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?