Thing 18 - Playing with Wiki

I greatly appreciate Wiki technology for all - I hope it will solve our endless struggle with document version control, long email threads, and poor planning. New Year 2009 Resolution: organize your next ski trip in Wiki! For now, my book review has been added to BPL Booklist

Thing 17.2 - Course Discoveries

I decided to start browsing the discoveries of my course fellows with a Random Joke from Comedy Central (thanks Chris N). I am always on the lookout for funny things, and my RSS "joke of the day" does not seem to update for some reason. I also appreciated the Unshelved library-related comic strips - this will be my new source for the weekly library bulletin board clippings (I've been known to post a New Yorker cartoon here and there in the past, but these have been specifically drawn for us librarians). I also could not help but listen some of the Lonely Planet Podcasts, thanks to Carin. I love Lonely Planet books, and their audio stories are of the same great quality. I've lately been disappointed with the Travel channel: I think it has become very commercial focusing more and more on "top" distinations and poker games. I am glad to see that Lonely Planet still carries the torch of character travel and that it chose to podcast its discoveries. Their stories are surprisingly visual even without the video illustration. You could "hear" the unique personalities of the storytellers, their interactions with locals and nature, all of which makes you re-live somebody else's travel experience. And the photographs complete the pictures.

Thing 17 - Dream Studies

I work for a small non-profit, which has an Institute - a professional training school for psychoanalysts. With students that all have prior careers, full-time jobs, families, and often other academic affiliations, the possibilities for online studies are endless. One could start dreaming by transferring all syllabi in the Moodle like course setup, where students participate in forums, get assignements, being quized and get their readings online. Should there be a way to redirect citations to the widely used PEP-Web database giving students a way to download articles directly, the print/copy in library process could be fully eliminated. I think the psychoanalytic field requires meeting of small groups and with a professor in a real class setting - I cannot yet imagine such a program functioning completely virtually. But a good deal of homework, paperwork, presentations, audiovisual materials, and lectures could probably be used online. Given a proper security, which most of the CMS systems provide, even some sensitive clinical materials used for training could be accessed via the web. Course evaluation is another thing suitable for anonymous online submission, as well as surveys and grading. Give it a try, and I bet the courses themselves will soon look different: when professors know their are teaching online, they will design presentations with a distant student in mind. There will be more Ted like talks and lectures, assignements will become more interactive, and who knows, maybe we will finally solve the parking problem...

Thing 16 - Google Docs

After much frustration and a couple failures I finally managed to publish my document in Google Docs. The toughest part was to retrieve a URL to link to it. I will try to add few more useful work related files later. Great idea, but being Beta and all, they don't seem to have figured our their interface yet and are also pretty slow. Still, I've needed to share a large Power Point file for a long time - hope Google Docs is just the place.

Thing 15 - Etsy, Lulu, CafePress, and Biblio.com

The idea of artisans, artists, and crafters having their own online services to sell goods is very encouraging. Etsy certainly found a way to put a "face" on every product, with a custom-designed entry page for little companies like Cosmos Curiosities. I found most of the prices to be on a high side, but this is probably reasonable given the hand-made non-commercial quality of goods. I also appreciated honest allergy disclosures, e.g. "this product comes from a home with a cat" - somehow it makes you respect the craftsman even more. I liked the recycling approach in the tins and boxes, and the the fact that you could ask for a particular design and color. I will be ordering my holiday cards from Lulu.com this year and was absolutely thrilled by a possibility to publish my own cook book here. Something for my next life to consider: right now those recipes are sitting in a folder on my kitchen counter, some are quite battered. And all illustration I could provide... Well, back to earth now. Coincidently, I've recently ordered some election sweatshirts from CafePress - very nice company with many smart choices. Slogans like "barack, paper, scissors", "omerica", and "joe the plumber meet barack the president", "barack and roll" and "polar bears for obama" made me smile and think of the times when we all wear self-designed t-shirts. Mine would have a quote from a contemporary Russian writer saying "Everything good in me is owed to sleep".

Well, on a related note, I've recently discovered another excellent buyer-seller service, which might help libraries with their book sales. It's called Biblio.com and it specializes in rare and used book sales. You could find anything from out-of-press to first editions here, and many local book stores are participating. I will try to find out how a library can join in. If any of our fellow librarians have used it for work, please let me know!

Thing 14 - Backyard Activity

I have to admit I was late on this assignement and had to search the calendar slightly backwards. Surprisingly, my backyard in Newton did not have too many scary Halloween events listed on American Town. There was one call from the Kids Halloween Dancing Party preceding the trick-or-treat, but the rest of the week-end activities look way too serious, ranging from Week-End Masses and Worship Services to local politics, town councils, product recalls, and oncoming election. What can one expect from a town with a 100% election turnout - the statistics I just got from the Wicked Local, which, by the way, I found a little more interesting and lively than American Town. They annonced the Silver NewTones Halloween concert (one small con: it still appears in their Coming up section 10 days after the event). The WickedLocal events are not as organized as Globe, Herald, and American Town, and searching is a bit tricky here, but news are interesting and read more like they have been written by real people. I used to follow WickedLocal predecessor TownOnline, but ever since I got school age kids at home, I don't: kids bring tons of local event flyers from school every day. Somehow I know what's going on in my backyard before it makes the headlines...

Thing 13 - Horror Read

My "scary" search on Library Thing brought me to two children books I am going to read to my kids. These are from the authors they would read anything by: Dav Pilkey and Robert L. Stine. I imagine they are more funny than scary, but what's wrong with a good laugh on a Halloween night? I really like how Library Thing gives you a list of sites where you can buy or swap a book, reviews are nice, even though I noticed that they generally don't offer as many as Amazon. I wonder if this thing hasn't picked up on the level of big book seller sites - libraries could really make it happen. Searching and subject tagging are clearly their strong points, as well as popularity index and statistics. You could feel that our MLS pros are behind many of these ideas. I would join with my library, but the thought of cataloging all of my personal books scares me to pieces!