Thing #10 - Online Image Generator

Back to the fun stuff! I really enjoyed playing with FD Toys during Thing #6 and was eager to try my hand at a few more of them. I love the Catalog Card Generator. I have what some might call a "strange fascination" with all types of old ephemera including postcards, photographs, baggage, & product labels, comic books, and most anything old. So, although I like (and would not want to give up) the ease of having the card catalog available on the computer, I do miss the days of searching the old card catalogs.


This looks like a great book!

Thing #9 - Finding Feeds

Initially when looking at Syndic8.com, I thought the site looked amateurish but the ease of use changed my mind. I found it user friendly and useful. Feedster is temporarily unavailable so I have not been able to evaluate it. Technorati is probably the most popular due to its more polished look and the neat scrolling blog updates. Overall, I think I like the layout and functionality of Topix.net a bit better than the others. Through all this searching, I have found several library & book news blogs that I added to my Bloglines account (as you can see in the column on the right). I could easily get carried away with adding feeds to my Bloglines. So far I have 31. That's a combination of library news, staff blogs, genealogy, general news, movie reviews, and local weather. Fortunately, the whole premise is to allow me to see a great deal of information in one convenient place. That's neat, I like it.

Thing #8 - RSS Feeds & Bloglines

Whew! I have finally been able to set aside time to set up my Bloglines account and get started with RSS feeds. Using an account like Bloglines (or Google Reader- which I already use) can really cut down on the amount of time spent catching up on all the blogs and news that I'm interested in reading. I have added some blogs by other library employees to the left of my blog entries using Bloglines (that's a overuse of the word blog if I ever heard one). That was really easy. With the ability to use folders for similar content on Bloglines, I can access only the subject I'm interested in catching up on at any given moment.

My public records can be found at http://www.bloglines.com/public/Anomalous.

Thing #7 - Digital Archives

I searched through the images at Tennessee Virtual Archive (TeVA) and the Nashville Public Library Digital Collection and could have gone on for hours. I love looking at historic photos in general and especially those of Rutherford County and Middle Tennessee. I'm a big fan of these Greetings from postcards.

Having previously spent time perusing the Library of Congress American Memory collection, I decided to showcase another of the WPA library posters from the 1930's and 40's. These posters, according to the Library of Congress site "were produced from 1936 to 1943 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. Of the 2,000 WPA posters known to exist, the Library of Congress's collection of more than 900 is the largest. These striking silkscreen, lithograph, and woodcut posters were designed to publicize health and safety programs; cultural programs including art exhibitions, theatrical, and musical performances; travel and tourism; educational programs; and community activities in seventeen states and the District of Columbia. The posters were made possible by one of the first U.S. Government programs to support the arts and were added to the Library's holdings in the 1940s."

I think it would be great if the Linebaugh had its own digital collection of Rutherford County images available for the community.