The Final Adventure

In the end, I guess this is what Web 2.0 is all about - social networking. I found Josh Bernoff's article interesting as he is specific about cultural sectors and how they need to expand on their 'measure of buzz and awareness' within the community. And as today's community has an on-line focus, this is where we need to be. Also the idea of support from community members with knowledge relating to your collection is of interest. We are currently developing a 'Living Libraries' program where members can borrow a living member of the community to learn about certain areas they have expertise in. An idea I think that could also work through social networking.

I love ALA's MySpace. I have a myspace of my own ... mainly for keeping in touch with my son while he travels around Australia. It is a great way of keeping up with the youth of today, so libraries really need to look at social networking if we want to stay relevant to them. I have also tried FaceBook, but I'm not nearly as impressed with it. There seems to be too much nonsense (gift giving, quizzes, surveys etc..) going on that I find a waste of time. It also seems slower and no where near as reliable.

Possibilities for public libraries? Endless really. We could put our selves just about anywhere and everywhere if we wanted. Except for Second World (which simply scares the hell out of me!) I can see advantages in all the Web.2.0 applications we have looked at simply because it has us out there with the growing population of on-line users. And if we are going to survive in this new on-line world, first and formost we need presence

On Line Applications

Well, I've sent my document from Google Docs. Again, very easy to do. I know if the majority of our customers who pay $2 for 30 minutes of word processing knew this was free on line, they wouldn't bother! How long before fees for such things go out the window?

I have already stated in my document some of the uses I can see for on line documents in public libraries. Just the simple fact that they can be shared between branches so easily seems reason enough. E-mailing and attaching already seems old hat!

Have had a quick look at Zoho. Seems to have even more options! I'm looking forward to sharing this one with collegues and friends. I'd never even heard of it before ... what rock have I been under!!

Mashups

Well, as you can see I've been playing with Flickr toys during this week. Here is my mashup made on the Big Lab site. Have brought together pictures of my beautiful twin grand-sons that I had saved on Flickr. Was very easy to do and I can see a great use for something like this if you have an event with plenty of pictures. They can all be grouped together - makes a better impact than looking at pictures individually.

Or maybe book covers of recently acquired titles...

It's really endless how libraries can use all this stuff, we really just have to use our imagination.
And regardless of what the average joe believes, we librarians have plenty of imagination!

Podcasting

Enjoyed visiting the sites this week and seeing the different uses for podcasting in libraries, but was a little disappointed overall. I'm not sure we, as a public library could warrant broadcasting in this way. I believe most of the information we would want to get out on the web would be better off in a written or video format.

Although I like the idea of children's stories being available through podcast, I'm doubtful they would get a great deal of use. The audio books for children these days are so good, I think a librarian's reading (well great in the flesh) would leave most kids unimpressed.

Of course it would be different for a specialised library, as podcasting would be great for lectures, talks and forums.

I was able to listen to a few of the British Library podcasts and of course the ABC, which I have enjoyed for awhile now. If ever I miss something on the radio that I wanted to hear, I can always go on line and listen to the podcast. Great! I decided to add a RSS feed for the Book Show to my Blog, as you can see.

I was unable to listen to any of the others sites though, because you needed ipod, and I could not load the software onto our work computer. I'm sure there are others out there with the same problem. Work computers are proving to be a small but annoying hindrance during this course.

Answer Boards - Librarian Heaven!

Really enjoyed this week. It was simply fun! Love the Taste site, and yes I've signed up to yet another membership. I can understand why people who do not have the inclination or the access to an off-line social life would become addicted to on-line communities. It's so easy to do and just about every interest anyone could have is available.

Did not find the Answer Board Librarians wiki user friendly or all that interesting I'm afraid. I could not find interesting or relative information. I'd like to hear if anyone else found this site helpful and if so, enlighten me, please.

