HELP! How does one do it?

I just checked my feeds on Bloglines and spent an interesting 30 minutes "reading" The Shifted Librarian including a 5 minute video on YouTube which was all about librarians needing to adopt and love all new technologies all the time in order to keep up with, if not lead, the rest of culture.

It makes sense.

I then clicked on The Shifted Librarian's page first of two "blogrolls" and found 198 blogs that SL reads on her aggregator!

How does she do it?! or better still, when does she do it?

I need help here, figuring out what in my life I give up in order to scramble to catch up.

One last May 24 2007 post

One thing this challenge has done is to make me aware of the wave that is flooding over me. It is not the future; it is now.

So now I have to decide what to do about it and how it affects the way we do business here in the Youth Services Department.
I need to talk with the Teen Services Librarian and learn how FaceBook and MySpace have changed the publicity angles of her programming. I need to talk with the Rutgers interns we have to learn how their recent class (but not classroom) experiences can inform my future thinking. And I have to figure out where Library 2.0 fits into the actions I might take to spread my passion for Early Literacy education to non-reading parents.

Thank you CJRLC.

Reading articles on Web 2.0

No pressure here! It is 11:27 on May 24 and I'm rereading articles on Web 2.0 in an attempt to remember what I thought so I can respond and meet the Tech Challenge (or at least come close.)

On the SJRLC blog Peter Bromberg writes about the difference between a BLOG and a listserve. I think the most significant difference is indicated in the first sentence below and after several months of thinking about this, I find it reassuring.
Since the blog content is "pulled" by you rather than "pushed" by us, we can be more liberal in sharing content. For instance, we may blog about a cool presentation on customer service, or an interesting blog post, that is not exactly library-related or a cool website on wikis.

Writers of blogs can put as much of themselves "out there" and it need affect me only as much as I am willing to "pull" at it. I confess, I do read Read Roger (Roger Sutton's -of HornBook fame - blog about children's books and reviewing) regularly.

After reading John Blyberg for 30 minutes, I have decided to retire and spend my days reading and writing in blogs. That is the only way I could possibly have time to follow to their logical conclusions all the threads that go into and come from his blog and those lnked from it.

Google Maps!

Today I got directions from Princeton NJ to my home town in Saskatchewan and learned that it would only take 30 hours of driving to get there. Guess I won't be doing that right away!

I have created and saved a map to help me get to a wedding in New Hampshire in June. I have found and emailed to my mother in law the roof of her home in MN and included directions to her public library from there.

I am quite comfortable with Google Maps now and appreciate the opportunity to make myself try some of the additional features. Google Maps is quite clever at presenting a simple interface without clutter but making all kinds of additional features available if one looks for them. The help pages are just that, helpful.

the deadline approaches

Yikes! Here it is, May 24 and I'm not finished with the CJRLC tech challenge. I have set up and revisited my Flickr account. I receive several feeds on bloglines.com. I regularly contribute to the PPL Youth Services Blog JuReads, and occasionally to this space. I have taught someone else how to download photos to Flickr. And I have read, though not commented on, articles about Library 2.0 and Web 2.0 (must do that before noon.)

Flickr Report

I just realized that I haven't written about my Flickr experience.

I did take an intro class at PPL and managed to create an account, post some photos, create an ID photo (avitar?) so there isn't a grey box identifying me.

I have checked back twice, and commented on one person's photos, though there has been no response to that comment. There have been no comments on my two pictures.

Until today my feeling was that I really don't want my photos "out there" in public. If I want to share pictures, I'll send them to the people I want to see them. Then I spent time this afternoon looking for pictures I know are on the Flickr site. I've seen them there. But I cannot locate them today, so I've come to realize that maybe there is more privacy than I previously believed.

I may find this more useful than I originally thought.

It worked?

This morning I checked Bloglines first thing to see what feeds had been added to my account on Bloglines. And there were quite a few! So I am a success! Now, happiness will be being able to get For Better or For Worse comics, and the weather.com weather report. I'm working on that. They don't seem to be offered on Bloglines. Perhaps I can figure out another way to get them fed to me.

Feeling better now

Whew! Today I did manage not only to sign on to Bloglines, but to subscribe to about 8 feeds. I can hardly wait to see what shows up there tomorrow.

Comments on continuing the challenge

I have found that the hardest thing about this challenge is getting my login and my password to match. No sooner do I think I have it all memorized, but I try to log in again and spend 15 minutes trying to get it right. Moral of the story? Log in more often, perhaps.

Yesterday, I spent at least an hour trying to subscribe to Bloglines and gladly quit, just turned the whole computer off, when it was time for me to move on to desk duty.

I hope to be more successful today. I just want RSS feeds of the comic For Better or For Worse, and the daily weather report. If they work, I'll add others.

Yikes! I am running out of time. At this rate, I'll still be changing passwords on May 23!