Istanbul to Selçuk

Istanbul ıs wonderful. Lookıng out across the waters to the poınt where Europe meets Asia wıth mınarets scattered on the skyline everywhere you feel as if you are in one of the world's timeless great cities.
We arrived early on Saturday and met up wıth the group after lunch. The And Hotel ıs perfectly situated.We have a wonderful view of the Aya Sophia from our wındow and the vıew from the roof terrace restaurant ıs spectacular. The group ıs great and our leader ıs Turkish whıch ıs such an advantage over an Australian leader.
The first afternoon we took an orientation walk, starting with the tomb of Mehmet İİ. We have all become old hands now at removing our shoes and donning headscarfs when we walk into mosques and other holy buildings. One of the highlights of the walk was the Rustem Pasha Mosque, hidden away in the old spice market. Not big, but full of beautiful blue tile work. Then we wandered down to the water and over the Galatea Bridge, finishing up with the first of many great meals. The food so far has been universally great. Perfectly grilled and spiced meats, fantastic eggplant dishes and other vegetables etc. Gözleme whıch ıs a traditional specialty of thinly rolled pancake like pastry stuffed with what you want - spinach and feta in my case.
Sunday mornıng (after breakfast on the terrace) we went to the Aya Sophia Museum. İt was a 6th century church that was turned ınto a mosque after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire and then Ataturk restored it as a monument to both traditions in the 1920s. Visited also the Blue Mosque (too big, too many people)and the smaller Aya Sophia whıch we all preferred.Again very exquisite tilework. İ am actually becoming really keen on mosques (which is lucky in the circumstances).
Justin and İ went to Topkapi Palace in the afternoon. İt is at least as big as any other palace we have seen - even Windsor Castle(land size anyway)İ think. The harem quarters were amazing. Room after room unfolding with increasing degrees of decoration until you reach the inner sanctums.Tile work of such elegance and beauty. The afternoon was topped off by walking to the edge of the grounds and having tea at a cafe on the terrace overlooking the water and across at İstanbul at the point where the Bosphorus meets the Golden Horn and flows into the Sea of Marmara. An absolutely timeless and great city of the world.
And then we walked back along the steep winding old cobbled streets, gloriously colured tulips everywhere until we found a fish house for dinner.
On Monday morning we took the ferry to Yalov and then caught a bus to Bursa a large and wealthy town with a main street like anywhere else except for some very fine mosques of various styles. The highlight of the evening was seeing the Whirling Dervishes in action. The performance was fascinating and had to be seen to be believed. It immediately had the 2 drs in our group analysing the physiological reasons for being able to spin non stop for 20 mins. This was followed by a trip to a late night dive and some of us (not me) indulging in water pipe smoking.
Yesterday we spent most of the day on a bus from Bursa to Selçuk which is a really lovely and ancient village in a stunning location. Sitting on the terrace we look out over hills and ancient ruins.
We wandered around the town checking out the ruins from as long ago as Roman times. There are giant stork nests on top of old aqueducts guarded by the graceful big birds.
After a delicious dinner on the terrace the whole group headed of the Haman (Turkish baths) where we all rinsed ourselves in the communal bath and then lay on a large marble slab in the middle of this hot steam room. Then we were scrubbed down and given soap massages by the masseurs followed by oil massages. Amazing.

Yesterday we went to the ruins of Ephesus whıch must be one of the best preserved ancient cities. It has a history dating back from 1000 BC to maybe 500 AD and has remains of Byzantıne, Greek and Roman civilisations. Amelia - your hero Augustus visited in 29 BC. The grandest building was the Library (as it should be) which was built to rival the one at Alexandria and the original facade is still standing.
Some of us followed this up in the afternoon with a visit to the Ephesus Museum which contains much of the contents of the excavated houses. We also walked up the hill to St. John's Basilica which was built in the 500s by Emperor Justinian to honour St. John the Gospel. Our own Justin has been fighting a losing battle by trying to explain to everyone (guide included) that this is not the same John who was a disciple of Jesus but they all persist in thinking he lived to 120.
Our group took a dolmus up to Sirinçe which is an old Greek village ın the mountains wıth very unusual domestic architecture. İt is famous for fruit wines and our guide took us to a wine house to taste many. They were not to my taste but others imbibed freely and a very relaxed group headed of for dinner ın yet another rooftopcafe wıth an unbelievable view. The group has relaxed now and we have some very amusing people so there is much banter and fun. Our own Prince Harry is obviously wasted ın the British Army. And the food continues to be delicious if somewhat predictable.

#23 Is this really the end? Or just the beginning...

I was always positive about the 23 Things concept but working through this program has exceeded my expectations. I have discovered more useful tools than I had thought possible, started new initiatives for our library service, had fun, but lost sleeping time.

I’m so glad I understand rss feeds. I have become quite dependent upon Bloglines for keeping up to date so I am constantly exposed to new library ideas and possibilities. My blogines feeds include Technorati and podcast searches.
I use Del.icio.us all the time. I search by my Rollyos when I want information on medicines, to locate an art image or to find a recipe. I will continue to upload photos to Flickr but more importantly use it as a very valuable image resource. And of course I love image generators. Library Thing is now part of my own profile as well as being a useful bibliographic tool. YouTube has given me more laughs than anything else for quite a while. I am now in the habit of storing vital documents on Zoho for easy retrieval.

