Library Blogger ONE

#23 - Woohoo I did it!

2007-10-28T18:54:00.000+11:00

This programme has been a fantastic experience. I have always been interested in Web 2.0 technology and having a programme with different applications for me to follow has been great. Although I had played around with blogs previously, participating in 23 Things has made me see outside the square and enabled me to challenge myself to get things done.

I had always thought that blog templates were pretty boring but thought that anyone using them was confined to what was offered. Playing with all the different applications made me think that there had to be a way to change things, so I had a go and managed to change the image for this blog, as well as the one for my personal blog.

I love looking at different programmes and applications that exist and trying to find uses for them at work and for my own self development. I now have a wiki for my department at work, as well as some ALIA committees I am on and have used Google Talk (as opposed to Google Chat) for meetings where members are in other states - cheaper than a teleconference (free!). I now use Google Reader for all my feeds and have found many more to add to my reader through 23 Things (like I didn't have enough before....) Flickr has been a great tool to use for sharing photos with my family and friends - I like the fact that I can make some public but have others private, namely family ones. Again, we are using an administration account in Flickr for a committee. Take a look here.

There were quite a few challenges, mainly IT restrictions at work, but I am sure there were many others with this issue. I was lucky that i was able to use the same user id when joining up to everything - makes it so much easier to remember!

I am really glad that I participated in this, as I found it very interesting and informative. Well done to the State Library of Victoria for implementing this programme across all public libraries and to Yarra Plenty Regional Library for facilitating it - job well done guys!

#22 - The end is in sight lol

2007-10-28T18:53:00.000+11:00

Being able to download audio books is the path the libraries are taking and if they aren't then it is the path that they should be taking. So much of a person's daily culture is now with downloading - it is a second language - downloading movies, songs, books, you name it and it can be downloaded. Whether some of these things are legal or not is another matter....

Libraries can contribute greatly to this culture by providing access to audio books as mp3 files which can be downloaded from the library catalogue. Ipswich Library & Information Service have a wide selection of audio books for downloading. The great thing about it is that they use Overdrive which means that the file is removed from the device it was downloaded to after the due date. I think that is amazing. Apparently that happens even if the file is burned to a CD - what a great service to be able to offer patrons - downloading their choice of mp3 files from their home, straight to the device of their choice and no possibility of incurring overdue fines!! Using Overdrive is very expensive though, I believe.

With such a rising trend in downloadable files, especially by young adults, it makes you wonder whether there is a need for a consortia to make accessing these files more affordable for libraries. What do others think??

#21 Podcasts

2007-10-28T18:33:00.000+11:00

I was surprised to find out that podcasts are not only audio files. but also video files - I always that that podcasts were only non-musical audio. I was watching something online the other day and they continually referred to it as a 'podcast' - I thought they were wrong, but obviously not!!!

I used the podcast.net directory and tried searching for 'libraries' but nothing i found really interested me. I like podcast.net's searching capabilities and the way I could refine the search or extend it by using a keyword search.

The subjects covered by podcast.net are quite extensive, covering sports, hobbies, business or news and many more. I tried searching for 'scrapbooking' and found 6 results. It will be something different to listen to when walking. I added "Wholly Scrap" to my Bloglines account. I'll be exploring further and looking at finding some video podcasts as well :)

I can see a definite use for podcasting in libraries, not only for the public, but also for the staff. Meetings can be podcast so those who have been unable to attend can still here it and use the podcast with the minutes to gain a better understanding of what happened. Podcasting events such as Storytime, Rhyme Time and our Wyndham Wordfest would help those who have to miss out for one reason or another. and would also encourage others who have not attended previously but then saw something on our site.

Audacity is very easy to use and we have been using it with some success for our NLS4 events. The sound signal doesn't seem to be strong though, as we need to talk directly into a microphone to get clear podcasts.

#20 Youtube

2007-10-26T14:12:00.000+10:00

Youtube has some amazing clips available for viewing. I found Sesame Steet in the Library (lol) and some more versions of Code Monkey (how creative can people be??!!)

When I typed in 'information sharing' and this came up. It is quite amazing. A little long (just over 5 mins) but well worth watching as it gives a lot of food for thought. The clip looks at the information storage and retrieval evolution AND revolution. It shows the huge change in the ways that we now find, store an share information. Amazing and it only happened in less than 10 years

A vision of students today, by the same creator as the above clip. It shows how students learn today, how their lives will evolve and the sort of change they can expect to experience. Lots of points for discussion.

Any comments?

