#23 I made it!

Can't quite believe that I've managed to fit all this in and make it to 23! It has been worthwhile to become familiar with all the amazing array of programs and applications that are out there, however I did feel that I was racing most of the time to fit it all in and that I have only skimmed across the surface of many of the programs that are out there. There is no way I would have completed the exercises if I had done it all in work time, work commitments plus program time simply don't add up. This needs to be factored in into any future similar programs, as people who don't have access to the internet at home, and there are still some who don't, are at a distinct disadvatage in this regard. I also often found it easier to concentrate at home ( no interuputions) than at work. Some of the instructions for how to complete the excersises were a bit hard to follow at times and I know that you're all really busy trying to keep up with all we've completed, however it would be helpful for future programs if the instructions could be looked at to make sure they are logical and easy to follow before the program commences.

I will make time to go back and look at some of the programs I didn't have time to play with enough as there are some like bloglines and delicious which I think will make my virtual life easier. Ebooks, podcasts, a youth services wiki and a blog where kids and adults can talk about books they've read and enjoyed are all things which I think could enhance our library service.

I reiterate what I said in an earlier post that Libraries have to be very careful that they are using technology because it will enhance our services and be useful for our customers not because it's wizz bang and hey aren't we better than everyone else because we have this. We do need to and are reaching out to users who don't want or need to come to a physical building and many of the tools we have looked at in web 2.0 are things which will attract these users. We still need to have programs which are physical not virtual.

There must be a balance between what new services we want to provide and what current services we continue to offer. Continually adding without reassessing the time commitment leads to staff who are stressed and skimming across the top of the information they are trying to absorb without really taking it all in. As we value customers so we also need to value staff and makes sure they have the time to provide the best service for the community. In conclusion thank you and I hope there's still a job out there in the future for a physical not just a virtual librarian!

I

#21 Podcasts

Had a look at podcast, yahoo podcast and podcastalley and they seem very music orientated. Did find a couple of library references but nothing startling. I did add enough rope to my bloglines account but not from searching on any of the above lists as it was much easier to pick it up from the ABC website and I think this maybe true of a lot of feeds for podcasts. The problem with podcasts in the library is that we have so much security on our pcs that getting access could be tricky. Podcasts for book reviews and from author talks and booktalks would be good, particularly for popular authors where the sessions book out. That way those who can't come could listen to the podcast of the event.

#22 Ebooks

Jumping ahead here as I only have dial up at home and can't listen to podcasts without it stopping and starting as it tries to work. So podcasts will have to wait till I'm at work. I can see a huge place in libraries for Ebooks. Isn't this what we are all about, providing access to books 24 hours a day! The idea of it disappearing from your mp3 player once the download time has expired is brilliant. No more agro borrowers with overdues! This is also a great way to access books no longer in print, much easier than interlibrary loans and I can see that this would be a way to free up more library space if all the books we hold in stacks could be easily accessed as ebooks we would no longer need to keep them as hard copy. I think ebooks can complement hard copy collections and I don't see the ebooks taking over completely because it is still much nicer to relax with a hard copy than an ebook. But for research purposes and those hard to find hard copy books I think this is wonderful. We already to some degree do use ebooks when you think about our access to britannica on line and also some of the reference encyclopedias which we access via databases. I can see that a lot of our reference materials would work well as ebooks

I can also see a place for Mp3 audio books, particularly as tapes are on there way out and this will provide another format for those who want to listen to a book.

#20 Youtube - Graham Kennedy

Youtube hmm! You could spend days looking at all the fascinating videos on this site and still feel that you hadn't made much headway. I must admit it was great finding graham Kennedy footage on youtube and some of our staff will attest that i was laughing out loud. He really was the king. Apart from the fun side of youtube I'm finding it hard to envisage how it really has much relevance for libraries.

#19 Web 2.0 tools

I had a look at realtravel which is a travel site which pulls together information on any destination you care to name. I like the things to do tab which puts travel into categories such as activities you like doing eg beach, shopping or travel style e.g adventure or family. That way you can choose a style which appeals and limit your search but bring up places from all over the world. You can also obviously search by a particular destination. You can compare prices for air fares and accomodation. There is also a forum where you can ask travel questions like what are the best travel shoes and people using the site can post answers. It's really a one stop travel spot and I can see would be a useful site to recommend to all our lonely planet, rough guide and fodors users.

