LibraryThing & Goodreads

LibraryThing: I joined LT because I've heard about it more/longer than Goodreads and because the instructions for joining Goodreads were waaaaaaay longer. I entered 5 books in my library and was hoping to get suggestions, but I'm not seeing where I go to get them. Do I have to tag my books first? Or write reviews? Good grief, I'm looking at the tags for "After Tupac and D Foster" and someone has tagged it "Tupak Shakur". Scary if you can't spell words from the TITLE of the book! In addition to being misspelled, some of the tags are very strange. I guess this is what happens when the masses are allowed to do a librarian's work, no? :)

Actually, what I think I might be more interested in is the LibraryThing groups. I joined a librarians group and a YA lit group and they both seem pretty active. Again, there's just not enough time to keep up on everything! I don't know if I will ever re-visit LibraryThing. I do like the widget that automatically adds book covers to your blog. If/when we do a collection development blog, I think it would be nice to have a new titles widget in the sidebar.

Goodreads: "Have you ever wanted a better way to see what your friends are reading?" Um, no, not really. I find the best way to find out what my "friends" are reading is to ask them. I do like the interface of Goodreads a bit better than LibraryThing. Not sure exactly why, the soft browns, not overly texty, the logo. I have a friend who uses this, so I've seen her account and I don't feel the need to sign up for another book account today. So I checked out the groups page and one of the first ones I notice is "The Haters Club" from Portland, OR. I can't see how this is book related, but whatever. They don't list nearly as many groups as LT and I don't see any that I'm in the least bit interested in joining.

I'm not really interested in writing book reviews for most of the books I read and if I want to read reviews from random people I'll continue to go to Amazon.com for those. I think these are interesting services, but not especially useful to me. I did add a book sharing application to my facebook account, but there was an implication that I would actually share the physical books with people, which is strange. It also gave me the option to read/write reviews for books. Social networking is exhausting!

Item #12: Image generators

Hmmm, I didn't realize how many crappy pictures there were on Flickr until I started looking for something to manipulate. First I tried Mt. Fuji, now I'm looking for Japanese Maples. Really, it's impressive how many out of focus, uninteresting photos there are of bright red Japanese Maples.

Soooo...using Sketch Generator, I changed these lovely red leaves into a "sketch." It's very easy to do. I don't really like how blogger has placed the photos, but I guess it's livable. Any thoughts on how to make the images go exactly where I want them?

The other part of this assignment was to mention what 2.0 sites I'm enjoying and using on a regular basis. I've definitely become completely addicted to my bloglines account. I check it from work and from home. It's something I look forward to coming into work and doing first thing in the morning. Mostly I look at reviews of children's books and library 2.0 blogs, but I also have some news feeds, the addictive "blog" of "unnecessary" quotes (speaking of which, I just ate something called a "Veggie" Ham & Cheese Veggie Wrap. I'll be taking a photo and submitting that, fer sure!), and a few friends who occasionally post. In the past week, a few of my friends have created Facebook pages, so I may begin to use that more...too soon to tell. It's weird how when I log on I get a notice that my friend shani left this message ____ for another friend. Obviously you need to be aware at all times of what you're posting and who (everyone?) will be seeing it. And we'll see how much I use JacketFlap...

NOT a cheater

Ok. Because I never cheat on anything and I certainly don't want to risk my one free day off due to not following instructions...I'm joining a new social network. After reading the buzz on the Child Lit discussion list all morning, I joined JacketFlap.

JacketFlap, which doesn't seem to have a wikipedia entry just yet, is a social networking site focusing on children's and YA literature. Its members include authors, agents, illustrators, publishers, librarians... I'm still working my way around it. I see that like a wiki, I could edit the biography of an author who has not entered a bio. Does that mean YOU can edit MY bio? Why would you want to?
Instead of using my own words to describe JacketFlap, I'm going to let their FAQs do that for me:

What can I do on JacketFlap?