#19 Web 2.0 Awards

2007-10-26T13:51:00.000+10:00

These awards have some really good sites. I looked at so many of them and could play for hours. I ended up playing with 'yourminis' because I wanted to see what other widgets were available. I installed a clock widget. I was going to get carried away and put in a fishtank (kind of mirroring the huge one we have at home now) and a really cool decision maker one, but then decided against it. I really don't want widgets cluttering up my blog.

I was talking to someone who was migrating her blog over to wordpress - I wonder what would happen to all the extras and amendments to the templates I have done if I were to do that? I would assume that they would be lost, as the formatting is specific to Blogger. Having said that, it would make you wonder at the relevance of this software if it means that you would be tied to one particular application.

At least they are free, for now.....

#18 Web based applications

2007-10-25T21:20:00.001+10:00

I can see the value of using a tool like zoho to create a shared document. I use google docs frequently and it comes in very handy. It is good to know of another online sharing tool. ooh a smiley! i remember them from my msn study days!!!

I like how zoho still uses similar features to Microsoft Office, much easier to switch between uses.

Still playing around and Zoho also has a wiki featue, as well as notebook, planner and meeting features.

The 'r' is sticking on my keyboard - i actually need to remember that my user name is 'libraryblogge1' flipping heck!

I love the way these web based applications all integrate with each other.

Time to chill

2007-10-25T20:24:00.000+10:00

thought i would try to add a video. I love this clip of the girl in her PJs doing a Marcel Marceau dance of Jonathan Coulton's Code Monkey.

Click here to see the song being performed live.

#16 and # 17 Wikis

2007-10-25T19:16:00.000+10:00

Wikis - I love them! I was first introduced to wikis at a presentation I went to at NLS2006 in Sydney in December 2006. I was intrigued by the whole concept but a little flattened when the speaker, who was talking about using wikis for information sevices, said that the wiki didn't work!

It was with mixed feelings that we then started a wiki for NLS4 as a means for collaborating and sharing all our information. It is a private wiki, and can only be accessed by members of the NLS4 team. It has proven to be invaluable and of course means that any of the team can access the wiki from anywhere at any time. I also love the way that I get emailed notification when the wiki is altered.

I recommended use of pbwiki when our library wanted to start one to get ideas from staff on the future direction of the library and also started one for the Children's and Young Adult area as a way to capture knowledge.

Library Success is a wiki that shares best practice within the library world. It is a great idea. The very nature of wikis. being an open collaborative tool with editable content, means that sometimes they are subject to inaccurate information being put on them, either deliberately or accidentally. I noticed that Library Success is now asking for email verification when an account is opened, for vandalism reasons.

I added my blog PBwiki Learning 2.0 SandBox wiki, the Favourite Blogs (had to use Aussie spelling :) ) page under Australian Blogs. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get a link to work - Keep getting an error on a page. So guys, the blog name is there, but it isn't a link. I will keep trying.

#15 Web 2.0 and Library 2.0

2007-10-23T12:25:00.000+10:00

Libraries will have to keep up with change to keep up with all the new technology that keeps emerging. In fact, Web 2.0 is already becoming dated, with talk of Web 3.0 and the semantic web. As children learn more about technology in their formative years, it means that these things become a way of life - hard for any of us right now to grasp the concept that we knew of days that our children would see as positively primitive - no mobiles, no computers, no PDAs, NO INTERNET!!! And when I studied IT subjects, I had to hand code all my web pages - compare that with blogger's 3 step sign up process, where you have a web page of sorts, where anyone, with barely any skills, can create a web page.

Web 2.0 technology can be used to help bring a new generation of patrons into the library. The Department of Education blocking myspace could be seen by some as a marketing opportunity to attract that client base into the library, and I don't mean just by giving access to myspace on public access computers, but also by trying to integrate it into the way we do things, with our homepage and other services. Unfortunately, some just don't see it that way.

# 14 Technorati

2007-10-22T16:54:00.000+10:00

Technorati now tracks over 100 million blogs - that is amazing. I am not so sure that I would want to use it - I prefer to keep track of my blogs through my feeder and to be more selective in those that I track. I could see myself getting sidetracked looking for things. This of course, doesn't mean that I won't go and have a browse......

#13 Tagging, folksomonies and social bookmarking in Del.icio.us

2007-10-22T16:38:00.000+10:00

Del.icio.us - an odd name - I have often wondered how they came up with that name! I think the idea of sharing links like this is good - I used to do it with Furl and it sort of went by the wayside.

The great thing is that you can see what others have 'bookmarked' with the same tags and find sites that you may not have known about.

I can see a real use for this in academia, for teaching with students. You can have a link on Facebook to Del.icio.us links. Wouldn't it be good for a lecturer to set up a FB account for the subject and then use Del.icio.us to mark sites that the students needed to look at for their studies. Just a way to bring the learning into 'their space'.

