why i laugh at work

why i laugh at work
Originally uploaded by moonflowerdragon.

What else are Jaffas good for?

Have I mentioned that I love my evening hours at the library? Well the hours are great and so are the people I work with.... AND

Ange: makes me laugh; tells me how to do better, gently; listens caringly; shares trustingly; offers wise thoughts; encourages believably. I want to work like Ange.

I *was* early for work and then...

Playing with 2.0 for professional development

I've contemplated adapting the 23 Things to share the fun with friends and/or fellow library students (particularly delicious and RSS which would be nice and convenient for me :D), and then I think why not just fellow students regardless of course? (Ideas: not time based - just the things; polls for initial self-assessment? ?registration of blogs? questions: how to make pre-blog things interactive; should I stick with Blogger or try to set up a Wordpress?)

Catching up on my bloglines after a week's holiday the idea was reinvigorated by this post:
librarian.net � Blog Archive � Why should libraries be socially networking?

I'm also curious about the time/staff/procedural issues around how libraries begin and maintain library2.0 projects whether it is using blog platforms (like Murdoch Uni library planning) or Flickr or having a Facebook page.

But the time to resolve these thoughts is not yet for me... :D

Subversive handouts for the too-short introductory class

I love this idea... I've been observing the material reference librarians at work use in their info skills classes, and have been aware that there are many tools, tricks or skills that students might enjoy learning over time that can't all be presented in introductory classes. Such a neat way to trigger curiosity.

clipped from pegasuslibrarian.blogspot.com Since then I've used the "Here's what we learned today... Here's what you can ask me about any time... Here's how you can get help..." handout in many, many classes. And while they're useful for lots of kinds of classes, they're particularly good for two kinds of sessions: those like the one I described above, and those where the professors know full well that the primary goal of a short session is to introduce their students to me so that the students will be more likely to come see me with their research conundrums later. And my original experience of having professors and students alike ask questions from the handout while still in class has held true of almost every session for which I've created one of these. (Here's an example of one I created for a class I taught earlier this week.)

When a player guides...

I've been thinking lately about how I have been introducing friends and colleagues to the web2.0 tools that have given me so much fun learning.

Coincidentally, today I noticed Helene Blowers' presentation From Players to Guides and took a look to see whether her advice matches my style.

After reflecting on the importance of playing for learning, Helene turns to becoming a guide, which she identifies as "a person who exhibits and explains points of interest" (Blowers, 40/67). Helene advises becoming a Discovery Guide, orienting on learning rather than training and focusing on FUN. Learning in which exposure is the first step and where learners have as much to share as guides.

There are two slides that remind me of training and collaborative volunteering with the Australian Breastfeeding Association, and that I believe will be tumbling in the back of my mind while I continue holidaying:

Slide 57 From Players to Guides by Helene Blowers

Slide 58 From Players to Guides by Helene Blowers

and keeping in mind the daily dozen who visit this blog from searches for guidance on referencing citations of blogs or online videos in APA style, here is a guess at referencing a citation of a presentation stored at Slideshare in APA style:

Blowers, H. (2008). From players to guides: Learning Strategies for a 2.0 World. [Presentation]. Retrieved September 22, 2008 from Slideshare website http://www.slideshare.net/hblowers/from-players-to-guides-presentation

EBLIP latest

Just briefly (after all I am on holiday): I've been perusing the latest issue of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP). First I enjoyed Marcus A. Banks' final theory in Friendly Skepticism about Evidence Based Library and Information Practice that differences in decision-leading preference, or tendency to wait for evidence versus willingness to play or experiment, stem from hard-wired personalities (ie Myers-Briggs S .v. N: data-driven .v. intuitive) and that both have value.

