Showing posts with label catalogue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label catalogue. Show all posts

Sunday, February 09, 2014

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words

Château de Krujë
By Inkey (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

This week's 23 Things module is about using images properly. Our first challenge was to find a Creative Commons image and post it in our blog with the proper attributions. I chose this image, because it reminds me of a trip I took to Albania in 2008. This is Castle Krujë (Croo-yah), an old fort from the Middle Ages which Albanian hero Skanderbeg succesfully defended against the Ottomans on multiple occasions.

I also had fun playing around with Wordle and creating this Olympic-themed word cloud.

















Although it is very easy to create images in Wordle, it's not so easy to save them if you want to create a .jpeg or some other image that you can keep. If you opt to save your creation to a public gallery, the tool will give you some HTML code that you can use to post the image to your blog, but you can't control the size. To get this image, I had to take a screenshot, open it in Adobe Photoshop, and create the .jpeg from there. In this regard, I prefer WordItOut, which allows you to save your creations easier.

Finally, I always wondered where all those funny memes come from on Facebook. Now, thanks to 23 Things, I know. The cool extra thing I tried today was creating a movie poster. This one is for my friend Rainey:


Background image by Stuart Caie from Edinburgh, Scotland (Indexed) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

A Social Catalogue

This week's 23 Things task was to explore the social features of our catalogue. Gone are the days of searching through cards to find a Dewey number. Now we can rate the books we've read, post comments, read reviews and follow fellow bibliophiles! I think it's wonderful. I love the little carousel that shows the covers of books that have been recently reviewed. It's helped me discover some great titles to add to my "For Later" shelf. It's also really convenient to have a "Completed" shelf. I read a lot of series books, and it helps me keep track of what I've already read.