Thing 7 : Online Image Generators

This "Thing" was fun....easy, but fun. I can see so many ways this could be used in a school library....one of my goals as a high school librarian is to make our library the campus hub, and every trick we can use, such as creating and using images such as these, helps. We're always fighting against that stuffy library stereotype....

One challenge, though, is that we have virtually no access to the school website and no presence on the website to speak of. It's a sticky subject....and we can't be too pushy about it without stepping on toes. We are, however, experimenting with having a presence on Blackboard, and I'm wondering how we could incorporate some of these images into Blackboard.

I'd also like to try blowing up these images and printing them out...seems like it could be a cheap way to have some unique decorations for the library.

Thing 6: Flickr Mashups

My name is

I'm a

and I love to

Thing 4: RSS and Newsreaders

I'll come back to this later....

Thing 3 : Blog Search Tools

Well, I've spent the last 3 weeks studying blog search engines in order to give you the most informative post possible for Thing #3.


Okay....not entirely true. :-) I've spent the last 3 weeks dealing with the rest of life....demands at work, family obligations, etc., etc., etc. A few unexpected "bumps in the road" have come up lately, and my 23 Things have fallen by the wayside.


But I'm back on track (thanks to President's Day).


Blog search tools....


I looked at 2 search engines : technorati and bloglines. I searched for one of my favorite authors, "Nevil Shute". Both engines brought back comparable results...in fact, the top results were almost identical. I just spent several minutes watching some of the video results from technorati--that's an interesting feature. Of course, what makes Bloglines so valuable is its RSS feed feature. As someone who is easily sucked into two hours of reading the blogs of people I've never met before, I like the ability to have a manageable list at my fingertips.


As a librarian, I have two perspectives on this. First, I love to search the Internet for a topic, be it political, work-related, or just a passing interest, find good, factual information (hopefully), and then click on a blog search to see what the rest of the world is saying about this topic. During the election, when news websites seemed to recycle the same news over and over again, I often went to blogs to read opinions, reactions, and analysis of all that was going on.


But that brings me to my other perspective....the perspective of the old school librarian living inside of me. I believe that I may have crossed the line from having more of the information I explore being factual to more being opinion....and if I, as a librarian, for Pete's sake, do this, I'm pretty sure most of the population does the same thing. This change in our culture brings with it all kinds of implications. I see this so clearly in my students--they are just as apt to quote a blog for a source as an encyclopedia.

Another note....I don't know how often I would go to these search engines, even though they're interesting to browse. I almost always use Google to search the Internet, and if I'm looking for a blog, I use the feature built in to Google. Google always seems to win out simply by putting everything in one place....a good concept for our libraries, as well.