However I was triggered to blog by a quote in the letter to editor by Judith Siess Commentary on a Library Non-Use Study upon which Siess applauded the concluding statements (of the study: Non-Use of Library Services by students in a UK Academic Library, by Lisa Toner in EBLIP 3:2, 2008) for recognising the value of further evaluation, which followed after Siess' surprising evaluation of 14% as a 'quite acceptable' response rate. I'll have to read the study she was commenting on to check the nature of the data it studied, but I'm guessing that a major gap was missing in the study: Patron NEED. From the commentary it appears that the study examined only why people don't use the library, not whether their perceptions & decisions impacted positively or negatively on their outcomes. I wonder: if students do not use the library and succeed quite happily in their studies, do they really NEED the library?

That wondering was triggered because the commentary earlier mentioned that the study showed that non-users not only didn't use the traditional (?physical) library, but didn't use its electronic resources but most did use the Internet; later mentioned that some 4% of respondents expressed a lack of need for libraries; finally highlighted that the studying library concluded with deciding to increase marketing, publicity and promotion; all without telling me if the study examined whether patrons who don't use the library actually DO need it (or not). Surely data related to that part of the equation is relevant? That is: what are the outcomes for students who don't use the library? Is it significantly different from those who do? If it isn't, then I'm guessing we have some really interesting questions to investigate and answer.

My (partial) pledge to not suck at the internet

I've had this pinned since ADHD Librarian made the pledge he linked as being in full at Modern & Awkward.

I, moonflowerdragon, pledge that:

I will never comment on a blog saying "Why do we care?" because if I don't care, I can go away from the blog. Instead I will sit back and have a good five-minute think about my life.

I will not sign up to Twitter or a blog just to write "I am getting my hair done" or other inanities [me: didn't sign up to do it doesn't mean you won't find me doing it if I'm having desperate month]. Every message I write will [endeavour to] be entertaining and/or informative; e.g. "Getting a beehive hairdo so I won't fit under the parking garage clearance pole" or "I am on fire, please assist me." (Note: The latter is appropriate only if my hair is, in reality, on fire.)

...

I will only add up to one application per month on Facebook. This application will not be a zombie maker, werewolf maker, "top friends" maker, or anything that serves no purpose and is not, again, entertaining and/or informative.

[I will not trick people into seeing any images that they might find disturbing, because that's not funny and it never will be funny]

I will not add a signature to my forum posts that is more than half the length of my average post. I will definitely not put ASCII art in my signature, because I recognize that 1993 is over and the Internet has pictures.

...

I will never leave a comment expressing adulation or criticism in three or fewer words, unless I am doing so in an altogether unique way. "FAIL" is not a unique way. Neither is "LOLzers."

On Wikipedia and Academia

I've had this post pinned for a while (well I've included the date in the kwout so you can see how long) because I've been watching commentary on how Wikipedia is used. I may very well want to update this post if I can find the intriguing pages I was reading that examined the apparent founder-supported cabal protecting an apparently strongly biased and potentially misleading set of articles.

Library Technicians: Education, Training, Practice, Career, Jobs, etc.: Wikipedia and Academia Hit News Headlines Again via kwout

From Sandra's ideas playing to brains crooking

Ah yes, now I pinned this post to commemorate Sandra having introduced me to Crooked Brains, which does indeed consume time if you're not careful. (Sandra's Playing with Ideas hasn't been updated since July 14 but there's usually something interesting at her Lyrics Game. And Sandra also lets us know when she updates her unschooling pages.

PLAYING WITH IDEAS: The Churches of Book Worship, and other fantastic realities via kwout

If She Ran the Universe...^OO^

The Happy Villain has a fascinating style and eye-popping experiences in her library. Don't go there if you can't tolerate blue language, or if you prefer people to take a compassionate view. I like that Happy Villain will discuss her own behaviours and expectations as critically as she does others'. As well as amusing me, I also occasionally learn (or at least remember) something. This ebay/bike story pointed out that conflict might not need to be directly confronted (my unfortunate tendency).

If I Ran the Universe...: ...We'd All Have Old Bicycles via kwout

Libraries bridge the digital divide: includes games

Another pair of items I've had pinned for a very long time. I do like ShelfCheck and I love the point made in this miniseries. It also reminds me that the State Library of Victoria includes the videogame and computer game product of Victoria in its duty of protecting Victoria's heritage.

