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
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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)