Week 12 - NSW Public Libraries Learning 2.0

I can see that if properly planned, social networking could be a huge benefit to my library in increasing it's public profile, access from patrons and the networking opportunities for staff.

The main complaint I have heard in relation to social networking and companies entering that "world" is that they do not regularly update the information on the page and it becomes stale. This discourages people from visiting the pages and the value of social networking has been lost.

I think if a library uses the social networking applications to promote events and information about the library then they need to not try and "act cool" as this is a turn off for teenagers, but at the same time the information needs to be presented in a way that attracts visits to the site, attracts friends, which increases your social network.

As a marketing tool there is alot of potential, but I think libraries need to look at what is out there and what is working, or not working. Learn from the mistakes of others, but don't be afraid to have a go. If the social networking page for a library is done correctly then it will have a huge impact on that library. At this stage I feel the library I work at is still in the learning and research stage and it would be a mistake to rush in and make a social networking page just to say we have done it, but I hope that by the end of the year we will have ventured into the world of social networking.

Week 11 - NSW Public Libraries 2.0

After viewing the slideshow it was amazing how many free tools are available for creating and editing documents. This will allow staff to create masterpieces without having to purchase additional software. I think the tools are also a great idea for when people are travelling and accessing the internet at a cafe or similar, these tools will allow you to create and share documents regardless of what is installed on the computers, and as a bonus you will be able to access them again later from any location.

I have created a basic document in Google Docs and shared it. My workplace has used Google Docs quite extensively for a number of different reasons. When planning events that involve people from different geographical areas it is easy to share a Google Docs document that they can all access and have input, without having to worry about email, lost attachments or multiple versions. Everyone is accessing the latest version of the document and their changes are instantly visible to other participants.
I can also see Google Docs being very useful when working on PCs that do not have Office or similar installed, documents can still be created in a number of formats without requiring a software installation.

I created a zoho account to compare it with Google Docs, I think I prefer the zoho options, particularly in the word processing application as it allowed a large amount of document formatting which is not available in Google Docs. Zoho also allowed a larger range of formats to select from, but I have not explored all of them to see how useful they are.
I think that I will continue using both until I am more familiar with them and then determine which one I am going to stick to.

NSW Public Libraries - Week 10

The Star Viewer is an incredible creation that must have taken hours of work and research, but it is a fantastic tool for people to look at.

Mashups are alot of fun but they do require some artistic talent, which some of us have in bucket loads and others only have a thimble full. I enjoyed looking at the mashups that have been created and then I had alot of fun selecting which mashup tool I would use and then creating my mashup, hope people like it. I think this definately fits the play aspect of the life long learning.

I have looked at a number of mashups and I think that mashups made using the mosiac maker tool would be most appropriate at work as it enables you to show case alot of pictures in a without taking up alot of room. It would be important however to ensure that you have gained permission from any people in the photos before using them. I think that from the already created mashups the motivators would be the most use at work as they could be used to raise staff morale and to create positive reading messages.

NSW Public Libraries - Week 9

I had a look at the range of podcasts available from the British Library and listened to the Gaiman-Waugh podcast which was very interesting as it described how the content of the CD included recordings of the author through different stages of their life.
On the ABC I searched through the subjects and listened to The Book Show which is aired on ABC Radio National, I listened to the episode from Thursday April 10th 2008. The preview of There will be blood sounded very dramatic!

When I looked at the Library Success wiki I was a bit surprised by the number of podcasts already there and the range of topics they covered. I listened to the BookTalks Quick and Simple, I selected the Artemis Fowl: the Arctic Incident and listened to the talk. It was very well presented with clear speech and voices for the characters. I thoroughly enjoyed this podcast.

Within our library I can see alot of potential for podcasts, bookgroup meetings could be podcast to give other patrons a review of a book. You could also podcast the reading of a childrens book to provide an online storytime.
Although I can see alot of use for podcasts I would be reluctant to use it with staff as I feel it is important to keep the face to face contact, using the podcast to support this contact would be great but it would need to be kept as a secondary means of communication and not used as the primary means of communication.