I created a Del.icio.us account for myself, but had to do it from home, because of the IT restrictions we have at work. I wasn't too keen on having to download something onto my tool bar though - I don't like external things that are supposed to think for you - I find they can often have a lot of spy ware with them

On the whole. quite a good way to bookmark remotely.

# 12 Rollyo

2007-10-18T10:40:00.000+10:00

Well, pretty impressed with what Rollyo can do. It would be great to have different search rolls for diferent subjects by using the drop down menu feature available. It would be used on the reference computer and there would be no problems about any sites that are bookmarked vanishing overnight when the system restores.

The only drawback I can see is that it gives fairly meaningless results from the sponsored links, that really have no relevance to the search - they are just a means to draw you in. I guess that is to be expected from something that would probably require advertising to be able to survive.

I was going to do a work related search roll, but instead did one on some of my favourite professional reading blogs - hence the name 'Cool Blogs'

# 11 Library Thing

2007-10-04T13:35:00.000+10:00

Well have had a play with Library Thing, and I have to say that I quite liked it! I don't think I would use it much (who has time to read when you work in a library????). I did enjoy adding some books to my own catalogue but used some books I loved as a child - The little House on the Prairie series. I went a little further and added a spin off series, called Little House - The Charlotte Years. This series is about the childhood of Laura Ingalls' grandmother, Charlotte. There is also Little House - The Caroline Years which is about the childhood of Laura's mother, Caroline.

To visit my Library Thing library, click here.

Week 5 - PLAY!!

2007-09-25T16:13:00.001+10:00

I like to play!! Image generators are really good - talk about a time sucker though! Too easy to get caught up watching it!! I really liked this text collage one - called Linguasso (combination of lingual and Picasso), it created random art pieces based on words that it chooses. The words are in different fonts and sizes, overlapping too - the end result looks quite good. I quite like this one it created for me. It would look really good printed on a transparency for a scrapbooked page. The only (slight) hiccup is that it IS random - you can't actually choose the words you want. Still, I can see lots of potential......

Oh boy - just thought I lost my post!! luckily blogger has autosave.....

Uses for RSS readers

2007-09-25T15:57:00.000+10:00

I like my google reader account - I have subscribed to many feeds and organised them into folders relating to their subject (am I cataloguing again???). I have one for marketing, one for libraries, one for scrapbooking, one for authors, one for teens - you get the picures. I have added some to my bloglines account - if you click on the picture of the book in the previous post, it will take you there.

I find using RSS so much simpler than having to regularly check any sites I have put in my 'favourites' - all I have to do is log into the one site and and new additions are there waiting for me to read!

For libraries - what a great way to be able to alert patrons if there are new books in the collection, or new journals added to a database. A different method of desktop delivery. Library Elf is also RSS enabled - bonus!

Public RSS feeds

2007-09-24T19:53:00.000+10:00

Well I finally figured out how to make my bloglines public. Talk about roundabout directions!!! Click on the book to go there!!!

Week 4 - Bloglines vs Google Reader

2007-09-23T18:06:00.000+10:00

I thought I would sign up for Google Reader too, to make the most of my acocunt. Bloglines is much faster to detect a feed than GR and has some fancier features.

I then found this post on Kathryn Greenhill's blog (go Kath!) - she says it so much better than me!

Week 4 - RSS feeds

2007-09-23T17:48:00.000+10:00

I love the idea of RSS feeds!!! It was OK to add sites I liked to my 'favourites' but that meant I had to keep remembering to check if there were any updates, and sometimes the updates wouldn't be obvious from the homepage of the site. It also meant that I couldn't check for updates from other computers, unless I remembered the URLs, as favourites are only specific to the machine you are working on (unless there is some other way to share them, short of networking 2 or more PCs).

I did dabble with RSS over 12 months ago, using SharpReader - this is a client that I downloaded to my laptop that I would put the RSS feeds into and it would regularly check for updates. At the time, not many sites were RSS enabled, so the content of SharpReader was a bit limited. I also would forget to open it, so it was starting to get a bit pointless.

I love the idea of a web based reader, because I can access my account anywhere to check for new feeds. Great way to keep up with what is happening.

I have subscribed to 20 different feeds!! I think I'll add some of my favourite blogs to my blogroll. I organised them in different folders so I can read what subject I feel like at the time. It could be library stuff, scrapbooking stuff, Web 2.0 stuff.... I think I'll have a play with Google Reader too. That way I can use the same google account!

I just discovered something really nifty - if i do a spell check, I can double click on the 'unknown' word (or the typo, if that is what it is :-) ) and it will give me a selection to choose from. Cool.

