Hard to believe that the school year 2007-2008 is truly over, especially since the Long Winter just continues -- I had hard time saying goodbye to the library staff, teachers, other staff that I got to know during the initiative. It has been a great learning experience as well and I am glad to have had this opportunity to be part of it. Thank you.

Technozoo at PLA

"Technozoo" presenter at PLA confessed to not being a librarian but that he is married to a librarian, so he should be on the wavelength. Well, he skipped along from Joost (peer to peer technology gaining momentum) to Skype (best for talking inexpensively around the globe) to kiva.org (organized around 2.0 principle) to iPhone (70% of all mobile internet done from iPhone!!) to Microsoft Surface (tactile, a table, to come out by the end of the year) to Sony Reader (better than Amazon Kindle) to gaming, which of course most of us really want to hear about. David happened to be there, too and the average age of 33 for gaming puts us right in the thick of things, right. BrainAge game actually caught my attention and others' too. In conclusion the presenter made one point emphatically: keep the net neutral. Great point.

Google, reference, and Wikipedia

PLA conference in Minneapolis was a blast - so much information, so much great interaction among the 10,000 or so participants. One of the most interesting presentations I attended was given by a professor from the U/W. Besides being a smart, entertaining goofball, he brought up a lot of relevant points. He presented Google (among other things) as a replacement for ready reference, a guide, to be used by librarians, but with wisdom, hopefully, such as using the fine points available before "normal people" become cognizant of them, acknowledging the weaknesses (Google scholar just isn't up to snuff yet, for instance), and proceeding forward, gently, from Google to in-depth resources relevant to the query.

Wikipedia he saw as a necessary evil and advised: if you're not happy with something in Wikipedia, fix it! Get in the fray, do your part and if masses of librarians do, then Wikipedia is ever so much more useful again. Print reference is all but dead, anyway - -

Thing 11

Referring to our last meeting, I use google docs for my translating projects (translating was my first college degree) because I can access it anywhere and I lose memory sticks (need better memory). Right now I'm translating a book from Finnish into English to be published in Finland, and edited by a bilingual American editor here. It wouldn't matter where, actually, because he collaborates via google docs. The ease of it! So would that qualify as a Thing 15 somehow, too? My editor and I don't fight much about detail, we've worked on many projects before, but somehow this method creates a neutral, professional sphere that reduces the possibility of friction further yet. Formatting is adequate for the task on hand although it lacks finesse.

Some of my own children seem to prefer Netvibes as a place for a homepage, it must be more current in their set somehow. I try to learn from what comes out of the mouths of babes, too.

Experiment

Thought I should upload my picture for once, the real me. It's the best I've got.

Ok, so I was seven at the time back in Finland. Amazing how well these ancient archival photos retain their quality! Fun playing with the scanner.

More about LibraryThing and Me

I've made progress in cataloging my books into LibraryThing and having fun on the way. Now I've started writing reviews in the reviews section, which can be read by anyone of the appr. 350 000 other users of the system, or by anyone browsing the library. You can search either your own library or the whole system with 23 million books at this time. Each time I catalog a book of mine I automatically see who else has the same book and can peek into their libraries, add them as "friends" or "interesting libraries", if I want. You can set your account as private but why? The more exposure the better, unless I start getting nasty comments, which you can flag.

You can also use the call numbers (both LC and Dewey), obtained by a simple click from Library of Congress, Amazon or one of the other 200 some databases and paste them on your books. I won't -- it's enough to get this invaluable, fabulous collection cataloged online and feel like I'm so Library 2.0 now --

I also joined "Librarians who Librarything" group. Support group for active bookworms.

Common good

Can't help but mention that Wall Street Journal today (Friday, the 29th) has a thoughtful cover story in Weekend Journal praising the Finnish school system (other publications have had articles lately as well). Since OECD started testing 15-year-olds Finland has been close or at the top of their rankings. Of course over there people complain about schools constantly and lament (I've heard personally) that if this is as good as it gets, we are, as humans, in bad shape indeed--It's the ongoing process that's meaningful.