I am happy to see some new technology to explore is going to be added for us to explore. Time to get the old blog going again, I found a new layout which I love, looks much better than my old one. Only problem with adding the new layout, as the instructions told me to, is that it lost all of my gadgets so I will have to add them all over again. I edited my details in the blog as they were out of date.Since the original course I have been blogging quite a lot since the first course, not only did I help a colleague set up a blog for her book clubs but I have also set up a e-newsletter for the library http://singletonlibrary.blogspot.com/ which has a monthly post with any upcoming events, new books and book recommendations. I like blogging when there is a point to it. I don't like it when it is meaningless. I haven't really had time to read any other blogs apart from the occasional other library blog and had a look at all my colleagues blogs at the end of Learning 2.0 I also changed the name of my blog to add in the 2.1 part :D
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Week 12: Wrap up; social networks and catch up
Social Networking is a great tool, I am a member of Facebook and log on daily to see what my Friends and Family have been up to. Social Networking is becoming so popular that it would be a great idea for libraries to be out there, a great way for marketing and publicity of the library. Our Library is definately going to in the near future be on MySpace. I am also a member of SecondLife, I did a conference on Second Life once about literature and there was alot of problems which I guess made me not like SecondLife too much, it is very difficult to work out and very time consuming, it is very liable also for libraries to get on Second Life to remind Internet users of our great services, I just hope if our library ever decides to sign up to Second Life I am not the one to do it because I really don't like it at all. So having finished the Learning 2.0 course I am happy that I have completed it, I didn't think there would be anything to learn for me but I am very surprised as I came away learning quite a lot, maybe I had already used most of these things before but I also learnt there relevance in Libraries and how my own Library can use them. Looking forward to putting into place some of the things we learnt on the Course. Feel free to contact me about anything I blogged about at kharris@singleton.nsw.gov.au
Thanks for a great learning experience.
Week 11: Online applications and tools
I had heard of GoogleDocs before but didnt ever investigate to see what it actually was. GoogleDocs is a great idea, I myself don't really create documents that more than one person collaborates on but if I ever do in the future I will definately be using GoogleDocs, it would be great for anyone writting new policies that need to be send to managers or others for approval and change. GoogleDocs obviously has very limited capabilities in comparison with Microsoft Word but for simple documents it is such a wonderful application, and its Free :D I also tried Zoho and found it nowhere near as easy to operate as GoogleDocs but definately for Slideshows or Speadsheets it would be a good thing.
Week 10: Mashups
As I talked about previously the Library held a competition during Readers Week to create a motivational reading poster and we used Huge Big Labs so I have used Mashups before, you can create some pretty cool ones and I created two really quick ones so imagine what you could do if you actually spent some time to make them. They could be great promotional material for the library. There are also some great possibilities for Local Studies content. I love http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/ so interesting.
Just a fun one I made
Week 9: Podcasts and Audio
I have used Podcasts in the past and I regularly listen to radio shows that I miss while at work, I have them set up on my iTunes and they download automatically to my iPhone for me and I can then listen to them whenever I feel like it, I love listening to them whilst cleaning the house. I think Podcasts would be great for the Library, our Library is currently in the early stages of setting up "Living Libraries" and it would be a great feature to be able to offer them on our website to housebound and remote users not able to come to the library. They could also be great for Teen webcasts, storytime, book reviews, poetry readings, author talks, celebration of special events, interviews and library newscasts... the possibilities are endless. They would also be great for recording any staff meetings we have that people are unable to attend, they would be able to listen to them at a later date and not miss out on anything, because it isnt quite the same to just read the notes from a meeting.
Week 8: Answer boards and social searching
I am totally addicted to Yahoo Answers and have participated in Slam the Boards before, it is a great idea for increasing awareness of Libraries and how we are still relevant. I still answered a few questions in the Books and Authors section mentioning in the source box that I am a Library Technician. My statistics are
Answers
Total answers
133
Best answers
40
30%
Best answer
Which I am pretty proud of as it is the highest percentage of Best Answers I have seen. The Books and Authors section of Yahoo Answers is great for fine tuning Readers Advisory Skills and keeping up to date with what is new and what people still love to read. Overall a pretty quick excercise for me but a very relevant one.
Week 7: Tagging, folksonomies, del.icio.us and LibraryThing
This week I had lots of fun and learnt alot with Social Bookmarking which I had never really used before. I love the idea of delicious and what a cool url, it did take me a few go's to type it in write though. I have now got my own accout and have found some pretty interesting websites from the top tags list on the homepage, I even logged in at home to show my fiance how cool it was and how he should get his own account, it would be a great idea to have a library account setup to add any interesting websites we come across that could help with any reference enquiries, I also found a website on Mouse Tutorials and passed it along to my coworker who does Seniors on the Net Classes. Library Thing was another very interesting website that I enjoyed alot. I added some books from my personal library, it was hard to think of what I had at home so I cheated and added the Tomorrow Series that I own. I love the search options and the tags that lead you to more books, Library Thing recommendations, Member Recommendations and Member Reviews, it would be a great site for Readers Advisory and I would definately direct patrons to it. I managed to add both my LibraryThing Shelf and my Delicious Tags to my blog.
