LibraryThing meme

via Rudibrarian and others; a reading meme:

This is a list of the top 106 books most often marked “unread” by LibraryThing users. The rules: bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish. Pop a note in the comments if you’ve done this one (and help me keep the dream alive).

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Day in the Life of a "Virtual Librarian": Wednesday

On most Wednesdays, I have the privilege of working from home in my pjs. Yay! These days allow me to get away from the bustle and interruptions at the office and concentrate on what I'm doing for longer periods (usually - home has it's own distractions, of course). I don't think I could work from home any more than 1 day a week most weeks simply because I don't have the discipline.

6:30 am: arise, walk dog, check emails, friendfeed, twitter, blogs
7 am: sign up and record my 1st two 12second videos
7:15 am: clear work email and voice mail, respond to a couple emails
8 am: check remote access and explore functionality of new database content (ACLS, Alexander SP) and CQ Public Affairs db that CQ mistakenly dropped access for.
9 am: further flesh out nursing 1 hr virtual workshops content
10:30 am break: finish fixing J's elliptical machine
11 am: LibGuides
12 pm: treadmill for 30 min, shower
12:45: lunch
1:10 pm: LibGuides, play more w/Elluminate V-room, look over Elluminate moderator documentation and recorded sessions
4 pm: work day done! friendfeed, twitter, etc.
5 pm: record a bunch more 12second videos, dinner, family guy (one of best x-mas comedy episodes ever: Kiss Saves Santa), watch movie, sleep

Day in the life of a "Virtual Librarian": Tuesday

• 7:20 am arrival: pop-tart, emails, friendfeed
  
• 7:30 am: reference duty all day, switch ref number over to my phone, answer 3 non-library-related "Ask a Librarian" emails redirecting them to Student Info Call Center + 1 actual research question
  
• 8:30: LibGuides work
  
• 11 am: Elluminate for Moderators pt.2 webinar
• 12 pm: lunch break (pop-tart and chips) @ park w/ Gibson's Spook Country
• 12:30: straightened out CQ access issue: they dropped ball on our renewal but were very fast to respond and fix + couple ref phone calls
  
• 1 pm: investigating problems with EBSCOHost RSS feeds not working properly, colleague at CUNY (via Twitter) reports even more EBSCO problems on their end and possible issue w/ EZProxy intersection + LibGuides work (finishing up 1st draft Law & Criminal Justice Guide)
  
• 1:30: weekly dept-wide staff meeting - thankfully no major issues - only 10 min
• 1:45 pm: composed and sent email explaining to my colleagues how to create/edit subject or database specific PQ, JSTOR and EBSCOHost search widgets, and where to copy existing search widgets for our catalog, WorldCat and Credo Reference + reference
  
• 3 pm: weekly library staff meeting
• 4 pm: day is done
  

Day in the Life of a "Virtual Librarian": Monday

• 7:20 am: arrive, eat cereal bar, check email, Bloglines
• 7:45 am: talk to boss re: why I disagree with push to have me be guinea pig and immediately switch to using Elluminate virtual classroom (currently using Wimba) for my 3 nursing library orientation workshops on Sept. 4. Not enough time to prepare, not ready, plus my upcoming vacation all factors.
  
• 7:50 am: per boss req: sent email with my arguments written down so she can take it up chain of command.
• 8 am: compile new week's To Do list
• 8:30: compose draft of feedback on College's new draft top navigation bar which removes any mention of "library" - relegates it to drop-down "quick list" - struggling to be diplomatic about it...
  
• 9:00 am: complete list of IT-requested social networking tools I'm using or thinking of using - sent to boss (list will be posted here)
  
• 10:00 am: Lib Guides work (tweak 2 published guides and revamp Nursing guide)
• 11:00 am: Elluminate for Moderators: part 1, webinar
• 12:00 pm: lunch and twitter/blogs break
• 1:00 pm: back to LibGuides work: Law and Criminal Justice
• 2:10 pm: break w/twitter and friendfeed
• 2:20 pm: notice that our CQ Public Affairs collection is saying subscription expired - verify status w/boss and submit help ticket to CQ.
  
• 2:30 pm: back to wrestling with LibGuides and locating more quality legal and criminal justice resources
  
• 4 pm: day is done! Off to free Lez Zeppelin show in Washington Park.
  

List of my Social Networking Tools?

I recently received a request from my boss and our IT dept for a list of "social networking tools and other technologies" I'm currently using or investigating. I have no idea what they will use this list for except for the vague mention of "proactively assessing" these tools, I assume for security purposes. Hopefully this won't lead to a culture of restrictions and red tape. To me, that would all but kill the lifeblood of a major part of my job and our library: innovating and experimenting with new and emerging technologies to improve library services.

Anyways, a got a couple requests for the list, so here it is...