What I really loved this week was the Yahoo!7Answers. What fun! As librarians we all love finding and delivering answers to our customers. After logging in and setting up my profile, I went straight in and managed to answer four questions, exactly the same way I would at work, by using our resources. Maybe not as satisfying as supplying the goods to a real life person, but enjoyable all the same. I must admit that it is not only the giving of information I enjoy, I also love adding to my own store of knowledge ... and what better way to receive than to give!

Technorati, LibraryThing & Widgets ... Fun, Fun, Fun!

This has been quite a week. I've been introduced to Technorati .... Interesting. I registered my OpenBook Blog with them. Do seem to have heavier traffic, but not sure if Technorati has anything to do with it. Then I moved into more familiar ground with delicious and LibraryThing. I have a listing with delicious, but I love what Sutherland Library are doing with it. What a great way to post sites for your users. We have what we call 'Weblinks' on our site, which is a list of websites we have investigated as useful to our users. But to be honest, I think the Sutherland's link to delicious and their tag cloud of subject headings is much more in step with what is happening on the web today. There is no such thing as being a single entity on the web now. Linking and networking is what we need to be doing, and social bookmarking is entrenched deep with web users already. If we are not to be left behind, we need to embrace this technology now.

LibraryThing is great. I joined a few years ago and have been slowly building my book shelf. But I was a little upset when I went to log in to link it with this blog. It seems I have been erased! I was no where to be found. I'll admit it has been awhile since I last added any titles - maybe six months. But to have just been wiped like that? Looks like I've been pushed aside for paying customers. Does anyone know what the time limit is on non-paying subscribers? Anyway, I started a new shelf and am having a go at adding a widget to this blog. We shall soon see if I'm successful.

Catch you all next week! Cheers ... JoDee

The World of YouTube

YouTube has been no real big surprise to me, as I have been accessing videos on this site for quite awhile now. My son has been on with a few music videos for over a year now, and I am always getting in there and showing people. So, that is whose video you will find here on my Blog. Have a look, they are young talented musicians having a great time with their chosen sound.

I did many searches during this week of LibraryLearning 2.0 and found (not surprisingly) many videos that have to do with libraries. There weren't alot that sparked my imagination though. I think libraries should be careful with what they do in the video category, as many prove to be a little on the boring side. Something that many people think libraries are ... and we don't want to prove them right, do we?

But I did find one that I thought was rather clever. It is a day in the life of the St. Joseph County Library set to the music of Madonna's, 'Ray of Light'. Now, I know we all love our job and find it more than interesting most of the time, but it is usually not considered exciting is it? But take a normal day in a library, speed it up and set it to music, and you have an above average video that, if nothing else, shows librarians to have a sense of fun and humour. If you haven't seen it, click the link and have a look. If anything, this is the sort of thing libraries can promote through videos - not the humdrum - the fun.

My Wiki Adventure

Well my wiki adventures were interesting. I found no page on the PB Wiki for library officers, so thought I would add one. That proved to be easier than I thought it would. No wonder wikis can grow to astronomical size in such a short time. Now that I am registered with PB, I receive alerts everytime someone adds or changes things on the Library Learning wiki. This is certainly handy if you are involved with a wiki that you want to keep updated on. From what I can see PB wiki is a great wiki site, and I would consider using it if I was going to set up a wiki for anything.

I then moved on to wikipedia and looked up my suburb. Sure enough, it was there and I actually knew something that could be added. This proved even easier. But there was a nice surprise in store. For when I clicked on a hyperlink in the references section of the article, where should it take me ... to our library site! We have links to local suburb histories on our website and who ever wrote and referenced the article used our information.

Again, this exercise has been great fun and I'm constantly learning new and surprising things. Hope everyone else is finding the same.

Until next post .... JoDee

Wikis - the limit is set only by our imagination

Was interesting looking at all the different wikis. I had no idea there were so many on the web. My only experience has been with Wikipedia, and that has not included adding any information or editing, just reading information.

I looked at the Library success wiki and really believe this serves an important purpose. There are some great ideas on there and available to everyone. The library camp was interesting. A great way to get an agenda happening on something like this. People planning to attend just add their topic of interest.

