SL

I don't see how so many people have so much time to create a Second Life. I can't seem to find time to put away the clean laundry in my first one. Or maybe people are abandoning their in-shambles FL and enjoying a fresh start in their second. It looks like all the female residents have big boobs, long legs, and tiny waists, so I guess wish fulfillment is part of the game. Though with recent publicity about some broad "killing" her SL partner, it looks like things don't always work out so well in SL either. I didn't see any gray panthers in any of the slides--though I saw at least one sexy bald (prematurely?) dude. Usually I'm pretty good at thinking creatively, but I'm having trouble coming up with any uses that RPL could put SL to. I'll look forward to reading other AIT students blogs on this topic.

Podcasts

I was somewhat familiar with podcasts, having listened to a couple of NPR's This American Life shows that I had heard parts of on the radio (I'd recommend "Switched at Birth" if you want to hear an unusual story of two Wisconsin babies who were raised by the wrong families until age 40) and also a couple of author interviews on the Teaching Books (Badgerlink) database. I looked at what a couple of other libraries were doing with podcasts with mixed results. I found Denver PL children's stories really disappointing, partly because of the reader's voice but mostly because while the stories were being read, the screen was showing really annoying abstract frenetic graphics. Photos of the pages or no graphics at all would have been more appropriate. I tried to watch NYPL's video program with Lidia, the Italian cookbook author, but the download was extremely slow with about 40 seconds of frozen screen download time between each 4 second segment. I've had that problem at home too occasionally, once when I tried to show a friend a short video that I'd already watched. It played straight through for me the first time, but repeated plays were jerky beyond belief. I suppose I have to admit that I did not complete the assignment, because I really don't want to subscribe to any feeds at this time.

Knock knock

Finally found the list of AIT bloggers sent out in an early email. It took quite a while to find two that I could comment on, that is those who were still active and who had already enabled comments. I've enabled comments on my own blog now, but since mine wasn't listed on the emailed list I don't suppose I'll get any comments from other bloggers.

Feedback

Except in electronic situations, feedback is usually a good thing. However, having read some of the really vicious, vitriolic, or just plain redundant anonymous posts on local blogs, like the JT and RacinePost, I'm not so sure the information is always useful. We all know there are folks in the community who really appreciate and value the library. And while it is always nice to hear from them (Man, I loved that "Automatic Flatterer" even though I knew it was faux), adulation doesn't really help us improve. There are others who have an ax to grind. Perhaps they had to pay a fine or claim to have returned a book which never made its way back to us or found the library closed just when they needed us most. I'm not sure we want to give them a platform on which to chastise us. If we could structure our blogs or surveys to elicit helpful opinions--and not have to spend too much time moderating--I could see the usefulness of encouraging these sorts fo feedback. I could also see online comments responding to other people's questions--a sort of open party line for household or consumer questions or for reader guidance inquiries. I'm always open to comments from readers so comment away. Thanks.

Chasing cows

I'm running as fast as I can today, trying to catch up with my AIT homework. "Remember the milk" is probably not something I will ever use. I won't say definitely. But to me having to sign in to make a to do list--and then be signed in to get reminders just isn't very practical--when I'm rarely at a computer that isn't shared with the whole department. Perhaps if and when I ever get to the point where I have a portable device that is on all the time....
I did post a task, but had to have Mark help me out to find it on the list--were there really only four tasks on the list after all this time or was I missing some. At one point I thought I saw eight or more but then some went away. I was thinking there would be an actual list, but it looked like just a bunch of messages that you had to hover on or click on to see what the task was.