If you are an active Twitterer, or even if you just use it occasionally, it is hard to figure out which of the people you are following are still active.  Enter Twitoria, a service that finds your friends who haven’t tweeted in awhile you so can stop following them if you like. 

Just enter your Twitter username and you can scan for friends who haven’t tweeted in a specific period of time.  It defaults to inactive for the past month. 

For me, I had only a handful of people whose accounts are dormant.  Explains the stream of tweets I get each day.  Now if Google Reader would alert me to dormant feeds…

Malice Domestic has announced the nominees for the 2009 Agatha Awards.  The awards are given to mystery and crime writers who write in the traditional method. 

The nominees for Best Novel are below.  Awards are also given for Best First Novel, Best Nonfiction, Best Short Story, and Best Children/ Young Adult.

Best Novel:

Six Geese A-Slaying by Donna Andrews (Minotaur Books)
A Royal Pain by Rhys Bowen (Penguin Group)
The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books)
Buckingham Palace Gardens by Anne Perry (Random House)
I Shall Not Want by Julia Spencer-Fleming (Minotaur Books)

Putting up a poll of your website about the nominees might be fun.

John Welsh has an interesting article about how he approaches blogging.  He writes, saves, waits, thinks, rewrites, sleeps on it, etc.  I can see the value of posting in this way, and in some ways I think it may make some of us more comfortable with blogging.

But I have to admit, this is not how I blog.  I blog quickly, capturing that moment, a new find, a thought.  My pleasure in blogging is not in rewriting.  It is in sharing my thoughts whether they are well-edited or not. 

I recognize that we all have different styles of blogging.  But one of his points makes me a little ticked: "If blogging is not your full time job, write only during the weekend." No.  I refuse to even accept that this is good advice for anyone.  It is how to get the unpaid, hobbyist bloggers out of the game.  I blog at my work, but certainly not full-time. 

So I will leave you with my quickly posted thoughts on blogging:

1.  Blog what you love.

2.  Blog when you like.

3.  Blog where you wish.

4.  Just write.

Get Rich Slowly has a nice selection of true-life stories that revolve around frugality.  It would make an interesting library display or a nice featured article on your library blog. 

You could tie it into the President’s new Recovery.gov web site if you are looking for more political discussion on your site.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about categories in life and in libraries.  Here in libraries things tend to be a lot more cut and dried than outside the building.  We love to classify things, so we do it with everything.  MLS or no.  Children or adults.  Periodical or pamphlet.  Loud floor or quiet area.  Director or Board?

Sounds easy?  Sometimes it is.  But really the art of librarianship comes when those lines blur and it is no longer clear cut.  When is a book for teens and when for older elementary children?  When do you order that book or decide to pass on it? 

And for management, it becomes even more of a dance, an art form.  When is it alright for circulation staff to answer reference questions?  When does negative behavior cross the line into a written warning?  When do staff get to make decisions and where is that policy line that must not be crossed?

Those are the moments when it becomes real to me.  When the questions are asked that cannot be answered with a pie chart or a graph.  When we must decide each on our own what the line is.  Those are the moments of real librarianship, real management.  The rest are easy.  This is difficult, satisfying and worthwhile.

Trackle is an interesting new service.  It lets you track almost anything online.  You can be alerted about a large list of items, each one customizable for your own personal interests. 

Follow local news but only the keywords you want.  Get alerted about a new book being released from a favorite author.  Track your home property value.  Get weather alerts.  And much, much, much more.

The perfect Friday link!

I love desktop wallpaper.  It’s a quick and free way to have your own personalized environment on your computer.  I’ve just discovered DesktopGaming, a site that offers wallpaper based on retro gaming systems. 

As with any wallpaper for your computer, you will need to know your screen resolution.  Click on browse to find out all of the choices you have.  You can choose from arcade games, Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, Genesis, various Nintendo systems, PC or Playstation amongst others. 

I’ve been waiting to try this one for awhile!  It got hit so hard when it was first announced that they had to take some time to handle the load of hits.  But now they seem to be open to having new users again.  You will need your OPML file from your feed reader.

The results seem to be focused on technology blogs right now (not a big surprise) but I can already see that there is some customizing of the results.  There are several foodie blogs on my list, just not in the top group of results.

I look forward to seeing this refine as it gets more users with a wider range of interests.  For now, it’s a great place to try out, a service that is needed for RSS fans, and a cool list of feeds.

Early this morning, I sent rushed emails out that I would not be able to make Library Legislative Day in Madison.  I also tweeted it which in turn updated my Facebook status. 

Almost immediately, I received a clever reply from a local library director, the wonderful Terry Dawson.  The best part was that I knew that someone who was going to be there would know why I wasn’t going to make it. 

It worked so much better than email, because that is so targeted and you don’t want to bother people via email who have no interest in your making a meeting or not.   It underlined for me the power of social networking to reach people both near and far.  Sometimes the information is rather important, like this.  Other times I get to show a more personal side of myself.  And still others, I get to share links or laughs.  A very nimble and flexible technology, ain’t it!