Lesson 7: RSS - Bloglines

Setting up my RSS feed was not difficult.

I choose my feeds from Blogline Quick Picks, (books, movies, music, news...) and added a few of my favorite web sites, mostly book magazines' and publishers'. A great part of my job is about fiction, mysteries and history books, so I think that using Blogline feeds will keep me updated.

Lesson 6: Google Universe

Google Books searches the full text of the books that Google scans, converts to text and stores in its digital database. This tool is particularly helpful when we are not able to provide a printed book from our collection.

With your Google account, it's possible to "create and manage personal bookshelves, share books with friends and see what they are reading" (a concept similar to LibraryThing).

You can browse books by subject or use Search box to find a title. There is also Advanced Google Book Search with more options, such as publisher, subject, publication day, etc.

I'm not crazy about Google Books, but there is nothing particular that I don't like about it. I use it sporadically, and I would recommend it as a back-up when our printed material is not available.

Lesson 5: Social Networking

From all social networking sites, Facebook is my least favorite. It's mostly because of privacy issues. Facebook has met a lot of criticism on a range of issues, including child safety, advertising, data mining, inability to voluntary terminate account, etc. Apparently Facebook has been dealing with those problems, but some of them remains. The basic info can be found at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook

I do have a Facebook account, however, but I seldom check it. I know more or less where my friends are. Who is a friend with whom, it's not of my interest. In those rare occasions when I do check my account, I'm annoyed with its commercialism and advertising.

Recently I've been trying to make a change in my account - to add my maiden name - without any success.

I like everything that saves me some time and makes my life more pleasant and easier. For me, Facebook does not do that.

The Calgary Public Library's account on Facebook is a different story. I can the benefits for the Library. This is yet another possibility to make us more visible, chatting about our programs, services and collections.

Lesson 4: Wikipedia

I checked numerous articles today and I had a hard time finding errors. It seems to me that I always can see them, but not today. Reading the articles i realized that would have said some things differently, but that is the matter of style or personal preference, not grammatical errors.

I found, however, an article on a Yugoslav Nobel Laureate for literature, Ivo Andric (1892-1975). I've changed a part of a sentence saying that he was "a member of presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina" to "a member of the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina". The word "presidency" is a literary translation of a Serbo/Croatian/Bosnian word "predsjednistvo". The English equivalent for this political entity, or, if you like, a proper translation, is the word "parliament".

In the paragraph that talks about his personal life, it stated that "following the death of his wife in 1968, he began reducing his political activities..." I added the name o his wife Milica Babic-Andric.