Social butterfly - beautiful learning...

For years I have been bebo-ing and more recently facebook-ing. I wouldn't call myself a social person, but these networks certainly bring you and keep you in touch with a range of people throughout your life.

By looking at the other libraries that have pages on facebook, bebo or myspace, you can see there is a variety of methods in utilising these. I particularly like the Rotorua one. We have been trying to get a myspace page for youth for a number of years, however the ugly IT restrictions rear their head again.

As for second life, I have also been aware of libraries in here for some time, but forget it, I hardly have time for a first life....

Brilliant learning program, thank you PLS-SLNSW

Online everything!

I was really impressed by all those applications being available to use online and for FREE! I knew about getting Freeware applications, but not applications online through the web browser like that. Immediately I have setup a zoho project for a large technology implementation at my library. In the past I have tried using organisers, spreadsheets and word, but they are never as good as specific project software which we were unable to afford.
The online conversion tools at Zamzar were very impressive as well, if I had known about this in the past, the money I could have saved!!!

Mashups - New York Public Library

Mashups New York Public Library
Originally uploaded by cuppa.thé

After fiddling with big huge labs and making numerous mashups, I decided to save this one. Using the flickr tags of New York Public library, I love how the centre image is of leftover food and wine glasses. This is similar to the completion of our events although it is usually orange juice and spring rolls. A great combination of people, books, building and the culture of libraries just from a random selection using tags.

Pod is the word

Podcasts consume the rest of my time between TV, youtube, RSS feeds, work, sleep and eating. I have been subscribing to numerous podcasts, both audio and video for some time now and catch up on them periodically.
Of course podcasting doesn't work at work, so I had to remember to subscribe to more at home to complete the activities for this week. The British library being one, and more ABC podcasts. I had since subscribed to a Stephen Fry podcast after Week 1, just from seeing his great video on Web2.0.
I can see great opportunities for libraries and podcasts, book group discussions, author talks, speeches at events and even weekly news or upcoming events in an audio podcast.

Answer boards and social searching - Librarian's have all the answers!

Well the bonus from this week is that I have discovered taste.com.au from the referral in the social searching section. What a brilliant recipe site that I will return to. Love the social searching rating aspect.
I have often used answer boards for IT related issues, but more recently have come across them for more general information. The authority of the answer is hard to judge, but having librarians slam the boards is a great way to increase the reliability of them. I love that the public recognise the quality of answers from Librarians as shown in the wiki.

Tagging & Folksonomy

Del.icio.us
I like the way both Sutherland and Cleveland have used Del.icio.us for their tags. We sustain links pages for HSC, local and other general reference websites on our site. I think using Del.icio.us would appeal to those who already social bookmark and would also make it easier to update and reduce the need to train staff in editing webpages.
A tag cloud is a much preferable style of view to see the tags to me. You can easily see the most popular/used and is a positive move away from old school lists.

Technorati
It is great to see that you can broaden or narrow your search by using a keyword or tag search. The principles of library information retrieval remain! The results were more precise when using "bookmobiles" as a tag search, and conversely nswpln as a keyword search provided more posts. It's great to see all the images of libraries that have been added to flickr as part of learning 2.0

Librarything

What a wonderful thing librarything is. I have added a couple of books and put the widget on the right hand panel as you should see. In terms of the quality or cohesiveness of the tagging, perhaps this works for the most part, but I still see the need for some kind of uniformity. Forgive me I am a Librarian. I do like the social aspect though as it is interesting to see what other read and tag who have the same titles as you in their library.
I already use a similar tool on my social networking page, so probably wont be able to sustain 2, so will leave librarything for this exercise.

The tube or youtube...

When at home my choice is usually do I watch TV or do I watch something on youtube. Inevitably it is usually a TV show that I catch up with on youtube.. (as suggested by the Stephen Fry clip in week 1) My first choice is usually youtube, although I like that Google is not restricted to 10 mins.

I noticed that google video listed both youtube and their own videos when doing the example searches for lego etc. I think this is a recent development when Google bought Youtube, as a year or so ago I remember google videos being only google videos. I particularly like that author talks at libraries are available, and would like to post many of our events on there, if we had the resources that is... I often would like to go to the author talks at Mosman and other libraries, but because I am usually at work here, don't get the chance. Online videos give me the opportunity as though I was actually there.

All the DIY and information videos is something I have recently discovered on youtube. I think libraries can take advantage of this and instead of giving someone a 2 dimensional book on creating something, they could have a real-time instructional video, or at least supplement this with the book.