JacketFlap is all about Children's books and the people and companies involved in making Children's books. If you are in the business or are a Children's book lover, you can find loads of information here on pretty much any Children's book that has ever been published. If you are looking to get published, you can research publishers in our database of children's book publishers. If you want to keep up-to-date on the lastest news, reviews, and people in the Children's book business, then you'll love our Children's Publishing blog reader, which includes up-to-date postings from 500+ industry blogs. If you're looking to connect with other people in the Children's publishing world, then try browsing through our People section. If you're looking to see other books that people are reading and discuss books, please try our Books section.

My thoughts:
Search: is funky. The terms don't come naturally to me...I guess "published people" and "book titles" are the ones that seem the least intuitive to me. And why does the search default to publishers? I'm pretty sure I read that a publisher is behind BookFlap...but I can't remember who and I'm too lazy to use my research skills to find out.

Blog reader: it's great to be able to sort blogs by their categories...librarians, reviews, industry, news, etc. But the actual blog reader screen is too cluttered for me. Of course, that is solved easily enough by clicking on "Read the rest of this post" and getting redirected to the original post.
Reviews: I was expecting a really big database of reviews...but not yet.
Um, and there's some way you can earn "points" that are redeemable for amazon or booksense gift certs. Strange, but, ok.
Publisher info: looks good. Kinda like a Children's Writer's Guide for FREE!

Will I use JacketFlap? (I actually just forgot the name and had to double check. I thought it was BookFlap. Not sure if that is a sign of my future use of it or not...) I'm going to give it a try. I think the news blogs will be worth reading and they have a newly published section.

On the Facebook front: I added a library application (it freaks me out all the applications facebook wants you to add) and i tried to play scrabulous with a friend, but apparently we both have to be logged on at the same time to play. :)

Other thoughts on social networking and work: *I thought it was interesting that when i did a fort vancouver regional library search on Facebook, of the 15 people listed, everyone's "location" was Portland. Interpret as you wish.*

Also, I'm vaguely uncomfortable with the mixing of work and social life on these sites. Facebook encourages people to link through their place of employment, but if I put it out there that I work at FVRL, can I really feel right about telling the world that I "partied my butt off" this weekend? Or post a revealing photo? Do I want to look for dates AND advertise where i work? Does it make me a cool librarian?

Facebook

Here I am on Facebook!
I'm cheating a little on this assignment because I have had a Facebook account for a few months. I researched Facebook, Myspace, and other social networking sites last fall when I created a presentation for parents on social networking as part of my former job. I created accounts on different sites and the Facebook site is the only one I sorta update. Myspace is just too busy and loud for my 30-something self. I know I would have loved it when I was younger, but now I'm just frustrated by the graphics and music. I do have a friend or two my age who use it, but the majority of people my age that I know are either not using any of the SN sites, or they are on Facebook. But then again, sometimes I look at Facebook and wonder, 'what am i supposed to be doing on this site?' It seems a bit too vanilla to me at times. So what I'm going to do for this assignment is delve a bit deeper into Facebook and see if I can find anything relevant to me, besides my few friends who are already on it. Here I go...

What do you think about libraries taking part in social networking sites?

I like it. Our YAAB page is a good example of what a library can do in myspace. I think it's a great place to have a presence and advertise books and library events. I think FVRL could also have a page that marketed our online HOMEWORK resources and had the option for homework help chat with a librarian. The arguments against it, saying 'we need to stay out of teen spaces cuz they might not want us there,' are moot because we wouldn't be soliciting friends. We're just there and if teens want to be our friend, then cool.

When I worked as a librarian at Portland Community College one of the student library helpers was adamant that the PCC library should have presence in myspace. She said that she was on her myspace account several times a day and she would appreciate getting messages from the library on that account. What kind of messages? How about new books, change of hours, you need to renew your materials...

I think FVRL would also benefit from a Facebook account. This would attract the "older" crowd and could include messages about hours and events. This would also be one more venue to solicit feedback and ideas from the community regarding the library and what our users would like to see us do.

I think the main concerns are: keeping up with the current social networking sites...don't stay on myspace once the majority of users have moved on; make sure that the personnel time spent on managing the pages is worth the PR and interactions we are getting out of it; can these sites be accessed at the library, or are they blocked by filters?