Dangerous Edge of Things

What a great debut mystery. Some reviews have compared the protagonist to Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum - I'd say maybe if you're talking about book one of that series.

Tai Randolph has moved to Atlanta to take over the gun shop her uncle left her. Tai's plans are sidelined when she discovers the body of a young woman who has been left for dead in her car. The car is in her brother's driveway and Tai begins to investigate because she is worried her brother is somehow involved. Her investigation brings her into contact with the Phoenix company - one that specializes in security and protection services - and mysterious operative Trey Seaver. Trey is a former police officer who suffered a traumatic brain injury. That injury has altered his personality. He no longer is able to relate to people as he did before the accident and though he can tell if someone is lying, he isn't able to go with his gut and can't read emotions in the same way he once did. Sounds hokey but Tai and Trey make a great team and while there are a few rushed plot points, this is an author I'll be putting on the autobuy list.

Higgins' Best Yet

Kristin Higgins has become an autobuy author and My One and Only proves why this is so. The second chance at love/road trip romance hits all the right notes and was deeply satisfying on an emotional level.

Divorce attorney Harper James is content with her job, not least because she's pretty cynical when it comes to relationships. Her mother abandoned the family when Harper was a young teen and that has had a major impact on her. When her short-lived marriage fell apart twelve years ago, Harper convinced herself she was better off. Yes she loved Nick and she knows he felt the same, but she was always ready for the other shoe to drop and when it did she got out. Now her flaky (to Harper's mind) younger, sister is getting married to Nick's brother and Harper is convinced it will be a disaster. Despite her foreboding, she agrees to attend the wedding in Montana and once again come face to face with Nick. On the return to Maine Harper is forced to accept a ride from Nick and they begin to re-examine what went wrong with their relationship and whether they can get back what they once had.

Harper's fears are realistic given her background and Nick's frustration at her apparent lack of confidence and trust in him is well-founded as well. These are two adults who love each other and are struggling to find a way to make it work. Very well done and Higgins' best yet.

Children of Scarabaeus

This sequel to Song of Scarabaeus was very good, though not quite as great as book one. Sara Creasy continues to build this science fiction world to great effect and there is plenty of action and suspence this time out.

As Children of Scarabaeus opens Edie and Finn are trying to escape to the Fringe where they will be safe from Crib influence and be able to help the Fringe worlds get out from under the control of the Empire. The knowledge they carry and Edie's cypherteck abilities make them the perfect antidote to the problems with the terraforming on the Empire's planets. That terraforming is breaking down and many planets are facing starvation if they can't get assistance from the Crib. Their plan goes awry when they are captured by the Crib and Edie is forced to work on the terraforming of a new planet where the accelerated pace of the work may be causing planetary destruction. Though she is forced to work for her former masters Edie and Finn remain determined to escape. Their plans are complicated by the discovery that the Crib is now using children to work the planet and by a military agenda that has other plans for Edie's tech skills.

Fans of science fiction with a romantic element will certainly be looking to read this one. And though I didn't love it as much as the first, which had a tighter plot, it is still a very strong entry in the science fiction/romance field.

Fatal Justice

This was my first time reading Marie Force. I love police procedurals and books involving those in power in Washington D.C. so this sounded like the perfect mix for me. Fatal Justice ended up being a mixed bag, perhaps because of that mix of police and politics and romance too.

Lieutenant Sam Holland is facing major upheavals in her personal and professional lives. On the personal side of things she's trying to come to terms with being the girlfriend of the newest, and most popular, U.S. Senator from Virginia, Nick Cappuano. Because of his very public life, Sam finds her own privacy lacking. And as a newly minted police lieutenant (the professional change I mentioned) that public scrutiny is just making her job tougher. When a Supreme Court nominee, Julian Sinclair, is murdered Sam has to try and meld the two parts of her life.

Perhaps because of all that was going on, this book ended up feeling a little choppy. I like Sam for the most part, though there is just a smidge too much focus on how tough she is, and Nick makes for a great partner in work and life for her, but...the mystery gets shorter shrift as the novel progresses and that was a weakness. That said, there was enough to interest me in continuing with the series as other books come out.

