Thing 5

Take the weekend off?  Nope, I drew the Easter slot in the reference librarian rotation this year.  We were surprisingly busy, with actual research-related questions and not just, "Do you have a pen I can borrow?"

Feedback first so it's easy to find:

1. The "in plain English" videos are great!
2. It feels like there should be a more cohesive place for discussion for a program like this than in comments on blogs, but then I wonder if that wouldn't just end up being another "Thing" for people to learn.  (A forum, or a chat room, or some other group communication tool.)  Blogs can work for group communication, but it can be more cumbersome than some other media if not everyone is posting on the same one's comments.

And a summary of what I've learned (and/or observations) thus far:

Blogs

I've learned a lot about manipulating a Blogger blog's design and other settings.  In the past when I've set one up, I've just picked a template and didn't change much if anything else.  Some of the things I've learned:

• Choosing and manipulating a picture for a header: I picked a picture, and then when I wanted to use it for my other blog, as well, I discovered that it no longer fit my site header.  I had to tweak the other site's layout to make it work.
• Manipulating the CSS for a template: After I had been working on templates for this blog for a while, I decided to change the template on the blog I use for gaming topics.  I found a template I really liked... except that it put huge amounts of space in the header.  I eventually found out how to manipulate the spacing in the CSS (cascading style sheets) for the template to compact it up a bit.
• Gadgets: There are tons of Blogger gadgets, and if there isn't one already built in the Blogger design page, you can paste in the HTML from some other site to display their gadget.  I had done this for NaNoWriMo word count before, but something like goodreads' widget seems more complex than a little image with a number across it and a link.
• Post jumps:  I wrote a post about 'scrolly' pages before, and Monday I got frustrated with how scrolly my verbosity had made this blog.  Digging into the Blogger settings once again, I discovered that if you use the new post editor, it has a button to insert jumps - those "Read more..." links that take you to the rest of the post.  And then of course I rearranged all of the gadgets, too.
• Other Blogger settings: To go along with the jumps, I tweaked number of posts on the front page and how the archive shows (weekly instead of monthly).  I may have to adjust the archive again if it gets too long.
• Blogs in general: I learned some things about different blog platforms' comment settings.  Some of them allow easy reply threading; some don't.  The use of 'captcha' and other human verification settings seems to be broadly configurable.  The layout options are diverse and most all are highly customizable.
• One more thing I learned today:  Blogger's "new" post editor is much more difficult about hard-return spacing in posts.  I think I've had to tweak this post four times to get rid of extra space that appeared from nowhere.

RSS & personalized home pages

I'm a heavy RSS user; moreso now that I'm reading everyone's blogs through feeds.  I did learn a few new things:

• OMPL format:  I don't know all the nuances of the header settings, but basic format for making blog imports isn't hard to pick up.  Exporting your feeds and then looking at the source should make it easy to manually make custom lists for sharing if you ever need to.  (Feed package ideas - book review sources, local events, weather, subject-specific (gardening, knitting, sports, etc.), professional development, news packages - if your patrons use RSS, you could offer feed bundles, sort of like webpage subject guides.)
• Google Reader:  While in theory this would be great for me, since I read on multiple machines, I just don't like Reader's format as much as my little Feedreader program.
• Personalized homepages:  I played with both iGoogle and Netvibes, and they both have possible uses, but they just aren't grabbing me like some things did.

Photo sharing

The photo sharing has probably had the most new-to-me applications for me.  Since I've had my own web domain for so long, file hosting was never an issue, and the quantity of photos I have, while possibly making something like Flickr attractive, is also prohibitive in terms of uploading, sorting, and so forth... as well as my reluctance to pay for photo storage in the cloud.  $25 a year isn't that much, but it's not a step I'm ready to take.  So... things I've learned from photo sharing:

• I have too many email accounts:  No, seriously.  I forgot my Flickr-associated Yahoo! password... again.
• Where Blogger puts my picture uploads:  I knew it was sending them to Picasa Web, but I didn't really know what that meant.  Now I know where to find them, and how to post and link them elsewhere.  If I made the albums public, I could link them in the sidebar through a Blogger gadget.  (Maybe I will... I like those pictures more than my Flickr ones...)
• Basic Flickr usage:  I've gone through the uploading, tagging, and attempting to share Flickr pictures.  The site... just doesn't do it for me.  It's a helluva a lot easier to just upload straight to the blog or Facebook, since that's where I'm using my pictures.  For the library, since we're on Facebook, it'll probably be easier to just upload there.
• Flickr observations: A great place to browse for event ideas; a great place to show off events to a broader public than via Facebook, thanks to tagging.

Social networking

Social networking has always been hit or miss for me; I don't stay active in most of the places I sign up.  Facebook has worked out for me since I can see what people I know are doing, and I can just post pictures there rather than uploading them and linking them to everyone I know.  Twitter almost became one of those things I signed up for and didn't use, but participation in a community of gamers and using it as a communication tool drew me into using it more for other things.  Some of the things I've learned:

• How to make Twitter lists:  I hadn't used Twitter lists before, but I follow a couple clusters of people.  Sorting them out was kind of fun, and maybe useful to people who are looking for similar feeds to follow.
• Facebook privacy:  I checked through the settings again, just to make sure I don't have things floating out publicly that I don't want to (like birth date and contact information).  I found the discussions about workplace or student friending interesting.  I have both colleagues and a handful of student workers friended on Facebook (although I let them initiate the requests); on the other hand, I generally follow the "would I be embarrassed if my mother saw it" mindset in public forums, so I don't worry about what they see of me.
• goodreads:  The big new thing for me in the social networking area was signing up for goodreads.  Most of the book series I've read haven't been something I just picked up off the shelf: they were recommended to me, or gifted to me, by friends or relatives.  (Discworld and the Dresden Files were both recommended by my gaming group; David Eddings' Elenium and Tamuli were gifts from one of my aunts.)  My early interest in biography and horse books were fed by my elementary school librarian.  So although I signed up for this as a way to keep track of what I've read and what I already own to read, it may also prove to be a good source of new reading for me.

Looking forward to the next Thing on the agenda!