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.

Video adventure

Video offers libraries a great tool for creativity and fun. It would be fun to have a DIY library video competition during the summer school holidays, with the entries posted to a wiki, maybe. A lot of kids seem to have phones and cameras with video, or we could let them use the library camera.

We could also make a video about how to use the online databases from home- and put it on the library website.

My favourite YouTube video was "Library pacman" from Swinburne. Here it is:

Wiki world

While I use Wikipedia a lot, and thought I had a rough idea how it worked, I had not realised how I might be able to use it to work collaboratively with my colleagues. Our regional library has 4 branches, each about 80 km apart, with few staff. We could use wikis to work collaboratively on
* creating a regional customer service training day for our casual staff
* sharing our storytime programs and planning new ones
* developing policies and procedures
*We could create a virtual book discussion group, starting with the staff and then inviting the customers.

How exciting!

RSS Feeds

Well, it has certainly taken me a while to get back to this- I initially found the concept of RSS feeds confusing and there is nothing like confusion to aid and abet procrastination. I like the idea of all the useful blogs being collected in one place. I chose the obvious ones- Helene Blowers blog (isn't it attractively presented!), the Powerhouse photo blog, the NSW Readers Advisory blog, ABS for librarians, and just for fun, the brand-new Manchester National Year of reading blog. It seems that Manchester is launching the National Year of Reading on Saturday 26th April, and this is what their website http://www.manchesterreads.org.uk/ had to say about this event:
The National Year of Reading is a year-long celebration of reading in ALL its forms. It aims to help build a greater national passion for reading in England - for children, adults and families.
In Manchester, there will be events and projects to do with reading happening all over the city, throughout the year - and this will be the place to find out about them!!
National Year of Reading will launch on Saturday 26th April with National Join-a-Library Day.
Library staff will be out and about all over the city - making you an offer you can't refuse - a FREE library card, your own Welcome Pack, and the chance to have your name entered for a prize draw.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it? The idea of the blog is that people will start their own blogs as reading diaries and connect via the main blog, talking about reading and the events in the Year. So it will be interesting to watch this blog grow.

The main point of RSS for me will be to save time, and keep up with information. Having the RSS feed on your library's blog would be an extra service you could offer time-poor customers.

Our Library

This is our library. It's not a great photo, but I

hope you can see it is an interesting older building. I believe it was built in the 1920s, and it used to have the cenotaph plaques on the front of the verandah. These have been relocated to a war memorial down the street, which is in a better location for large gatherings. The inside of the building is basically one large room, but it looks as though it once had a central hallway, with several small rooms leading off it.

A beginning...

Here we go! Imagine stepping off the edge of the highest building in town.. no parachute... and no cartoon-style trampoline to catch you below....

Well, that is how this feels. If you are reading this, it means I've just learned how to set up a blog and it has actually worked! I can see lots of uses for this; to communicate ideas to team mates about new ways to do our job, to communicate about services to customers, to gather customers' ideas and input. But how do we make it effective? How do we make sure that this is useful?

By the way, the highest building in town is only two stories, so the fear was needless. Like most fears!