Thing 23!! Nearly the end...for now

I liked the image generated for the last entry in the training blog. Very amusing and clever, particularly as I am doing this work on Dec 3rd.

I have very much enjoyed this program and would like to say thanks for all of the hard work that has gone into creating it for us and supporting it...along with all of our questions and glitches.

I feel that there will be several things that will be taken up very quickly in our library service..(that means in the new year!). RSS feeds, Bloglines, librarything are just some of the things that I see being implemented. This assumes that I can persuade others, if they don't already agree. Also, wiki approaches for information that we can all use to keep infromation relevant and current.

CHRLC is launching a new web site in the new year. I hope it has been set up with enough flexibility that various of these things can be incorporated into it.

I know I will use many of these web 2.0 services personally from now on and that I will be showing people I know personally how to use them.

I have made a commitment in my annual review to conduct some internet/computer training with patrons, in very small groups, and I can see that I will be using the things learned in those.

I very much enjoyed the approach of the training. training doesn't have to be torture..it should be fun and relevant. Bring on libraries 2.0.

Thankyou once again.

Made my blog link work on fav blogs page

Finally made my link seem right on the Favourite Blogs part of the pbwiki sandbox. I included my blog under the Victorian Public Libraries(Australia)title, in the CHRLC section.

I'm nearly finished this learning 2.0 program now!

Flicka fun and mash ups...oops

I realised when looking back over the web 2.0 course that somehow I had missed doing these fun activities from #6. So, I thought I had better go and catch up.

Yahoo-Flicka-Wikipedia-Weathermap has a terrible name, but is a great mashup. You nominate a city, see photos from there, short snippets from wikipedia about there and a map, all on one page. I have it currently set on London. I can see this as a great way to entice kids to find out a bit about places. I'm going back to see what Melbourne and New York look like. I found out about this mashup from the MashupAwards site, which I have linked into my blogroll.

Audiobooks (or "The end is in sight")

I looked at the homepage for the Project Gutenberg and realised that I had known about this and forgotten it. It is a great initiative. It is interesting in the light of the tension for libraries to try to be a repository of literary works, as well as fulfill all of the other aims of libraries(all on a limited budget).

I was immediately aware that the audio books I saw listed seemed to all be male authors, except for Beatrix Potter. When I actually did a search the ebooks I found lots of Jane Austen, but still an enormous amount of male authors. I was interested to see the asian ebook project, as well things like the buddhist ebook group.

Talking books at the library are already very popular, I can see these continuing on in the same vein. It provides another option. The physical talking books aren't very sturdy, tapes break and MP3s and CDs get scratched. It may be an effective way to reduce the costs for libraries of keeping up with the spoilage rates.

I noticed Mark Twain's 'On the decay of the art of lying' and I am very interested to listen to that. I can't believe in the modern age with all of the spin doctoring that there is any danger of it dying out!!

Podcasts, smodcasts!

I have selected a podcast that shows in my bloglines over to the right as 'City talks - building better cities' that examines how places can be designed/supported to encourage community. I found this using podcast.net I found it to be a very easy site that was well organised. I think there are a lot of very interesting podcasts out there. Again, I am not entirely sure of their application in our library service because of the issues regarding the slow speeds of the dial up internet access that many peope use in our country area. I'm not even sure what could be supported direct at our library. In the future I think it could be a good tool for the library to use, perhaps book reviews, guided historical walks along our bushwalking tracks, guided talks on natural features like our recently extinct volcano, guided talks about historical and local flavour things (like our tree of knowledge!). Lots of focussed local information eg about the current debate on windfarms in our area.

You too can YouTube

A video called 'The adventures of super librarian' created by circulating.





I love the idea of YouTube but it is impractical with dial up. Way too slow. Many patrons come to the library to use our broadband as it is generally not available. The library service struggles to have the capacity for this. I don't see this technology being relevant for the country areas until the web revolution reaches us!! This is a pity.

Discovering web 2.0 tools

I had a look at Biblio.com It is hard for a book lover to go past a book site! It seems a very reputable commercial shopfront for buying primarily rare or out of print books. I found several by Barbara Deming I might be interested in!! It made me realise that I haven't been thinking about the more commercial activities as web 2.0. Of course they involve interaction, of a sort, but I think of web 2.0 as somehow the more exciting, fun stuff. I use a lot of commercially related web 2.0 sites all of the time, so I suppose they don't seem as exciting. It was interesting to see the opportunities on the site for discussions on books and all sorts of other things. I could see discussions that had happened over a couple of week period to sort out returns of money from credit cards when booksellers couldn't fill a book order. I found it one of the ways I decided that the site seems reputable. I'm not sure how this could be used in a library context. I will be looking at lots of the other sites that received awards.

