Social networks

Bebo seems to be the most popular social networking site amongst our young library users. The older clients don't mention using the social networking sites at all, but this will change with time. For now, social networking might be a tool for communicating with the 10-20 yr old people in our community. I'm not sure that they wouldn't find a library presence on Bebo as a bit of a joke, but that could perhaps be made to work to our advantage.....in that it might bring the kids to look at our Bebo. I think images of the kids participating in library activities would interest them, but we probably can't post pictures of kids without their parent's permission. I have signed up for Bebo, so I can have a better look at how it works..



This is a picture my young daughter took of the last little bit of sunset from our back yard. I want to thank the people who made Learning 2.0 happen for us- it has been a very worthwhile experience. Now it is up to us to take these ideas and use them.

Learning 2.0 online applications

Online applications and tools

 

I am writing this using Zoho Writer.  It seems to have lots of bells and whistles, and I like the fact that I will be able to work on stuff wherever I am- I am always forgetting to bring my USB home.  I am wondering if our library customers will like this too- we have only one public access PC, and it only has Notepad, no Word or Excel, which is very irritating.  I will try suggesting to a few people that they might like to open a Zoho or Google docs account.  Our customers use our PC because they don't have one of their own, so having this tool will help them because they can work on the document at the Library, at the Community technology centre and at TAFE, if the DET system allows it.

 

Google docs seemed simpler, but I really liked the introductory welcome screen in Zoho writer- it explained everything quite simply. The tabs at the top of the page make it easy to go back to the welcome page to check something if you wish.  I think our customers would like this too.  I also prefer Zoho Writer's tool bars- I can find things easily.

 

I tried to insert an image here but the upload seemed to be taking an inordinately long time.  Now to try and post this to my blog- if you are reading this- it worked!

Mashups

Here is an interesting blog on google maps mashups: Google Maps Mania. Much more confronting: Wanted for war crimes gives information about the last known location of suspected war criminals from Darfur. How can we go on sleeping, eating, pretending this stuff doesn't happen?

For a wonderful lady

With love and gratitude....

Answer boards

I thought that WikiAnswers seemed a better place than Yahoo 7 Answers, if only because the questions had a bit more depth... but any question deserves an answer. I think it is very important that libraries get involved in answering questions, so that people remember that this is what we do. The difference in quality between the librarian's answers and other answers was interesting.

LibraryThing

I like LibraryThing- but I can't seem to work out how to get images of covers from LibraryThing into my blog as a side bar on the righthand side "Randomn books from my library"- I liked looking at these on AtticusMockingbird's blog and Bambino's Bloggerama. Help! There is something I don't understand..

Del.icio.us

I think the concept of social bookmarking is wonderful. I'm a packrat by nature, so my favourites list takes a lot of scrolling to get through, despite the fact that it is mostly in folders. This should make my life simpler- now if only someone could show me how to organise my stuff at home...that would be truly delicious.
webnewbie's delicious

I can also see that this would be very useful in the library. Just this week, I typed up and printed a handout list of sites for school students doing the CWA project on Mexico- a link to the library's delicious account would be a very handy thing on our web page, and might encourage more kids to use our page.