Instead of embedding a library related video, I have decided to continue my Peruvian theme and show this short clip of exactly what I will be doing, seeing and feeling in 6 months time....

Wookie

Wikis are a fun word, and also a great tool.
I have been a member of the wetpaint wiki for some years now and have contributed a little to a couple of sites, book related.
Discover: I loved some of those wikis, particularly as you can see from my heading the wookieepedia. Wiki is a word that that you can have such fun with and the Star Wars fans obviously have.
I think a way Libraries can use wikis is to collaborate on information that needs currency. Book groups, reviews and other opinion sharing subjects is a great way to do this. The book lovers wiki at Princeton library was a perfect example of this.
Explore: I contributed a paragraph to the NSW public learning 2.0 wiki, and noticed in the list of next generation catalogs that Queens library with Aquabrowser was listed. We have wanted this and Queens use it very well. It is a pity that most Library Management Systems are not in touch with this possible next generation as their standard OPAC. They have missed the wave...
Adventure: I couldn't believe that my small suburb was listed in Wikipedia! It even listed famous people that live/d there. I would like to add a picture of the library building that has been closed for some time as my contribution to this article, but I have yet to take a photo.

Feeding the Ambulance chaser within

RSS Feeds!

When I first saw this week's activities, I thought 5 feeds, how am I going to find 5!!!!. Well I have now subscribed to 25. RSS feeds are a great way to keep your finger on the pulse and find out what is happening up to the latest minute. I now check my bloglines regularly and go off on many tangents which of course lead to some very interesting learning.

I love seeing the Powerhouse picture of the day, and originally thought ABS for librarians, how dull. However it is really useful to finding out when the latest releases are available, instead of waiting for them to be sent out via mail to the library.

I think libraries could use RSS feeds to keep in touch with library and community events, book reviews/releases, and other related information and pop culture.

I actually added the RSS feed to this blog on the right hand side from the start. We have had RSS feeds from our library site since seeing Helene Blowers last year.

Photos, - to store, to share, to dream

Photo sharing communities are a great way to show off your pics, and to delve into other people's lives. I quite often use them to catch up with people (particularly with small children) and see what they have been doing without actually having to physically get together. I also find that I can peruse other's social lives without their direct knowledge, as some people post their every waking minute.

I like to dream of other places in both the past and future (and sometimes current time). Hence my attached image that is firmly planted in my mind this year.

This is such a great photo, it seems too unreal. Perhaps it has been photoshop'd, but the colours, the shadow and the clouds are brilliant.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be displaying in the post, even though it is in the HTML. I will come back to it and fix up later.

I have worked out that the user didn't allow his photo to be shared or downloaded from flicker, so I have just done a screen dump and added it to this post. Now you can see what my dreams are made of!

You can see the rest of his photos and the original by going to flickr from here.

biBLiOteGa

Blogs and Libraries

I think that blogs can be used with libraries and librarians for various reasons. All 4 examples shown in Week 2 are great ideas. I think we would be likely to have a blog for current events and news at our library.

My only issue would be that like other websites in general, if the blog is not kept up-to-date it would quickly become redundant and depreciate the value of the site/blog.

After searching technorati, I came across this great blog which I would love to keep going back to. Librarian Avengers is an ideal I think I aspire to. Perhaps I am kidding myself, but it is great to see hip, cool, young librarians out there on the web and blogging!

This halloween costume she talks about is funny as well...

To blog or not to blog

Learning 2.0 brings this question into my consciousness. Web 2.0 consumes much of my time at home and now also at work. (Well in a limited way, due to the organisational IT restrictions)
Do I want to spend more time writing about how I have been wasting or spending my day? Already I deprive myself of sleep catching up on missed TV on youtube (exactly as Stephen Fry perfectly surmised) or responding to all the notifications on my facebook profile.

But what better way to spread the message of how great the "The machine is us/ing us" video clip was, rather than repeating it 1/2 dozen times to colleagues or friends and family. Being part of producing a library website in the 1990s allowed me to be very familiar with HTML and the brilliant way it used this to demonstrate the point was very effective and also brought a smile to my face. I also loved the funky background music and the all over the place clicking and fast movement. What better way to communicate a message to someone from the "MTV generation"!

So, blogging can become my tool/box and quite frankly all of the other 6 1/2 habits merge into this learning experience. I think recounting all my learnings each week into a blog will also create a longer learning method for life.