At our library we have started uploading our data to Library Thing to test whether we can use their Libraries product. We are using contacts found via library blogs to add code to our catalogue that will allow users to add rss feeds from updates.
We are planning on starting a staff library blog as a communication means. We are exploring online book clubs and are also looking at wikis.
We would like to offer podcasts of our author talks and much much more.

And following (yet again) the example of Vampgirl, the next step is Learning 2.1.

#22 Audiobooks

As someone who listens constantly to audiobooks whilst walking, cooking, driving etc I was quite excited by the prospect of a new trove of titles to plunder. I was even thinking of seriously asking the red suited man in the sky for an ipod. From a personal point of view I was slightly disappointed with the range of titles offered on World eBooks and Gutenberg although they do offer some great classic titles. And I liked the fact that on the Audiobooks for Free site you could listen to a sample prior to downloading. Nevertheless I now feel inspired to discover what might be available via subscription sites.
Some public libraries offer downloadable audio titles for limited loan periods. Pretty canny - they automatically delete off the listening device when the loan period expires.
I would like to explore offering this service at our library. SirsiDynix have a product that does this. However at the moment it is limited I think because the titles cannot be downloaded to an ipod. When they resolve these licensing issues, we would certainly consider purchasing it.

#21 Podcasts

I decided to see how easy it was to make a podcast myself so you can listen to what I found out about podcasts whilst doing this exercise.
Listen to my podcast
To do this, I downloaded Audacity to record my spoken words. I also had to download an mp3 encoder to be able to export the file as an mp3 file. I then had to register with Box.net to store host the file online so it could be shared with the word via this blog.

For my fellow IT persons in libraries

#20 Down the Tube

Yet more byways in which to lose oneself.

I spent more time than I had on YouTube. I was looking for a genuinely funny video about libraries and chose this one for what has to be the most morale boosting line for librarians battling with 2.0 = "Dewey is like Google for smart people".
Another close contender was "The Professional Librarian" dealing with correct returns policy. Also worth a look are the YouTube Salute to librarians and clips from Monty Python and Mary Hartman.
Of course there are some serious videos where libraries are using YouTube for promotional or training purposes that we could adapt and adopt. I would especially like to explore offering a YouTube clip on the catalogue that would engage users with our databases so they could find the resources they wanted to when they really needed them.
Something else that I discovered whilst doing this exercise - YouTube has an amazing diversity of material. I hadn't really expected that it could also be such a powerful information repository, despite its searching limitations. Quite by chance in a search for "London" and "library", I came across some footage related to concentration camps during the second world war. My father was a victim of several so I started looking for some shots of any of his camps in what I suppose is a continuing search of mine to make up for the conversations I never had with him whilst he was alive. I was marvelling at the depth of resources when I came across some very powerful footage that was accompanied by a glorious Bach cantata and I realised that this clip was actually a celebration or worse of the Holocaust. This was very chilling and I ceased these explorations.

So moving right along and nothing to do with libraries- this clip is for other baby boomers who started watching television in the late fifties.

#19 Weaving the web

Working my way through these Web 2.0 winners could take some time. Lucky it's a rainy Sunday. There are some wonderful tools for people and libraries to use, but gosh some people do just have too much time on their hands, leading innocent bystanders like me into temptation. I have resisted, yet again, the urge to sign up for an organization tool Backpack. Seriously though, does the world need sites that look for True Stories in one sentence or a tool for sending emails with all your corrections in it? And more self-publishing in Lulu? I am reminded of Martin Luther: The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing; every one must be an author; some out of vanity, to acquire celebrity and raise up a name, others for the sake of mere gain. Table Talk, 1530s.
So thought I'd focus on some tools for libraries. Library Thing we already know about and love. I looked at Biblio which is a rare and second hand book finder that I wasn't aware of, and will use again. I like the fact that some of their profits are donated towards communities in need.
I thought I would look at some other searching tools and was sidetracked by Swicki. I couldn't resist adding my search for food and cooking videos widget on the left. Just enter a search term and it will locate relevant videos for you. I might even like it more than Rollyo but I will have to explore further. I definitely want to add some of these metasearch tools to our website.
I was most impressed by the tools that rely upon collaborative knowledge eg. Listdump, Craigslist, Yahoo Answers, all of which I have used. And I was very taken with Boxxset which is a tool for bringing together different media eg. blogs, videos, fan fiction etc all on one topic. Would be particularly useful for cult titles and TV shows.
Google Maps I already knew about and have used quite extensively. They can be added to library sites where appropriate and I have even annotated the maps using an image generator. (Thank you Thing #5)
I might just have to go and play with a few more tools now. But I will leave you with this link to the Top 87 Bad Predictions about the Future and a tip for those who still have time to live a real first life. Go and see Death at a funeral. It will have you laughing out loud.