photo from "ned the head" on flickr - Wagga at dawn

Embedding a Youtube video

Uploading a photo from Flickr

this photo is called "chicken and craps" I found it on flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/foxxyz/143793979/

Week 12: Social networking etc.

I have tried out Facebook in my personal life - not sure how well it works to have personal and professional overlapping but I guess that happens in real life anyway.

I think MySpace, Facebook, Bebo etc. are useful marketing tools but I think before we use them we need to check that the demographic we're trying to reach are using them. eg. MySpace works well for public libraries in the US marketing to young adults ... but in New Zealand Bebo is more prevalent.

I think Second Life is interesting but will be more relevant to us when more of our clients start transacting more of their lives in Second Life.

Wow... I made it to week 12. It's been quite a ride, tricky to steal the time to complete all the activities but definitely worth all the effort.

Week 11: Online applications

Ahhh... I'm on familiar ground with this lesson. I have already been using Google docs to work on committees that are geographically widespread, also Google Groups for storing committee files etc. that are accessible to everyone.

I have found Zamzar very useful for converting files to PDF - something I need to do suprisingly often. Doc2PDF online is very good too.

I have yet to fully explore the project management tools that are out there but find I am living more and more of my 'life' online so no doubt will begin using them as well.

Using any different programs requires a bit of flexibility - I have used Open Office as well and found I had to think more about things I could do automatically in programs I am more familiar with but perhaps that mental agility is something to keep developing as we age anyway?

Week 10: Podcasts

Podcasts are great - though now I can see I really do need broadband at home so I can subscribe to some!

I think we could use them in so many ways:
- downloadable self guided tours of our exhibitions or the library itself
- capturing author talks etc. from our events program
- providing curator talks about rare books and other important items in our collections
- building training tools for the public library folks
- developing training resources for our own staff [eg. induction program]

Perhaps our future includes library as broadcaster?

I have collected an mp3 player and am finding it a bit of a challenge to master but will persevere. I'm not sure the player itself really adds much value to the program?

Week 9: Mashups

What fun! I loved this lesson and have had quite a bit of fun exploring the many image generators linked at the Generator Blog.

The French map mashup is so impressive - surely we could look at something like this with some of the maps in our collection and also in relation to the Dictionary of Sydney project? I'm not sure what skills and technology we'd need but it would be worth investigating.

Week 8: Answer boards and social searching

I first heard of "Slam the Boards" last year and thought at the time it seemed like a really smart and proactive move for librarians to be involved. I think our experience with Ask Now shows that clients do want to interact with us online and I think we need to factor Answer Boards in context of both a service and a marketing exercise - pointing people back to libraries.

I wonder if we're beginning to see a trend that information is valuable because it's accessible and fast (point of need) rather than authoritative that might be important. Do we know what our clients value about information? Do our clients have diverging opinions on this issue?

Week 7: tagging, folksonomies etc.

Before I did this course I had heard the term 'folksonomies' and didn't really know what it meant. In context of more structured 'taxonomies' I 'get it'. I think we need to meet our clients somewhere in the middle on this one -

• I like the examples of catalogues that include tags, we should look at this in our catalogue
• I think we should be able to 'connect' tags and subject headings in some way [somehow in an automated way in our catalog]
• I think we could use tag clouds to help secondary students explore some of our resources ... helping them find the right keywords to track down what they need
• I think we could use tag clouds and resources like Del.icio.us at the information desks, particularly for very topical enquiries and to capture links to be considered for the official lists on our website
• I set up a del.icio.us account and was disappointed that I couldn't download the widget for my toolbar - it should be part of our SOE...
• I set up a LibraryThing account but since I don't have time to read all of my books at home I doubt very much I will have time to catalog them into LibraryThing... :-(
• I think LibraryThing for Libraries is a trend we should keep an eye on

Week 6 - online video

I had heard of YouTube before - mostly for fun stuff ... like the internet version of funniest home videos. Boy had I underestimated it's potential:

• I have seen some great examples in this course of short video tutorials, embedded in the course they work well.
• I have learned that YouTube isn't the only hosting site - videos can also be found in TeacherTube, blipTV, MetaCafe, Daily Motion, DotSub and Google Video to name a few.
• I have learned that many organisations block access to sites like these to limit the use of bandwidth - we need to keep this in mind when we put resources up in these formats for our clients
• I haven't tried uploading a video ... but I hope to in the future
• I added a video bar from youTube to my blog and here is a video I've embedded:

I chose it because it shows that even if we don't add content to online video sources library clients are quite capable of putting up their own... as the folks at SLQ have discovered.

Checklist ...

I thought I should do a quick checklist against the topics and make sure I haven't missed anything so far:

• Week 1 - watched it, read it OK
• Week 2 - set up my blog and explored Technorati, have also set up a blog using Wordpress (a few more features but trickier to get the hang of so I think Blogger is a good choice for this course)
• Week 3 - I've uploaded photos to flickr, added tags to them, searched for quite a few. Haven't quite mastered the Flickr upload tool direct to my blog but managed to upload photos to my blog anyway. I think Creative Commons is important - it has applications to a lot of the work we do here where we're happy to share with acknowledgement. I think people misinterpret it as an alternative to copyright law - it's not, it's just a way of indicating what type of sharing and reuse you authorise within copyright.
• Week 4 - RSS: I have used bloglines a lot, it compares well to another RSS reader I have used "RSS Bandit" which is also good, I have also dabbled with Google Reader. I have to track blogs a lot in my day to day work so tools like these make it much more effective ... now I just need a daily timeslot to read the posts! I'd like to see us put RSS feeds on a lot of our SLNSW webpages and into our catalogue for new items by authors / subjects - I think our clients would find it really useful.
• Week 5 - I have edited a Wikipedia entry and created a couple of wikis in pbwiki (so easy and working well). I think we need wikis behind the firewall for internal use and also access to ones externally for our clients. I think we need to have a discussion about what information we put on our official website and what needs to live in these 'collaborative spaces'. I wish we could set up an Australiana wiki...!

Week 5: There and back again

How quickly the weeks have flown by and now I have some catching up to do for graduation!

I was intrigued by this article about the "Battle for Wikipedia's soul" - it's one of those gems that Library Link of the Day unearth. It fascinates me that we live in an era where we debate what information is 'trivial' and what is not... archaeologists and anthropologists of the future will be very interested in much of what we might term "trivia". It's something that we are well aware of as an institution that collects a record of life in NSW... not just the high-brow but everything that tells the story of who we are and how we live.

I guess that puts me fairly in the camp of the 'inclusionists'!

I can see lots of applications for wikis in the collaborative work that we engage in with other NSLA libraries and also with the public library network. It could be as simple as 'brainstorming' or whiteboarding ideas through to something more substantial and collaborative. It's a great function to be able to limit editing rights / access to a wiki which seems to offer a fair amount of control. PBWiki is very easy to use - I have tried editing Wikipedia entries in the past and need to work on my MediaWiki skills.

I'd love to see entries in Wikipedia for some of our more rare and unique items - in relevant articles about the famous people or places they relate to.

I added some information on how to get to the library to the wiki. Formatting went a little bit berserk for a while but I think it looks ok now.

The Google Generation Report

The Google Generation Report... The British Library and JISC commissioned a report that looks at what is colloquially being called the "Google generation": Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future (2008) by the Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research (CIBER). It asks questions like - what do we know about young people’s information behaviour? How do young people currently behave in virtual libraries? The social networking phenomenon: is it important?

Should be compulsory reading for all of us I suspect!

Weird... but clever

I don't know if this is really an example of a mashup ... it's from a competition where people re-edited movie trailers. The Shining [not quite the way I remember it!]

LibGuides - could this be the new Navigators?

Central Queensland Uni are using LibGuides to build their online subject guides etc. for students ... could this be a platform that would work really well for our Navigators? Princeton University library is also using it and here are some examples of their guides.