#18 Zoho writer

Had a look at Zoho writer and I've managed to publish a document to my blog. It's come through rather large but it's there so that's a start in the right direction! I still think I prefer word for creating documents but maybe that's because I'm not as familiar with Zoho. I can see it would be useful to be able to use the web for groups of people to be all seeing and editing the same document and saves you sending it backwards and forwards to each other. Would have been quite useful the other day when I was editing a literature review for my daughter and had to save and then resend the document to her.

Garden of Delights book talk

 

Garden of Delights                                  A special talk about author and landscape Gardener                                       Edna Walling                                                                    Thursday 1st November                                               7pm                               Hawthorn Library                             584 Glenferrie Road                              Hawthorn                               Session is free but bookings are essential

#17 a few of my favourite things

Raindrops on roses , no that was Julie Andrews. Favourite things walking the dog, Tai Chi, pottering in the garden, watching the baby magpies and noisy miners play in the bird bath, walking along a beach anywhere, collecting shells. Well I added my blog to the favourites and perhaps I'm thick but the instructions were a bit vague. What it needed to say was that you add your blog at the bottom of the australian favourites by hitting enter next to the last blog entry so that you get a line where you can type your blog address in, and you don't need the brackets as it works quite happily without that. Maybe a few visual prompts would help. Otherwise it was fun.

#16 What is a wiki

I can see lots of potential for wikis within the library sphere. I have problems with the wikapedia type wikis as the fact that anyone can add content and it may or may not be accurate is a worry. Where I do see potential is in setting up a library success wiki for Australian content. I can see potential for all sorts of topics to be covered in a wiki of this nature. Thinking as a Youth Services Librarian we all have a huge store of knowledge which could be shared on a wiki from ideas for programs to valuable websites. We so often reinvent the wheel and this would be a good way to share this wealth. All those Viclink training days could have the content from the days added to the wiki so we could all access and use it. Wikis also have great potential for pathfinders for our patrons and also for book reviews, though with spydus we are already able to add reviews to the catalogue.

#15 Library 2.0 & Web 2.0

What an amazing world we are moving towards. I am old enough to remember card catalogues, reverse brown's filing systems and photo charging plus the gradual introduction and change to computer technology. I must admit I feel a bit like one of the people Alvin Toffler talked about in Future Shock plus I can see elements of Brave new world in some of the articles which are in the batch of OCLC articles.
I liked the fact that the author of Into a new world of Librarianship talked about not buying technology simply for the sake of technology. I think Libraries have to be very careful that they are using technology because it will enhance our services and be useful for our customers not because it's wizz bang and hey aren't we better than everyone else because we have this.
He also said we need to have face to face as well as virtual conversations which I think is very important. Yes we do need to and are reaching out to users who don't want or need to come to a physical building but we also need to maintain those physical spaces and places where people can makes contact other wise we move towards some of the worst excesses of the brave new world model. We still need to have programs which are physical not virtual - I'm afraid I can't quite imagine a virtual preschool storytime!

He talked about the need to give staff time to play and learn and I think this is vital. We are all hurrying and racing to keep up with technology plus trying to maintain current services and be everything to everyone. There must be a balance between what new services we want to provide and what current services we continue to offer. Continually adding without reassessing the time commitment leads to staff who are stressed and skimming across the top of the information they are trying to absorb without really taking it all in.
As we value customers so we also need to value staff and makes sure they have the time to provide the best service for the community.

Many of the aspects of web 2.0 will be very useful for our customers. As a Youth Services Librarian I have noticed in the last few years that they number of non-fiction titles borrowed, particularly by secondary students, has decreased as they become more reliant on the internet for their information. We can use technology to assist their searching and certainly things like library link Victoria are helping with this plus all our on line data bases. We can certainly make sure that the searches they do provide information that is authoritative and it should be one of our aims to do this.
I hope the libraries of the future will still have a physical space and that there will still be books to read as well as virtual spaces and e books because I think it would be sad if those community meeting spaces disappeared. My hope is that the 2 can coexist together.

#14 Technorati

I've had a look around Technorati using "learning 2.0" as the search term and it's interesting to compare the number of hits you get under blogs, tags and blog posts. Tags obviously narrows the field but there is still some superflous material getting through. Looking at the topics listed under search terms and tags and the most popular sites I wonder if technorati or similar search facilities could ever replace dewey and subject headings. I think at this stage the search results are still too broad and our current way of cataloguing does by and large yield a better hit rate. Who knows though what may happen in the future particularly with more and more people using on line catalogues.

