Week 12 and finished!

Social networking could be a great way to introduce library events and to gain feedback from customers/clients/readers (no longer just borrowers) about library services. It could also be a place where regular library visitors with similar interests could meet.

A thought just struck me in this very cautious age: if a public library provides a medium that connects a victim and criminal is that library liable, and what is our legal position in relation to potential harm?

On a lighter note, I would like to join other participants in thanking the Learning 2.0 team for their commitment and support over (especially for me) an extended period of time. It has been a practical and worthwhile journey where I have been capably guided into the world of Web 2.0.

Week 11

Google docs could be used with community groups to create posters, flyers, any public documents that require collaboration - of course, everyone involved would need to be computer savvy, and have access to a computer with broadband connection. This is still not possible for everyone in my neck of the woods.

Within the library, again much more efficient for collaborative works - what a time-saver it could be.

Mashups

I have managed to save it to desktop, now to transfer to my blog.....YES!!! It worked, and Always learning was right, it was very easy to create a calendar, but to create an interactive map would take a lot more time - is there enough time in one day to use all these fantastic tools?

I loved Keir Clarke's Star Viewer, and his Virtual Tourism blog is pretty amazing too. How small the world is when he can join in our blog conversation from (I'm assuming) thousands of miles away.

As many others have said, mashups would be great for local history groups, and also for tourism where we could set up a virtual tour of our town for prospective visitors (I work in a combined library/visitors' centre).

I had great fun embedding links in my post - wouldn't have known I could do this if I hadn't been reading others' blogs but, again, it's the time factor.....so much to do.....

Podcasting

The Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County's Library Loft podcasting page is inspirational, where they have enabled viewers to access thirteen podcasts, documenting author visits, local productions and just information. And that's not all! As well as being able to download any of the podcasts, in typical "cover all possible queries" library style, authors' webpages are linked and book titles are listed with links to the catalogue. I would love to see something like that on my public library's website - maybe then my sixteen year old daughter would visit it.

Staff who can't attend training sessions or talks could catch up later with in-house podcasts, but I would imagine they would have to be of high quality or they would be under-utilised.

Slamming the boards

Answer boards would be extremely useful when the CWA country project comes around, and readers might like to rate books and compare ratings with others on an answer board instead of tracking books through a book site like Amazon or LibraryThing. It would mean only books owned by our library would be included in either case (although useful websites for the CWA project would be helpful) and there could be a link to the cataloge, too, simplifying the job for the reader.

Week 7

I spent too much time trying to format by LibraryThing search box on my blog page and too little time playing with LibraryThing. It would again be a great tool for members of a book club to use, and if connected to the library catalogue would potentially increase library usage.

LibraryThing

Well, I have managed to put the search widget into this post, but haven't worked out how to make it a permanent feature of my blog yet - still working on it.

Delicious bookmarks

I was really impressed with the Cleveland Public Library's bookmarks, and can see how appropriately it would replace the typed page we currently have stuck to a shelf. This page lists some websites that we thought would be helpful for students doing assignments, but they don't use the list. How much more fun finding a page on the web and following the links?

The famous otters

I also like this one, although the narrative gets a bit much at times....

Youtube and Google video

There is a video out there about almost any topic a body can think of. We have a very small branch library, but I could see how a video could be used to introduce other branches to customers, and to promote our library and town through videos to people in other places.

My favourite ever video

I just love this video - I make my two teenagers sit and watch this periodically so I don't have to go through each item again and again and again.........

The wonderful world of wikis

The first wiki I visited was the St Josephs PL subject guide, and it seemed a great way to connect to the catalogue, and as a gateway to related information, especially local. The booklovers wiki was a "novel" idea, and it could be a wonderful way to get different opinions about a new, or even favourite, book. Wookieepedia is a good example of a pooling of many minds.

Library applications that I think would work well would be book review sites, where reviews could link to the library cataloge, and for local history groups. There is so much information that never gets recorded, and this could be a way to make it happen.

I found while visiting the wikis that I was frustrated with pages that had links only - even though I am on a broadband connection, each click takes some seconds and I was less inclined to explore without some information as enticement.

RSS

What I like about RSS and newsreaders is that I can select specific sites/topics to notify me when new items appear. The sites I selected were the requested Powerhouse Museum site, Bruce Wolpe's White House '08 blog from the SMH, the ABC cricket news site, "statistically speaking" - the ABS site for librarians, and Helen Blowers' Librarybytes blog.

I am sure some of the items that arrive in my email from the Learning 2.0 team have been detected/selected as a result of RSS or newsreaders feeds, and can see that it is a great way of keeping up to date with the latest in technology or just changes, and onforwarding same to interested parties.

Libraries can include feeds on their blogs, or have their blog included on others' to inform about local events/changes or about things happening further afield. I can relate to the concerns of some of the other 2.0 participants about information overload, but as you are only prompted when new items appear, if you have managed your selection properly then it really will save time.

The challenge is to ensure that blogs are maintained, active and current, as the example of the "@ your library blog" shows - it has just one post dated April 10, 2007. I did a Google search which returned over 20 million hits for library blogs worldwide, and 120,000 in Australia - that is daunting.

I asked my 16 year old daughter (an active library user) whether she would access a library blog and she couldn't think of anything more boring, so the challenge is there to create interesting content.

This should work

Unwind
Originally uploaded by krismartin

Another photo loaded on from Flickr - this is perhaps getting easy!

And here's one I didn't create:

Another photo

Trying another way to add a photo: yes, that worked too.

I think I'm getting the hang of this, but very slowly.

Lucy at 2

Lucy at 2
Originally uploaded by estelle1959

I think I've managed to upload this photo of my dog to my blog: here goes.....