Curious Veronica Finds Some Friends

I'd wager that most reference librarians are curious people. Spend any time with us on the reference desk and you'll find us hunting for answers long after the customer has left. Even when the question has come to one of our colleagues, our curiousity is whetted and we start the quest.

That being said, Project Play has done wonders for me in terms of curiousity. Once I'm started with a question or a thought, I move right along. But sometimes I need that initial goose to get me started. A few years ago a friend and I took the train from Chicago to Flagstaff. Once there we spent time at the Grand Canyon, Sedona, and various other places. And as we travelled, questions arose. How do water towers work? (That one on the train ride out). What's the difference between ravens and crows? (This came at the Grand Canyon). Since my companion was a librarian as well, you can guess she came up with a plan. She made note of our questions and when we got back home we researched the answers.

That's what Project Play has done for me. It's helped set me on course to find the answers, or if not the answers, at least the beginnings of how to think about the resources we've studied. By posing the questions, you've jump-started my thinking. And for that I thank the designers of the play and the players.

All Mashed Up with Nowhere to Go

I love the idea of mash-ups and I generally think the ones I've seen are clever or amusing or even useful. The problem is in coming up with ways in which I could use a mashup in my working world (or even in my private one).

I think of this as being like cooking. In general I have a small list of dishes I can make without consulting a recipe. These are things I've made many times and because of my familiarity with them I'm able to change things up and still have some success. These would be the mash-ups I'm knowledgeable enough to improvise and create. In the library world they'd include the things talked about in Project Play. Library catalogs that add data from LibraryThing or maps that combine census information with geographic layout. Both are familiar to me and could be possible suggestions I'd make for my own workplace.

The problem is, that list of known mixes is small. And when I venture out, I get the same results as with my cooking. If I don't know the recipe for something, I need the recipe. I'm not intuitive enough (or experienced enough) to move past the recipe. When I most frequently err on the side of adding too many ingredients to the point my dish is inedible. But more often, I can't think of things to add. I can't brainstorm it on my own.

That's what mashups seem like to me. I know there's a world of possibilities out there but because my knowledge is so limited, I can't envision them. I welcome the chance to explore them more because familiarity will hopefully bring some creativity. But as it is, unless someone gives me the exact recipe for mashing something together, I'm probably not going to be able to come up with it.

Just What are those InterTubes?

Back in the early stages of my blog I made my first attempt to embed (sounds so militaristic!) a YouTube video of Elvis Costello singing my theme song in the blog. And I found the task pretty simple. This pointed up how easy it would be to include this kind of content in library endeavors. The handy thing about YouTube is that it serves as the host for all the videos your library might want to create. This means less server space used on your end. As an example one of the MPL branches did a video about a music program they had for kids. Once the video was done, how easy it would have been to load it onto YouTube and make it available on the library's website. What a nice way to promote your library, not only to your own community but to the wider web world. Think of a fundraising effort you may be undertaking and making a short film to sell the idea. The possibilities are immense.

All my cogitating aside, I'm not going to embed a video from YouTube today. Instead I'm going to embed an episode of my very favorite SF show from the new movie/tv service called Hulu. Hulu in their own words: "Hulu offers full-length episodes of not only current hit shows like The Simpsons and The Office but also classics like The Incredible Hulk, Miami Vice and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and in some cases, as with Arrested Development, Firefly, and Friday Night Lights, we have every episode ever aired. Our expanded library of full-length movies has something for everyone, from The Usual Suspects to The Big Lebowski, Me, Myself & Irene, Mulholland Drive and (one of my personal favorites) Three Amigos!." Their movie selection is still pretty small but I'm thrilled with the tv shows on offer.

And without further ado here is one of my favs (and with this tip for embedding - paste the embed code into a Word document first otherwise the full code doesn't always come through):

Casting for the Screen

Of all the things we've looked at this semester (and we've looked at some fun things), I think screencasting is one of the most potentially useful for libraries. Being able to wed sound and slides in an instructional way is perfect. Screenshots with a voice telling you where you would click and what to look for is great for the learners who learn visually and those who learn aurally. Think of talking someone through setting up an email account and how often you do that in a week or month. I know some thought a podcast would be the way to go, but a screencast does it one better. The uses are limitless for instructional purposes.

