Week 9 - we made it! - closing ruminations

Well, I guess I was kind of sceptical when I embarked on this course. I had heard about social media, used them a bit but really just thought they were annoying pages for people with too much time, but I thought I would embark on this course to see what I was missing out on.

Some of the picture applications I will give a miss I think, but this course has taught me about some great not so new-but-new-to-me applications. I will definitely be using Rollyo, Wikis, Google reader, Zoho and downloadable media from now on in my work, and will keep an open mind and an eye out for other useful applications out there.

Thanks for setting me straight :-)

Week 9 - downloadable media

Although I've worked at the library for about a year now, and often take advantage of the books, magazines and DVDs to take out on loan, I've never really investigated the audio books (I guess because I don't choose to spend my commuting time as leisure time, but it's a poor excuse perhaps) or even e-books when doing my work. I look at training opportunities, and what I can glean from You Tube, but it never really occurred to me (I'm ashamed to admit) to take out a couple of books to support my professional work, be it how to do advanced spreadsheets in Excel or tips on Project Management, all of which I hasten to add are available as eBooks!

From now on, I promise to use these resources more!

Week 9 - Podcasts

Just entered "london" in the Podcast search and found this podcast: http://rss-feed.s3.amazonaws.com/14756..- a comedy clip (seeing as I'm going to comedy tonight).

I've used Podcasts before for training and in teaching - it's so much easier than having an internet connection to view a web clip for example. Having said that, I haven't managed to download the podcast correctly from this site (Podcastalleys) I think you needed to download something in order to download your podcasts, but I have done successfully in the past from BBC websites etc. It's great to know about the different sites you can go to as a podcast resource; normally I just go to my regular sites and check out what's offered as a podcast - a lot more time consuming!

Week 9 - YouTube

I've used YouTube before, and am using it more and more now to check out things I'm interested in before I buy (particularly music - it's saved me more than once from a bad investment, and helped me find some musical geniuses)!

At work, I have used YouTube before to check out 'how to do it' guides for various MS applications when I lose the will with the help sheets provided in Word, Excel etc. It's great and problems are solved over a 5 to 10-minute video.

This video in YouTube is of Northland, my Easter holiday destination: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWxVaa4Rl8U. I think the comment and related features functions in YouTube could be used by libraries for people to share research, reading or training experiences.

Week 8

This week has been pretty useful. I chose to explore Zoho writer as I am less familiar with it than Google docs. Both I think I will use more in the future for anything that doesn't need to be super-secure or kept confidential. I need to work more with both applications to decide which I prefer, but I can already see a few uses within libraries, sharing and collaborating on presentations (and presenting them remotely at conferences) for example, especially those which are created between people from different organisations who can't share a network. I practised starting this presentation and have also embedded it into my blog at the foot of the page. I like the fact that the interface on both Zoho and Google docs is similar to the MS set up, and you can export in different formats, even pdf.

The last application that I investigated won the 3 place award for map applications: CommunityWalk.com. I've recently been asked to develop a map of the central library site & its facilities that we could provide to visitors, and I hope to use this site to develop it.

All in all a pretty fun week - I didn't realise just how many web 2.0 applications were available. Oops - forgot to say that I posted this blog from Zoho Writer...and it was pretty easy to figure out...I'm liking Zoho.

Week 7

Really interesting! I'd heard about Wikis before but never really taken in what they were about. Think their applications in libraries could be endless: comments by a book club for example on a particular book, used for project work, used to make an event calendar, used to share best practice (as in the Wiki examples provided), great for professional updates and training like the one Jayne has set up, or for sharing anything like research and evaluation. Perfect. I'll definitely use these in the future at work where we need to encourage or facilitate collaboration.

Week 6

So, this week I looked at Del.icio.us. I found it quite hard to navigate around and couldn't install the quick bookmark links as we can't download them on the council PCs, but I saw that this tool would be pretty useful for research. In fact, I'm sorry I didn't know about it when I was writing my Master's dissertation.

I've always used index cards when I research to record key words and thoughts about the usefulness of a source. And this is a perfect way to do it for webpages as it allows you to enter more info about a page than a simple bookmark. I think it would also be a great way to easily group your sources by key word - just a mouse click! And to check for pages recommended by others/get the lowdown on what they contain without having to browse yourself. Only downside I can see is that when faced with a deadline, you'd be very reliant on a good internet connection - not good news for last-minuters like me!

It's interesting to see that the writers of "to a temporary place and time" and "into a new world of librarianship" are embracing the new ways of accessing and adding to available information through Web2.0 technologies, and also maximising their potential to inform and engage users' participation.