Flickr mashups - Spell with Flickr

2007-09-22T17:11:00.000+10:00

I just love the way Spell with Flickr works. It is the cleverest thing. I could play with it for ever! It was a bit tricky getting the picture into the blog though!

Playing around

2007-09-20T21:11:00.000+10:00

Being a true cataloguer, I tried to have correct labels on my postings so they could be searched, but I didn't like the way they looked visually. I tried to put them in a label cloud, but just couldn't get it to work this time. I will play more with that another time.

One thing I have never been keen on with blogs is when the archives seems to scroll on forever - doesn't really make one want to look for older postings. Phydeaux (who gives instructions on the label clouds) also give instructions on how to organise blog archives into a calender - looks pretty neat!

My creation - Technology

2007-09-20T20:36:00.001+10:00

My creation
Originally uploaded by libraryblogger1

I love technology - it always amazes me just how far it has advanced and just how much we can do with it. When looking at mashups and all the other photo manipulation toys, I couldn't resist making a trading card. It took a few attemps, as the resolution of all the photos i chose meant most of the pic was cropped to fit on the card. At least this one is ok.

I made the card private in Flickr, but then Flickr wouldn't let me blog it, so I had to make the photo public.

So many great tools out there - I really liked TXT 2 Pic as well - wouldnt it be cool to have a famous person tell us something? HOw about Bill Gates giving the library $10 M US?? :-)

Playing with my blog

2007-09-19T19:42:00.000+10:00

Well I thought I would have a bit more of a play tonight and have inserted a new picture into my header - trying to make it more personal than just the same templates we see on so many blogs now. I also changed some colours and my font to trebuchet in a slighter larger size. The pictures took ages to configure so that it would fit into the space allocated. I won't tell you what it first looked like!

I have been looking at the blogs of my colleagues at Wyndham and they are doing such a great job. One colleague wrote something here that I can really relate to. Blogging used to daunt me - I would cringe at the thought of someone reading what I had written. It is amazing how quickly one gets over this :-)

New books

2007-09-19T19:02:00.001+10:00

New books
Originally uploaded by shewgirl

I love the way that Flickr lets you configure your blog so that you can add a photo along with a blog entry.

I was shown something similar to this a few months ago used by a library in the US. While i initially had one book cover linking to an entry on our catalogue, I think having a picture of several books is better as it allows users to see many items at the one time.

Week 3 - Flickr

2007-09-19T17:33:00.000+10:00

Playing with Flickr was an interesting exercise. I found it quite easy to use, but there was some differences to work out first - organising sets and batches etc. Photsharing isn't new - when I was studying and first started using the internet, a study buddy used to use webshots to share her photos with her family overseas, as she was from Hong Kong. There are other photo sharing sites around, but Flickr has some very innovative tools that it offers users.

Being able to tag photos means that uses can browse for categories that interest them (I guess we can link it to libraries and say that we are cataloguing them :-) ) Collaborative tagging just uses keywords insteaod of authority files. While I like the idea of collaborative tagging (folksonomy) because it can make it more user friendly, it can make it harder to support searching when compared to browsing items with tags from controlled vocabularies. Imagine how the content can get out of control?? Imagine tagging photos with something as general as beach - add those photos to all the other photos on in the world that have been tagged with the word 'beach'. How many will think to be more precise or to retag their images? Ok, so my background can get in the way a little... :-)

One thing I really liked about Flickr was the way I could make some photos viewable to the public and leave some private. I also liked how I could invite people and give them only access to view certain batches or access to anything I posted. I put my niece's christening photos up and only wanted my family to look at them. I have a bit of a thing about photos being public on the internet.

Part of our marketing plan for a conference I am convening is to have a Flickr site with photos added regularly so that we can add interest and variety to our site. Stay tuned for more information!

23 things Week 1 Lifelong Learning

2007-09-13T20:54:00.000+10:00

Listening to the podcast made me realise that I have always been a lifelong learner, I just didn't know that there was a name for it, or maybe there has only been a name for it in the last few years??

A fellow colleague mentioned that his/her first learning was structured learning, through the education system. This is true but I think lifelong learning is more than that. The education system is something we all have to participate in, it is a legal requirement up to a certain age. While we can start our journey to lifelong learning during school, if we are inquisitive enough to ask questions, I really feel that lifelong learning begins when we take on the responsibility to learn for ourselves. Yes this can happen at school, but I think that we place more importance on this as adults.

Knowledge is something I have always looked out for - how to do something better, faster or more effectively, new roles, multiskilling - all very important to me in my working life as I looked for ways to increase my knowledge and challenge myself. It didn't matter if I was paid extra for this or not. By doing this, I was learning all the time.

I love learning new things and I love helping people learn new things. That is what is so great about this programme, that ability to learn and to learn through play.