InfoTubey Awards!

The InfoTubey awards are given to libraries which used YouTube to market their library or its services or enhance the standing of the library in the community. There are some great examples amongst the winners.

QUT Library is also using YouTube - they created a video to promote the library to the students in their Creative Industries Faculty.

RSS and bloglines

I've set up my bloglines account [week 4] - it took me a while to figure out how to get into the edit function to create folders (is this obsession with organisation a professional virtue or just me??) and I really like the link that allows you to email a posting - I can see some applications for that in part of my day-to-day work monitoring trends.

There are so many blogs that are interesting - at least with a bloglines account I can herd them into some kind of managable order. It reminds me of a line in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency / by Douglas Adams "we have dishwashers to wash the dishes that we can't be bothered to wash ourselves, we have video recorders to watch the television programs we can't be bothered to watch ourselves, and the Electric Monk is a labor-saving device which just believes all the things the world expects you to believe when you can't be bothered to" .... is bloglines going to read all the blog postings I don't have time to read?

I checked our new website and so far we don't have any rss feeds ... seems like there is some potential there - at least for key events like the sl*u35 club and other events and exhibitions.

Eaves dropping

I've just tried searching for our organisation in Technorati. It might not be the most appropriate way to find out what our clients are saying about our services but it's certainly useful to monitor it. I tried a variety of combinations and in the end using quotation marks to make it search for the "State Library of NSW" or "State Library of New South Wales" was the most effective.

I also searched for my name ..... yikes .... a friend has been blogging about her birthday and she has mentioned me! I think I will just have to hide in plain sight in this very 'public' 2.0 world we live in!

Video Bar - Library 2.0

I've added a video bar to my blog with the keywords Library 2.0 and Web 2.0. I'm a little nervous about what will "drop in" from Youtube but I think it's worth the risk to see what's out there and what people are saying about Library 2.0.

I think it would be great if we could use short video clips like this to provide information for some of our clients - perhaps using databases effectively, how to sign up for a readers card or the Making Connections program.

Lifelong learning

In week one we were challenged to be lifelong learners. I've always been interested in learning new things and some of the organisations I have worked for have really encouraged continuous learning in their employees. It certainly helps to keep on top of one's game professionally.

I remember when there was a lot of hype about being "learning organisations" largely inspired by Peter Senge's book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization.
I guess with this training program we are putting into practice one of his principles by creating a common set of tools / methodologies and theories.

I'm quite excited about the possibilities - I know that within our organisation we have a lot of knowledge and skills in our staff. I'm impressed that it's so easy to use some of these Web 2.0 tools that with a little bit of support everyone can translate some of what they know into the online environment.

I'm very interested in the idea that Web 2.0 means collaborating with our customers and finding ways for them to contribute to the knowledge resources we create. We will have to try quite a few things I imagine before we find exactly the right mix of traditional and new services - but won't it be fun trying them out!

I think it's also a challenge for us to go into the places our clients look for information - if Wikipedia is so popular for example, wouldn't it be great if it included references to some of the unique items and information we have here?

Library of Congress blog

I am intrigued by the Library of Congress blog. It has such a personal chatty style which contrasts with what you might expect from a government agency. It's interesting to note that it does have a disclaimer: "This blog does not represent official Library of Congress communications. "

I also like the links off to their services including the catalogue, digital collections and "ask a librarian" this really integrates the blog with their website and promotes their resources. I note that the author, who is the Library’s Director of Communications has a background in journalism and speech writing.

This is the type of blog that I would put in an rss feed so I could keep up with what's happening at their library. It would be great to have something like this for our organisation.

Graphically speaking

I've been experimenting with the look and feel of my blog - I wanted to see if it could cope with an animated gif. Looks like it can't although when you click on the hula dancer you link through to a page where she does dance!

Test pilots

Wow ... at last we are ready to test the Learning 2.0 program for the staff. It's great to have so many enthusiastic test pilots on board already.

We're ready to blast off!