The Pioneer Woman - Ree Drummond

I have become seriously addicted to this blog since I followed a link from Rachel Lucas’ site for a recipe.  Ree is a fabulous writer—her description of meeting her husband-to-be (Marlboro Man) and their courtship (Black Heels to Tractor Wheels) is riveting AND she has wonderful pages on photography, cooking, gardening, home dec—it’s all good.  All this and she frequently gives away prizes in various contests.

The Pioneer Woman - Ree Drummond

Pandora Radio - Listen to Free Internet Radio, Find New Music

Z got me to try this and I’m loving creating a new radio station every day.  Started with Herb Alpert (just as I did when I started buying records)—right now I’ve got George Michael as the starting point.

Pandora Radio - Listen to Free Internet Radio, Find New Music

Posted Using Zoho

Zoho is easy to use, has all the features (and many more) that I would require in a word processor (including ), and allows sharing, publishing, emailing, exporting all with the click of a button.  AND it's free--how can that be?? 

Technology

I like being able to access all the information from any computer, for example, Bookmarks are computer-specific, Yahoo Bookmarks are portable, but del.icio.us is portable AND easy-to-use. Flickr is ever so much nicer to use for sharing photos--beats attaching photos to e-mail by a mile.

Future of Libraries

Read Rick Anderson's article about "icebergs" that he perceives are threatening libraries' future success. While I agree that more and more patrons want everything available on the internet, a significant number still want to be able to check out a book and I don't see that changing anytime soon. The challenge has always been to tailor a book collection to a specific local population's needs while staying within a budget and librarians will continue to meet that challenge and, to use his metaphor, sail around the icebergs into a happy future.

Wikis

I think the most helpful library wikis are those such as St. Joseph County Public Library's Subject Guides--they provide information that's extremely helpful to patrons in an easy-to-update format. Librarians have to go where the patrons are because more and more patrons are going directly to the computer and bypassing the reference desk. For example, the SJCPL's subject guide topic Biography includes such helps as Biography, Memoir, what's the difference? , as well as links to related topics which include keeping a journal, blogging, photoblogging and scrapbooking.

In Conclusion . . .

The items I most enjoyed learning about were Flickr, Library Thing, and online productivity tools. The items I appreciated being encouraged to re-discover include downloadable books [had never been too interested (beyond what I needed to know to help patrons) because we only have iPods but now that there's an MP3 player in my future--yipee!] and Web 2.0 awards--hadn't checked them out since last year. Also delighted to see how interactive most of the sites are--once you're in Blogger, so many other possibilities open up.

Thanks to our library system for encouraging our continuing education. I've learned so much and have in turn shared sites with interested friends and family members. Looking forward to see what's next . . .