Thing # 6--Online Image Generators

Well, I think I am now truly past the Flickr steps, and I have to admit that I did have some fun playing around. I created a trading card for the famous MN racehorse Dan Patch, that is available to your right. As I mentioned in my previous blog entry for Thing #5, I can see all sorts of creative uses for these tools in the Library--perhaps more in my previous life as a children's librarian than as a reference librarian. However, as I also mentioned before, my library is looking at creating trading cards for MN governors. It just so happened that I was working on this step during a quiet time on a reference desk shift and our acquisitions librarian was on the desk with me. He has been busy creating a list of "150 great MN books" for the sesquicentennial, and while watching me work on the Dan Patch trading card he said "I should do trading cards for the 150 books!". Excellent idea. While I understand that the purpose of these tools are for use on web sites, I also think a nice, full-colored print version of trading cards, no matter what the subject, would be popular as well.

Thing #5--More Flickr Fun

Well, I thought I was done with Flickr, but not quite yet! It was fun to play around with the mash ups, and you can see that I spelled my name with Spell with Flickr and put it up front and center for the moment! Clockr wasn't providing any change of images today--I don't know if that is a standard thing or if something isn't working right. If I remember, I'll check it on another day. Flickr Color Pickr was fun--I'm not sure of the value of choosing images by color, except perhaps for the graphic design fields. Big Huge Labs was helpful in that it pulled all these options together into one site. Obviously, I enjoyed Spell with Flickr and it was entertaining to go through splashr and see all the different options for how your Flickr page could look. (I flirted with the postcard set-up, but went back to the plain old traditional page.) On my Flickr page I took my Tranquil Landing image, made it a jigsaw puzzle and uploaded it.

The applications might be fun to create with if one had more control over the design of the library web page. At my institution the web page design is pretty much locked down by IT--all we provide is content. These tools could certainly provide the help in designing a vibrant web page if one had free reign. I love the idea of the trading cards--as a former children's librarian I could see all sorts of possibilities in that--trading cards for favorite authors, favorite literary characters, etc. In fact, at my current library we are considering trading cards for the state governors. With all this for free, it does make me realize that interesting web creations are a possibility without too much effort.

Thing # 4--Photosharing with Flickr

Finally, finally, finally--I am past the Flickr assignment! I enjoyed the video regarding online photo sharing, and it totally makes sense that if one was really into taking tons of photos, keeping a back-up copy on the Internet would be the smart thing to do. As a matter of fact, this may be a tool I share with my sister, who has a new digital camera and is enjoying becoming a somewhat amateur photographer. This would be a perfect storage solution for her. She is slightly less web savvy that me even, (if that's possible), so I will need to explain it to her. But now having used Flickr, it is fairly easy to understand. However, I did need to refer to my notes taken during one of our Library 2.0 sessions when Jen discussed Flickr, as when you are on the page nothing appears to be intuitive to me. But I created an account and successfully uploaded, titled, described and tagged a photo of mine (the same one on this blog). I then searched Flickr for some other images of the Manistee River, and found some interesting stuff. In fact, over on the left are two photos that I particularly liked--the Day's Landing on Lake Eleanor in Brethren (created by D. M. Day) is fun because of the family name connection, although not an actual relative. I love the photo of the freighter coming into the Manistee River channel at night, (taken by Open Lake Group LLC), because it is always an exciting time to hear the ship's horn and know that another big lake freighter is in town.

I can certainly see the many benefits of using Flickr to create buzz for your library. In fact we are working on a library tour, and Jen uploaded some 28 photos that I took of the Library onto our Library's account last week. With the search capacities of Flickr I can envision all sorts of ways that Flickr users may stumble upon our Library tour. I obviously understand the benefits of the storage aspect, and if I was a big photo nut I would probably use that aspect of Flickr. The private verses public debate is where I sort of lose interest--again I just don't get into the concept of everyone looking at my private images. So if I did use Flickr for myself, I would more than likely use the private option. Obviously, for institutional uses the public aspect of Flickr is what it is all about, and that makes sense, too.

All in all, an overall useful tool. By the way, in a follow-up to Thing #3, I never got the RSS email feed to work--I must be doing something wrong.

23 Things on a Stick-Round 2: Thing #3 again!

Well, well, well....I hadn't realized that I haven't done anything since March 11Th. Pathetic. I read through my last post, and also realized that I hadn't signed up for SendMeRSS as an alternative to an aggregator. So, I signed up for that today and put two URL's in for feeds to my email. We will see how that goes and I will report back this time. (At least I have good intentions to do so!) I have also re-registered my blog for the second round of competition. At my library we are planning to meet once a week to discuss a "thing", so I am really hoping that by doing that I will stay motivated and perhaps finish this project. I'm off now to discover what Thing #4--I'll be back!