As Tim Gunn would say...

How to post this onto a blog 101. Make it work!


The above posted by Zoho Writer. Trying to see why Terri's wasn't posting correctly.

"Flirting is Manditory"

According to the Dove chocolate I just ate, "flirting is mandatory" today. I rather absently read it and threw it away. Now I'm wondering if that really is what it said. Seems somewhat suspect.

We have the Dove chocolates here because I bought them as an incentive to Terri to finish her 23 Things blog. She's going to do so today. Well, she had better. We work late together tonight (finally!) so I will be poking and prodding her all night long. And stealing her chocolate incentives!

Flying out to St. Louis a couple weekends ago, I finally got a chance to read some of the ARCs I got at ALA. The first was Jinx by Meg Cabot and I, suprise suprise, actually enjoyed it. I act suprised (really) because I haven't much enjoyed the last couple books she has written for teens. And although I thought that the plot was going to turn out all Witches of Eastwick "we want the perfect man" and in walks the devil. But, it wasn't. And despite the transparent love affair, rather enjoyed the book.

Sadly, I was not as impressed with Shannon Hale's newest book Book of A Thousand Days. I'm not sure if it was because I wasn't so familiar with the fairy tale it was based off of, or the fact that she pulled a HP7 ending where everything managed to be wrapped up in a perfect conclusion and I wanted a bit more conflict. No. Perhaps I'm being a bit too harsh. It was a good story, there were just little bits of it that annoyed me. The biggest issue I had was at the end with the "interview with the author" bit about this really being some real story that was found and translated, etc. Fake things like that annoy me.

I did, however, love Scaredy Squirrel Makes A Friend. Those stories are too cute.

Oh, and Jonathan Crombie, you know, Gilbert from Anne of Green Gables, well, he's going to be on Broadway in The Drowsy Chaperone as "The Man in the Chair". It seems hard to believe that he won't be playing a romantic lead. I really wish I had been able to see him in Romeo and Juliet back in the day up in Stratford, Canada.

Week 9, Thing 23

Bling bling ka-ching!

It looks like I'm at the end of the road for this learning process. I have to say that I think my favorite aspect was this blog. It helped me to meet and connect with other librarians in my area as well as abroad. And, really, how cool is that? This means that I will truly do my best to keep up with this blog, and learn how to write proper book reviews. Proper ones, mind you! Because, it should be useful, shouldn't it? Instead of just full of random book/theatre/baseball bits and pieces that go floating around like normal. Though, I suppose that's just me, and it's a hard time changing a personality, isn't it?

Out of my 7 1/2 lifelong learning goals, I have to say that this one prompted me to focus on my spelling on learning how to be a mentor to my co-workers which is something I freely admitted to being weak on since I felt too young. But, helping Terri work on her blog gave me a sense of accomplishment and feeling of goodness that I would have lacked otherwise. Plus, we helped each other stay inspired, and you can't want anything more than that, can't you?

I am quite sure that I would be interested in doing other sorts of things like this, should Maryland/ESRL libraries do offer something like. Though maybe not so much over the summer. It seemed extra busy, especially with everyone away on vacations!

Week 9, Thing 22

Lacking a mp3 player (yes, I am so last century), I never really had the sudden urge to go download an audiobook from NetLibrary, which is the service that our library provides. Though, I did note that when I was scanning through the titles that some of them were unavailable for download through our library. I was disappointed with the lack of selection of some of my favorite authors. But, I freely admit that my tastes in authors run to very obscure minor authors or ones that are dead, so it really is no great suprise that I was coming up empty with the authors I searched for.

However, it would be a good resource to use while at home, as I can download the audiobooks onto my computer and listen to them while I, say, crochet a blanket. I hate just to do one thing at a time, especially crocheting, because as relaxing as that gets, it can get mindnumbingly boring, especially when I have a deadline and "can't stop now" fever! Thus, an audiobook would work just as well as the tv, and perhaps slightly more intellectual.