Backup

Argh I'll keep this post from Unshelved pinned as a reminder to ensure I keep up with my backup methods. Any photos that are important to me to keep saved I upload to Flickr. Any documents I think I need to keep I email to myself or upload to googledocs. Which reminds me, I've been working on a big assignment for a while... hang on a sec...right, where was I?

Not yet in the need for anything like FolderShare, Time Machine or SuperDuper.

Hm, but my budget tracking spreadsheet is too big for googlespreadsheet so, where's my memory stick? Good.

As to the boys' saved games, they've been advised to consider whether there are any they would feel devastated to lose and a friend will show them how to back those up.

Thanks for the reminder Bill (& Bloglines for pinning & Bill again for the regular comic so every time I read the comic I can catch the pinned post about backing up).

Wiki for collaborative study .v. e-portfolio

I'm wondering how I happened upon COM125 (the 2007 source of yesterday's notion) to have it in my bloglines. I guess it might have been a link Michael Stephens shared as he was doing a class using a blog around that time too. And I am so very intrigued by the notion of using web2.0 tools for study programs.

Which brings us to the other reason I pinned that last post: 'theory' reminded his class (and attracted my curiosity) of the class studyguide wiki. The teacher appears to have used this as an assessment tool (points for submissions) while providing a mechanism for study in which students collaboratively built notes on the designated topics.

I wish very much that the collaborative components of one of my recent classes could have been done by wiki rather than e-portfolio. Both because I believe more workplaces are experimenting with wiki-style intranets and because it is easier to learn how to use and collaborate with a straightforward wiki than the multiple features of e-portfolio.

In e-portfolio for our separate contributions to be evidenced we were stuck with a jumbling method of commenting (like to a blog post) on someone else's work (with the backwards and forwards of quote and suggestion). While it is possible for group members to edit and work on the same document in eportfolio, it does not keep a history of the edits to evidence who has made what kind of contribution (relevant for assessment).

Ah that's why we can't vote online

(While I continue to pin new interesting posts through Bloglines I've decided to start unpinning some of the old ones by reflecting on why I wanted to keep it)

Gee, this one I've had since April last year! It caught my eye because I've often thought that automating vote-counting would be nifty. But as Cheilla pointed out (in the summary she tabled and her teacher shared online) as voting is supposed to be anonymous in the online environment protecting anonymity is not compatible with preventing (or detecting and identifying) fraud.

What's in those terms of use/service agreements?

Back in February this year another blogger brought up questionable clauses in terms of use or terms of service. I can't remember whether s/he referred particularly to this financial service provider but I've had the quote saved in blogging drafts ever since, till I had more time to think why it bothers me (and I note it could very well have been amended since then:

"Solely to enable PayPal to use the information you supply us with, so that we are not violating any rights you might have in that information, you agree to grant us a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable right to exercise the copyright, publicity, and database rights (but no other rights) you have in your information, in any media whether now known or not currently known."

Why would this provider need copyright and publicity rights to my information? I've seen other service providers be quite clear about specifying that we grant them the right to use our information in order to provide the service we have requested, but this is way more than that: it states "to use the information you supply us with"... isn't that a bit carelessly broad given the right is to be perpetual and irrevocable? Surely the "to use" bit should be "to use only for the services you have requested"?

If this is not significantly suspicious can someone explain why?

Vegetabular

Discussing what to have for tea with the boys I pointed out that we need vegetables.... only the way I was saying it (which I've forgotten) came to requiring a one-word form of "containing vegetables" and I stumbled... vegetablish? vegetablic? vegetabular?

LOL... well can I use them?

I guess not, while others have used vegetabular, vegetablic and vegetablish before; they're not appearing in dictionaries.

Word challenge

YAY I finally made a respectable score on Word Challenge (by playfish). (A round in which I recall there were finally no abbreviations or acronymns or foreign words).

