The staff at my library are playing a huge game of Clue for our summer reading club. Each week, we visit a different area of the library and learn something about that division. Today, I experienced the "cone of silence" in the AV division.

The summer reading club staff are also sharing clues of the mysterious murder of Mr. Boddy at our blog. Additionally, they post some fun cyber tools to use like these sneakers I customized. I need to write on my real ones so I could make a fashion statement during my evening 2 mile walk.



Still looking for a tag line, or rather a lyric.

You too can You Tube!

When I saw this Learn & Play exercise, I knew exactly which video I wanted to share with my CML collegues: The Fredricksen Library Book Cart Drill Team. This is my mom's library (and the one from my childhood). What I didn't know is that they had a new video posted in August. I give them kudos for their creativity.



What I like about You Tube is that you can find videos of just about anything -- some good, some not so good. I liked that I could reach out and expand my network by connecting to the librarian who shared the drill team video. I opened a You Tube account just so I could send a message!

I didn't spend too much time on this exercise, since I knew the video I was looking for. I think I could spend another couple hours exploring You Tube.

I can see any features or components of You Tube that might be interesting if they were applied to library websites and we are already doing that in the Learn & Play blog. We can invite patrons to become part of our community by sharing their videos as well.

I was unable to get the entire embeddable code to copy and paste into my blog and I don't quite get why... if anyone can help me -- I'll also put a message on Twitter, since most of my Learn & Play associates are addicted to tweets. Once I figure it out, I'll post it. However, I've embedded the link above.

CML Power Tools

I downloaded the library’s tool bar the minute it was available; I have it both at work and at home. It’s great at work because I all the shortcuts I love right there in front of me. At home, I showed by daughter how to use it and she can go right to the CML homepage (I'm sure I've shocked some that my homepage is not the library's) and look in the catalog or check her account. It empowers her to be responsible for her own account, even if I still have to lug the materials back and forth!

I also looked at BoingBoing; a really eclectic collection of things. It’s like News of the Weird but global and on steroids. It’s part news, part scavenger hunt from around the world, but 90% entertaining. For example, today there was a post about NASA’s top 50 photos and the one featured on BoingBoing is the Star Trek Enterprise crew meeting the real Enterprise. I think I may have to add this to my bloglines account.

I did post a comment on the library's blog Tooling Around about the highlighting feature. However, I have to say I'm disappointed the last post on the Tooling Around blog is from Sept. 2. Although, I was almost convinced to better use my Gmail account.

Kudos to the CML Library toolbar...