…and this time I’m helping to facilitate it. We’ve had a quick planning meeting this morning, and I’m looking forward to it. I had such a positive experience myself (see previous blog posts ad nauseam) that it’s good to have a chance to help encourage other people to explore what’s out there.
First of all, a huge thank you to the 25 Things Tsars for running the programme! – it’s been a good experience. And also to my fellow Thingers who’ve shared their thoughts, their delicious favourites (and coffee/cake) and their ideas about some of the Things.
Quite a lot of the 25 things to do this week! – so I’m a week behind.
I played with Library Thing a couple of years ago – but I’m afraid I couldn’t be bothered. I love books. I love reading. I love talking about books with other people. I even love rearranging the books on my shelves (can’t persuade my other half to let me arrange them by colour, just to see how it looks). But I don’t really get playing with book metadata online for fun. So I’m sorry 25 Things Tsars, I’ve done everything you asked until now but I’m ducking out of Library Thing this time around.
Nifty! – managed to post this direct to the blog from Image Chef.
I’m feeling cynical. Maybe it’s what Viktor Mayer-Schönberger has to say about Google (see previous post) but its all-pervasiveness does bother me. Yes, it’s incredibly useful but I can’t help thinking Google’s take on “don’t be evil” differs from mine. So don’t forget the alternatives – for example just off the top of my head, AA routefinder for directions/distances, multimap, yell.com. Spread your internet use around a bit – don’t make it easy for google to have a complete picture of you!
The 15th thing was to use Wikipedia – specifically the random article link – and to blog about it. I’m still staggered by the coincidence – my first “random article” was about Nara – archives buffs, that’s a place in Japan rather than the National Archives and Records Administration.
Beware of deer
So here are the coincidences: I visited Nara in 2007 when Choral visited that country, and really loved it (both Japan, and Nara). Next week our friends from the Osaka Symphony Chorus, with whom we sang Britten’s War Requiem on the evening of Hiroshima Day in 2007, will be visiting Huddersfield to sing with us (for a complete contrast, the martial Judas Maccabaeus, if you’re interested). And finally, apparently Nara is celebrating its 1300th anniversary during 2010!
We were amazed both by the heat, and the age of the Shinto shrines, including Todaiji the world’s largest wooden building. Plus the deer wandering everywhere. Read more…
del.icio.us is really useful to me at a practical, personal level – I use two browsers at work (although one is better than the other, the other one works better with wisdom…) and then also at home. Part of me loves the free form, unstructured nature of tagging – and the information manager part wonders what is lost by not combining it with something more structured?! It’s the old information thesaurus construction story “learning USE education, formal”.
which is to be master?
I realised I did this thing and then posted comments on other people’s blogposts about them without posting anything on mine….so catching up:
This article from Fumsi about the use of social media at the Orkney Library and Archive is a really great example of this kind of outreach. I hate the word “outreach” but haven’t found a good alternative at the moment… Orkney’s activity does look like outreach in terms of pushing out a message more than interaction/having a conversation though.
The Archive blog (updated daily) is at http://orkneyarchive.blogspot.com/.
I visited the Library & Archive last summer when in Orkney for St Magnus Festival with Choral and was really impressed – a welcoming building, with a real buzz about the place. Didn’t see any of the food which is a regular feature of the blog though… (but can highly recommend Orkney Ice Cream in original flavour…)