My list of words I didn't know is growing, but so is the list of words I'm learning.

I like the way Word Challenge offers the hint of showing how many words are possible and then placing the words one scores with in alphabetical and length order, amongst blanks for those that one hasn't yet found.

exon & copyright

In my efforts to learn these little words (not to stave off dementia, or become more clever, but because I want more versality to achieve better scores in word games) I've built on dictionary searches with image searches.

Today I found an excellent image that helps me see and remember what an exon is (and learned more about gene structure and splicing along the way). I'd like to share it using kwout, but that image was closely marked with a copyright notice and it prompted me to reconsider whether the link and reference to source provided by kwout is enough to abide copyright law?

Lessons I learned at school and uni about 10% for study and citing references I'm sure don't come close, and I was never sure about use of others' images or diagrams for school assignments.

How does it work here? As yet I'm not sure. Let me track the places I stopped to think:

The first article I discovered by Wesley Fryer was interesting (he cited a YouTube video Privacy Issues, Photos, and the Internet, and discussed how not to make the mistakes that were made in the Chang case) but not quite what I need.

However Wes' Winter 2003 article in TechEdge, “Copyright 101 for Educators” could be more informative. First point to stand out:

Tools for the TEKS: Integrating Technology in the Classroom via kwout

His description of fair use seemed relevant and similar to what I've read before on copyright in Australia, but then I realised I needed to access Australian information.... so:

Australian Copyright Council Information...

Apparently, copyright material might, in some very specific situations, be used without permission...

Aside from the circumstances for libraries, educational institutions and government there is fair dealing (summary of which I kwout from wikipedia instead of the Australian Copyright Council because I could only find it in pdf at ACC)

Fair dealing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia via kwout

Important subsequent points were that

• "each and every such use for research or study must be evaluated individually to determine whether it is fair";
  
• "Among the criteria used to determine the fairness of a use are the purpose and character of the dealing, the nature of the work, the possibility of obtaining the work commercially within a reasonable time, the effect of the use on the potential market for the work or on its value, and how much of a work is copied.";
  
• "There is no special exception that allows you to use a work without permission just because it is used for a nonprofit purpose."
  

Hm, so maybe I could print a copy of diagrams or images for me or my children to study, but: even if kwout links to the source, the act of internet re-publishing (even by a tiny blog with a known readership of two [including me]) an image which does not have an appropriate Creative Commons licence would seem to be in breach of copyright.

I'm looking forward to the Copyright unit I'll be taking in July.

So, in the meantime, as I've not heard back from the source, I'm going to avoid the risk and not kwout the copyrighted sketch of an exon.

But then there was another image - a 3d colour image that was interesting if not particularly explanatory... it had no copyright notice; but being hypersensitive now I won't post that one either because it didn't have a CC license.

So, all I'm left with is words:

Exon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia via kwout

plew or plu

plew - Definitions from Dictionary.com

Beaver Plew, From Discovering Lewis & Clark™ via kwout

herl

Peacock Herl
Originally uploaded by Bluewingoliver.

1. The barb of a feather used in trimming an artificial fly for angling.
2. A fishing fly made with this type of barb.

mon

Mon people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia via kwout

moa

Moa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia via kwout

Image:Giant Haasts eagle attacking New Zealand moa.jpg - Wikimedia Commons via kwout

ani

I will learn these strange three-letter words for Scramble, I will.

Particularly when lovely people photograph the subjects and label them, and add information to enhance my learning. I like the communal mothering of mother anis.

Anu-preto ou Pássaro Preto (Crotophaga ani) - Smooth-billed Ani 43 25-07-07 165 Uploaded on July 25, 2007 by Flávio Cruvinel Brandão via kwout

Vocab: ANOA

So, my latest research to nibble away at the enormous wealth of words I don't know yet:

ANOA:

anoa: Definition and Much More from Answers.com via kwout

Flickr tells me that I could see one if I plan a visit to the San Diego Zoo or Zoo Leipzig.

