# 23 The best of the nest

What a fantastic opportunity to have an exercise as grand as this one that provides us with an interactive overview into technology available. I was rather daunted to start with. I found it frustrating as I did not have any knowledge of even how to go about making these applications work for me. A 30 minute overview each week prior to the exercise coming out would have been helpful.
Time was a BIG factor. I don’t think anyone would have put in just 15 minutes seven days a week (that’s a total of almost 2hours). I think I would have spent at least 4-5 hours of my time scouting around the different sites. That’s a very large commitment in any person’s week. Especially if one is studying too. Just a reminder there is a life outside work and to provide an ‘on the ball’ service, staff need to have balance between work and home life commitments.
At last I have an idea of what Face book is or My thing or how Flickr works (among many others) and how each of these could enhance the library and my profession. So let’s use some of them.

Any way I am a survivor- I have thoroughly enjoyed this. Should time (work time!) permit I will revisit some of these sites for a more thorough look.

I particular I liked the following:-

RSS feed – fantastic idea to keep up with information and ideas in the library environment. A quick way to provide feedback directly to librarians. Needs to be managed to prevent having an information overload situation.

Library thing- sharing booklists and ideas. Obviously customised for the library environment.

Blogposts- for the NSL webpage. Communication and ideas library and book related. But who will manage this. We desperately and urgently need a Web team. As a large library system we should be leading the way in this field. I reckon our website is ‘behind the times’ – come on NSL.

Podcasts and Flickr –to promote the library, through reviews and images of events.

E-books – a great invention. Clean, lightweight and convenient due to download-ability.
Image generators-( Image Chef, library clouds etc) a great fun thing- Boy it’s endless what technology can do!
Well that’s it from Poppy. Thanks for the introduction and opportunity to partake.

Well worth the time. But relived its now over!

# 22 Reflecting on the light

I’d have to say that the social networking sites are not really for me. Yes they have a use but I’d rather be outside gardening and socialising in person.

I have so many different a/c’s now and can’t remember all the passwords I used, so they are already ‘lost’. I was concerned about posting personal details on the net. Maybe they are safe at present but with the development of the technical aspects of computers who knows what the future may be able to extract.

Now to answer the question of 22..

Opportunities that online social networks offer a library……

An important part of life is developing social and professional networks, whether virtual or reality. Online social networking could be just the tool to enhance this. Social Networking provides a technical savvy way to reach out in particular, to the teen and t’ween patrons of our library who are already experimenting and using many of the social network sites.

* By providing a form of communicating and reaching out to people. Particularly our younger people. With the novelty of the technology and its inter-activeness it could prove a good means to reach children who may not be readers. Encouraging reading online, writing online and with competitions involving books, we may yet see these ‘non readers’ join the library and become avid readers…. something to plan for in the future.
It also helps us keep up with the times with technology and relate to people where they are. By providing RSS feed from our library blogsite.

*A service delivery point- Marketing library services, events and activities to the community utilising another format. E.g Flickr – used for promoting library events in a visual format or Vodcasts for virtual library tours.

*Helping librarians ‘tune into’ the different levels and interests of their patrons by participating in the online chat sessions. (or at least reading these).This could influence how we target services to interests and trends.

*As a professional tool - Others in the library profession have discovered that Facebook is well suited as a tool for developing their own social and professional networks online. This may replace or supplement list-serves that are currently used for sharing knowledge( a more controlled environment)

*Podcasts – used for storytimes and rhymetimes- valuable for those unable to visit the library. This could also be in a vodcast format.
-children recording their own book reviews as a way of encouraging and rewarding reading and sharing books.

# 21 Social Networking

I had a look at Bebo, My space and Facebook. Very social. Even branched out to view Hamilton Public library as well as those mentioned. Visited LIANZA Bebo site, following the conference 2008 link in our exercises. They weren't really what I had thought a social networking site would be like. Probably not as exciting.

With the help of 'fish' I made a facebook a/c and set some high privacy levels (I hope) as I do not want my private information flashed around the world. I was rather cautious of even joining but a colleague convinced it would be good as I could see photos my son may post when he moves to Dubai to work.

I don't really think I am a social network site person. This is probably because I dont spend much time sitting at computers unless its to send emails, search the internet or for work purposes. However if someone can convince me how these sites could be used to benefit libraries and the role they have in our society I may be convinced.

When I searched Facebook for friends joined through NSL it took an expert to discover that the site is case sensitive, as we had trouble bring up our NSL friends. Maybe I dont have any....????

To sum up, I am pleased to have had a brief look around these sites as it will help me understand what my children and those that utilise these social sites are on about.

# 20 eBooks

I found reading about ebooks very interesting. How wonderful to be able to download books to read at your leisure, where ever you are.

These will certainly be lighter than some of the very heavy books that are about now. And cleaner as you will have your own germ-filled kindle or the like, to read from. Not one that has been around the community. But will we have access to a wide collection or will these be restricted?

So I could relate to reading an ebook while lying on my bed, in this format.

I found http://librivox.org/ and http://www.downloadfreepdf.com/ were quite good sites to search on for ebooks. Not too hard to use, especially after I had had a play with them. I suppose the more you use something the easier it becomes.