Note: I'm not clear on how they're defining "social networking tools", so I've included below (which is basically what I sent to my boss) just about anything that has any sort of social/networking component that I use in any work or professional development way, or have bookmarked for future assessment in those areas:

Tools with potential use for library services to faculty/students/staff (note: many of these have uses for prof dev/networking as well):

• Ameritocracy (news content w/social aspect)
• Jing (video creation)
  
• Hab.la (chat)
• Penzu (journaling)
• Grazr (rss)
• ClickBook (scheduling)
• xtimeline (timelines)
• dipity (timelines)
  
• PMOG (passively multiplayer online game: exploration/pathmaking game)
  
• screen2 (co-browsing)
  
• vuzit (doc viewing, displaying on web page)
  
• TeacherTube (videos)
  
• YouTube (videos)
• SecondLife (virtual reality)
• MeGlobe (chat)
  
• Meebo (chat)
  
• ChatMaker (chat)
  
• iCue (news content w/social aspect)
  
• OpposingViews (news content w/social aspect)
  
• OpenCongress (news content w/social aspect)
  
• Finding Dulcinea which uses Topix (news content w/social aspect)
  
• Gliffy (collaboration)
  
• Yahoo Pipes (rss)
  

Tools currently used for library services and or internal communication (note: many of these have potential useful applications for student/faculty use as well):

• Bloglines (RSS feed reader)
• Doodle (scheduling)
  
• Facebook
• Feedburner (RSS feeds and blog subscription mgt)
• flickr (pics)
  
• Google Sites
• Google Docs
• LibraryThing
• pbwiki
• Technorati (RSS feed reader and blog mgt)
• utipu.com (video creation/sharing)
  

Tools I use or may want to use for professional development, networking and idea sharing, and keeping up with technology, info lit and library process developments (many of these have potential use for students/faculty as well):

• del.icio.us (social bookmarking)
• DimDim (meetings)
  
• friendfeed
• G.ho.st (online desktop)
  
• GoGrok (collaboration, meetings)
  
• Google Calendar (scheduling)
• Google SketchUp (collaboration)
  
• LearningTimes Network
  
• LinkdIn
• LibGig
  
• Peepel (collaboration)
  
• Skrbl (whiteboard)
• Slideshare (slides)
  
• SlideRocket (slides)
  
• 280Slides (slides)
  
• twitter (microblogging)
• Twiddla (whiteboard)
  
• Writeboard (whiteboard)
  
• Vyew (collaboration)
  
• Zoho (lots of stuff)
  

Day in the Life of a "Virtual Librarian": Friday

Hmm...well actually, my official title is "Lead Information Resources Coordinator." But I do work in a library that has no books, no walls, etc. I have an office in an office building and our collections are completely online.

So the first thing people always ask is what I do all day. How can I possibly fill an 8 hour work day every day in that environment? Lemmie tell ya, it's easy when I get to get my hands dirty in just about every aspect of the biz here! And since I've been observing the "A Day in the Life of a Library" meme grow recently, I thought I'd kill 2 birds so to speak and add my 2 cents. I'm starting with a Friday, because Mondays are real iffy as far as free time to do stuff like this and besides I'll forget by then...

Here's what I did today and it's fairly typical for a Friday:

• 5:30am: wake, walk dog, wash-up, etc.
• 6:45 am: 40 min commute
• 7:30 am: arrive @ office, eat a breakfast-ish snack (pop-tart, cereal bar, fruit, chocolate?), check e-mail, review reference responses from last couple days, quick twitter/friendfeed check
• 8:00 am respond to e-mails
• 8:30 am: register for Elluminate V Room and begin testing it out to see how existing Wimba workshop content and activities might work with it. Some functions are improvements over Wimba, others not so much. Conclude it will be a bit of work to get it running smooth on new platform, regardless. Look at my calendar frantically and fear not enough time to do this.
• 9:30 am: Bloglines prof dev break - catch up on library and tech stuff, explore couple cool new (at least to me) tools: http://g.ho.st/ (online desktop) and http://www.factcheck.org/. Also revisit Zoho for 1st time in ages. It looks like it's improved.
• 10:30 am: Work on outline and hands-on plans for 1 hr Library Intro workshop for new nursing students via Elluminate - keep it simple, Dana!
• 11:30am: working lunch at desk: crappy bag o' microwave mac'n cheese
• Noon: more 2.0 exploration: Finding Dulcinea, Learning Interactives and Gliffy
• 12:15 pm: more Elluminate work
  
• 1 pm: reading break at park across street: Gibson's brilliant "Spook Country"
• 1:30: edit EZProxy cfg file for new ACLS Humanities e-book collection, add that + 2 Alexander St. Press resources to our web site
• 2:30 pm: provide feedback to nursing faculty whose 401 course I'm embedding in about possible research assignment adjustments and how I can best help students.
  
• 3 pm: draft long list of social networking tools/apps/sites I use or am thinking of using for any purpose at request of IT dep, via my boss + LibGuides tweaking
  
• 4 pm: weekend is here after commute home!!!