Week 9, Thing 21

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Week 9, Thing 20

Since I've already posted the one lone video on Youtube that features myself, I decided to turn to musical theatre and bring some "Frou Frou" into this blog's life. Otherwise known as the musical version of The Scarlet Pimpernel, a book that I have cherished for many a many years. Of course, the musical version did play heavy with the Marguerite/Chauvelin romance aspect, but, it did have some wonderful baritone songs for ChauChau. And Douglas Sills as Percy was hilarious!

So, here is the Tony Awards performance:



The site seems easy enough to use. I think it could be used for library things such as the video from Mitali Perkin's book launch party that I had posted previously. It could show the community just what's happening at the library. Oh, I am full of brilliant ideas this morning.

And, speaking of The Scarlet Pimpernel, my friend over at Bronteana highlighted two vampire Scarlet Pimpernel romance novels. Which sound absolutely, um, interesting, to me. They are Possession and Confession by Lori Herter.

The snippet posted by The Scarlet Pimpernel Merchandise site from Possession tantalizes us with:

A really bad vampire/romance novel. The interesting thing about it is that the hero is a playwright who became a vampire in the year 1616, but lives latter-day Chicago and his newest work is a musical version of The Scarlet Pimpernel in which Percy is a vampire. The author has a nympho vampire friend, who becomes obsessed with the actor portraying Percy. Most of the book is set during rehersals, which, oddly enough, all of which the actor does with full prosthetic makeup and costumes. He has to wear a blond wig and the rubber mask because he has a round cherubic face (not an aquiline nose) and brown curly hair, and because he was very famous on a sitcom, and doesn't want the audience to see his TV image.

It's unfortunate that I can't get this one on ILL. ::sniff::

Week 8, Thing 19

This one is inspired by my mom, who has decided that I need to buy a house. I think it's so they can move in with me during the summer now that they've sold their "summer home" and don't want to live in Florida full time. Ah, the life of the retired!

So, I checked out both Zillow and HousingMaps. I found HousingMaps to be nice and simplistic, as it is just based on Google Maps. Unfortunately, the focus is on houses around the DC area, as that is the nearest Craigslist site. Though, I did happen to click on one in Richmond, VA. Close enough, I suppose. What's a few hours?

HousingMaps actually had stuff in my area. Granted it was very expensive and I could never afford it. How depressing. Well, when I become a millionaire, I'll think about it. The "Make Me Move" thing was interesting. As my mom always said, "It's all for sale". I guess some people just need the right price.

Then, of course, thanks to poking around on Mingle2 (a site my mom would never approve of), I found a link to this priceless gem (a.k.a. the Millie "I'm going to marry my boss" Dillmount approved site of the day) Wealthy Romance, where you can find all of your rich men dating needs. Now you know how I'll be spending my down time on the reference desk.

Ah, I probably shouldn't even admit to finding that one, should I? It's just too amusing.

Week 8, Thing 18

Having an online word processor is a very useful tool for libraries such as ours that do not have access to Word documents on computers designated for online use only. These types of programs will be especially beneficial to those who need to create and send business letters and resumes online for job applications.

The above paragraph was brought to you in part by Zoho Writer and my mad typing skillz. With special thanks to Mrs. Walker who did not fall out the window in our typing class.



The word processing program is pretty neat and it has all of the things that Microsoft Word has, and lets you work on saved documents anytime and anywhere. And costs a lot less. Though, you have to make sure you actually log into your account to keep the documents from being deleted! But, for when you are in a pinch or at a place where there is no access to Microsoft Word (or similar word processing programs) it's quite good.

Week 7, Thing 17

Mass hysteria was created when I posted my blog to the Maryland Libraries Sandbox. Ok, I'm sure it isn't that bad, but I was confused where I should post the link. Should it go under the heading "Eastern Shore Regional Library" or did I dare create a new heading for "Queen Anne's County Free Library" as people from libraries on the western half of Maryland did. I dared.

Of course, some of this daring was caused by pure ignorance. As a non-native to Maryland, I still haven't quite sorted out all of the county names and where they are located (a problem when entering out of county patrons into the system). For the moment, however, the Queen Anne's County Free Library is free ranging it!

