Thursday, May 22, 2008

wrap up and thank you

A big sigh of relief that I have been able to get through the 12 weeks - and a big thank you to State Library staff for putting this altogether. I have enjoyed the journey - it's had a few scary moments where nothing has made sense - then WOW suddenly I get it and carry on. I hope to use some of the skills in my personal life but for work purposes I guess our library staff will have to take the advice from David Lee King's blog - 'Remember Helene Blowers’ Learning 2.0 / 23 Things? Maybe your 24th thing should be this: figure out what your real target is, and how these emerging tools and trends work into that equation.'

By this I mean what do we really want to achieve in our library for our community and how can we use these tools to get to that goal. I guess we will be finding out soon.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Week 12 - The end is in sight

Finally made it to the last week, and what a steep learning curve it has been.

Social networking - hmmm...

Our IT department have blocked Facebook so was unable to check that out but took a look at Myspace. On a personal level it was easy to join - but not that easy to find people - I looked for people I had been to school with but found the limited search options hard to define and so returned no hits. At friendsreunited uk it was much easier to track down people - I found my old school very easily and was able to limit the search to just the year I left. Found 15 people plus one of them was organising a reunion so may even try to get back for that.

I am not sure if it would be a good marketing/research tool for libraries - a lot of people in our area do not have broadband access and we get quite a few 'brownouts' in the area. Would make it very frustrating for users of our services.

Second Life - I guess I'm too busy enjoying my real (first) life to want to join this online community. I have looked at the site but it really holds no attractions for me. Younger people who have grown up with this online world probably love it...

Week 11

There is a huge range of free software out there - but we are limited in what we can use by our IT department. We also have a very efficient Intranet which allows similar options to the applications mentioned in the slideshow. eg. We already use an inbuilt software option to convert documents to pdf - so cannot see us using Zamar for this.

Using the Google Docs was very easy but at present cannot see any uses for our library patrons - I can see it would be beneficial for staff use in our regional library set up - it would make updating procedures and policy documents very easy and would enable our remote branches to participate effectively.

Friday, May 16, 2008

week 10 mashups


This was great fun - I can see lots of possiblities for this on a personal level - not too sure about the public library computers though as people may need too much time to create the mashup (we have a 1/2 hour limit).

The voicethread option could be useful for our local history collection.

National Library of Australia has a mashup project on the go with Re- Picture Australia using selected images from different collections - they are inviting people to take an image and add 'artwork' and re-load as a new image. Instructions are at http://www.pictureaustralia.org/index.html.

Week 9

Many of our internet users already listen to various podcasts - we supply headphones or encourage regulars to bring their own. At the present time I can't think of a use for staff.
I think that at the end of the course we will need to discuss just what web 2.0 techology we will be able to use in our library and how to get the best from it.

week 8

There sure are some funny questions out there in the virtual world - but it's good to see that Library staff know where to find most of the answers. I am on the ASK NOW roster through the NLA and really enjoy getting questions from all over the world. It keeps you on your toes and builds familiarity with websites you may not normally access during your work in your own library.

Week 7

This week's tasks were fun and quite easy to do - I can see myself adding more books to my library - even if it is just to see who elses reads similar books. Creating the del.icio.us account and adding the bookmarks took me a bit of time - but I finally got some sites bookmarked and tagged.
I can see uses for the social bookmarking as library staff from each of the different branches could add sites to one account which we all could access - that would be really useful.
The search of the Technorati website for nswpln2008 only pulls up the flickr images and not blogs etc.