My new happy home

Recently bought little old house, with room for a cow

This is a photo of the house we bought. It only leaks when it rains. This place has actual pitfalls, to some a problem, to us delightful. There is a bit of land for Gracie the jersey cow (see photo near the bottom of my blog), a partially collapsed well, a spring, a dam, a mullock heap and a filled in gold mine. I love it. It may not be the place for people over six foot, as the ceiling slopes from the lounge to the back of the kitchen. But for me and my partner it is great. I wrote this in Zoho and inserted the photo and published direct to my blog.



Technorati Tags happy,cow,home,gracie

Playing around with pbwiki

This hasn't been an unqualified success. I'm not sure why. I have successfuly added my post about platypii being my favourite animal...even though I have never seen them in the wild.

But, I have tried repeatedly to add my blog and it hasn't taken as an active link. At the moment you can see on the favourite bolgs page my blog as black type. I then tried every variation I could think of on the explanations given. Anyway...I was booted off by the next person (there is a lock allowing only one person to edit at once), so I will go back and try again later.

Wikis

I think they have lots of applications both internal to my workplace and in the broader community. We have real problems with keeping our web info up to date. Anything requiring changes or input can be handled this way. Our Branch procedures manuals could use a wiki. Good ideas, forms, processes, procedures could be displayed this way. Wikis are something I can see being implemented almost immediately within our library service.

Within the broader community, using the libraries resources to facilitate the development of wikis on various topics would take some thought. I think there may be concerns about being seen to take responsibility for content. A wiki could be a way that patrons could engage in chat about books they liked, information aout the local community etc. I would be very supportive of it. It could always be trialled , then put in a submit an email address type thing, if you needed to.

I loved when I went to the Ann Arbour wikis that there were over 50 comments about a pokemon competition that they were holding at the library. It expanded out into conversations about recommendations about new games to buy, to asking if anyone coud loan someone a game for over summer! There was the odd bit of further information from someone at the library, but it was largely self propelled. Peope enjoyed being told that they were the 5000th or 9000th entry on the wiki. The best practices wiki was very interesting to look at. I like it when wikis have the history button very obviously displayed. I am intrigued where someone has changed something and then it is immediately changed back by the original author. This happened a bit in the best practices web site. Meredith Farkas wrote some intersting material in her various wikis. I loved her idea about being able to find out where you would get an old Toyota repaired in your local area wiki (perhaps because I have an old Toyota!!).

I think they are a very useful tool and will stop bottle necks in the heirarchy.

Tagging, folksomonies and technorati part 3 the future

Just thinking about this topic brought up some ideas. I come from a background working in community engagement for more than 20 years. I am very excited in seeing how libraries 2.0 and future approaches could assist in community engagement.

Having technologies where people think of the library catalogue as their library. Being able to make comments about books, mark those to look at again in the future, send recommendations to friends. Have all of this easily available and friendly to use. Have your own page where you can have icons to genres you like, new items, reviews, author discussion/analysis groups. Have a seamless online catalogue for Australia, where you just select where you want to pick up the book and the computer programm will work out the rest. In the physical world, have ways people can recommend to others. Have informal networks for people who like particular genres, subjects or authors. Providing enriched resources to help people navigate web 2.0. Just as a start.

The article by Dr Wendy Schultz was very interesting and well ordered. I liked her development through different stages and found it thought provoking. I love the irony of ultimately reverting to a valued space/experience which looks very like a 18th or 19th century wealthy (often gentleman's) library. Without the exclusion. Things may well go full circle. Rick Anderson also provided some useful insights I believe. The approach of, let's not be trying to train, but have easy to use facilities is a good one.

The library I work at has very small floor space, but I actually think it works very well to encourage chats and low key social interaction across a very diverse community. I feel that many people come to the physical space of the library to be part of a library community, and the broader community. Many people joining the library disclose that they are new to town and are very keen to be put in contact with other aspects of our community, beyond the library.

Tagging, folksonomies and technorati Part 2 technorati

Below I'm including a link that will list this blog in the technorati hits for learning 2.0.

learning 2.0

I enjoy searching blogs and this is a good site to do this with. The results are very different when searching, depending on where you search for your key words or tags. I liked the variety, but it's good to remember to check exactly where you want to be looking, especially if you don't like the look of the first list you get.

I've included below to the right the icon to allow you to make this blog a fave with technorati. I'm 8 million something in the current rankings!!

Tagging, folksonomies and technorati Part 1 del.icio.us

My link to my del.icio.us page is included on this blog. Its up at the right.

I have found del.icio.us to be the most challenging site so far, conceptually. It seems to be boggling my brain quite a lot to adjust to a different way of organising bookmarks. I always knew I was a folder queen, but I didn't know how attached I am to them. I am happy to keep on practising with it, because I believe them that it will work out to be very easy and quicker. It is already very interesting to see other people's choices and comments. I use Firefox all the time, so I think it will work very well with that. I don't know how much my experience would be shared with other internet users at the library. For those who have been using the internet as long as they can remember I suspect there would be a quick take up. I'm not sure about the baby boomers who have adopted the internet in the past 10 years. At the second I find it easier to see how others at the library might use this, than how I could use it to find any of my bookmarks!!