"The Salt Lake County Library System has an activity to get children to use the Dynix system. You have been locked in a room by an evil professor. In order to escape you must answer questions that can be answered through going to the Dynix catalog." [Library News Daily]

This is totally cool, and it gives me an idea for LibraryU modules. I think we could do something similar for SWAN using the quizzes function, without worrying about a table of contents of data. Just straightforward interactive quizzes, no frames, and maybe even a little Flash or animated GIFs. SWANee, how I love you, SWANee....

Just a note to my fellow shifted librarians - if there's any way at all you can syndicate your content so that it can be added to news aggregators, you should do it. Not only does it make it easier for me (yes, this is a selfish request) to keep up with what you're posting, but it also makes it easier to spread your memes. I know that sounds like I'm advocating the spread of a disease, but after all, information is contagious!

So for my Blogger friends, if you have a spare minute, I encourage you to follow Steven's example and RSSify your site and put the little orange "XML" graphic on your site.

From the Mail Bag [via Boing Boing]

A U.S. Deputy Attorney General finds the Nigerian Email Scam in his inbox and responds. This ranks right up there with Yours Is a Very Bad Hotel!

"Your offer is most inviting, and your generous proposal of compensation for my efforts is equally compelling. In return for assisting you and your colleagues in carrying out this false scheme, you will pay me 25% of the $19 million, or $4.75 million. You carefully set aside 5% of the total

to offset all local and foreign expenses that might be incurred for this transaction,

and only wish to recover the remaining $13.3 million for yourselves.

How could I possibly quibble over such generous terms? Please, count me in....

However, to provide the necessary assurances, I must also respectfully suggest that as a gesture of your own good faith, we should conduct an initial face-to-face meeting, prior to taking any further steps toward obtaining the $19 million.

In my work as a Deputy Attorney General, I have found that there is no substitute for direct personal contact when engaging in multi-million dollar transactions.

Therefore, I urge you to travel to Dover, Delaware, and meet me at Room 2001 in the J. Allen Frear Federal Building, 300 South New Street, on March 15, 2002 at 9:30 a.m. It’s close by my office, so it won’t be hard to slip out to meet you.

As you will no doubt discover through your own careful research, such as you conducted when you sent me this e-mail, Room 2001 in the Frear Building happens to be the local office of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)."

For Dad:

"Candidcolors. If you like photography (you know who you are) have a look at this..." [Rogi]

Sheree sent me this funny story about Jason Black's Mini Schnauzer, and she suggests that we do the same. Seeing Rosie, the Cutest Puppy in the World, from work... awesome! Maybe we could hook Rosie up with Anubis, eh Andy? Bruce, send me the webcam or get me some video feeds of Anna Banana!

BTW, new pics of Rosie coming soon.

Next month, Kailee turns eight-years old. She's getting to be a good reader, but she's really a social creature. She loves, loves, loves to talk, and she's very artistic. So for her birthday, I think I'm going to give her a blog. A Radio blog, to be specific. Here's my reasoning, in no particular order.

1. Radio makes it eight-year old easy. Typing in a box and pressing a button is perfect for someone my age, let alone her age.
   
2. It will help her continue to learn spelling and grammar, while motivating her to look up words in the dictionary. We can use it to teach her to think through her thoughts before posting them.
   
3. I've already registered her domain name because she wanted a Web site, but I was going to have to act like a funnel and put her stories, pictures, etc. on the Web for her. This lets her do it herself, which should be a point of pride for her. Of course, we'll totally monitor everything she posts, but it will also help maintain her current interest in computers and the Net.
   
4. Letting her post her own pages will show her how easy it is to post anything on the Web, which will go a long way towards teaching her information literacy. For example, last week we argued with her because she saw a site that listed her brother's Chinese sign as "Pig." We tried to explain it was the year of the pig and that he wasn't literally a pig, but she just kept saying, "Well, that's what the site said." So if she sees Web publishing for herself, I think she'll be much more critical of what she reads elsewhere. And that's a "good thing."
   
5. With the new rssDistiller tool, she can subscribe to some of the kids sites, which will help her learn how to channel information.
   

6. And finally, we can totally embarass her at her wedding with posts from when she a kid.  :-)

Adding comments to your site forces you to start thinking about how you respond to other bloggers.

When someone leaves a comment for one of my posts, or when I want to respond to a message on someone else's Web site, I have to decide how best to handle this. Do I blog the response so that everyone benefits from seeing it and it's archived (and hope that the original person will see my response), or do I just leave a response comment on the other person's site? Or both? Is this also a matter of comments etiquette?

New forms of communication mean new decisions for disseminating information. And not that they're all that new, but they are for me so I'm having to look at comments as another information tool and evaluate how best to implement them in terms of the knowledge contained within.

Of course, some of this is new because the YACCS commenting system makes it so easy for me to blog the comments other people leave on my site. That way, I'm not the only one seeing them, and I become a funnel for that information as well.

What do you think? Leave me a comment. ;-)

Registered Radio User Eric went back and registered Radio, which is great for all of the reasons he mentions. Here's the part that's making my head spin, though:

"BTW - For anyone interested, that last posting came from Library Techlog as displayed in my NewsIsFree aggregator and then using RadioExpress posted to LibTech Weblog (Powered By Movable Type) via the Blogger API from within Radio 8.0's post to weblog feature using xManilaBloggerBridge by Steve Hooker.

Why ?... I'm still trying to answer that myself." [LibTech Weblog]

John Robb is right that Mary Wehmeier's Radio Weblog is great. Besides the expert insights into figure skating and the behind-the-scenes run-downs, it's an excellent example of how easily blogging lets an individual share her knowledge with the entire world. Yes, knowledge management on a global scale. It will be interesting to go back and read Mary's comments about the various skaters in four years to see how they've changed. Also check out what happened when Mary tried to blog live with her Handspring Visor from the ice arena.

But my favorite part is reading about the figure skating "Posse," or as she puts it, the " 'been there-- done that' club'. " I'm just sorry I didn't point out this blog sooner, but of course you can go back and read through what she's already written.