Thing 5: flickr

Now that I'm at the State Library I'm trying to come up with ways we might use flickr. It would be fun to load photos of all Florida's libraries, from events the Library hosts, of stuff going on.

The Florida Memory Project has loaded quite a collection of historic photos for public viewing and comment on Flickr: The Commons. So now there's precedent for putting photos up.

I'm not using Flickr but I have loaded photos on the Kodak Photo Gallery and Snapfish. They make it easy to share sets with friends but aren't so public. And I occasionally put photos up on my Facebook page. I think part of that is that might have to do with I don't take a lot of photos.

I love the libraries that have done photos of book shelves and tagged them to their collection/catalog. That is very cool. And it's fun to search flickr after a conference and see what people have loaded.

Thing 4: RSS and Newsreaders

I love my bloglines account!!! I've currently got 44 feeds and it's a wonderfully easy way for me to stay current on all the things I would previously have gotten from a listserv.

I've primarily been using it for blog feeds but last week I added the St. Johns County Public Library feed for their website. This is cool because now I know if they update their website (they're using Drupal and it's really nice).

• What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?
• that I don't have to go out and check everything. It all comes to me. That I can read them from wherever I am, not just on the computer where they are bookmarked. (One of the reasons I love delicious.com)
  


• How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your library or personal life?
• I think for the State Library I could envision their being an RSS feed for the blog I hope to create soon and if they update the website using drupal, perhaps people could also subscribe to get updates for the sites of use to them.
  


• What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds?
• I tend to read the news I want to read so didn't find this useful for me.
  


• Find any great sources we should all add to our feed reader?
• I think the blogs I read are pretty standard ones that most folks are reading. I like iLibrarian. I think I have a new favorite everyweek. I'm really fond of the ones my friends with kids write - it lets me watch them grow up even though we aren't anywhere near each other.