we don't need no stinkin' titles

Being struck with the winter doldrums make blogging difficult, I think. It's not that one doesn't have ideas. Those are always floating around in the ether, even popping in at the most inopportune moments. But the actual sitting down and typing ... who wants to do that when there are new episodes of Project Runway to watch and yellowed paperback mysteries you found for fifty cents when back in Ohio (I miss you, Half-Price Books!) to read?

Nevertheless, the Internet trucks on and for those of you who are as equally at loss for entertainment on a quiet Sunday afternoon - it's either do this or the dishes and I'm not quite up for the dishpan hands yet - I offer a few random things from it which have lately caught my eye. Maybe later I'll actually find the wherewithal to compose some of those floaters.

* Mental Floss wants to know what your favorite sandwich is and so do I. Lately I have been obsessed with good old p.b. n' j. but for my daily lunch I tend to go with turkey and swiss more often than not. Neither are particularly inspired so maybe you can share something a little more creative?

* I'm a big fan of Largehearted Boy, for oh so many reasons and find consistent enjoyment in the Book Notes series, where authors offer soundtracks to accompany their books. This week Sara Zarr - who I have been meaning to read forever - offers one up for her new novel Sweethearts. And it includes an Over the Rhine song and I used to be really into them. As such, I've finally put in a request for Story of a Girl and will look forward to Sweethearts.

* Fuse #8 doesn't exactly need my link, but I can't resist one to her review of the new Enola Holmes just because of the opening. I feel exactly the same way and am totally anticipating this one. I used to get the ARC hook-up with these. I don't anymore so it's a good thing it's coming out this week (although when it will show up on our library shelves is another issue entirely).

* On the social networking front, I'm somewhat intrigued by Listography. So far I haven't joined, although I keep eying it and wouldn't be surprised if I soon succumbed. Because lists are very satisfying to make.

* What You Can Learn by Looking at the Bloggie Nominees: People like food. And gossip. And Dooce. Food I'm more than okay with but I've never been able to get into Dooce, despite acres of people I know holding her exploits near and dear. And a year or so ago I made this deliberate effort to not pay attention to celebrity gossip. Which I hesitate to tell people, because I fear it comes off high and mighty, but it isn't if I explain that I made the decision because before that I paid way too much attention the celebrity gossip. In any case, I'm intrigued enough by some of the smaller/more personal nominees to throw 'em on the bloglines and see if they stick.

oh so random

A few thoughts about recent topics, that didn't really fit into the posts I made about them ...

* One of the things that makes Wikipedia so useful and successful is the fact that there are so many users. And not just random users, like those of us who check on occasion (or even more frequently), but vested users who monitor content and catch pranksters and update content. Specialty wikis, by there very nature, do not have nearly so many community members and the interests of those who are there necessarily skew what will be present on it. Using Lib Success as an example, as a Children's Librarian my inclination is to see what they have related to that area. Answer? Nothing much. In programming, there's a link to the Mid-Hudson database, which I already know and that's pretty much it. If I expand to include teens, there's a little more, mostly because of the rising popularity of gaming in the library, but it's still pretty paltry.

Is this because as a user group, children are pretty well-covered in traditional library education, or just evidence that we librarians that serve them aren't very new-media inclined? I don't know, but it's a little frustrating. The question that then arises is if want to change the situation, do I register as a contributor here and try to add content, in the acres of free time that I have, or do I just start a new wiki, even narrower in focus in this one, or do I just suck it up and do nothing?


* On QL Chat, someone recently asked if there was still a point in having the website pathfinders on our webpage, and though I didn't respond there, my inclination is to say no. And in doing so, admit straight up that I've never been a big fan of pathfinders, either in print or online. The focus of most of them just seems too narrow to me to warrant them and I hate the clutter that the print versions necessarily incur. If we were to wikify them the way that the SJCPL has, then I might be more in favor of them. I still think the audience is a limited one and there's too much to click through, but the organization at least seems a bit more natural and I think that that helps.

* On both of these points - and as exemplified by the limited number of people who participated in this project - the big issue, and really it's a huge one, is how do you get participants? You can talk and encourage and hope but if people don't show up, you're pretty much out of luck.