#13 Del.icio.us

had a look at the PLCMCL2 account and I can see that it would be a useful tool to bookmark favourites when you use different computers. eg work and home or, as we often do, different computers over several libraries at work, depending on where you are working for the day. I can also see that peering into someone elses bookmarks and following the trail they have set up to useful sites would be helpful for students or anyone who has a particular passion or hobby. Sorting out the garbage from the gems may be difficult but I guess that's true of any internet searching and maybe it helps that someone has done at least some of the work for you first.

#12 Rollyo

Well I've ceated a rollyo account and made a list of Tassie destinations as I'm off to Tassie in November and thought this would be a good way to pull some of the sites we've searched together. Mind you it feels a bit like a glorified favourites list so I'm not sure how much more useful it is than this given that you can create folders in favourites for relevent sites just as easily. It looks prettier in the finished product. Can see it might be useful for students doing research to pull together useful sites on a particular topic. I've added it at the bottom of the blog and this is the link.
http://rollyo.com/editroll.html?sid=320757

Week 5 #11 Librarything

I can see this is a fun way to catalogue not only your own books but books in a library too. Interesting to see how many other people have added the same book as you to their catalogue. Jackets of books are always appealing and though we shouldn't judge a book by it's cover it always helps! Spydus now displays book covers which is a great tool too.
Here's the link to my small lot of books. I could add more but there's always something else to do
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/ritafellows

#6 More flickr fun

Opps forget to put in the post that I had looked at some of these sites and liked Librarian trading card - good way to create a different view of librarians perhaps we can trade like we used to with swap cards - opens up lots of possibilities.

my image generator Week 5 #10

Found this on generator blog and as a Taurus thought a bit of bull would go a long way. You can find other zodizc signs at http://www.imagechef.com/ic/final_widget.jsp

Week 4 #8 & #9 Thoughts on RSS Feeds

Well I've set up the Bloglines account and added some feeds from the sites which have feeds and I can see that it would be useful to manage all the information you might want to access on a regular basis from the internet as it allows you to use one site rather than several to do that. However I still come back to the concern that to do this you are spending so much time in front of a computer and there is so much more to life than a computer. I can see that if you had a news group where everyone was discussing a particular topic that this would be a way to do this without having to have a face to face meeting and would certainly be useful if you all lived along way from each other or if time was short. I don't know that this is something I would use on a regular basis. Having looked at some of the search tools to find feeds my head is reeling. There is so much information and you wonder about the privacy associated with feeds. Google blog search like google seems very easy to use but very broad in it's coverage whereas some of the others are a bit more specific. Finding time for all of this is very hard to do but I guess I've made a start.

7# Feedback on web 2 so far

Thought I'd post a few thoughts about the web 2 program so far. While it's fun to learn to use these applications I think the expectation that we would ony need 15 mins for each activity is way off the beam. Given the fact that most of us are trying to do this in work time, and that work related technology is not always fast or helpful, this estimate is not accurate and should be taken into consideration if the program runs again. The instructions for the various activities and the links aren't always obvious or helpful and one of my collegues suggested that it would be useful to have a teacher look at the program to make it more user friendly. This would also lower the frustration levels for those who are trying to make the program work. Also making sure in advance that the links and instructions do work would be helpful. We always berate teachers who set assignments for students without first checking that the answers are readily accessible and that the materials are available, the same should apply to the web 2 program.

#5 Flickr - shells

Found this great photo of shells on flickr. Just love shells and can't resist picking them up when wandering along a beach

#3 To blog or not blog that is the question

Had an interesting conversation, the aural variety, with my 22 year old daughter who communicates with me via Facebook too and we both agreed that blogging is not the be all and end all of communication and that far too many private thoughts are being aired in public. This from a very savvy computer user was interesting and made me feel that I'm not such a dinosaur to think that face to face conversation, private diaries and the good old phone call are still the way to go.

Finally seems to be working!

Well I've finally made it into the blog to post this. Seemed to go round and round in circles and not like me very much. Must admit that facebook is a hell of a lot easier to use. This is very clunky a bit like the instructions for the learning program. Hmm we'll see what happens with the next week.