Week #6 Post #13

The tutorial on this exercise was somewhat disappointing. I have used the del.icio.us/hcplbiblio as part of my reference toolbox where and when appropriate. There is no sense in recreating the wheel, so to speak, in some cases with popularly asked questions at the desk. I created my own del.icio.us account and am currently exploring and tagging some of the more interesting sites dedicated to color. One that is very intriguing is COLOURlovers. The portability of the account is great.

Week #5 Post #12

I've read through the demo and the FAQs of the Library Elf. At this time, I do not think this service would be of any assistance to me. However, individuals checking out materials from several libraries or families having several cards from one or more library systems may find this a convenient form of record keeping.

Week #5 Post #11

I can see where this could have a good application for an instructor after a lecture in the studio or online session in distance learning. Occasionally a student may want to explore a previous topic in further detail. Titles which are not referred to on the syllabus "Further Reading List", could quickly be cited on the instructor's blog.

In this particular exercise I choose books from my personal design collection about the Hearst Estate on the Central California coast. My grandfathers and father were commercial fisherman off that beautiful coastline and I grew up visiting the estate on vacations from Los Angeles. In 1991 I took my daughter on her first set of tours of the estate.

Faces of Hearst Castle by Jana Seely and Keri Collins is the most recently published of the set (September 2007). It is also the first imprint of the Hearst Castle Press.

Week #5 Post #10

After a self-tour of the image generators, I selected Meez for the combination of features I originally had in mind for my avatar. As you see below she is nosily gliding across her studio's wood floor in a task chair. She actually spins in the original created avatar on the Meez site. For those of you familiar with the task chairs at our branch, you will notice that both arms of my avatar's chair are securely still in place. What a concept!

thelibrarychair

Week #4 Post #9

At the end of this task, I have constructed 7 folders: "Animals", "Book Reviews", "Cooking", "Design", "iHCPL Blogs", "Librarian Stuff" and "Sustainable". The "Sustainable" folder really provides a good example of how I put together the other 6.

My husband and I recently purchased a Ford Escape Hybrid and I am not the most technical person on the block so to speak. However, I am really intrigued by the technology of driving 400 miles on one tank of gas (city) and the car's near silence while idling at a traffic light.

Technorati and Feedster were frustrating to use when searching for hybrids. I did find the Hybrid Car Blog and GreenHybrid - Hybrid Cars utilizing the Bloglines' tools. TreeHugger (a new popular site which I initially found referenced in an ASID newsletter) and Wind Power News from RenewableEnergyAccess.com I added to the "Sustainable" folder by the URL copy/paste method.

Week #4 Post #8

I particularly enjoyed the initial profiling for the Bloglines newsreaders. It quickly identified for me some of the more popular newsfeeds. Of particular interest to me were the book reviews from USATODAY.com, Washington Post Book reviews and NYT Book Review. I later added Los Angeles Times - Books. There was a good representation for my interest in cooking, design, animals and library topics. I also subscribed to various blog feeds from the iHCPL participants in the department.