getting a bit De-lost along the way....

I'm catching up on things 9 and 10 today with mixed feelings.
I had a delicious account already and had begun to use it to bookmark frequently-used webpages. However, I did revert to using just internet" favourites" and the links toolbar instead.
On a personal level, I can see the use of having all your favourite and most useful sites in one profile that you can see just by logging on to Delicious wherever you happen to be.
I can also see , from other libraries websites that is could be an extremely helpful way to group together subject-related sites to save readers searching all the time to find them.
Given enough time I think I oculd compile a suitable list for our subjects and keep adding to it.

I am not anti-Delicious, but I have to admit to finding it quite hard to navigate the site and to carry out the various more advanced tasks suggested by things 9 and 10,though I did get there in the end ,and hope my chosen recipient did get the URL for the photos of cats with dodgy "moustaches" ??

Picnik Unpacked

Today, I found my way to the Picnik website and retrieved my Flickr photos for editing

(and soon realised that if I'd read the instructions on the packet properly yesterday, I would have known I could edit any photo ,including the rotating necessary to put right the images uploaded to Flickr upside down by that LOL cat !)

So...I did the rotating first, and then had a play with some of the more advanced functions such as changing colour saturation and making up a slideshow of my photos.

I can see the use of Picnik to prepare images for printing and for making them look even better online, perhaps for adding to library websites and using in powerpoint presentations, so I'm insired to put something together and make use of some of the great photos people have taken of the Sackler over the years.

In the mean time, I'm publishing (above) the result of a "colour and saturation" experiment...anyone for psychedlic ratatouille??

Week 4 A Flickr Account to call my own

I'm a bit behind this week after a couple of days off sick, but now have time to start on this week's "things"
So, creating the Flickr account was quite easy (the hardest part was deciphering the characters in the password generated by yahoo !) and uploading photos was also quite straightforward, though it took me a while to locate the ones I wanted ..that will teach me not to give names to individual photos and folders on my camera :)

I realised after uploading that I should have rotated a few images, and was unable to find a way to do this for individual photos on Flickr..it only had the option to rotate all in a group, so if anyone reads this and knows how to manipulate a single image after uploading it, let me know.
I also had a browse of other photos uploaded by 23 things group members , and soon discovered I am not the only one who goes on "busman/woman's holiday" trips to other libraries as part of their holiday itinerary.

the end of online anonimity!

I also decided to spend some time editing my blog layout,adding a photo of the library and one of myself to the blog homepage.(so..if anyone is reading this, now you know who I am and where I work!...as well as my star sign)
I am also flattered to find I now have a "follower" (thanks for that Rachael!)

I have very much enjoyed reading other people's blogs this past week and seeing the different things everyone has done with layouts, photos and so on. I am still pondering how we could use a blog in the library and looking at some of the ones already set up in OULS.
One of the arguments for using web2 has to be that so many of our readers are familiar with it and use Facebook and other sites as their primary means of communication.
However, I still feel we should offer choices and use various methods, mixing old and new to get the information across.

Week 3 .. Hungry for RSS feeds :)

Time to start using Google reader ...I realised I had already set up an account after a previous training session on web 2 but hadn't done much with it.
Therefore, when I logged back in there were hundreds of items awaiting my attention from a few feeds I had already signed up for.
I started looking for others using the "browse for stuff" option, and entering various search terms to do with my professional and personal interests.It was quite easy to add the subscriptions.
I then decided to be a bit more adventourous and go to websites of museums and galleries and a couple of charities I support to see whether they had any feeds set up.
Several of them did, and even had a google icon, making it extremely easy to add them to my list of feeds.If they didn't have a google icon , I just copied the URLs and pasted them into the "add subscription" box on the reader home page.
Now..I just need to find time to read them all!