Week 12 - Social Networks

The LeMonde map was very interesting and made me wonder why some social networking sites are more popular in some countries and not others. I have a Bebo account that I haven't used in ages and was interested to see that New Zeland is saturated in Bebo. It would be an interesting study to find out the whys.

I signed up for Facebook just to have a look under Mosman and was surprised to find the Mosman Library HSC Study Crew group who are, as their name suggests, a group of HSC students using the Reference Library for studying. Their comments and ideas for the Library and(some)staff (the annoying lady) - we wonder who that is - are priceless. Its great to think that they are enjoying Mosman Library and think of it as a 'hub'!

A couple of years ago I saw a Four Corners program about some tragics who spent most of their lives in the virtual world of Second Life so I decided to see what all the fuss was about. I signed up and created an avatar and spent most of my time getting my avatar to look right! Did you know you can lengthen your arms and legs, make your hair thicker or longer and get your makeup just right? No wonder people prefer Second Life to real life! What was weird though was that the people on the Four Corners Program all looked exactly like their avatars!?

Apart from that, I was using up all of our downloads for the month so in the interests of domestic harmony decided to leave Second Life and concentrate on real life.

Here is an avatar I had fun creating at Doppelme - not as sophisticated as Second Life but still fun.

Week 11 - Online Tools

We tried using Google docs in the Library for our weekly rosters, that way if things changed which they invariably do we could update the roster and everyone knew what was going on. This was disbanded after a while as some naughty person/people were making unauthorised changes to suit themselves which threw everything out and roster rage is the last thing a Library needs - so there is that aspect to consider with online documents that are shared around.

Zoho looks great easy to use. Being introduced formally to these online tools has made me realise that we will have to rethink our policy of charging our customers to use our wordprocessing, excel, powerpoint etc programs as some customers could be and probably are using Google docs and Zoho for free while the less computer savvy will be paying for the same service - which doesn't seem fair to me. Keeping up to date with all that is happening on the Internet is neverending and making sure Library policies and fees and charges are fair and equitable is a challenge for us all. So thank you NSWPL for this course and for indirectly alerting us to this dilemma!

Week 10 Mashups

Mashups are fun. It's fantastic what you can do flitting from one site to the next. I can imagine that there would be lot you could do with mashups in the Library across all the age groups....the possibilites are endless.

Week 9 Podcasts and Audio

I had a look (I mean I listened to a bit of) Murdoch University's podcast of a library tour. What a bore! I can't imagine any student - unless they are a real nerd listening to that for any length of time. It would be interesting to see their statistics - especially if they are kept on how long people actually listen.

On the other hand I can see that podcasts of our HSC seminars would be useful - for students who can't come on the night and for those who want to relisten at a later date. I will certainly be looking into it for next year's program.

The Mount Kisco Library in northern Westchester County, NY have some interesting and fun podcasts and their aim is one we should all try to emulate and remember with podcasting in our libraries - to inform and entertain.

Week 8 Answer Boards and Social Searching

I've looked at Yahoo answers before this course and signed up just so I could answer someone's question by suggesting that they would be better off going to their local Library to get the facts rather than scrolling through loads of opinions.(Call me old fashioned) So I was delighted to be alerted to Answer Board Librarians Wiki.

Slam the Boards is a great idea and I especially like the way that Yahoo Answers and WikiAnswers are giving Librarians the recognition they so richly deserve.

Week 7 - Library Thing, Del-icio.us, Tagging etc

I can imagine old school cataloguers being up in arms about the tagging going on in Library Thing - all those amateurs making up their own subject headings!

There is scope for Library Thing to be useful for our customers who want to keep track of the books they are reading or have read. But then again, there are a lot of those tools out there that are just as good. Good Reads is another site that does the same thing but without the tagging.

I have been aware of del.icio.us for some time and it seems like a good idea in theory but is a bit clunky for my liking and tiresome to look around. Hats off to Sutherland Libraries for bookmarking HSC Pages but I wonder is it useful to their customers or just another place to look at? It seems to me in these time poor times the one stop shop is what people want.

Week 6 - You Tube and Google videos

I decided to add this video of the Angry Librarian as it is an example of how we should never be with our customers no matter how much they might drive us up the wall. This is a great example of a passive agressive librarian!!

And for all you lazy librarians out there here is an excellent library workout you can do to get that blood pumping. Its also fun to see how much libraries have changed since the late 80s.

Wikis - Week 5

Wow! I came to Week 5 ready to be unimpressed with wikis - I was under the influence of Andrew Keen's book The Cult of the Amateur that has a lot to say about Wikipedia and how Larry Sanger, who ran Wikipedia's day to day operations and was responsible for policing the lunatic fringe amateurs who posted and reposted thousands of entries a day came to realise that ..."the democratization of information can quickly degenerate into an intellectually corrosive radical egalitarianism. That the knowledge of the expert does triumph over the collective 'wisdom' of amateurs....and that fully democratic open source networks inevitably get corrupted by loonies" p.186

But after having a look at BookLovers Wiki Montana History Wiki and SJCPL Subject Guides Wiki I am prepared to give them another go.

I can see us using a Book Lovers wiki on our emerging Readers Advisory page at Mosman and a Subject Guides wiki would work very well in bringing the Libraries collections to people at home. The Montana History wiki was of interest to me as I have a friend who is the Special Collections Librarian at Montana State University and a board member of the Montana Historical Society. This kind of wiki would be a fantastic local studies resource that would be of interest to local historical societies and that would allow their collective knowledge of all things local and historial to be accessed by others interested in local history.

RSS Feeds - Week 4

Today I added 7 RSS Feeds to my Bloglines account. They are mostly on library related matters because I don't really have time to read continuous news stories. I really like the Shifted Librarian blog which I have read over a number of years as it really gives a good insight on what librarians can do with emerging technology to make their libraries relevant now and in the future. I have added a link to the site on my blog. I have also added the Mosman Council Rss Feed because I'm biased! I think discrimination is the name of the game with these gadgets!

Photo from Flickr

This is a gorgeous photo from the Olive Pink Botanic Gardens in Alice Springs. I visited Miss Pink's garden while I was attending the ALIA Dreaming 08 Conference recently.