Thing 10 - Meebo & Skype

I tired MEEBO very quickly; with two other IM systems in place already, I guess I'm primarily feeling frustration that we can't have one system that can talk to other systems. However, MEEBO has some nice emoticons, and it looks like we could do group chat - and that leads me to Skype...

Skype has a chat feature too; group chat would be possible, and you can insert videos and send documents using it. So - pretty nice. The phone worked fine too, and would make conference calls easier.

iGoogle - Thing 9

Ok - I LOVE iGoogle. I don't know what to say except that it's so easy - and convenient to have everything in one place.

Wikis

I have finally updated not one, but two wikis. I tried the Public Services first, but didn't have anything of substance to say. So then I went to the Ask a UC Librarian wiki, maintained by Ken Furuta. I managed (after much frustration) to post our now public Ask calendar (and learned more about tiny urls) and I created a new page and put up the minutes to the Common Interest Group's minutes. Very clunky (I thought) for that kind of thing, but it does work.
http://kenfuruta.info/wiki/index.php?InterestGroup

Back to Facebook

Now that ALA is around the corner, and I'm corresponding again with East Coast pals and colleagues, Facebook is starting to be much more interesting for me. It's definitely a social tool, and I can't see (for me) using it with students, but to keep up with my friends and make plans - it's great. And now I know what an FB event is - and I've even set one up. Thanks Karen!

More on Assignment (Thing) 7 - del.icio.us

Well, I followed the instructions about tagging without the delicious buttons (thanks Melanie!). I managed to tag Knitty.com, a great knitting web site. I think delicious is a great tool for bringing like things together with language by the users, not an outside community (eg class names). Worth exploring, altho having seen Dana's and Brian's delicious accounts - they are not particularly attractive...

Assignment (Thing) 7: Social Bookmarking & Folksonomies

I was ready to start del.cio.us, but (frustratingly) blocked from downloading the buttons...
so until IT can have the buttons installed, this Thing will have to wait...

Assignment (Thing) 4 - back to tagging

I've tried searching for my blog, 24 hours after pinging, and am not having good luck (and "jawlensky" is not a common word, overall)...a lot of the blog directories are visually confusing to me; it's not always easy to figure out how to search.

Assignment (Thing) 6 - Social Networking and Facebook

So Dana has managed to talk just about the ENTIRE Langson Reference Department into starting Facebook accounts. At least that is something in these exercises I had already done.
I admit I rarely use it, but I have had a few conversations with other librarians through Facebook. And I seem to have applications like the Wall and Superpoke, but I don't quite know what to do with them...I think I just went to war with Dana!?! And I've sent Good Karma...

Assignment (Thing) 5

Ok - I've subscribed to some feeds, but I don't see myself going to Bloglines to check feeds - I'm just too lazy. I like how I have it set up at home - the new feeds pop up in a reader and if I want to read any, I click on them and can go to the story, etc. There's probably a way to do that here too, right? So lots of different blogs available - what's new?

Assignment (Thing) 4 continued

I checked Technorati, searching "Jawlensky" and my blog appeared (so sad, for anyone who might be looking for interesting information about the artist, and they get my post). I'm not sure how you search some of these sites though...

Assignment (Thing) 4 - Tagging and Technorati

I've pinged and now await the results...

In the meantime, I searched Flickr tags with the terms art and degenerate, since we're seeing this as an assignment at the Reference Desk. The search pulled up images from the actual Entartete Art exhibit in Germany:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ablekay47/1349396328/

Assignment (Thing) 3 - Flickr

I haven't done this for so long that I'm forgetting the little I began to learn in November!

I used to Flickr to look for more work by artists I like (an obvious use, although I caution people to remember that reproduction quality may be suspect with ANY reproduction). Anything where images are needed as a primary source or supportive evidence makes this a useful tool. And being able to start with something like "jawlensky" ( a known item) and use people's tags to look for other abstract art, makes this doubly useful.

FYI - I fell in love with Jawlensky's paintings when I was an intern at the Long Beach Museum of Art. At the time they had numerous Jawlensky paintings stored in the attic, and I got to spend lots of time with them - they grow on you when you see them en masse, particularly because many are quite small and have an overall effect of a devotional image, something to meditate upon.