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.

Week 5

Well I couldn't get the Library Thing widget to work, and I don't really see the point of it either - why would I or others want to search my books on my website? What's the point? If it were the library collection, that's worthwhile, but we already have a function for that. Hmm.
With LibraryThing itself, I think it's a good tool to record your favourite reading, search reviews, share comments and find local events. Cool. But I'm not really into all this stats about each other - 'look how many people share your interest in gardening stuff'.

Ahaa, now Rollyo was good! Professional colleagues have already recommended this to me. I can see instantly how it could be useful in the library to set up certain searchlists for regular customer queries, or just for librarians' own research. It's also really useful to me as a linguist - limiting my search to reliable sites I choose and cutting out all the dross that the internet can throw up. I also managed to add the widget this time following the instructions - so that's something I've learned how to do! I'm feeling more bloggy savvy :-)

Week 4

Here's my new blog: https://twitter.com/salsasunset. Unfortunately I can't search to follow people right now (the function is broken - Twoverload or something) but I did subscribe to one of the following suggestions - a London author who insults his audience....hmm. TweetDeck sounds a good idea if you tweet a lot, so if the Library received mini posts, it could be an efficient way of sorting them. Ooh, and I also put a link to my tweets on this page :-)

I absolutely loved RSS feeds and Google reader - I can't believe I haven't used this up until now. I'm constantly feeling stressed about all the sites I need to keep up with, and this is really handy for keeping the finger on the pulse with the latest professional info - genius.

Week 3 cont...

I also made my own trading card, but I think I need a few more library qualifications to make it fly! It was a fun exercise; many of the fun applications I've looked at could be great for language teaching activities. For the library though, maybe the trading cards could be used to advertise reading recommendations, with the book cover in the photo and snippets in the text field...or using the mosaic making applications for displays...I don't know....

As for the photo editors, I didn't really make friends with these. I've seen some good ones in the past and will keep looking. Picknik wasn't working at the time, so I tried Splashup but didn't see the point of the features. Maybe I had the wrong photo. Oh well.

For the image generators, I went to http://bighugelabs.com/fx.php as I find this site the easiest to use, and I made a b&w charcoal version of my library reading room photo. Call me simple, but I like effects like these the best :-)

Week 3

Looked on Flickr for some beautiful library buildings and found this photo of the National Library of Chile - stunning. Also used the 'Colour Palette Generator': http://bighugelabs.com/colors.php to make me some colours from this photo and the results were lots of lovely beiges, roses and purples. Could be great for preparing promotional material, or designing a colour scheme for a library display. I couldn't display the results here though as you need Photoshop to read the file.

self-control

Just reading my last post....amazing how quickly blogging can become a brain dump :-)
Like having a diary with an audience! Glad I realised at week 2 :-D

Week 2

So for week 2 I am very obediently going through the list.....
First stop Bebo...seems pretty vibrant and really youthful...but I didn't find it very intuitive to use i.e. if you upload a video to your profile, I could not find how to remove it afterwards when you have had enough of it :-{...but I did come across this video of ACL at Matariki starring Daniel: http://www.bebo.com/c/video?FlashBoxId=9982693184&&TUUID=d28128a3-1238-4391-8ab9-ac813c0bb9e7 so seems a great way to showcase work at the libraries! :-) So on the upside I was actually pretty impressed by how easy it was to search for a video you wanted (thanks to all those people frantically sharing stuff they like) - I was exploring Buraka Som Sistema...http://www.bebo.com/c/video?FlashBoxId=9303269139&

I'm already on Facebook and haven't used it in a while - you can maybe get to know too much about people. But I'll now used it to search for things I'm interested in - I hadn't thought of doing this before; normally I'd just use YouTube or search the net, so this was a learning point! And it seems a huge number of staff here already have profiles on Facebook, so this could be a good venue for an informal professional support network I guess (unless there already is one and my useless skills can't find it!!) Page seems to be temperamental at the mo, so will give this one a whirl later!

My Space is my favourite so far! I love the forums page - that seems a really practical way of organising the space (rather than just people linking to each other's social profiles) and timesaving if you need to find people or info fast, like at work! I found this really easy to use, and came across a Zumba page from Poland:http://www.myspace.com/krakowzumba and might be able to help this forum frequenter who needs a recipe for chocolate cake without the flour: http://forums.myspace.com/t/4721096.aspx?fuseaction=forums.viewthread.

Linked In does definitely have a different feel I think, and there are already lots of Library professional groups on there so I think this would be a great tool to use as a librarian to keep in touch with all the different networks that are relevant to your post. Also loved the feature that some of these sites seem to have where you can pull all your updates from a different site like Twitter into your profile on another - very convenient!

How do you get your picture icon to appear when you blog?

Week 1

That took ages just to customise. There seem to be far more functions than I would ever have time to use socially, but this exercise has been good to see how quickly I could create a web presence for a business. It would be good when I am in a position to network at the Libraries. I think blogging at the moment seems to be more for a hobby (for people with LOTS of spare time, or like my brother, those who are permanently connected to the net); professional networks may be more useful for information relating to my job.....but as we go on I could change my opinion!! Will see how it goes!

Week 1

Wow, that was trickier than I thought. I ended up with ten pages open at once and still haven't made my page look pretty :D