Codex Seraphinianus

or: the serendipity value of working at a different computer

As I didn't want to shut down the game I have on my own computer, and as the boys are away for the weekend, I thought I'd use one of their computers to get some work done.

Of course none of my browser tabs are homepages here, nor am I automatically signed in to the tools I use most frequently, so: on accessing my protopage I land at the public index page rather than my usual private start page. That's fine, I'll do a crossword, study a chess tactic and maybe play with or edit or refresh some of the widgets.

Oooh what's this on the Article of the Day widget (provided by The Free Dictionary)?

Codex Seraphinianus - encyclopedia article about Codex Seraphinianus. via kwout

Sounds interesting. Perhaps I'll see if I can look at it next time I'm near the State Library of South Australia.

Has any reader seen it and want to tell me what you thought?

Sensible RSS diet management

Martin Belam offers some excellent suggestions for managing RSS feeds to minimise the risk of information overload, atRSS Feeds: Managing the Mechanism.

I like the suggestion to use an audition folder - putting new feeds on trial - see whether they really give value for my reading time.

I'm Problem Plays?

Thanks to ADHD Librarian I took another silly quiz. Silly result too:

OkCupid.com: The Which Shakespeare Play Are You? Test - Online Dating Test via kwout

Vocab: toea

Today, I learn: toea: 100 toea equal 1 kina in Papua New Guinea.

Again, an image search was useful too:

koa guitar

Customized Kramer bass: Koa figuring
Originally uploaded by A.J. Kandy.

Vocab: koa, tree to table or guitar

Continuing my list of words I hadn't known

1. An acacia (Acacia koa) native to Hawaii having flowers arranged in axillary racemes and small sickle-shaped leaves:

koa tree
Originally uploaded by amy.kay.

becomes
2. The light-to-dark brown or reddish wood of this tree, used for furniture, crafts, cabinetry, and musical instruments....

Koa Table
Originally uploaded by liltree.

or

Customized Kramer bass: Koa figuring
Originally uploaded by A.J. Kandy.

Vocab: kea

Kea
Originally uploaded by Small.

This New Zealand parrot expands my word game vocabulary.

Vocab: kae

Jay; Garrulus glandarius
Originally uploaded by phenolog.

According to hydroponicsearch (sourced from gcide and 1913 Webster) the Eurasian Jay or Garrulus glandarius is also called "kae".

So that is why, if I remember, I could play kae in word games :-)

Vocab: hao

How many times do we need to receive information to remember it? 7?

Okay first time, thanks to Google:

Definitions of HAO on the Web:

* 10 hao equal 1 dong in Vietnam
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

* Hao is a large coral atoll in the central part of the Tuamotu Archipelago. Because of its shape, French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville named it Harp Island.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hao (French Polynesia)

and again thanks to kwout and the free online dictionary:

Vietnamese monetary unit - definition of Vietnamese monetary unit by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia. via kwout

So if that sticks I can use HAO in Upwords or Scrabble or ...

And maybe this piece of geographic data will come in handy one day:

The Tahiti Traveler - Hao travel guide via kwout

Vocab: goa, hae

Scramble delightfully tells me all the words I miss - and each time there are so many it is quite embarrassing. Or perhaps not - the letters are after all scrambled, and it is more "can you see them" than "do you know them", so okay I'm not so embarrassed. And maybe not even over some of the words that I didn't even realise were words, that is: sure I saw the letter combination but wouldn't even think to jot it because it is not to my knowledge a word.

Still, maybe knowing more words will help me see them better.

goa: n. A gazelle (Procapra picticaudata) native to Tibet and having backward-curving horns in the male. [The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, 2000, Houghton Mifflin Company.]

(making GOA an acceptable Scramble/Boggle, Scrabble word which I'd have thought to not be acceptable had I known only of: Goa - a state of southwestern India; a former Portuguese colony)

And maybe the information (with pictures) from Rufford Small Grants for Nature Conservation Foundation could help me remember:...