And to prove it, I'll admit that this week's shiny object wasn't limited to the screencasting software. I was also thrilled with Cueprompter. Just seeing the demo via screencast gave me ideas for future presentations. Nice.

Are You Talking to Me?

I've really enjoyed the podcasts I've listened to, but as with everything else in the wide, wide world of the web, there are just too many of them. I find myself weeks behind in listening to the ones that interest me and then just skip them. I've enjoyed All About Books from NET Radio (an NPR station) and the Atlantic Free Press always has something interesting to say, but... Where do I find the time? In theory I like the idea of using my Ipod, but in practice that takes too much time too. So...

For libraries I have thought it useful to have a podcast that walks a patron through a process. Think of museums and the walkmans they give you to listen to as you walk through an exhibition. That would be helpful for larger libraries in a physical sense. But also helpful would be online podcasts to help a patron search for job sites or walk them through setting up a Yahoo email account. Would they solve everything? Probably not, but they could certainly become a tool in our arsenal.

My Space or Yours?

I used to be more of a proponent for libraries creating a presence in these social realms but in thinking about how much libraries should participate, I kept coming back to a comment I read somewhere. Could have been on a blog or in an email or something a project player said. I don't remember that, but the comment stuck.

Their analogy went something like this: Having a library presence on MySpace and Facebook or other mostly social networks was like being a librarian walking into a bar and giving a presentation about library services. Certainly you may find customers who've never used the library or don't know about your services, but are they people who want to be found? Do they want to hear all about your library while they're socializing?

I'm not arguing against all efforts to network in these social settings. We do visit groups to tell them all about the library when we're asked - the key is being asked. But I don't expect much from them either. What I do argue is that there are networking places that may be a better fit for libraries. If you want to catch people socially, how about meeting them through books on GoodReads?

Am I off the mark here?

Keeping a List and Checking it Twice

I'll admit that while I think Jott and Remember the Milk are cool online gadgets, they don't do much for me. The issue is probably in how many things they do rather then in how few. Both have lots of fun aspects and with a little more exploring I'd probably find even more, but when I need to list something, I really just want the list - on the back of a bank envelope or a scrap of paper usually. In the past I have played around with Ta-Da Lists but even that - which is a little more basic in its service - is one of the online tools that I've left behind.

I will keep these sites in mind and will perhaps come up with a use for them in the future. But for now I think I'll stick to the scraps of paper I can stick in a pocket.

Writing the Web Way

I've been using Google Docs for a while now and have been happy overall. In the past, at my library I might find myself on any of four or five different desks and my work tended to get spread out. If I wanted to work on a particular project it always took me a minute to figure out which machine or floppy disc I'd stored it on. When we first got USB's, my problem was mostly solved. They hold a lot of data, are small and portable, and can be plugged in to all the machines. But...I still had to remember to unplug it at this machine so that I'd have it handy for the next. And if the PC I was on didn't have the application I needed for my project, then I was out of luck. To add insult to injury, I lost the darn thing (I think I left a pocket on my backpack unzipped!) and there went all my work. Luckily most of it was also backed up on the PC at my desk. Unluckily my updates weren't all as updated as they could be.

Given my experience I decided to give Google Docs a try. Voila! Problems solved - for the most part. Is Google Docs perfect? No. It sometimes has some wonky editing and formatting. And experimenting with the slideshow in this week's coursework made me realize it can freeze up as well (as Pinky said). And transferring back and forth between Google Docs and Word and other applications doesn't always go as smoothly as I'd like (formatting again). The other reservation I have relates to the security. Though I love the ease of access and use, I don't include any documents that are confidential or extremely private. Do I think Google Docs is secure? Sure. But only in as much as anything is secure out there on the big bad web.

But small issues aside, it's been great to have my documents available whichever machine I happen to be on. I like the blending of blogging tools with the word processing. I also appreciate the ability to share documents with co-workers for collaborative projects.

As a final note, may I suggest that those who are new to this Google tool check out some of the other tools also available. I'm regularly using the Google Calendar as well.

