LLDP intro

Well I'm back in a new library learning situation, so I thought I might get back into blogging a little. It won't be as interesting as the manga stuff, but I'm sure you'll all love to hear about it anyway.

So our Library Leadership Development programme has been running at our library for many years, and ours is the fifth set of people to go through it. Apparently almost 50% of our staff will have done it by the end of our group, which is pretty major given the size of our system.

The first two sessions ran over the last couple days, so I'll have some time to work on the homework until the next sessions next month. I'm most interested in meeting with my trio, who are badass ladies. One of which reads my blog, so I'll be careful to say nothing but high praise for her :P Joking of course, since she's my partner in crime and a book making goddess extraordinaire. My other partner is not well known to me, but she's a full librarian and seems super nice and sweet too. I'm excited to get to know her as well, and maybe by the end of this I'll have nifty new praise words for her too.

Well that's the intro, I should probably talk about what we learned (so much) or the food (so good) but i don't have much to say about vision statements or coaching skills. So next time kiddies, next time.

A forced intrest in Pinterest

So against my better judgement I joined Pinterest today (http://pinterest.com/)and I'm still not sure what I think of it.

I generally don't go in for design or other things like that, but I wish this had existed two years ago when I was planning my wedding. So many visual ideas for so very many things...it's almost overwhelming.

So far my interests seem to lie mostly in the garden and in yarn bombing my community, but pretty much everyone who knows me would have told you that. I'll have to give it a little more time before I decide to keep up with the play, or throw it away.

Why I like my place of work

One of the best things about working on a large campus is that something is always going on. Sometimes it's the big things like plays, concerts and art shows. Some times it's the little things. Today in the tunnel there where several booths set up for the students and other general passerby. Not only did I get to learn about asthma, healthy eating and job opportunities I also got free popcorn and a doughnut egg (more commonly known as a Timbit). It's the constant whirl of activity and change that keeps this place interesting, even at it's worst.

Literature map

So this is cool, apparently you put a writer's name in and it makes a map of other authors a reader is likely to enjoy. Great for reader's advisory, so long as you don't need to go into detail about why an author is liked. It's a great first step for doing research on your own.

Here's a link, go put your own authors in and try it! http://www.literature-map.com/

Songza

So I found a cool new music thing! Finally! It's called Songza, obviously, and it's free!

So if you log in online or on your phone, you get to a "concierge" Who asks you what mood you are in limited by the time of day (Wednesday has "cooking dinner," "reading," and "winding down," etc... as moods) and then offers some musical genres to pick from. It's a little like Stereomood, but I think it's a bit better because you can pick the types of music you like as well as your feelings.

I find I like this feature the most because it's allowing me to find genres that I usually wouldn't listen to. For instance I find I like folk metal, even though I didn't know that existed before this program. After all you have to respect a genre that uses harpsichords and bagpipes with skill. Of course I also listen to styles I already love, I'm guilty listening to a show tunes playlist right now my sister's opinion be damned. :P

One limiting factor is that when I first started listening on my phone the only genre it would give me was indie music. Apparently this was because it was using the three or four songs already on my phone to decide what I liked. It isn't smart enough to know that those aren't a good enough sample, ha ha. Oh and it also gives you the oportuninty to buy songs you especially like. I haven't tried that out yet, but I suspect that this is why they can offer free music so if something awesome comes up I probably will.

I am bad and I should feel bad

Turns out I don't use most of the cool tools that ifttt connects for you. Now I have to go learn all of the things. That gets both a :( and a :) from me. I swear I will get somewhat tech savvy one of these days!

IFTTT is a gift for lazy people

So ifttt stands for "if This then That" and it connects different media actions for you. You can set it up (for instance) to post to Facebook every time you create a blog post. You can get it to do so many different things automatically and without thought on your part, kind of like your lungs breathing in air or your heart beating. It can be a great time saver, or a new way to waste it. I'll let you know how it turns out for me.