Yash Veer Bhatnagar | The Rufford Small Grants for Nature Conservation via kwout

And now to embed 'hae' in my memory:

Scots, Wha Hae Wi' Wallace Bled Analysis Robert Burns via kwout

Rationality in policy making

It's quicker to start a blog post than to log in to Blackboard to post an interesting but non-essential comment on the student discussion boards, so:

LibrarianInBlack: Ban a baby, ban a phone via kwout

YouTube Scholar

MEDIA PRAXIS is the Professor who created a course Learning from YouTube (which I found via one of Langwitches del.icio.us links for today: to openculture's guest feature by Alexandra Juhasz, which I'd really like to study from which I want to consider and learn/write/learn... when I have more time!).

I haven't noticed Library2.0 posts about that course yet, though I could have missed it, indeed I'm sure one of the Academic Library2.0 lot would have noticed and mentioned it.

Still I wanted to jot-blog about MEDIA PRAXIS and her course on YouTube because I also think Rach might be interested and I don't think she uses del.icio.us yet for me to 'for:' her, but she might be subscribed to my blog.

So, I haven't made any significant comments on what I'm quite certain would be a very rewarding tour of thought, which is a little embarrassing, but it is time for bed.

No I can't leave it at just text, got to add a photo or video... hmmmmmmmmmm.......

web design curiosities

Have you seen anywhere the cute little tick or ✓ next to a link indicating you have already viewed it (rather than an alternate colour)?
For example, from Man with no blog (which blog I surfed by today after following one of Kathryn Greenhill's tweets)



My first guess is that effect might be achieved with CSS - including the tick maybe as a .gif in the style for visited links?

Naturally to share and discuss this piece of cuteness I tried to kwout it first rather than PrintScreen & edit. I say "naturally" because kwouting is so quick and it is a new game for me. However one who understands how kwout works might amend "naturally" with "ignorantly" because whatever kwout is grabbing, it is not precisely what you're seeing.

For example: This that I first tried to kwout but for you to see what I saw (the cute tick next to the Twitter link) I had to cut from a PrintScreen:



when kwouted looked like this:

Man with no blog » Twitter Lemmings via kwout

Note kwout didn't capture the visited link style (which is fine, that style isn't important to anyone except me), and then I noticed that site colours and images are different too, compare
This cut of screenshot:


With two of different kwout grabs of the same page:

Man with no blog » Twitter Lemmings via kwout

And another time:

Man with no blog » Twitter Lemmings via kwout

and I haven't been able to get kwout to grab the same kwouted appearance I first saw for that page, but this is the style it had:

Man with no blog » Twitter Tours via kwout

Could someone resolve my curiosity about why that happens?

kwout comes in handy

Some time back one of my feeds mentioned kwout. I think I tried it first to capture the image of a game and I think it didn't work because it was a Flash game - doesn't matter anyway: kwout came in VERY handy this week to share an item of research for group work in the current unit (CULLB708C Manage Information Access) of my course (Advanced Diploma Library and Information Services). While I could have cut and paste the significant content, using kwout portrayed the information in its visual context, while providing due credit to the source:

About Us - Stark County District Library via kwout

It embedded nicely in the Blackboard discussion forum and e-portfolio group workspace.

Scrabulous, building my vocabulary

Playing Scrabulous on Facebook with fellow students from my course, I picked up the letters T W I B I L S. Very Monty Python sounding word I thought, but I was very surprised to find it a valid word!

Plural of twibil

n. - A kind of mattock, or ax; esp., a tool like a pickax, but having, instead of the points, flat terminations, one of which is parallel to the handle, the other perpendicular to it.
n. - A tool for making mortises.
n. - A reaping hook.

Nice, thanks MoreWords (Robert Hoare). Apparently if I'm armed with a twibil, I'm twibilled - according to onlinedictionary [from a 1913 Webster].

