My tech talk will be brief as I try to catch up on my remaining 23 Things. As Beth T. noted, part of the success of this blogging process involves looking at and commenting on co-workers postings. While reading others' musings, I'm overwhelmed by how many "can't live without" websites are mentioned. I try to evaluate each one I see, knowing in the back of my mind that there are a googleplex of others just as amazing. As a purveyor of information, it's important to stay current, but with cyberspace growing by light-years, it's difficult for mere mortals to keep up. Of course, I can't post anything without adding a picture, so I'm including one of my beautiful daughter Julia.
I can see that a wiki would be a great venue for connecting the area's largest ethnic groups - Chinese, Korean, Indian, and Urdu - with HCL's vast resources. There could be sections for highlighting new materials and upcoming programs, as well as feedback from the community in terms of collection requests, program reviews, sharing of great titles, etc.
Given my involvement with Cultural Connections, I'm wondering how Library 2.0 can benefit Howard County's foreign-born community. The ultimate goal of CC is not only to enhance library service for the area's diverse multicultural population, but also to foster an understanding of and appreciation for ethnicities other than one's own. Even though Library 2.0 connects people in brilliant ways, does it sometimes remove the face-to-face element? And is that element crucial for improving cultural relationships?
Not many people know that if you get up before dawn and witness the sunrise, you will see the most otherworldly light. Attached find a picture I took of the flour mill near Main Street in Ellicott City. The lighting was so unusual that this photograph almost looks like a black and white shot that was hand-tinted. I'm also registering my blog with Technorati on this post.Technorati Profile
I set up 2 RSS feeds - one to keep me current as to when new Chinese and Korean DVDs are added to the collection and another posting exciting travel tidbits. This photo shows the night lights of Baltimore's Inner Harbor.
Dave Anasco who used to work @ HCL bugged me to open a Flickr account and after my February 2007 trip to Costa Rica, I finally took his advice. I've since joined 2 Flickr groups in an attempt to give and get photo feedback, but haven't found the groups to be too active. The picture on this post was taken from our porch looking at active Arenal volcano. You could actually hear the volcano rumble and at night see molten lava spewing down the sides. Equally impressive were the unearthly noises of the howler monkeys in the middle of the night!
