Guild Wars

I know that we were asked about playing a console game but I've only played Rock Band which I love but I suck at and I still play old school 8bit Nintendo. Sorry folks, the corny music, the thrill of not being able to stop the game, save it and return later still proves to be a challenge. I can't stop and pick my weapons like some of these games today, Mario just hauled ass and hoped to run past the ninja turtles. Anyway....

My husband plays Guild Wars (an immersive game) online with his loser friends and my brother all the time! Ok, so they're not all losers but they can certainly play for extended periods of time and not even realize it. I won't lie and say that my husband actually let me play for fear that I'd get him killed but he was kind enough to le t me watch- jealous ladies? you should be :-) So he's got his headset on (and if he doesn't watch it he'll end up wearing that for a living) and he and his friends are running around this fake ass world killing stuff and idfk what else. 5 minutes later- I can't take it anymore and I leave. Nothing can beat saving the princess in world 8 and I don't care what anyone says- viva mario!

Xbox Rock Band

If I were lucky enough to be given the chance to consider buying a console (lolol-would never happen) I would choose Rock Band for Xbox. Ok, but if I didn't know that already- this is how I would go about it-

How would you research?
I would ask the kiddies! They know what they like to play. I would also get recommendations from other libraries that use gaming and see what they think of their systems. I would also test drive some systems before hand if possible- CJRLC allows members to borrow xbox Rock Band and Wii- it's so cool! Of course I would check out their respective websites, and consumer ratings as well.

What would your criteria be?
-good price
-can take a beating
-replacement parts easily available
-technical assistance provided

Which do you think you would get?
xbox with Rock Band- I think it's great how 4 kids can play together and they can play online. Plus my friends and I play on the weekends and I need some practice hahah

Frontline

I love Frontline and the work that they do. This was a great portrayal of the lives of teens today. They love to network and share their, sometimes very personal, lives with everyone except their parents. Watching this I can imagine how the son Cam must have felt: betrayed. Adolescence is a difficult time especially with a whistle blower mom like Evan. However, I think she did what she felt she needed to do to protect her family. In a few years when Cam is a father, he may come to realize that his mother wasn't out to ruin his life, but rather to save it.

Social Networking Sites

MySpace and Facebook- love them! These sites are great self publishing arenas. I have a Facebook but a MySpace, no reason in particular other than I like the look of Facebook better.

These sites are addicting and just tour around it for 5 minutes, especially looking up old friends and seeing what they're up and suddenly you'll see that 2 hours has past. You don't mean for it to happen but it does. Every time you click on one name an see others pop up as well, you just keep clicking and discovering new things and "meeting" new people and discovering where you fit in the world.

I do have some reservations about these sites because they can easily be accessed by employers and be used against you in the future. One must be very discerning about materials posted to the web because they can come back to haunt you.

Anderson- The Long Tail

Just a quick story first. I had to interview a cataloger for my cataloging class and having very limited experience, I sought out our County library's head cataloger. She was very informative but said one thing that really stood out- you will never catalog the same book in the same way you did six months ago. That made me think about what Anderson had to say about DDS and books getting "lost". Why did I bring this up? Oh yeah, I thought a question should have been posed about the how we display our collections, how we decide to put certain books in one area vs. another. But I digress....

In the latter chapters of the long tail, I enjoyed the discuss of less is more, or is bigger=better. I tend to agree with a bigger collection = a better one. Limited collections in any store, unless they are specialty stores, make me think of the days of the Little House of the Prairie's General Store when I want the Sears catalog! I work in a small library with limited funds and space but I do try to make sure that we have a diverse collection because I feel that choice is important.

text based blogging or podcasting

I guess this all boils down to personal preference. I prefer reading to listening but there are definite benefits to both.

Text-based blogging- great for:
-hearing impaired individuals
-those without speakers
-trying to read a blog secretly at work (not that I do this)
-visual learners

Podcast blogging:- great for:
-sight impaired individuals
-listening to anywhere
-auditory learners
-a more personal feel to a blog

New Tastemakers

I'll start with something that Anderson said at the end of ch. 7 about pre and post filtering. Before I arrived at my library, they only ordered books that the former director liked and the NY Times bestsellers. We continue to buy from the bestsellers list because tons of people will line up for a book just because x x wrote it and it's on the NY Times bestsellers list. We also now take recommendations from our patrons. If enough people feel that a certain genre or book should be ordered, we seriously consider purchasing it. I also tend to buy a lot of books from NJ authors, in the
hope that it will somehow help- who knows if it does.

I'm not sure where we fall with being th new producers but we give the people what they want. If they want all of the bestsellers we make it happen (even though I will always try to sneak in a couple of books that I or others felt were good as well).

On a hippy side note- I liked the mention of Amazon producing books on a need-basis. I think we could save a lot of trees that way :-)