Thing #7- Facebook Addiction

There is a good reason I not to log into my Facebook account- it totally sucks me in and I get distracted. In fact, I do not check or update it often enough for the this very reason. However, I did benefit from taking a better look at my privacy settings which I have neglected for the past few FB updates. They are still rather confusing but at least this part of he 23 Things gave me a way to refresh my page. How do you unfriend? I think I may have missed that somewhere.
As a librarian, I have had a ton of Facebook questions so it does behoove us to have some familiarity and comfort with it. I haven't really used it to to answer non-Facebook reference questions but who knows. It could be useful for following up on some of the players in current events. Or if you are doing some research on a contemporary famous person. For example, I am friends with the President and while campaigning he would have updates and info on his FB page. (I haven't checked in with him in a while, maybe I should...)

It has been really interesting how Facebook has evolved. I remember the buzz it caused on my college campus (Emory University) when we were finally added to it. Suddenly everyone was on it and totally addicted. By the time I had graduated, I still hadn't joined and now I wish I had since I know I would have had better connections with the people from my past. Back then, (you know waaay back in the early 2002's?) no one really thought much about privacy and security since there was already facebook's inherent edict that only college students were on it. No parents, no professors, no family-or only the young college age ones. It felt a little safer. Now that it is open to the world, privacy is a MAJOR issue. One must watch what gets posted and what you post about other people and how their privacy settings affect you.
Real life examples 1) By the time I got to grad school, all of my profs were on FB. I HAD to be on it too and then had to navigate the should-I-friend-a-professor? waters. (I only friended them after I was out of thier class.) 2) I worked at a middle school where all of the kids and most of the staff were on facebook. Friending the staff opened up my network of friends to include the kids. Not cool! Even though my security settings were ok, I had to get on the staff about friending students and not changing thier security settings so that they couldn't find me since all these little faces kept popping up in my "Suggested Friends"- I am not your friend, I am your librarian and you do not need to know about my life! It was a hassle and I finally stopped friending the staff.

Ah! The Joys of Google- Thing 3ish

I have had gmail for years and love it! Google really knows how to get things right. If only they made library software...
I made a discovery - Google Caller! I had never stopped to look at this before Google made it a little popup. So you can call anywhere in the US and Canada for free using video chat?! That is pretty cool. But back to the basics:

Google Docs- this saved me so many times in grad school! Since so many of the students are commuter students, it is really hard to work on group projects using Google Docs. It spread like wildfire! After I learned how to use it, I never did a group project without it. When I went to Korea, we made all of our Korean classmates use it when we worked on our group papers. Here, the Job Shop (and now I do too) advocates getting people a gmail account so they can always have easy access to their resume for printing/editing/attaching close at hand. They can't loose it like a flash drive- nor will it get stolen. It is so much easier for the patrons (and thus us) to keep up with their needed information this way. I am a total convert and cannot speak highly enough.

Google Books- kind of useful. In instances of big name authors, links to their pages come up so you can see all thier books. We could tell patrons they could preview books on Google and then request them here but then that could lead to the question- why aren't the books in our catalog linked to Google books in the first place. Pretty neat- I had a good time playing around but in some ways it is competitive with us. Some. Great for reviewing and previewing books in the comfort of your jammies.

Google Scholar- Whoa... I was just playing around with this and typed in my name for fun. Whoa! The first thing on the results list was MY paper I wrote back in grad school about Surpass, a library automation system. I had to post it to a wiki, I think. Or else Simmons moved it. Anyway, this would be a good option for patrons looking for scholarly articles and information.

Google Patents- May be useful for patrons looking for information on what patents are already out there. I found a UV comb meant to sanitize hair and fur and a sister curling iron to keep it curly and germ free.

Google Uncle Sam- As always, using Google is easier than looking at government websites. I found a tax form pdf in less than a second. A search for "kentucky jobs" came up with OET as the 4th search result. As of January 25th the unemployment rate for the state of KY is 10.4 percent, 44th out of 51 states.

Google Sites- SO AWESOME! I want my own site now! Plus it looks pretty easy. I also encountered Google Weddings. Neat-would have been quite useful a year ago as a maid of honor. I will keep that one for the next bride.

Google Maps- I literally don't go anywhere without using Google maps. I have found it to be quite reliable and I have refused to use anything else since.

There is so much to Google!!! Hooray! (can I also say that my spell check on blogger caught that I in fact did not originally capitalize Google properly?)

23 Things

I haven't updated my blog in FOREVER. Mostly because I used it to talk with my adviser in graduate school (Hi Rong!). But here goes...

I think 23 Things is such a great idea! And I am looking forward to learning more about the
Google I already have :)

"I have the Google."- Fat Vampire: a never coming of age story by Adam Rex

Still Employed!

I still have a job next year! Hooray. I FINALLY met with my head of school and she said I could come back. She doesn't like me much but she said that since they have the money, I can come back. She also wants me to be more direct in getting her attention and getting the things done. And she wants the library to be used this year by classes of students. This should be fun. And I have heard that other teachers are planning to dump kids in there to do work. So next year my library is going to be full of kids going nuts. This promises to be incredibly fabulous.

I feel like all the decisions I make are arbitrary, as if I don't have reasons to back them up. However on closer inspection, I always do. I don't do research and I don't really know what I am doing. But then I think that is what life is like in general.

At least its Friday

Automation is often a drag. I had to catalog yesterday and today and it took forever! Like 8 hours worth of forever. My paper is due in a few weeks and I have to get cracking! One of my biggest challenges was always being flexible enough to find something else to do when my computer gets taken over. But also, I found myself constantly reprioritizing or throwing out parts of my plan. Its like I never had a solid idea of what to do and then I am always trying to cut corners. For instance, before I did anything, I wanted to have a shelf list. That got thrown out the window since I could never sit at my computer for long enough. As a result, I only have the barest of ideas how many books I lost this year (I am thinking at least 100) so that is approx. a 3%- 5% loss this year. Or, I wanted to get all the call numbers on books before I started to import them but the process is so long, I find myself attempting to split my time so that I can do both which makes me feel like I never get anything done. Agh! I am making real progress but it is so slow! I definately underestimated the time it takes for me to do anything and everything.


But all of this effort and I don't even know if I have a job here next year.