Week 7, Thing 16

Wiki! Wikis! My first experience using (and by using, I mean actually contributing) a wiki was during grad school. It was my records management class, and one of our wiki assignments was to be a "definition taker" for a certain class period and we had to find definitions to the various words we discussed during class. I always lived in fear that I would get some tragically hard word and end up looking stupid. Though, goodness knows, I don't need help for that! Now that wiki was password controlled, so only members of the class were able to access it. What was especially nice with it, was that at the end of the class, we were left with a permanent spot on the web of everything that we learned over the course of the semester that we could go to for reference.

My second use was an on the job experience at Wheelock college where the reference librarians had their own wiki (as did the circ staff). This kept all of the reference librarians up-do-date with various questions asked, questions that were still being worked on, and things that we could do when there was nothing else to do. Once tasks were complete, we could cross them off the list so others would know that they could move onto the next task. The wiki also included useful guides for things such as filling ILL requests.

Wikis can pretty much include whatever the users want, on a variety of topics. They could be used within libraries for librarians to share useful links for reference sites/article discussion/reviews/etc.

Does this sound like a good textbook answer?

Week 6, Thing 15

As I read the articles provided about Web 2.0 and Library 2.0, I can't help but think about small public libraries like where I work. Especially during the article by Rick Anderson, "Away From The 'Iceburgs'". He questions the role of "collections" in this article as he promotes the Library of the Future that will be able to provide the local community with electronic access to pretty much anything, all without needing to come into the library. Now, you can call me an old-fashioned stick in the mud (and I'm only 26!), but, I have a hard time believing that there will ever come a day that we could do that, simply based on the cost. And, of course, some of the technology really needs to improve (such as book readers) before I'm willing to give up on my paper books. Patrons may expect to find everything digitally, but until we can afford such a thing, they probably won't get it.

Granted, I am also an archivist, and this archivists needs her paper!

I will be the first to admit, however, that a more interactive cataloguing experience would be love. Especially if they would always provide plot synopsis and reviews.

Week 6, Thing 14

Tagging is my friend. Except, I've apparently been using the "wrong" tag for this blog. I use "23 Things" to mark entries relating to the 23 Things course I'm taking, but it seems that the prefered term was actually "mdlearn2"? Well, I'm not going to change now! My problem with tagging is that sometimes I forget the ones I've used before and end up using something slightly different, thus creating an onslaught of tags. Mountains, believe me. That said, I enjoy searching for "23 Things" in Technorati and finding my blog. Of course, on days like today (July 23), you have to type it in with the quotes otherwise, good luck. And, yes, the searches are different depending on where you search.

It comes as no suprise that "harry potter" and "deathly hollows" are some of the most popular tags at the moment. What makes it more fun is the fact that I am now free to read them without worrying about spoilers. Not that I actually have time to read them or even really want to read all of them. That would be frightening. It does concern me, however, that one of the top 100 blogs has something to do with "hot asian teenage girls" or some such thing. I obviously did not look at that one, either. Does that count as interesting?

Week 6, Thing 13

Now that the Harry Potter madness is over for me (as far as reading the book unspoiled), I can now go back to reading blogs/watching the news without fear that I will stumble across something that I didn't need to know about too soon.

Which is why I can now talk about Del.icio.us, the social bookmarking manager. Something that will prove instantly useful this week as my home laptop is beomg sent out to California to be repaired. Taking with it all of the bookmarks I saved on that computer. And, pretty much everything else in my life the past two years. I know, that isn't that dramatic.

But, it explains how perfect a tool Del.icio.us can be when used "for the greater good" (HP!). I can, therefore, access my bookmarks elsewhere, or be reunited with them when I am reunited with my computer and no harm done. Then there is the additional bonus of the tagging and being able to see other people's bookmarks and how they are labled so you can find other sites that might be of interest to you that, otherwise, might have been unfoundable. Unfoundable? Maybe hard to find, then. So, I can see it's uses for things other than personal. That is, of course, if the bookmarked links are reliable sources and that depends on the user. Like so much of everything on the internet, it is helpful to be a little bit wary.

