at the Blue Blog, talks about her kids all the time, but has never referred to any of them by name – it’s only first initials.
• Stephanie, Yarn Harlot, also talks about her kids all the time by name, and divulges all sorts of personal information about her life.
• Nona, of Nona Knits, doesn’t have a last name.
• Grumperina uses several pseudonyms for different purposes: for her blog, for published patterns online, and for published patterns in print.

It just goes to show you there’s a way for everyone to be comfortable with their online lives, whether public or private.

Whee-hee!

I got a big manila envelope in the mail today from the Indiana State Library, and couldn’t figure out what it was. As soon as I opened it, though, I got it:

I’m published! Yay! If you’re here after reading my little article about Web 2.0 and libraries, thanks for coming, and welcome.

Surveys and Prizes

Did you participate in ACPL’s Learning 2.0? Take our survey, and win a small prize!

http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB227AJC5M898

Everyone who takes the survey will be issued a Sansa c140 MP3 player: small, easy to carry around, compatible with our new downloadable audiobook provider… Just give us your feedback!

Bad blogger! Bad, bad blogger!

I haven’t posted here in months (obviously). I feel like I’m setting a bad example for all those other Learning 2.0 people out there… oh, well.

I’ve decided to take the advice of the diet gurus of the world and not beat myself up for getting out of the habit of posting regularly. Instead, I’m just going to start with a new post today and move on from there. So here it is: a new post!

Geek Out!

For the past couple of years now, the Digital Collaborative (my library’s technology group made up of IT and front-line staff) has been offering staff what we call, “Geek Out, Don’t Freak Out.” Each one consists of about 20-30 minutes of prepared show-and-tell from us, and then leaves time for questions and test driving. They’re pretty fun, but for a while, I was kinda the only one doing them. It wasn’t because no one else wanted to do them; it was because it didn’t occur to me to ask other people to do them. Silly me!

Next Wednesday is our GODFO on YouTube, and will be done by the fabulous Kay Gregg of Access Fort Wayne (our local public access TV station, which is a department of the library). It will be nice to be there as a participant instead of as a presenter.

Tape-o-rama

I’m loving the guerrilla librarian’s post about our in-house use survey next week.

RSS is the tool that I love best.

I did a bunch of reading and commenting on people’s blogs today as part of our Learning 2.0 project, and because everyone seems to be working on RSS feeds and feed readers, I did a lot of commenting about RSS and feed readers. It got me to thinking: Which Web 2.0 tool do I use the most often? Not surprisingly, it’s my feed reader.

I’ve been using Bloglines for quite a while now — it comes up automatically when I open Firefox in the morning, and it stays open as a tab all day long. At a glance, I can see whether or not there are new posts on any of the blogs I read, or new stories from any of the news sites I look at. I’m following 103 feeds at the moment (almost half of which are L2.0 learners’ blogs!), and there’s no way I could keep up with even a fraction of them if it weren’t for the power of RSS doing it for me.

Which Web 2.0 tool to you use most often? Is it the same as the tool you like the best?

It’s Me/Mii!

Ooh! Ooh! I just figured it out! Check out my new avatar!

It took some doing, but using Mii Editor, I took the best possible avatar likeness of myself — from our Nintendo Wii — and recreated it! I’ve always hated trying to find a picture that somehow represents me in the world at large, and at the same time was so proud of how much my Mii looks like, well, me: this rolls those two things together and comes out with awesome.

Learning 2.0 Lab

I just posted a reminder about L2.0 Lab time over at the ACPL2 blog, mostly so that people remember that it’s available to them to use as a resource, but also because I’m a little bit bored down here! Kay and I are hanging out here in the Staff Training Room — she’s looking at stuff on Flickr; I’m blogging — and we want to stick around here in case someone comes down looking for help, but I’m feeling a little guilty that I’m just goofing around while I’m waiting for that to happen. I need to take my own advice, right? I mean, I did say in the L2.0 introduction that just because it’s fun doesn’t mean it isn’t also useful. So I’ll just chill out and blog until someone comes down looking for help.