My search was for Shakepeare's Romeo and Juliet. I was satisfied with my search hits, although I am not a fan of reading small 'times roman' font. I would have liked to have been able to change this.

Looking at the kindle article in wikipedia, and its photo, I thought the device appeared a compact invention that would assist those with weak wrists (a plus for me to consider if I chose to purchase one). Seems that these can be purchased through many outlets.

So ...... looks like we are in for some changes in our libraries. Will we become outlets for selling the ebook reading devices.? Who knows..Thank goodness for pay-on-line.

#19 Podcasts

I really enjoyed looking through the kids and teen section of http://www.podcastpickle.com/
It was beautifully set out with information about the book, audio item. However on my laptop I was not able to hear the podcast. Although I thought the concept of podcasts used for this reason was very appealing. They pose a virtual link to the stock of the library when unable to physically visit the library. It was nicely set out and easy to navigate.

When I looked into http://www.podnova.com/channel/197285/ and tried to add both this and the podcastpickle link as an RSS feed, my bloglines came up with the message :-No feeds were found. Please verify that the website publishes an RSS feed. ........ WOW!.......I have just had a thought. Maybe they werent added because RSS feeds only support newsfeeds or blogs....Oh well..At least I am learning!! Just a little slow of the mark eh.

I am a little dumbfounded as to what has gone wrong. I will seek help from the experts during the week and hopefully be able to alter this post so it is more successful. I gather then I must look up a blog to add an RSS feed to my blogger account. Hope this right.Please let me know,experts, if I am barking up the wrong tree .

I looked into Yahoo audio search and found a listing for the artist Norah Jones. I had to make another a/c to access the music. I sort of feel a bit overloaded with usernames and passwords. Got to remember which is for what and the other way round! I like the display of artists who have similar music to that of which I searched.

The sum podcasts up.
I think they are fantastic and could be very useful in the library environment

#18 Youtube official

Fancy Youtube again.

I never thought that youtube could be utilised as a marketing tool for library awareness.It could be worth a go trying this format, as now a days there are a lot of visual learners out there.
Surely the music video from our exercises, with its jazzed up music and visuals could be a way we could reach the younger generation, such as teens and children.

I think it could be a way of teaching databases, opac searching and advertising the various services offered at the library.Possibly even showing rhymetimes and storytime sessions, holiday programmes, author visits and other activities offered. What about a library tour?

Who knows. The possibilities could be endless.

I found a really good example of this in the following link (I tried to upload the video but it didnt work)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJPZSGB8ZZ0

I liked the wide selection of topics available for viewing. No wonder we get a lot of patrons coming into the library to view things on youtube.

#17 web 2.0 Awards selection-You Tube

I decided to have a play around with You tube as I really haven't looked at it in depth before. I searched storytelling, a library based subject to see if the programme could be useful to use in the library environment.
I felt it was a very useful application, showing in a visual way how applications and specific subject could be enhanced.

Maybe I am a visual learner. Yes, I probably am, thats what really attracted me to the site.Tthrough the process of learning about web 2.0 we have had the odd link to you tube. I personally found these a good way to get step by step instructions on things that were new or of interst to me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFC-URW6wkU

I also had a quick look at colour blender a colour and palette design tool,but this seemed a bit complicated.

#17 Web 2.0 applications

Don't you reckon that real productivity comes from easy collaboration more than any other feature.Web office applications seem to be able to replace the old applications by taking a fresh look at what really matters from a productivity standpoint.
Interesting to note in the listed awards the following;-

• Del.icio.us first in Bookmarking and Social News qualities.
• Wetpaint second in Hosted Wikis
• Google Maps first with Maps
• Zoho second in Organization techniques
• Flickr first with Photos and Digital Images
• YouTube first with Video techniques
• Twitter first with Social Networking Mainstays
• Technorati third for News and Blog Guides
• Rollyo for Searching
  
  
  
  
  

Zoho colour

Just testing the background colour option. Which seems very much like highlighting your phrase/s.

I thought it might set the entire article up with a coloured background.

Me Mudder on Zoho

This is a test for Zoho writer.I have tried to copy and paste a document but it did not work.

So here goes with writing one.

Who done it...?

When me prayers were poorly said

Who tucked me in me widdle bed

And spanked me till me arse was wed

Me Mudder

Looks like I have been SUCCESSFUL. I have also just fiddle around and found that colour font options on the blog post site. A little slow but I will get there.

# 16 Move over Zoro! its Zoho writer

I like the bold, italicize, underline, set back ground color & color your words, link to a web page, set margins, use cool smileys options in Zoho. The friendly functional toolbar has similar features to microsoft word which all helps in understanding a new tool. And tags have yet again surfaced.This sees the way to go! The function to add contextual comments sounds appealing.

Rollyo covered in patches

I explored Rollyo and created a search roll for patchwork. I thought this was pretty cool. A one stop shop for website links to my hobbie. But what happens when new websites are created, or older websites have their links modified. This could date my links and may them obsolete. I liked the idea of listing the tags, as a laymans link to related topics.

http://rollyo.com/poppy/