Well week 12 is complete and with it the course. It would be remiss not to say thankyou to the State library for making the course available and another thankyou to V for her encouragement and incentives. This week I have explored social networking to varying degrees. Could not quite overcome my fundamental need to be cautious about what I put out there. The voyeur in me wanted to sign up to Myspace or Facebook and have a good look around. The real me could not bring myself to do it. Second life – don’t quite know what to say that isn’t clichéd (enough trouble managing my first life etc.). Liked the description of the Communities of practice for local government proposal being an attempt to harness the power of social networking to share problems, ideas and expertise – laughed at the comment in the Daily Telegraph describing Facebook for local government as the grimmest thing imaginable – “lots of bureaucrats swapping tips about how to complete form CG23, or fiddle their expenses”. The ALA’s profile of itself on MySpace was certainly something to aspire to!! From my own personal point of view I am happy to keep pushing myself to discover what is out there and participating in Library programs that use our new found expertise for the benefit of our customers.

• What have I achieved? – I know a whole lot more than I did at Week1 and I am motivated to know more
• Did I enjoy it? – Unexpectedly Yes
• Was it hard to do – At times yes, but worthwhile
• Have I overcome my dislike of that loud, uncontrolled cacophony out there? – No! - but I have mellowed a little.

Week 11

Really liked Google Docs – the edit anywhere anytime approach and the myriad of templates made an impression. I didn’t use ZOHO - what can I say realising I had to create yet another account deterred me somewhat and the training info did state that the core features matched up well with Google Docs. Did my desk shift on the first afternoon after I had looked at Google Docs and recommended the site to a customer who was looking for resume templates. She went away really happy. Slideshow looked interesting, but I still have such reservations about putting any of my “stuff” out there. I only have one picture on Flickr (and that’s of a tree) so you can see what I mean! I’m intrigued to know what Thumbstacks offered, but alas there was no access available and the Slideshow exploration of online tools wouldn’t open either on the occasions I tried. In theory the collaborative options all seem great, but being in the “lap of the gods” in terms of availability a lot of the time makes me really appreciate an in-house network with somebody at the help desk when things go wrong

Week10

Mashups – well had lots of time-consuming fun here and I suppose there are endless possibilities for producing posters, displays, maps with library locations, places of current and historical interest etc. Had a look at Automotivator as my colleague had produced a lovely poster for our door guaranteeing our “friendly service”. As weeks go this wasn’t too demanding. Must say that my head is still in Week 9 as I am so delighted at knowing how to download the podcasts. Went to a seminar in Sydney last Friday and listened on the train to a disc from my current talking book that I had ripped on to my MP3 player and the podcasts I had downloaded from the British Library site - hard to recognise myself although I do recognise that there is so much to learn and I am far from being what could be described as “techno-savvy”

Week 9

Podcasts – enjoyed the exploration of this topic. It would be very easy to spend too much time at it as there are so many interesting podcasts out there. Unlike much of what has gone before I felt I was in a much safer and measured environment. For a change I did not feel that I was standing in the middle of a world where everyone was screaming at each other. There’s a lot to get excited about in terms of application in the library (loved the children’s book readings for instance), but as with a lot of 2.0 we would need to have our IT department on board. Not sure I really have the hang of subscribing yet although I have managed to create a link to the British Library on my blog, save some links to my desktop and load them on to my MP3 player – that’s what I call a success.

Week 8

Have just revisited Week 8 after my sick leave. Thought I must have forgotten something significant, but no – it was just as uninspiring as the first time around. Whilst the librarians slamming the boards are to be commended it is such a miniscule drop in an ocean of uncontrolled, disorganised babble. All I can say about it is that WikiAnswers was slightly more acceptable than Yahoo answers. Maybe commending librarians for participating is wrong after all. Are we condoning and legitimising this cacophony when we know perfectly well how to do it better ourselves. Should we not be promoting things like Ask a Librarian? Is it not a case of build it, promote it and put resources into it and they will come?

Week 7

Definitely social book marking has enormous potential as a reference tool in the library. Looking at the AskNow site and the two library examples was really interesting and indicative of just why the 2.0 course is important in highlighting what is being developed. It must be seen as good alternative to general search engines with the ability for staff to collaborate by identifying useful resources and putting them together. No longer would I have to turn up for my once a week reference shift and not know what resources had been found by other staff for the current school assignments
Do I want to make sure my blog is being tracked by Technorati? I would like to pretend that nobody knows its there
I got the same number of hits for the standard search in Technorati as for their advanced search before trying the tag search as suggested. Had no luck with nswpln2008 until I tried the photo tab. Went back and tried “any authority” where I got 10 hits – certainly the examples were not such that I got a “wow” response to the technology.
LibraryThing – lots of fun – could spend endless hours here. This was a really full week, but finishing with LibraryThing certainly had the potential to lift the satisfaction rating.
Not so keen on the front page quote though – “poised to turn cataloguing into a form of communal recreation”

