Gaming is good for you

Here is a detailed list of New York State education standards that are met by gaming in the library. Plenty of food for thought.
And take a look at the normally staid lobby at the main research library in New York.
Libraries all over the country are realizing the benefits of gaming and we are too. We have more teen programs, and more teen participation, than ever before!

My Times

It's worth the time to personalize sites that you will use on a regular basis. Your reader, whether it is the Google Reader or another, is a highly personalized site, almost all the content is there at your request. A relatively new one that I like a lot is the My Times page on the New York Times web site. It allows you to use it as a news aggregator, pulling in headlines and other links from your preferred sources. Also, you can take a look at what sources your favorite NY Times writers are using on their own My Times page.

Here is my page:

And you can check out it out for yourself here.

Virtual Soapboxes

This past Sunday NPR unveiled the Sunday Soapbox, an opportunity to have serious conversations about politics with a variety of bloggers and NPR listeners, or at least users of the NPR website. Lots of news organizations, radio, TV, print, offer something like this. But this is unique as it doesn't necessarily spin off the stories on the radio and it offers the blog entries in podcast format.
Another way to participate in online conversation is by sharing items of interest-- podcasts, vodcasts, print, photos, etc. -- on your blog, or delicious page, or your personal social networking page.
Blogrunner allows you to see who is blogging what and how often. It's presented by the New York Times but covers blogs and content from elsewhere. It's organized by topic and is a good way to find other blogs, and content, of interest to you. Here's the Books page.

Why are we doing this? - part 2

David Pogue, tech columnist and blogger for The New York Times, asked this week, Are You Taking Advantage of Web 2.0?
The answer for THPL would have to be no, not really, not yet. But we are learning about it. And we are beginning to take advantage too, mostly through BookLetters so far.

Blogs, blogs, everywhere

Maybe you have started your own blog (lots of you have, congratulations!), or maybe you are just thinking about it. One way to get started is by reading other blogs. Certainly read those of your friends and colleagues, but there are so many more you might want to take a look at, visit regularly, add to a newsreader. (I know, I know, that's the next lesson.)
Anyway, here are some blogs for you to consider reading, commenting on, subscribing to.

It's official, libraries and blogging go together. Check out the Library of Congress blog.

The librarians aren't the only ones in Washington blogging. Yes indeed, here is The Hill's Congress Blog (where lawmakers come to blog).

This one is a wiki, but I just want to point out that lots of public libraries are blogging away.

Since you work in the library there is a good chance you love books. Even if you aren't into creating your own personal library on LibraryThing, you may want to get into the LibraryThing blog.

Stay on top of local happenings with Sticks of Fire.

You can also stay current on Tampa, and the world at large, by reading newspaper blogs. There are so many to choose from, here are blogs from The St. Petersburg Times, The Tampa Tribune, and the newspaper of record, The New York Times. What a wealth of information and conversation! More opinionated, and often more interesting, than the articles in the newspapers.

If you still want to know some more about this blog stuff, here are a couple of blog entries you can read.
How Blogs Work is an entry on a blog called How Stuff Works.
And you can Learn More about Blogs and Blogging on this entry into the Discovery Series on a blog called Library Stream.

Now get blogging!

Some people pay for it!

Yes, this is the same service we offer for free.

2.0 makes it a cinch to share

Perhaps what I like best about 2.0 is how easy it is to share photos, thoughts, articles & information with people. Here are two quick examples.
My favorite article from Sunday's New York Times, by the clever Nora Ephron.
The children's literature awards announced yesterday.

You can make a living gaming online!

OK, so maybe this would only happen in China, and this is really weird, but yes, young men are making a living of sorts playing World of Warcraft. Here's a short vodcast from the New York Times Magazine, June 17, 2007.

Compassionate comments

I have blogged previously about a code of conduct and we are hearing more and more about the need for blogging and commenting without cruelty. In today's New York Times you can read David Pogue's Posts on his technology blog, Is It Time For an Online Code of Conduct?
And you can listen to Blogger's Debate Code of Conduct, a recent story on NPR's Morning Edition.