1. i am a classically-trained pianist.
2. i am ambidextrous. i eat with my left hand but do everything else with my right hand. but i can do everything with my left hand that i can do with the right, even writing. i’m mixed up, i think.
3. these things freak me out: dolls, puppets, and clowns.
4. my creative outlet is card-making. i have a whole studio devoted to making art, burning things and soldering.
5. i <3 dogs and have two of my own, along with 2 cats. i like to give my pets people names ’cause i think it’s funny. my pets are rudy, miss esther, lucy and beatrice.
6. i want to be a yoga instructor someday.
7. i started playing the banjo this past april and have done pretty well for a beginner. i’m in a band called The Hawaii 63 and sometimes i’ve been known to “sing” (if you can call it that) about my cat (esther) that hides a lot. oh, and she’s a kitty-ninja.
8. i love to garden and i like to make outdoor sculptures and art from rusty metal things, especially old farm implements.
9. yes… i know how to western square dance. it’s not a talent i’m especially fond of, but i might as well come clean about it now before the rumors start.
10. i love movies that have ray harryhausen’s special effects. stop-motion animation rocks my world. i was raised on rankin-bass christmas specials! i also love godzilla movies.

there you go! all done!

• my favorite discoveries from this learning journey have to be my awesome coworkers here at CML! i’ve discovered PEOPLE! i’ve discovered that i work with an amazing array of talented people and i feel incredibly fortunate. the connections i’ve made as a result of learn and play will stay with me forever. it was also really great to see the excitement from staff as we went through the program
• this program has assisted me lifelong-learning goals by solidifying how important it is to never stop learning.
• the biggest take-away and unexpected outcome was how i made new friendships from this program. i didn’t realize everyone would take to twitter so well, or that everyone would like the learn and play videos and actually want to do them with gerald and i. it’s just an incredible feeling of happiness.
• i’m not sure what could have been done differently… i know it took a LOT of time on my part to get things ready and maybe i didn’t anticipate all the work that would be involved, but it was highly rewarding work!
• of course i would participate again! i’ve been trying to spread the Web 2.0 gospel for years now, so it was right up my alley to participate in learn and play.

i think, hands down, this was the most fun i’ve had at the library in the 18 years i’ve worked here. thank you to CML, from admin to staff to the Friends, thank you for letting us Learn & Play!!!!!!!

to me, it’s a strange collection. many odd titles (A Date with Judy–Oogie Pringle and His High School Hot Licks wtf?), some variety (Revolution by Margaret Cho), and stuff for the masses (Kidz Bop 11). so when i say “strange,” i mean more like ecclectic, i guess. i have tried to download an ebook to a device and the hardest part for me was getting the Mobipocket eBook reader installed on the device. after that, it’s not so hard. now that it works with ipods, i’m sure i’ll try again and see if it really is compatible. as i mentioned before, i do prefer a real book to an eBook, but the audio books are excellent.

i can see libraries using podcasts for things like driving directions, tours of facilities, and storytimes, even though i think more interaction and engagement happens with video. i’m not all down on podcasting. when The Wizard and i went to Internet Librarian ’08, we met Greg Schwartz. he has a regular podcast called Uncontrolled Vocabulary, which is excellent for professional development in the world of libraries. in this aspect, i can see where podcasting is beneficial. it’s cheap and easy and quick. no need for video cameras or proper lighting or anything like that, just record and go. for libraries, i could see where a regular podcast from the director might be a neat thing.

i get a lot of laughs from the tim and eric awesome show: great job! on adult swim and one of the bits they do makes me and maggie just laugh and laugh and laugh:

of the links in the “tool box,” i know we covered some of them, but i’ll talk about book burro. i like book burro because you can find out other libraries’ holdings for books that you are browsing on the interwebs. book burro automatically recognizes ISBNs and will pop a small box with the libraries listed. you can add and delete the list of libraries that appear in the box. CML is available; they have us listed as “Columbus Public Library,” but at least we’re there. I like using book burro with firefox, of course, as you can modify it right from the “tools” settings in the browser. you can add book stores and libraries in book burro.

so here’s how it works: i’m searching amazon and i find a title i like. i’m on the page for the item and here comes book burro. it pops up and automatically starts searching whatever book stores and libraries i have designated and then the availability for the item is displayed in the popup box. the box sort of floats over the page and you can close it in case it’s annoying you. so it kind of works like out catalog search in the library toolbar, but, with book burro, you don’t even have to enter the title of the book. it knows when you’re looking for a book! i have to disable it when i’m entering titles for featured book on the homepage because, again, it senses an ISBN and it springs into action!

well, that’s my evaluation of book burro. give it a try! use it with firefox because it works best there (duh) and is available as a nifty plugin.

this one was fun! i reviewed the site picnik which is also available via flickr. i have a friend who is not very web-savvy and she LOVES picnik. so, i have heard her talk about it, but i’ve never used it. so when i saw it on the list here of award-winners, i had to give it a try.

love it! well, if you have the premium features you can really do a lot, but i like it ’cause it’s like a poor-woman’s photoshop but way easier to use. here i took a picture of my sweet dog, lucy, and i enhanced it several ways. i brighten and sharpened it, then i added a matte feature and then i added some color boost thing to it. it took a somewhat out-of-focus picture and made it much more appealing to look at, although i could look at pictures of my dog all day…

honestly, though, i don’t know how a library could really benefit from this. however, the free parts of it could be made available to our customers where they could come in and edit their photos and then leave happy because they were able to do it so easily and for FREE. does that count?

my thoughts are that we get rid of Word, PowerPoint and Excel and encourage our customers to use Google Docs. no more buying floppy discs or even flash drives. they won’t lose their document, even if the computer crashes. think we could ever get our customers to do this? i think some of them already are!

so once all that was over, then there was still creating the other wiki pages. this is where i get confused. all the elements of a wiki: the main page, the inner pages, the sidebar. the sidebar? what’s that? it’s helpful, but i can never get mine to correspond with the other pages i’ve created and then i get mad and pouty. honestly, my experience with wikis has not been overly positive, but i’ll use them when i have to and i DO see their purpose. (doesn’t mean i have to like it, though…)

okay, wikis are not very pretty, either. give me fabulous headers and footers and pictures and hearts and flowers! i know i can make the wiki look pretty, but it still doesn’t seem to be enough. i mean, have you seen the wikipedia? BORING!

however, they do serve a purpose. they are very good for project work. the IT/DS wiki that we use here at work, while devoid of any pretty pictures or font, does have extremely important information in it all one place. in fact, it is the routine now to make sure you “update the wiki” when any changes are made to projects. so i do see the value.

as far as libraries using them, i love what St. Joseph County Public Library is doing with their subject guides, one of the reasons why i used them as examples for this Thing. however, did you notice… no pictures!! no pretty font, nothing!! maybe that’s my new mission: bring the “pretty” to the wikis!!!! so, i think using wikis as subject/reference pages is one library application that works well for them. i don’t think it’s practical to allow customers to edit the pages, however, at least not in this case.