Week Two: Online Communities

Continuing with 23 Things Kansas, this week the topic is online communities. I've been using the internet and joining online communities in different forms since I was nine, which coincidentally is half my life. So I'm pretty familiar with them, if not 100% competent in their use. It all started with neopets, which is still around these days, and evolved over time into forums, livejournal, myspace and now facebook, with a myriad of others in between.

This week's assignment involves facebook primarily, and asks us to add fellow librarians and co-workers to our friends list. No offense to the aforementioned librarians, but my facebook page is my own private kingdom separate from work. So hopefully no points will be deducted on account of my omitting this particular step. ;)

So, what do I like about facebook? Narcissism aside, I use it primarily to keep in touch with friends and family both near and far and it's well designed for this task. If you've ever been on myspace, facebook's clean layout is like a refreshing shower compared to the ad-cluttered, black, neon and humilation stained pages of myspace. The interface is accessible, and although customization is at a minimum the main focus of the site is on communication, not personalization anyway.

Our library has a very respectable facebook page, I'm a fan from a while back, and the updates are informative and concise. I'd like to see more interactive elements added to the page, since there are quite a lot of followers, maybe some virtual book discussions, literature trivia, staff book recommendations, ect. There are so many possibilities for interaction with our patrons online, we're not really taking advantage of the actual communication part of facebook beyond comments and feedback, in my opinion.

I see myself using facebook until something better comes along, basically. I think there's always room for improvement, in facebook's case it's a matter of staying current and not being swept under the carpet when the next big thing arrives. I personally can't stand Twitter, I didn't think it was possible for a social networking site to be more narcissistic than facebook, and then Twitter was created. ;)

Reading Accomplishments in 2009

My, the word 'accomplishments' just looks so wrong today, what is with all those letters?

Anyway, we're into week two of 23 Things Kansas and I've been enjoying sifting through all of the other participants blogs one by one, though I can't decide if it'd be more work to add them all to my feed list or click through them every week manually. Hmm. To quote Despair Inc., "Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now."

2009 was a busy year it seemed, though on recollection I can't really say I accomplished (there it is again!) a whole heck of a lot. I refrained from setting a reading goal as I've done in the past so subsequently I didn't read as much as I should have, but I still knocked back a few great books. Some are ones I'd meant to read for a long time, others are more recent, all are linked to their amazon.com pages so you can see if they'd interest you. I recommend them all of course, I wouldn't admit to reading a bad book. ;)

The Magicians by Lev Grossman
The House of Gentle Men by Kathy Hepinstall
The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis
The Colour by Rose Tremain
Robota by Doug Chiang
The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Washington Square by Henry James

Week One: Blogging

Well, this is a revitalization of my old, decrepit and dusty blog that's four previous posts (now archived) were never continued. The occasion being my participation in 23 Things Kansas, a program designed to familiarize Kansas librarians with helpful resources and tools available online, blogging being one of them. I'm fairly familiar with blogging, albeit unsuccessful at keeping one updated so far, but I do enjoy a great many blogs every week, a few of which I'll refer you to here. :)

BibliOdyssey posts some really amazing illustrations and engravings from a wide variety of historical books, really neat to look through if you're a bibliophile.

Awful Library Books is a blog especially funny to librarians, full of truly hilarious examples of the necessity for collection weeding.

Shorpy is an amazing resource for hi-res historical images, many are user submitted and you're guaranteed to see something interesting every time you look through the archives.

As far as I go, I'm eighteen and I work for the Wichita Public Library, specifically the General Reference department, answering phones, finding information, stamping magazines and shuffling around in the basement pulling books for patrons. I love history, road trips and peppermint ice cream.

Live long and prosper!