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.