Week 6 - additional

Ignore my post from yesterday – Success I have embedded a video file – how happy am I, but I’m not going to shout about it: it would not be in keeping with the theme of this page

The Sound of Silence

SIMON & GARFUNKEL - THE SOUND OF SILENCE
Uploaded by

Week 6

I rather enjoyed looking at what everyone was doing with video in their libraries – lots of potential to put a different face on things. I enjoyed the 3 reasons for loving your library and the play on the drive-through theme. Do I have three reasons for loving my library? I could probably find more than 3, but the one I would like to name is lost to me. I’ve forgotten what it is to be just a borrower who comes through the door and find it impossible to recapture that feeling/sense of place/aura of the building etc. that used to inhabit the moment of entry to any library in my pre-librarian days.
I thought the new employee orientation from PLCMC was a great innovation. With our worksites being so spread out it would be excellent to have a welcome from the higher echelons introducing themselves and welcoming new staff. It could also be used to demonstrate information about a new procedure or to reinforce a policy.

You may note there is no video embedded in my blog. Did I set off on the “adventure” oh yes! Did I complete the journey – NO! Did I try hard to complete it - you bet! The frustration of having YouTube available for such a limited time was only surpassed by the difficulty in finding the code which was only surpassed by my inability to embed it without my blog telling me there were HTML errors.

What do I think of YouTube and its ilk? On the whole they look like they are there to provide a bit of downtime for the info-junkies while they wait for their next RSS feed. Infotainment that monopolises our time
Satisfaction rating: 6 (I am starting to appreciate the expanding of my horizons)

Week 5

Well what can I say about Wikis? I’ve completed the week with a couple of omissions I should own up to. The system was far too slow to take the pbwiki tour and I have not contributed anything to the nswlearning 2 wiki, but I did explore the site and wondered where all the cataloguers were.
The SJCPL subject guides – what can I say “in an ideal world” – where would we ever find the time and resources to maintain such an excellent wiki. Mint Museum – much more manageable. The full library success: a best practice wiki – I liked this one although not its Wikipedia format. Have added an RSS feed to my blog (just like that! At the beginning of Week 1 just that statement would have been gibberish to me)

The library environment could certainly benefit from the expert and controlled use of Wikis, but there is so much unreviewed and uncontrolled stuff out there that is not subject to ethical restraints. I recently read Andrew Keen’s book The cult of the amateur : how today's internet is killing our culture and assaulting our economy. He describes the rise of the “Citizen journalist” offering up opinions as fact, rumour as reportage and innuendo as information. He also describes blogs as the greatest outburst of mass exhibitionism in human history and here at the end of Week 5 as fascinating as it all is I am no less inclined to agree with him.
Satisfaction rating: Can’t think of a number this week – it was OK

Week 4

Week 4 is now complete and I have had all the adventure one person needs in a week. Still I suppose it is testament to my growing confidence that I tackled the adventures. It was thanks to Pete’s post of the 17th March that I eventually worked out how to put the feed onto my blog. I selected Google Reader as my reader of choice – mainly because the password to use it is the same as my blog. Will I make RSS feed watching part of my daily routine – definitely not. I already feel we have an overwhelming surfeit of information coming into our lives (its too noisy out there), however there are a few blogs that are relevant to my work and life that I now know how to arrange in a convenient location and that is good for me and I recognise that on a larger scale this is good for the Library.

Week 3

Well week 3 is finally complete. I have created a Flickr account blogged a photo, uploaded a photo, made a contact, joined a group and inadvertently breached the etiquette by not giving myself a profile before looking at MerryJack's photos.
Satisfaction rating this week - well OK 5 - the amount of time is takes away from "real" work is always going to be a frustration, but yes I did enjoy it

About Silence

About Silence
Originally uploaded by globalindex

Werbellinsee, Biosphere reservation Schorfheide Chorin, Brandenburg, Germany

In keeping with my theme this is photo from Flickr titled "About silence". Certainly need something peaceful to counter the stress of working out how to do it all

Week 2
Well that wasn’t too hard although I am very much aware there is much to learn and I experienced much frustration in the process of producing this meagre effort
Thoughts on blogs – are they just an outlet for unexpurgated and unreviewed musings? Do we underestimate the time and effort required to maintain a blog?
Should I acknowledge that secretly I would probably enjoy a post on my site even though my rhetoric is to the contrary?
Where are all the people who used to share the lunch table with me – are they all blogging at their desks? What does that say about modern communication?
Satisfaction rating: 3 out of 10 – I did get it done, but I need convincing it was a worthwhile use of my time