The Montana history wiki was a disappointment though. I can't really see how they can call it a wiki, as they don't allow anyone to add information.

And why am I not surprised there is a wiki for Star Wars! Of course there would be. I'm sure there is one for Star Trekkies too.

I like the idea of a wiki in libraries for staffing purposes. Our staff come and go at varied times through out the week, and it would be a great way of everyone adding their bit to a discussion or idea without trying to get us all together on the one day. As for our customers, a wiki would work well as an oral history for our local area. There are plenty of people out there that know and remember important aspects of our history. It would be great to have it all in one spot on our website. I am sure there are plenty more ways wikis could be used in a library, the list is only limited by our imagination.

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds are an interesting concept and I'm sure those who monitor the web for information find them very helpful if not essential.

But I for one prefer alerts, which send to my mail box links to the site for new information or in the case of a blog, a new post. I don't have to go anywhere else other than my inbox, and I have a choice of clicking it or not.

Creating an account with Bloglines was easy enough, but will I visit it each day to read my feeds? Probably not.

My feed for this post with ABC news, again was easy to do. I am very impressed with Bloggers set up. It is so easy to use. I will look for other, more relevant feeds as I continue Learning 2.0, adding them as I go.

For libraries, RSS feeds or alerts could certainly play an important part. As others have mentioned in the Learning blog, customers who do not visit the library on a regular basis but are still interested in what is happening will find them a great service. It is just another way we can keep in touch with our community through Web 2.0.

Still playing around with Flickr. Just had to take the 'Adventure' challenge and posted a few photos of our library. I organized another set with my photos to separate them from family photos I have on there already.

This proved to be quite easy, and a word search and tag search found my photos fine, except for one that seems to be missing when I do a word search. Can't work out why, as I have all the same tags on each photo.

Will try again later and see if it manages to find the truant photo!

How is every one else going with Flickr? Probably way past it, as I did start a week behind. Thought I could easily catch up, but there seems to be so much to look at the time quickly gets away.

Never mind ... forward and onward!

Fun with Flickr

Here I am for my second post, and it was not an easy exercise, I can tell you. I have two email addresses registered with Google, and of course I put the wrong one in, so I was unable to get to my blog (as a blogger). I could find it through the URL, but unable to access it without the correct user name.

It has been fun. Including this Blog I contribute to two others and they all work just that little bit differently. I can be my own worst enemy though, as I am bad for not reading what's in front of me when on the net. Taking in all the instructions does help ... so here I am!

Week three has been fun. Flickr is a great site for photos. I do have an account already and have posted photos of my twin grand sons. I have many relatives in Canada so it is a great way of giving them access to them. Did a search on my home town and found over 6oo photos available for viewing. This is pretty good considering I come from a very small, generally unknown fishing village. The world really is a smaller place.

Above is one of the nicer photos I found. I'm a sucker for sunrises and sunsets. Have a look at some others from Beautiful British Columbia.

It seems easy enough to load pictures. But I was puzzled with loading from my computer. In other blogs I have to type in where I wanted to retrieve the photo from, but Blogger seems to know that already. I couldn't get my cursor to click into the search box so I just clicked 'browse' and it took me straight to 'my pictures'. My other blogs require more direction.

So the learning continues ... what will next week bring!?

My First Rant

Well, I'm a little late getting to this Blog, but I'm sure everyone will understand as I've been on holidays (far from any computers) and have just got started. Looks as though it will be fun. I am not unfamiliar with Blogs as I have been blogging for awhile now, but there is always more to learn, and the advantages for libraries with Web 2.0 has been clear to me ever since I started.

So far, I'm impressed with the course and have obediently followed all the steps in week one, knowing I am already behind and could possibly skip a few of them. I find it exciting to think about getting libraries interactive on the web, so that users can become part of our community through their computers.

This said, it was a little disappointing going to the example links for Library Blogs and finding few or no comments on most of the posts. We have a big job ahead of us! The on-line users need to know that libraries are out there with Web 2.0 at their disposal.

I won't rant any further ... Save it for another post.