Week 10 - mashups

straight faced, originally uploaded by winnie-ago-go.

Another really interesting adventure, had an excellent time checking out the universe - its one of the problems with online learning - you just lose so much time checking things out, but really was a pleasure. Messed around with the google maps and located the library and added a placemark as well - very easy. Back to work - loved playing with big labels and so easy to use to.

Uses in the library, definately useful for local history, library walks, promotion of events. As 'they' say - limited only by ones imagination. I've spent so much time playing that my imagination is quite spent. (what a way to spend a sunny sunday)

Week 9: Podcasts and Audio

Podcasting our very popular author talks would be a great way of promoting the library and offer an alternative for our patrons who are unable to attend. These talks are generally held at lunch times and patrons have often commented that they were disappointed that they had missed out. Podcasts advertising the Library and Council's upcoming events or interviews pertinent to the community could be added to library's site.

Staff trainings and meetings would be another area where this medium could be useful.

The quality of some of the casts I listened to were quite poor so I would hope that this would be addressed if we were to use this means of communication.

Week 7: Tagging, folksonomies, del.icio.us and LibraryThing

Can't believe it - just went it to make a minor adjustment and lost the whole topic. Can't - won't go through the whole thing again but in brief:

Del.icio.us - Fantastic, have often lost bookmarked sites due to upgrades etc. this gives us one space where all colleagues can allocate useful sites, thereby saving time, frustration and irritation.

Library Thing, liked it a lot and very easy to use. Thought that it would be very useful for our library patrons particularly the book clubs and link could be added to our library site. Not only for the obvious use of materials etc. but for social interaction and added reasons to be internet savvy.

Week 8: Answer boards and social searching

"slaming the boards" - I think it would be a great public relations exercise and useful for staff in gain experience in this form of information service. As our library doesn't have an "Ask a librarian" link this could be used in place of it with library patrons voting etc. and may create a more relaxed, relative and contemporary view of Libraries and Librarians in general. The more interesting questions could be posted on our site and patrons invited to comment etc.

However, for this to be relevant it would demand an amount of staff hours that may not be available.

Again, another interesting concept that I had no idea existed.

week 6 - Video online; Youtube and Google video 'And the winner is... The Dancing Robots'

week 5 - wiki

Another amazing journey into this other world. I've really enjoyed checking things out and seeing how the other half use the technology available.

At this point I think the information that wiki's contain can't be relied upon as a reference tool but more of a quick starting point, such as Wikipedia. This is a shame really as there's such a lot of info on such diverse subject areas and so easily accessed.

However, as I was checking things out I found, what I think ,to be a really interesting, off-beat wiki
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Another wiki I really like, but for completely different reasons, is the Psychology Wiki . No, not so I can solve the worlds problems but because it has quite clear instruction on how to do things and what material it is after etc.
http://psychology.wikia.com/index.php?title=Psychohistory_and_phenomenology_of_the_soul&action=edit

As for its use within the library? Well... I think at this time, they would be more useful if assigned to the intranet, for discussion, planing and those types of things and where there would be some ownership of edits etc.

Wiki's could be used on the homepage to invite groups to join e.g literature groups. I would expect their would need to be some sort of administrator and the down side would be that it could become exclusive. Although, we do internet classes now so maybe it won't be too long until wiki's become the class subject area. Most anything is possible.

week 4 - RSS

I have found this week's tasks to be relatively easy - that was until I tried to attach a subscription to my blog. However, persistance has paid off and I do have a feed showing on this blog.

I really enjoy the Commoncraft demonstrations, it all seems so straight forward, clearcut and amusing. Loved the New Scientist site, it has always been a favourite of mine but was unable to attach as a feed, I thought it may have some copyright restrictions as no matter how hard I tried to attach it - it just didn't want to do it. However, 'Word of the Day', won the day along with the Womens Weekly recipies search.

AWW - Recipe Search and
ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

I have learnt a lot from taking part in this initiative, not only about the technique of blogging but also how much amazing information, pictures, ideas and just plain stuff that's available out there. Which is quite amazing in itself as I use the internet for work and research but have never just checked it out, so to speak.

As for RSS in the workplace, I have no doubt it will be a very useful tool and will be incorporated into the library's blog advertising upcoming events, such as writer's talk or children's story time activities. I'm not really sure what would work best but I sure someone will.