Readers Advisory with Library Thing

I'm using LibraryThing to record the books I've read and that I want to read. With tagging them, and sometimes adding comments, this will make a great Readers' Advisory tool for me. I used to keep a written list, but hadn't added to it for a few years. It helps me recommend books if I can scan a list, organized by genre, to jog my memory. The nice thing about LibraryThing is it's available to me from any computer, and the listings have the cover picture which is also a great memory aid.

Biblio.com

This is a great site for buying used/rare books. I found several that I wanted to buy at terrific prices. What caught my eye next was the fact that this company participates in reducing their eco-footprint with every book they ship out! They keep track of the miles each book is shipped, and keep track of the miles their employees travel to work, and then based on that, the company donates money to NativeEnergy, a privately-held Native American energy company that helps build community-based renewable energy projects. How cool is that?! I even had a patron on Friday who was looking for a book from 1970 that we could only get for him through ILL, which I did, but then he mentioned he might go on Ebay and see if he could find this title. I suggested he also look at Biblio.com since they had used books specifically, and showed him the site. He said he likes to buy used books and thought this site was great!

google docs practice

"Now is the time for all good men & women to come to the aid of their country!" We must live in an environmentally sound way with greater dependence on solar and wind power, and lessen our use of quickly depleting oil. This was my first entry in Googledocs, and I wanted to see how it all worked if I published it to my blog. Yaay, it worked! These web based productivity tools were a total revelation to me - I had not heard a whisper about them, but I think they are incredibly helpful and easy to use, too. In reading some of the users' stories I could see how useful these shared documents could be for long distance collaboration on projects (both fun/personal and business).

wikis

I can see the value of a wiki for a group's effort to create something and share ideas & resources. It still seems less than perfect for scholarly research, but can certainly be a part of that with the ability to update the wiki frequently with the latest information. I liked the Library Success wiki for great ideas and successful approaches.

technorati

Technorati really is an easy way to search for blogs. I did a few searches and read some stuff, and found out that by putting tags on my blog posts I can attract readers to my blog. That's not something I want to do right now, because my comments seem relevant only to my coworkers (and for myself to ramble on and crystallize my thoughts). Certainly, tagging your blog posts if you wanted to get messages out to the world would be good. Reading what other library staff around the world (have you noticed Australian librarians/educators come up a lot?) have posted is often interesting, but it's weird to be reading a post about something to do with work and then suddenly there's info about what someone is making for dinner! So, I guess since posts can be business and personal, that's just part of it...

librarian 2.0 article

To me, librarian 2.0 means being savvy enough to use newer technology to help library users as they research or entertain themselves. In doing this, we bring in our experience with traditional methods/materials, and therefore we are helpful in a well-rounded way to our patrons. I think this is why they come in in droves and ask for our help so much. Hmm, librarians' knowledge and experience are the ultimate community resource!

feedster and rollyo

Yikes! I can't seem to figure out how to add a Feedster box or a Rollyo searchbox to my blog. I've tried following the directions, but that hasn't worked. Maybe it's not supposed to be done? Anyone have a good/successful experience with doing these?