And on the Eighth Day, God Created Instant Messaging

I didn't have much luck with Meeboing Me, but was able to successfully chat with a co-worker. Of course our chat went something like this:

Me: hey, I'm chatting with you
Her: cool
Me: look I've changed the color of my font
Her: me too and look I'm typing it with my fav font
Me: cool man i see why people give up on the caps and use lol's

Well, you probably get the picture. First chats are always about as edifying as that, but having practiced a little bit now I can definitely see the benefits of connecting with co-workers or the public using the easy Meebo interface. Madison might use it as a way for the lone reference worker in a branch to get additional assistance for tough questions if the staff at other locations were online in Meebo. For the public it's got a couple of benefits, the first would be the easy access to staff if we started using it. The second could be to use Meebo to cover their chat if they're not able to get into Yahoo or AOL from the public machines (which are usually a mixed bag in terms of the updates).

Good opener for semester 2 and thanks to the Sloganizer for my blog post title.

Here a Wiki, There a Wiki, Everywhere a Wiki, Wiki

I did the actual assignment for the Wiki week on the first day of the week - posted MPL's link into the City of Madison Wiki Entry and re-posted it when it didn't seem to work the first time - but didn't actually blog about my efforts. So here I am blogging...

I do think Wiki's can be very useful for library work and wish that we all had more time to create the content necessary to make a Wiki that's appealing and utilitarian. One use I know we've thought of at MPL is to create a circulation manual with a wiki. Because Madison has multiple locations and the circ staff is never all in one place at one time, communication of policy changes can be tough. A wiki would allow live changes to a policy and everyone would have access to the latest, most recent information. In a broader sense, the same would hold true for libraries who wanted to make a wiki their library web site.

The beauty of a wiki is that anyone can make the changes as they occur. Contrast that with the old/current way of distributing memos, emails, even phone calls. In all of those cases the person seeking the information needs to be able to find it in a timely fashion and has to know that it's the most up-to-date information.

The trouble with wikis is that you need to have the 3 C's in place before you can get started. Having run a library blog for over a year now I can tell you my theory of the 3 C's. The C's are Commitment, Content and Contributors. If you're missing any of the three, a wiki (or a library blog) won't work.

• Commitment has to come from the people running the wiki but it also has to come from the powers-that-be in your location. Because the C's take staff time, management needs to be behind the effort before it can even get off the ground.



• Content sounds so obvious, but without content a wiki is pretty useless. And by content, I don't mean a few lists of things or your intentions to add things at a future date. Adding content needs to happen before a wiki is even shared and it needs to be updated regularly and continuously.



• Contributors may be your toughest C of all. You'll find that people will volunteer with all the best intentions in the world and then their other work duties intervene (this has certainly happened to me) and suddenly contributing to the wiki moves further and further down the list of things they may need to get done on any given day. If this happens often enough, suddenly your content evaporates. A way to balance the very real fact that other work will most definitely outweigh the wiki for importance is to get as many contributors as you can and to try and create a structure for their posting to the wiki. perhaps they need to commit to once a week or every other week, of if it works better to commit to being responsible for a particular area of the wiki.

Whatever is decided for a library wiki, staff needs to make sure they have the basic ground rules worked out before getting started.

When You Say Del.icio.us, You've Said it All

I used the sloganizer to come up with a title for this post and had to decide between this one and "the gods made del.icio.us". I decided that while the techie people who designed the social bookmarking site are probably pretty smart and special, I don't think I can quite classify them as gods yet.

I've become familiar with tags over the last couple of years but truthfully can not find a use for del.icio.us in my repertoire of web tools personally. I know all the arguments but really have few bookmarks that I need to take with me from computer to computer and the ones I do need I can generally either remember or find as necessary. And while I did set up an account as part of this week's assignment, I wasn't able to add the buttons to my work computer because it requires installation and only the automation gurus are able to do that. Without the buttons on the toolbar, adding links becomes much harder.

That's not to say del.icio.us isn't of use to libraries. In fact our library is working on converting our web page links into del.icio.us (as an aside I have to say that typing that name each time is sort of a pain - can I just call it Delish?) bookmarks which would hopefully be editable by anyone on staff once they are set up. That would mean that if I found a cool new consumer site, I could add it to our reference links/Delish bookmarks rather then having to contact the library web masters.

