Thanks, Staff Org!

Once again we had a great Holiday Gala. The event, this last Saturday in case you lost track, was a well planned and well attended one. It's always nice to see folks from around the system and especially nice when it's just to socialize.

A special thanks goes to Paul Medves and his wife, who worked most of the evening taking pictures of everyone there. I got my copy yesterday and it's a wonderful keepsake.

Now we can just look forward to 2007's event!

Tagging and more

I've talked to a few people about the Tagging class last week. We all agree that there are some interesting things we can do with this technology and that there's more to learn.
I heard from John Van Dalen, Main Reference, earlier today. He said, quoted with permission:

I enjoyed the class a lot and really got some good ideas from it. I can say the same for the DuPage Library New Technology video presentation which I viewed today. Stephen Bell and Aaron Schmidt are truly articulate and inspiring new technology practitioners. I have known about Aaron's blog for a couple of years now and feel he is in the forefront of spreading the word about all these new applications that a new generation of library patrons are embracing. Stephen Bell's Keeping Up Web site is great.

I look forward to the Spring '07 DuPage presentations.

That brings up the DuPage teleconference. If you haven't seen it, you should. The speakers are informed, informative and inspiring. They are also reassuring about how many new activities it makes sense to try and take on, while maintaining all our other duties.

I know John has some ideas of ways we could use Tagging. How about you?

TechTracks 2

Yesterday the State Library held the second class in their TechTracks series, in the TLC. This one was on tagging. I have to admit that this was a little more of a stretch for me. I think LibraryThing is a cool site, but I don't know if I'll really take full advantage of it or not. I like the idea of looking to see what books and authors are popular and what words people use to describe their reading, but I'm not a compulsive list maker. Well, that's not strictly true. I do keep a list of everything I've read and I like the idea of "unreads," but certainly don't have a cell phone with web address to access the list when I'm on the prowl for a good book to read. Guess I'll just have to spend more time playing with LibraryThing to see. I'm told that it's addictive, so we'll see. I know some of you have been using this site and are big fans. What do you think? (Oh, I did like the new books example Julie gave. I think something like that would be a great addition for patrons. Just keeping up with it would be the challenge. And which new titles would you add? And how many?)

Now the tagging aspect of Del.icio.us is an exciting one for me, on the other hand. How great to be able to get to your favorite web sites no matter what computer you're using! Just think if we used these in our branches or departments and added to the site as we stumbled across things, so that we had the benefit of everyone's experience, all organized and viewable at any staff computer. Who's going to be using this right away?

Miscellanies

Well, suffering from Turkey lag, much like jet lag, I haven't posted anything recently. Here it is, Dec. 1 and warm and humid. Makes me think I'm back in my home state of Florida.

Next week's TechTrack Class is on Tagging. I've started a Flickr account and done some basic tags, but don't know much beyond that. Anyone care to inform me on this before the class? Are you someone who uses this?