As far as Harry Potter goes, Snape = Neville. That's all I'm saying (and not Neville Longbottom).

Week 5, Thing 12

Rollyo! Just saying that is fun. The unfun part of it was staring at the screen, trying to think up what I wanted to roll (or is it rollyo?). I finally decided, that since this blog features musicals as much as books, that I would do one of theatre news sites. This is supposed to be about play, isn't it? So, I'll cop out of the "work" mode of "I really should have used useful ready reference sites" and have some fun. Who knows if it would even be useful.

Find the sites to add was not a problem. Finding the link to my Rollyo project was. Thankfully, Julie pointed me in the right direction, so you can find my Theatre Rollyo search engine here. It features sites relating to Broadway, West End, and French theatre. I've done a few searches, and it seems to be useful. For my own personal interests, though. This one won't cut the mustard at work.

Well, let the 10 o'clock onslaught begin! I need to find information about the Eastern Shore Negro League. It's being rather difficult and mysterious. Woe is me.

Week 5, Thing 11

I've known about LibraryThing for a while now. Known about it, but haven't used it. Part of the reason, I suppose, is that my books were scattered across three states at the time. Actually, they still are. But, instead of FL/NY/MA, now it's FL/NY/MD. Florida books have mostly come home to roost, but my New York ones are causing me a spot of bother, as, apparently, I have too many of them. Already, my mom has packed away nine boxes, and that just from the two bookcases in my bedroom (and not counting my entire L.M. Montgomery collection which was brought down to me a month ago). I still have boxes of my childrens books that were packed away during a previous move. I am being told that I must go through these boxes when I'm up there visiting in a few weeks and weed my collection. It will be the saddest day of my life. Ok, probably not that bad.

Did I have a point?

Maybe. Or, maybe not. Most likely not.

But, here I am, with a LibraryThing account! A very limited catalog, yes, but, I'm trying to remember books I like. Some of them I haven't seen in years. It is all quite tragic. What I like best is trying to find the exact edition that matches, which, unfortunately, I wasn't able to do for all of them. I need to go home and find the ISBNs for some of them to get it all straightened out. Of course, that will take extra effort on my part. Perhaps, too much. I did, however, break into one other LibraryThing user's dream world of being the only one to own a copy of The Story of Naughty Kildeen, so take that! I own it too. And I got it for a song ($5). Ok, so there are some page rips, but, the illustrations are hand painted and you don't get that quality anymore for $5. I'm such a snob.

Is it sad, though, that the majority of the ten books I have listed at the moment have the tag "young women"? I guess you can figure out pretty quick that I like to read books about smart young women. There, to make myself feel better, I put up a book with a tag of "young men". That should balance it out!

Week 5, thing 10

You know, with a week entitled "play", one would think that I would be blogging like crazy because, after all, it should be fun.

But, then there's me. Luckily, tonight at work is finally slow, so I have time to do fun things like create avatars:

And then, use other image generators to create things like this from previously created avatar:

As you can see, I did have fun. The first was created at Yahoo! Avatars, while the second image was created at FD Toys. They should probably both be dedicated to my friend Rachel. As I met her over in England/Wales (why I went for the UK theme, I was tempted to add the Welsh flag, but that might be overkill) and the second Warhol-esque image because she adores Warhol. I even endured the Tate Modern to see a Warhol exhibit they had. The exhibit was fine, but afterwards? Going around all of that modern art makes me twitchy (I'm such a Renaissance/Raphael fangirl). That's why I love visiting the National Gallery of Art in DC because I heart Raphael's St. George and the Dragon they have. So much better than his version in the Louvre.


And now that I've wandered off into the art world...

Here's a link to a story about my friend Carol and her exhibit she designed for the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Conneticut. It sounds tempting, doesn't it?

::hunts in drawer for chocolate::

Week 4, Thing 9

I have fallen shockingly behind in my "Things" post. So, prepared to be stunned with the massive amounts of updates today! That doesn't mean that I haven't looked at what I was supposed to be doing, I just got a little delayed with other things that happened last week.

