Lists: April 2008 Archives

We've had a long spate of grey skies and dreary weather in my part of the world, but this morning I woke up to sunny blue skies. Something about having sunshine hit your eyelids first thing when you wake up...it is almost guaranteed to make you feel good. Maybe it's spring fever, but I'll take it, I'll take it!

So I was already thinking about springtime and our long-since-planned, waiting-to-be-enacted landscaping project in the backyard this morning. Last night my neighbor and I were talking about whether the price of oil would affect the price of our planned asphalt drive. He was certain the cost would go up over last year's quote.

So I had home projects on the brain when I logged into e-mail this morning. And what a nice coincidence I found, when my friend Kelly sent a note about her green attempts as a homeowner. Now she lives in a warmer climate than I--her Spring has already started! But her entries inspired me to look again at green landscaping options for our project.

Maybe you, too, will find some inspiration from these green lists on WorldCat. At some point I will get to move my digging from online sources to the soil...but until then it is fun to see what inspiration others have found in WorldCat. What color are your dreams?

I don't know if you blog. But maybe you know someone who does. Other than me, that is. Or somebody who manages Web pages of some kind. Or somebody who likes to send links in email.

Part of the fun of blogging for me is sharing stuff that I like with people I know. And on the Web, "sharing" means "sending you a link." And if you've gone to the trouble of creating a list in WorldCat, it's almost freakishly easy to turn that list into a set of click-able links for your blog, Web site or email.

1. Get an account and create a list in WorldCat.
2. Go to the "Citations View" tab of the list.
3. Pick the citation style you like (I prefer MLA for this kind of list)
4. Choose to "Export selected references as:" HTML
5. And click on "Export."

At that point, you need to tell your browser where you want the HTML file to go to. Usually, I just direct it to be opened in another tab/window of the browser itself. But you can send it to a text editor or word processing program, too.

Now... Take that new HTML page of text+hyperlinks, select everything, and paste it into your blog engine, Web page or email. Depending on what software you're using, it might go in just as a copy/paste, or you may have to play with your tags a bit. It worked for me that easily in Gmail and in WordPress. Let me know how it goes elsewhere.