Better than Google Images

I just looked at Flickr and was pleasantly surprised. Here is something I can really use. I loved the feature of searching by key words, and since I had just returned from England, I search Quaker Meeting houses, and found some lovely pictures, quite a few artfully taken that covered places I had not been.

So clearly my photos are NEEDED on Flickr. I can even post them there for my 5 cousins and avoid the problem I had with their CD's which I could not open on my computer.

Yay! I love it. Fun and useful. Yay!

RSS-ResistSeeingSimplyeverything

Well, that didn't fly. I was thinking of a way to characterize the value of RSS. I think on thing I like about it is having the New York Times headlines delivered to me each day, but I could do that with setting my home page to them. This way I get to have a lot more things put in front of my face. The old "access to excess" problem. Since I have these feeds, now I think I have to look at them. More time on the computer and less time walking my dog or watching the sunset.

This is definitely a resource to be carefully managed. I see it as a moderation in all things problem. Great value as a tool. I can see now that in addition to the hour I spend on email every day I'll start spending some time on my feeds.

Help!

I've loooked at clouds from both sides now . . .

OK, much shorter this time, we are having technical difficulties. So I've discovered that tagging is a lot like the old fashioned book marking, and just as useful. So great!

On to the next.

Budget cuts in libraries

As we move into a budget with significant cuts, I am reminded of the 20 plus years I spent working in California libraries during the budget cutting era following the passage of Prop. 13. Since I believe we can learn from the past, I'm sharing some observations on what I learned, experienced and felt during those years.

#1 Be really, really, really thankful that we already use volunteers extensively in our libraries. Soon well-meaning patrons will come in and explain to you how much money we could save by simply having volunteers do your job. Patrons who know that their own job could never be done by volunteers will suggest that the library could re-instate those closed hours using volunteers. You will have to have a conversation with them, and it will really help you to explain how many volunteers and volunteer hours we already use. You might go on and on about it a bit, so they see that we are already using so many volunteers that there wouldn't even be room for any more in the building! Our volunteers are great and this is just one more thing they do for us.