I had a look at the Online Education Database and there are podcasts for almost any topic you wish to learn. I listened to a Yale Course - Death (Spring 07) - Nature of Persons. The podcast provided the information for learning and is a great way for students that are studying externally to listen to lectures and material that they may not otherwise get access to.

I also performed a Yahoo Podcast search for library, although I received 1082 results there was very little information with the results and I found that most had no relation to library. More refined searching is probably the key with this search engine.

Lake Matheson

Lake Matheson
Originally uploaded by marianb1

Test post for Regional Training Day Demo

NSW Public Libraries - Week 8

I think that answerboards and social searching are a great idea, it allows public input so they gain some ownership over the information and they can get help from Librarians even though they are not at a library.

Allowing customers to rate and review items in a libraries collection is now being incorporated into many Library Management Software packages.
The software allows library staff to allow or disallow a review if it is not suitable for posting, but any library member that can log into the OPAC will soon be able to place a review on an item.
Our library has not yet upgraded to the next level of our LMS, but by the end of the year we expect to have this functionality.

No doubt there will be some teething problems while staff and library patrons get used to it, but I think that it will be a great tool that library readers may come to depend on. How many times do staff get asked - what's a good book to read?

Maybe soon we will be able to give them a list of the most highly rated book - will that be a good thing or a bad thing? Only time will tell.

I answered a question on Yahoo7 by providing some websites that contained information that would help answer the question.

NSW Public Library - Week 7c

I had already created a LibraryThing account, so I want adventuring and created a Shelfari account and added some books.
I read alot of sci/fi and fantasy and I found that Library Thing listed some of the authors and titles that I own, but Shelfari didn't.
However, I prefer the way that Shelfari displays the books on your shelf, it looks more appealing and more "library oriented".
I also like the way you can add Shelfari to your blog as a widget, that is so cool!

I think both tools are a great idea and I think it is entirely up to personal preference and the books that one read/owns as to which tool will suit people working in the library industry.

NSW Public Library - Week 7b

I searched Technorati for bookmobile and received 516 results. When I performed an advanced search for the same term I received 532 results.

I also searched for nswpln2008 and it took a bit of fiddling but I finally got some search results. I looked through the search results which ranged from Flickr photos to videoclips and wiki's.
There weren't as many results as I expected, but it was good to get some.

Technorati is not what I consider the most user friendly site and I don't really like it, mainly because of all the advertising, but the concept of the site and its overall purpose it quite good.

NSW Public Library - Week 7a

Del.icio.us - I created my account a little while ago and have been adding links ever since, in a library environment I can see this as being incredibly useful as it allows favourite/useful pages to be tagged and accessed from any computer.
No longer will staff access the favourites on a computer only to find that the sites they want have not been added. They will just access del.icio.us from any computer and all the sites will be there.

I think in the future research assistants will be able to make use of tools like del.icio.us and tags clouds to gather together sources without spending hours trolling the internet. Searching and locating information will be faster and research assistants with superior search skills will have more resources than they know what to do with.

This is a link to my delicious which I keep adding to, but finding the time to get back to the tagged pages is proving a little difficult. But at least I know they are there when I have time.

NSW Public Library - Week 6

Looking at both YouTube and Google videos it is interesting to see how many things people are willing to post for others to see.
Although many of the videos are very funny and its easy to spend time looking at them, I think that the videos that are attempting to share work related information and are worth viewing get lost amongst all of the funny or just plain stupid videos.
I searched library in YouTube and the first two pages didn't list any results that would give me valuable information that I could use at work. In Google videos I did get slightly better search results but it took more detailed searching (listing a library name) to get a list of good results.

Potentially there is a great deal that can be done with these sites, sharing author talks, storytimes, book launches, conference speeches, book groups and much more. The video would need to be added with search tags that would make it easy to locate or use a wiki or blog that links to the videos.

I tried to select only one video to embed, but I couldn't. I am a horse lover and cat owner, so i couldn't resist these ones.

