Thing #20- Podcasts

This is something I've actually wanted to explore for a while. It seems similar to YouTube, but more productive, educational and helpful.

I searched each of the podcast search engines for the keywords "library" and "Japan". I wanted to see if there were any podcasts that would provide information on trends and practices in Japanese libraries today.

Podcast.net didn't turn up much. I did see our "UCSC Synergy Lecture Series " listed in the results, though.
The results from Podcastalley.com were much better. I found a nifty tour podcast about traveling through Japan and some general library podcasts. The other two didn't turn up anything relevant, either. I'll have to spend more time on this later and see what I can find, maybe refine or broaden my searches more.

Cataloging particulars

So I just finished a huge project that involved inventorying over 800 photos by Edward Weston. They were absolutely beautiful, so it was a fun job. I had to note down all the title, date and accession number information, exactly as it appeared on the print. This is a general cataloging practice as well as the best way to positively identify each print.

There was a small series of five that all had the title of “Wonderland of Rocks”. The parenthetical notes that followed the titles were as follows, though:

~~ Area later became Joshua Tree National Monument.
~~ Location now Joshua Tree National Monument.
~~ Later named Joshua Tree National Monument.
~~ Now, Joshua Tree National Monument.
~~ (none)

I was amused at the unnecessary albeit subtle diversity in these descriptive notes…. ^_^ They totally could have used one phrasing for all of them. But that’s my geeky cataloging side emerging, I guess.

Thing #19- YouTube

It's hard to believe YouTube has only been around for a year and a half- it seems like such an established part of modern popular culture these days.

I searched for "Japanese Calligraphy" on Yahoo!Video, MySpaceTV, MetaCafe, and Google Video, as well as YouTube. MetaCafe was disappointing- only two results, and one had nothing to do with shodo at all. Yahoo mainly contained more frivilous videos, rather than serious lessons or demonstrations. MySpace was surprisingly helpful- I found several good instructional videos there. Google and YouTube produced the best results, with mostly serious lessons on doing good Japanese Calligraphy.

The layouts for all the sites were pretty similar except Yahoo- the videos on that opened in a different window. MySpace had slightly "trendier" terms for rating videos, but for the most part, they all seemed to have the basic necessities.

I don't spend a lot of time looking at videos, but watching an occasional recommended one can be fun. And it's definitely a useful tool for talking about or sharing information on any topic!

Thing #18- Firefox Add-ons

Okay, adding the Cruzcat search engine was super easy. No problems there. I explored some other Firefox extensions and found a sort of interesting one called FoxLingo, a translating program that handles up to 60 different languages. So far, it works pretty well. This will come in handy when we're trying to catalog random things in Czech or Catalan or something!

more wiki editing

As a follow-up to last week's wiki exercise, I decided to test out my editing skills in Wikipedia. In the entry on John Cage, I added a small bit of content clarifying the location of his mycology collection and a link to the collection's finding aid. Not difficult at all, and now researchers will be able to find the mycology materials more quickly!

Thing #17- Online Applications

Creating the Zoho account and uploading documents was easy. However, my formatting didn't exactly import as I'd had it, and it was a little troublesome to edit my document. I may have to play around with that.

And I couldn't publish the document to my blog. It kept telling me my login and password were incorrect. I tried several times and carefully typed the correct info. So maybe this is a bug in the beta version?

Otherwise, this seems like a useful tool- it'd be easy for librarians and teachers to share documents with their students instead of emailing attachments!

Yay for Patti Smith!

Patti Smith is sooooooo awesome in concert! Just got back from a fantastic show downtown- really glad I've seen her live, now! She's got an amazing amount of energy, an absolutely magnetic stage presence, and one of the most incredible voices I've ever heard. It oscillates between low, husky and scratchy; strong, aggressive, powerful; and gentle, breathy, with a sweet tone. I really wish I could sing anywhere near that well!

She did lots of songs from her new album, which is all covers. They all suited her voice and personality so well: White Rabbit, Soul Kitchen, Perfect Day (encore), Smells Like Teen Spirit, Are You Experienced. She also sang a bunch of her own songs including two of my very favorites, Dancing Barefoot (1st song) and Because The Night. I'm really glad I noticed her name on the club sign one day- I'm usually out of the loop on cool concerts!

Just a random "fun things" post in between all the library exercises..... ^_^