Category: Informational

Work in Progress

construction figuresThis blog continues to be a work in progress. One of these days I’ll get around to finishing it up, including completing my different links lists, getting caught up on 23 Things Kansas lessons, and creating pages and resources for all the presentations I’ve done in the past 18 months. (Maybe if I’d get the web sites at work redesigned, I’d have time to play with my own. Ha!) Thanks for your patience.

Photo from Flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/lumaxart/2365527490/.

T is for Training Challenge Meme

I met a bunch of the T is for Training crew at Computers in Libraries last year through Bobbi Newman. I finally joined the T is for TrainingGoogle Group last summer, but it’s taken me this long to pay attention to the messages. My attention was caught at the right time, apparently, because a Challenge Meme was posted, asking members to post answers to 27 Questions. Here’s my lengthy response, so I won’t mind if you just skim or skip.

  1. Your one sentence Bio: I’m a lifelong Kansan, diehard Kansas Jayhawks basketball fan, mom of two ornery cats, and love to teach people, especially librarians, about technology (particularly free web tools, open source, and social media).
  2. Do you blog? If yes, how did you come up with your blog name? Yes. What a journey to get there. I’ve been an on-again, off-again blogger on since early in 2004, beginning with Xanga in college. I then switched to WordPress.com for awhile. Notice there’s no links to those old blogs. You don’t want to go near them: I was a political science major in undergrad days (get the picture?). Currently, I contribute to NEKLS blogs (my place of work). I jump-started this particular blog again thanks to 23 Things Kansas. The tag line, Librarian in the Cloud: Sharing Info thru the Web…One Web App @ a Time, originated from the Fall of 2008, when Liz Rea, Sharon Moreland and I submitted a presentation proposal to the 2009 KLA/MPLA conference. We needed a snazzy title, and Liz, who’s the awesome NEKLS System Administrator with an uncanny ability to create superb presentation titles on the fly, threw out, “Living in the Cloud: How Using Online Services Can Let You Soar”. The title stuck, the presentation was accepted, and we presented at the 2009 KLA/MPLA Conference to a full room (presentation info post). We had had no idea cloud computing was going to take off in the way that it did last year when we submitted the presentation proposal in the first place. Sharon and I gave an encore presentation at NEKLS Tech Day 2009. Here’s the latest version of the presentation. Also, I’ve been sharing resources through Facebook, Delicious, Twitter, and other Web apps for several years, and my friends always appreciated it. When I started this blog up a year ago, the title “Librarian in the Cloud” seemed like a perfect fit! Continue reading “T is for Training Challenge Meme”

Welcome!

One of the librarians I work with asked how I did something a few weeks ago when I showed her a cool trick on her computer (don’t even remember what it was now!) and then asked if I had a blog, which I had to sheepishly say no. 

I’ve blogged off and on over the years on WordPress.com and even further back in college on Xanga — but that was mostly political blogging and it caused more trouble than it was ever worth. Don’t get me wrong, for those of you who remember those times and knew me back then, I did enjoy it and it provided a much needed outlet at the time. Then, I lost all interest in politics (for the most part) and decided I needed to focus on the library world. 

Now that I’m finally finished with my MLS (check out my SLIM portfolio), it’s time to try a different approach to sharing information. That’s what this blog is for. 

Anyone who is interested in how technology is used on a daily basis will find this blog most useful. It will not be focused on any one area (with the exception of leaning toward Mac or open-source-based solutions) and may be library-specific a lot of times. Even so, most casual technology users will find this site quite useful (I hope). I also plan to use it to track the presentations I will be giving in the coming years at various library conferences. There may be the occasional political or sports-related post but I will try to keep those to a minimum. If the itch becomes too much, I’ll just start a second blog! 

I share a lot of links on Facebook and on Delicious, but don’t think that I’m reaching the right audience. I hope to succeed here. Let me know if you stop by and if you like what you see! (The name is temporary; if you have any great ideas, let me know!)