NSW Public Library - Week 5

I have looked at a number of different wiki's, it always astounds me at the variety of content that wiki's contain. Wiki's can be used to share information about so many different things, the advantage of the Wiki structure is that generally the content of the wiki doesn't become old or stale as people are always contributing.
The collaboration of many allows information to be provided on many levels and from many sources, creating a pool of knowledge that others can draw from and make their contribution to.

A Wiki provides a user friendly interface that makes it easy to navigate a wiki and find the information you are seeking.
Within a library I can see a wiki being useful for local history resources that you would like members of the public to be able to provide information about.
I also think that a wiki would be useful for a readers advisory within your individual library, contributions could be made by library patrons, staff and avid readers that find the wiki.

I tried to look at the PB Wiki Tour and the video was no longer available.

I ventured onto Wikipedia and made a change to the Kootingal page, adding information about the annual Pumpkin festival.

Fox Glacier 3 - Week 3 Learning 2.0

Fox Glacier 3
Originally uploaded by marianb1

I have finally been able to get Flickr to talk to my Blog. Here is a photo posted on Flickr, a ice cave on the Fox Glacier in N.Z.

NSW Public Library - Week 4

I have created a Bloglines account and added a number of feeds. There is a enormous amount of feeds available for every subject you can think of. I like that RSS makes it so easy to gather these sites together in an easily accessible format. I have made my bloglines public and included a link showing all of the sites that I selected http://www.bloglines.com/public/marianb. I think that this will be useful at work by providing a single access point from which information from many sources can be obtained quickly and easily.
Libraries can take advantage of this technology by providing a feed from their website, this will keep patrons up to date with what is going on in the different areas of the library. Libraries can also provide access to relevant feeds on their website to give up to date information on a particular topic or subject.
There were a number of different library related feeds, some of which I subscribed to and have found quite useful and informative.

NSW Public Library Week 3

I have been trying to link my blog and Flickr, unfortunately there appear to be problems and it won't work. Help in Flickr indicates that many people are having the same problem. Hopefully it will be sorted out, but if anyone has any suggestions?

I have been able to get it to bring up the grant access page by fiddling the URL, but when I try to grant access it says that something went wrong. The link in the Blogger help doesn't work either.

I have posted a number of holiday snaps to Flickr, all landscapes so that avoids having to post pictures of people, haven't worked up the courage for that one yet.

When I can get the linking working I will put it on my blog.

NSW Public Library - Week 2

Hi Everyone

Well I have created a blog and made many postings. I had a look on Technorati at other library blogs, it's amazing how many blogs are located when you search library or libraries. It is also interesting how many of the blogs that were returned on these searches had library in the blog title, but some of them had absolutely no library related content in the blog.
To be fair some had alot of library related content and some of it was very funny, when I have time I will try and look at more library related blogs to locate lots of good information.

Week 6 - part 2.

The tag test worked, I'm shocked.
Anyway moving onto more Week 6 stuff, thanks to Katie's training I have already signed up to Del.icio.us and been madly adding sites to my favourites when ever there is a really good site in an email or on another blog.
Admittedly I haven't had time to go back and look at them properly, but at least with them stored in my Del.icio.us favourites I can access them whenever it suits.

After reading the info for "On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0 ... " I find the perspective of "To a temporary place in time..." to be very insightful and forward thinking.

Although Library 2.0 is the buzz at the moment we are often trying to catch up with library patrons that have already discovered and embraced this technology and have moved on looking for the next new technology that can be tried out, shared with friends and worked into every part of their lives.

Although we are learning a huge amount as part of 23 Things much of this is already out of date with what Internet savvy patrons are using or attempting to do. At the same time there are other library patrons that have also never heard of Web 2.0 technology and the skills we learn and develop will assist them.

Learning and embracing new technology should be a life long process for anyone working in the library industry to ensure that we have the most up to date information and information gathering skills to assist library patrons.

Week 6 of 23 Things

I thought that it was about time to get some more work done on the 23 Things, so this is a Week 6 post to test using a Technorati tag for CNRL.
I have copied the code from the Technorati site and changed the tagname to CNRL, so I guess now I complete the post and see if it worked.

Here goes.

[CNRL]