Week 12 - the journey is over!

Well I finally reached the end of the program and what a whirlwind it has been. I feel like I have learnt such a lot, now I just need to find the time to explore all I have learnt in more depth, the best way to learn about something is to explore and practise so that is my next step. I find the social networking arena amazing and interesting but to be honest the amount of time needed to keep up with my friends in real life can sometimes be hard to find let alone keep up with online friends. I did discover while exploring Facebook that there will be a high school reunion for my year in June and many people who I have often wondered about over the years will be there, thank you library 2.0 for making me more comfortable and familiar with all of these new and fun technologies.

I think there can be some very great benefits to libraries with regard to all of these technologies especially the social networking side of things, marketing and client interaction can be enhanced. Some lucky member of staff one day will be assigned this type of job and I kind of envy them, although the work involved in maintaining these types of things could be overwhelming at times. Overall I have thoroughly enjoyed this experience, I only wish I had more time to explore everything each week but plan to re-visit many of the sites later at my own pace. Thank you State Library for organising this lifelong learning experience.

Week 11 - Fantastic online sharing tools!

I really enjoyed the tasks for this week, I learnt about a lot of very useful applications/tools that I feel I can actually use in my personal as well as professional life. The file conversion site, Zamzar, will be very useful and the ease of sharing and editing documents with colleagues and friends with Google Docs has great possibilities. We have a similar type of sharing documents via an electronic document management system but this requires all parties to access work remotely (very slow to use) in order to use the program. Google docs just requires an internet connection and would be much faster.

Week 10 - Mashup fun!

I used big huge labs to create a jigsaw of a photo I had of our water irises, can't wait to try other things like the cube etc.

Week 9 - Podcasts

Podcasts could be used by our library to record oral histories and share the experiences of the local community to a wider audience than those we can attract physically. Our library has also started to implement a 'Living library' project and this type of web 2.0 technology could be vital in promoting the 'books', encouraging more 'books' to register and gaining a greater audience. There are a number of housebound patrons who would probably like to participate or listen to the project but can't due to physical restrictions, this could be one way of engaging them in the library and wider community.

Week 8 - Slammin the boards

Answer boards seem to be a more formalised and permanent form of 'Ask now' which could be very useful in helping to answer some of the more frequently asked reference questions, we could post common questions and their answers in one central place and then update them as needed, it would also be a good way to receive positive and/or negative reviews of our services and collections. Potentially a very useful reference tool.

Week 7 musings

Del.icio.us could be a very useful site to have if you use multiple computers or browsers as it is like having a roaming profile and saves you having to transfer bookmarks. The tagging aspect of things is great for categorising links and helping to discover other similar sites you may not be able to stumble across on your own. It is a way of taking some of the harder part of research away by letting others who have already done the searching help out.

Library Thing could be very useful in discovering similar books by genre in a one stop shop. It can be used both in a personal sense and professionally for readers advisory questions such as 'who writes like...'. Sometimes it is hard to find out about authors without searching multiple sites, will look more in depth later when I have some time.

Video's

Well, I have had fun exploring YouTube and Googel video, there are a lot of weird and wonderful videos out there. I even discovered my local library renovation videos, it is amazing how huge the place looks without shelving! I can see that online video can be very useful in promoting services and events for the library, we just need the equipement and permission to do it!

For a good laugh check out this video on YouTube called 'how not to conduct a reference interview' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp0ldGHhJTs), I would try and embed it but I have run out of time today.

Wiki, wiki's everywhere!

Well I have looked at some of the wiki's mentioned in the Library 2.0 blog and have found the whole concept very interesting. I really like the idea of using an intranet style one to inform staff about policies and procedures, they seem to change rapidly and no-one ever seems to know where the latest version of things are saved. One easy location that is easily edited sounds fantastic! Love the star wars and book lover's review wiki's, one is fun, the other useful if implemented by a library, can get patrons to easily write their own reviews to share.

I have finally managed to find some time to complete week 5, yeah!! I have added comments to the wiki!! At first I was confused about where to add my input, there was no Collection Development position listed, chose Technical Services and there were other Collection staff so managed to get that right. Then I was not sure where to add my comment, at the top or under the rest, decided to go to the bottom of the class (so to speak). Wrote my stuff decided text looked boring and discovered (through google of course) a useful site to find html font colour codes and made my text dark purple, for those who are curious the code is:#800080.

RSS fun!

Well, I may be behind schedule but I have signed up for Bloglines and added the following feeds:
Quotes of the day; Powerhouse museum photo of the day; Librarybytes; ABS blog for Librarians and assorted ABC news ones including science, entertainment, offbeat. Adding the feeds was a little challenging at first but managed OK. Am enjoying the quotes and photo of the day. I can see that as long as you are careful not to subscribe to too many feeds at one time that this would a very useful tool to let you know when sites are updated. RSS technology would be useful in the library situation by letting our patrons know upcoming events, changes to the library and related news. It could be a very useful marketing tool.

Flickr frustration!

I am finding the whole web/library 2.0 experience to be very frustrating when trying to access the required sites using a slow internet connection. So many of these sites only seem to run smoothly (and quickly) when you have unlimited fast connection. I am trying to do this whole thing using the public intenet network at work and dial-up connection at home and it is taking me SO long to get to anything. I hate the assumption of all these sites that everyone who wants to use them autoatically has fast internet access, this is just not always the case. Websites hould be designed to load quickly and simply.

Anyway enough ranting, I checked out flickr briefly, looks quite interesting and will explore it further another day when I have some more time, the creative commons aspect of things could prove very useful when searching for images that can be used in non-profit library displays. One of the most interesting photos I came across was this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrhide/1410825821/

Very cool and unusual cloud formation, in the shape, of course, of a dragon. Apart from the frustration associated with accessing the sites using slower internet I am enjoying learning about the new technologies available, librarians need to know what is out there if we want to dispel the myth of the stereotyped old lady with glasses. We are not all OLD! although I do wear glasses!

Animation OOPS!

Have just discovered that the animations I just posted are not actually animated! Searched the blogger help site and found some mention of this problem, if you want to check out what they are meant to look like then visit the link for the source graphics.

Fun animated dragons!!

Thought I would make things a bit fun and add some very cool animated dragons to my blog, source: http://bestanimations.com/Fantasy/Dragons/Dragons3.html

As you may have gathered I love (good non-people eating) dragons, but only those with wings, never really understood the dragon without wings, they look like worms/snakes! No offence meant to the asian imperial dragons!

New beginnings

Well, this is my first post for the Library 2.0 learning experience, hope to learn some fun and new techniques to expand my knowledge of 2.0 technology and the applications it can be used for both for myself professionally and personally. Will add more later when I have more time, where does the time go??? Never enough of it!!! Especially working in a public library!