I was fascinated by one of More Words' random words:

vug : rock cavity: a small hole in a rock or vein that often contains a mineral lining that differs from that of the surrounding matrix - MSN Encarta

from which one can apparently make an adjective: vuggy

Watch out Helen & Graham, I'll be stronger for our next Upwords game.

Jigsaw drama

Hands Up jigsaw
Originally uploaded by moonflowerdragon.

If you take a close look at the picture can you see what drama is being played out?

Threads

Let's see if I can remember the path that led me to the amusing animation that I feel compelled to share.

Ah yes, it is actually a very short trip... it was the diversions that have taken so long.

First, naturally, my Bloglines - where Langwitches most recent post about her latest Voicethread caught my curiosity.

I'm still wondering what a bottle on a car means in Argentina because the answer is not yet at her Voicethread: What Could it Mean.

Some of the other Voicethreads looked interesting:

• amypalko's Colour Poetry demonstrates an idea for value-adding, archiving, sharing family, homeschooler or even school children's creative work.


• Kathleen Kyzer's UNC Chapel Hill in Second Life by using one web2.0 initiative to promote another begged me to view and was just interesting enough to keep me viewing though it was so slow I almost quit it several times.


• Freda Nichols' Dixie's House appeared to be using the tool for an art class activity - much like one could in Flickr (without voice).


• I'd like to see my boys use Voicethread to share their activities like cmmatzat did for his Lego Base


• I was so intrigued by Tom Taylor's High Speed Photography that I embedded the thread at Counting Everything, maybe one day I'll try out the technique he explained so clearly.


• The first image of sabestian's Kenya Escape wasn't so appealing to me, but I was curious to hear about a family's escape from war torn Kenya, and am glad I explored it.

Although I haven't created my own Voicethread yet, it looks a lot easier to create than a video.

amypalko's letter writing voicethread mentioned her Lives Less Ordinary Tumblr at which I found this video:
Les Triplettes de Belleville

643 or 747?

Where to classify books and magazines about designs of kitchens and other rooms? Interior decorating 747 or housing & household equipment 643? It was easy enough for magazines whose focus leaned definitely to decorative elements but what about when the focus is as much style/decoration (colours/accessories) as overall practical structure for household function as for building or renovating?

I'm torn, there doesn't feel like enough difference between the sets of numbers. Seems cataloguers are too: eg: for kitchen designing: Libraries Australia have over 300 at 643.3 over 200 in 747.797 What do you do?

Classifying: permaculture home garden

Librarythinging still: grateful to Libraries Australia for sharing records.

So, tonight I shelve indoor plants at 635.915 having checked that is the number for indoor plant cultivation; only to see that I had shelved
The permaculture home garden by Linda Woodrow at 635.987 (as given by Libraries Australia)... hm but a 30 seconds ago I was reading that 635.9 was floriculture.

Clearly when I checked it the first time I went straight to that number in the schedules, read "organic gardening" and didn't even read a little upwards, or I would have seen that .98 is "special methods of cultivation in floriculture" - not the subject of this book. So, I read backwards a little further... ah there is a .04 *Cultivation, harvesting, related topics to which I may add as instructed under 633-635... like with 84 organic farming.

Yes I like that better 635.0484, and I'm not the only one: Libraries Australia tells me that is its DDC at Armidale Dumaresq Council War Memorial Library, Clarence Regional Library, TAFE SA O'Halloran Hill Campus Library and University of Adelaide Roseworthy Campus. Of the other libraries who show their DDC most have 635.987, although some have 631.58, 631.5825 (neither of which I would use because this book is specifically for the home garden, not a work on permaculture in larger-scale agriculture like Graham Bell's The Permaculture Garden).

Aside: just because I learned from it: Libraries Australia listed the book at Rockdale City Library with DDC: 636.987 which is not a valid number (the closest being 636.9865 or 636.988 baboons as pets or great apes as pets respectively). I wonder why they don't appear to have the book anymore was it weeded as never having been borrowed?

:inner screams of joy: I love this!

Now that I think about it I'll have to see whether I took any photos of the garden I made back in 1999ish following this book.