Will I use my personal Delish account? Doubtful. But it was fun to explore it a little more and the whole idea of tagging in this weeks' assignment.

Everybody's Doing the LibraryThing

I had fun setting up my LibraryThing library and will probably continue to add titles.

That being said, I've been using LibraryThing as a Readers' Advisory tool for a while now. What works great for that purpose is the list of books suggested. So if a customer tells me they liked Richard Russo's Empire Falls I search that in LibraryThing and see what other books are suggested based on those who've listed Empire Falls in their library. Explaining it takes far more time then the actual searching and when I use the results in conjunction with other resources, it works very well. I find it especially useful when I'm looking up books I'm not familiar with. Invariably, I'll find a title or author I am familiar with in the results list.

Where it doesn't work as well is with the lesser known works or with authors who've got a lot of books under their belt. For the latter the lists will end up containing many of the author's other works and that isn't helpful if I'm looking for further reading.

And while I find the Unsuggester fun the most practical use I can find for it is to use it as something to show customers to get conversation started. And if I were Queen of the Publishing World this is the book I'd provide for LT novices.

My first YouTube Entry

Veronica Franco by Tintoretto

Veronica Franco by Tintoretto
Originally uploaded by rosewithoutathorn84

The first thing I did when I started to explore Flickr was to search the other Veronicas out there in the world. I was pleased to find Veronica Franco as one of the first hits that came up and decided to "blog this". She certainly led an interesting life as an educated woman who was a poet and a courtesan. She even successfully fought for her freedom when she was accused of witchcraft! Go Veronica! If you're interested in more about this Veronica, there's a book about her in LINKcat.

What I like about Flickr is the quantity and the quality of the pictures available. I've created a Flickr account but so far have only used it as a place to store photos that I've used for work purposes (so they're not available to the public). But because they're stored online I'm able to give co-workers access to the photos.

Sometimes I wonder how these web communities stay afloat financially speaking. A web service of this magnitude is a costly endeavor. Do they make their money selling prints? Selling advanced options? There's no advertising to speak of. So I'm curious. Anyone know?

Is There Anyone Out There?

When I thought about what I could write to elicit some comments I realized I should talk about how hard it is to do just that.

In reading other blogs and posting in my own I've noticed that you can never tell which post is going to generate a lot of comment. It could be the post arguing that the world is flat or that dinosaurs still roam the planet generating endless debate. But it could just as easily be the one that innocently says you don't like the actress who plays Kendall on All My Children.

So what I've tried to learn is to just write what I want to write about and try not to angst too much about whether or not anyone is letting me know that they're listening. Easier said then done of course. I know that I've been guilty of checking and re-checking posts I've written to see if anyone has commented. But I've also tried to tell myself that just because no one has said anything, it doesn't mean they haven't read my post. I can believe, can't I?

In an effort to generate discussion for this post I'll ask you what are some of the blog subjects you've seen generate a lot of comment? Seen any flame wars start? Have you ever thought about posting a comment but been too shy to do so?

Feeding the Mind

I considered myself pretty comforatable with Bloglines and Google Reader so I decided to give the Beta version of Bloglines a try. I can see that they're trying to be similar to GR but I don't think they have all the components yet and I missed being able to do some of the things I could do with Bloglines, let's call it alpha.

Once I was done exploring the beta version I decided to try getting my feeds to show up on my blog as a blogroll and experienced one of those "I know I should be able to do this, but I can't figure out how" hours. Leading me to wish I had a Logan to lean on like this Veronica does.

The instructions were pretty basic. Go to your bloglines profile and make sure to change the setting to a public one for access to the blogroll and then use the Bloglines HTML helper to get the code for the blog. Took me a little while with those things, but I thought I had it all figured out. But when I pasted into the additional elements portion of the template in this blog all I got was a message saying my username wasn't active. Huh!? Tried with my old Bloglines account - same deal. How was I getting it wrong?

Turned out I was making an assumption (and you know what they say about those). I assumed that my username would be the first part of my login for Bloglines. Turns out I needed to note the little * next to the username field and pick a username for my public Bloglines persona.

Success at last! My Bloglines feeds are now links on my blog, woohoo! Thanks for the tips and chance to learn Project Player Gurus.