I hadn't heard of MERLIN before, so it was nice to have that highlighted as a thing to do/place to see this week (or, two weeks ago). It has been added to my bloglines. Out of all of the blog finding tools, I am most familiar with Technorati. I did like, however, how Topix.net lets you view news articles that are related to your community/city. That's very useful for finding all of the juicy stories that Terri and Lynn like to read.

Week 4, Thing 8

RSS feeds! And bloglines!

Firstly, here is the link to my current bloglines: http://www.bloglines.com/public/castellglas. I know, very exciting. It pretty much consists of the links I have listed here plus a few others that I threw on there for fun. But, everyone wants subscribers, and now I can at least further my stalking of co-workers when I'm not glaring at them from my reference desk (it's a talent we reference librarians must cultivate to mainatain our street-cred/certification).

Bloglines is a useful feature, because I'm forever checking out different blogs/news feeds to see if there has been an update, and, voila! now I can do it all in one place. If that isn't exciting then you haven't been inside a library in a while I don't know what is.

Onwards and upwards, because I have lots of things to blog about (and lots of goodies to eat).

Week 3, Thing 7

Our last task of the week is to talk about anything technology-related. At first, I was going to talk about the Internet Archive, because, I admit, I am a fan. And how fun is it to read old books online? Well, it can be when they include the neat book flip feature.

However, a friend pointed out the Online Musical Theatre Video Archive to me last night, and I've had too much fun looking at it last night to not give it a mention here. I had never heard of it before, and it appears to be still in the process of creation (if the fact that they stopped in the "s" titled musicals gives any indication). The videos on the site come from either the Tony Awards or from programs like the Ed Sullivan show or morning talk shows.

Here's a favorite show, Deaf West's Big River:



The show is based on Mark Twain's Adventures of Huck Finn. It might never have been a show that caught my interest, as the music runs more towards country/bluegrass/gospel, except the addition of signing added a powerful element to the show. There was a mix of deaf and hearing actors in this version of the show. The hearing actors spoke/sung the words for the deaf actors. For the first five or so minutes, you are aware that the character Huck Finn is not really speaking/singing his lines and it is Mark Twain doing the talking for both himself and Huck Finn, but, slowly you accept MT's voice as Huck's and it is all quite magical. Oh, I think I'm describing it rather badly. And, I know that I said previously that I didn't think I would be a fan of the music, but there are actually quite a few songs I love from that show. A couple sitting next to me walked out before the end of the first act, because it does have those elements in it that make Huck Finn a banned book in some places, but, if you look beyond that, it is a beautiful piece of work that is made more poignant with the addition of signing. Especially when Jim tells the tale of his daughter who became "deaf and dumb" due to scarlet fever but he didn't realize this until after he had hit her for not shutting the door when he told her.

The second featured show? 1776! Because, really, how can you resist singing, dancing, and snarking founding fathers? You just can't.




This is the Original Broadway Cast peforming "Sit Down, John" and "Molassas To Rum" on the Ed Sullivan show. I always said that despite the content, that "Molassas to Rum" has to be one of the sexier baritone songs.

Edited: Oh look! It appears that they now have shows all the way to "Z". How exciting!

Week 3, Thing 6

I played around (ah, rule #7 1/2!) with several of the flickr toys. I was most amused by Mappr declaring on their photo map that they have "high" or "low" confidence that the photo was actually taken where it was tagged taken. It does seem like something that would be interesting once it takes off, but it was rather slow and clunky on my computer (probably due to a slow internet connection on my part) but also the lack of photographs attached to the map that meant everything I looked up, I could not find a related image.

I guess I had the most fun with FD Toys' Trading Card Maker. I made two! Though, neither of them are of me. The first uses a picture that I used during an archives presentation to the local historical society last week. It's of a daguerreotype:

The other is of cats. A co-worker of mine from the BAC Library in Boston used to joke about another co-worker as being the type who years from now would be the kind of librarian that would have cats hanging from her sweaters. So, I couldn't resist this one.

Thus ends my Flickr explorations for the moment.