Social Networks

After looking at some of the examples of social networks, I can see a use for them in the library, particularly as a lot of our newer clients are so technoligically evolved. The Powerhouse Museum's info was very interesting, particularly as we are a combined museum and library - the ability to obtain social histories and information on collection items sounds using social networks sounds fantastic. I haven't signed up to a network myself, but can see the advantages in using them.

Online Applications and Tools

I wasn't aware that there were online programs like google docs. How great is that? I like the idea of cutting out all those emails I'm sure we all send with attachments - or without them (I get a lot of those). We have a program guide that goes to print every 3 months, with about 15 different people contributing. Then we have to edit and proof-read it and send an email to the co-ordinator, who then has to make all the changes. I'm sure she's going to love this idea!

Mashups

I really liked the Star Viewer Mashup http://keirclarke.googlepages.com/sky.htm

I can see us using mashups to create promo materials in house - something like the one I created using Big Huge Labs. At this point, I can't quite see what else we'd use mashups for. I guess I don't find this tool quite as interesting as some of the others we've looked at.

Podcasts and Audio

I didn't listen to all the podcasts I tried - a lot of them were too long. I must admit, I prefer the ones with video - otherwise my attention wanders.

Some of the podcasts I came acroos didn't have a running time listed, which was a bit annoying.

I believe we could use podcasts in our library to do a few things - book reviews, podcasts of author talks, and as we're a LibraryMuseum, podcasts for exhibitions. The exhibitions podcasts would be extremely helpful for both staff and clients - of course, we'd need to load them onto an iPod, but it would definately be beneficial.

Tagging, folksonomies, del.icio.us and LibraryThing

I got a bit frustrated with del.icio.us, but only because we can't load anything on our PCs, and I had real trouble adding sites without the toolbar buttons. I can see it being quite useful, particularly as we have over 20 public access PCs, and if we want all the favourites to be the same, I.T. seem to take forever to do it. If we could create a del.icio.us account, then users could access that.
http://del.icio.us/traclee

When I was using Technorati, I became really aware of how important tags are. The advanced search page doesn't seem to be user-friendly to me, but maybe it's just me.

The big thing I noticed when using these 2 sites, was the importance of tags. We need to try and avoid "library speak" if we want the public to utilise our sites - some of the tags weren't what people would look for when searching for a subject.

I really love LibraryThing!! Added some of my own books, and am planning on sitting down this weekend and adding my entire library. My colleagues see the appeal of this site has for me - apparently I'm an "organised freak". Not a bad thing to be when your work in a library though.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/traclee

Videos online

Having just spent ages going through Youtube (which I've used before) and Google Video (which I haven't), I've come to the conclusion that you really can waste a lot of time finding stuff to watch.

I can see the benefits for libraries to put special events, conferences and maybe a virtual tour on these sites. I think with events, the only benefit would be if the actual event was going to be repeated again in the future, so people would look and think "I want to go to the next one". Otherwise, it's only really acts as a record. However being able to watch sessions from a conference that I couldn't attend would be great!

I find I use online videos to preview upcoming movies - my latest search was for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I'm trying to embed a video of "fainting goats" which is quite funny (but strange). I hope it works!

Learning 2.0 - RSS

Creating a RSS seems to be quite simple - managing it seems a little harder. I can't quite seem to work out how to get rid of the feeds once I've read them. I tried the "help", but still can't do it.
I subscribed to the Powerhouse Museum's picture of the day, as well as some preset feeds from Bloglines including the Librarians' Internet Index and a comic of the day and joke of the day. I found a site which has free craft projects for kids, which I'll use as I'm co-ordinator of Storytime. I also subscribed to a few book & movie review feeds. I must admit, having 10 feeds for each site pop-up within seconds of validating my membership was a little daunting - though I did find something straight away that I could use.
Once I figure out how to manage the feeds, I'll be a lot happier.

Flickr

Week 3's lesson is really interesting. I've heard about online photo storage, but didn't realise how great it could be. While exploring, I found some photos of the new LibraryMuseum at Albury - here is a link to the west facing wall - people either love it or hate it http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickyjdog/944446587/

After watching the "Online photo storage in plain english" video, I wondered about the tags - mainly including things like family names to make it easier for friends and family to find. I guess it all depends on just how much info you want to share with the world.

Is there any control of sites like Flickr to ensure that no unsuitable material is made available to the public?

I tried uploading a couple of my photos, but will have to go through the tutorial to see where I'm going wrong. I also didn't have much success adding a photo to this blog. I obviously need to practice more.

Once I learn how to do these things properly, I can see myself using them much more.

Technorati

As part of Learning 2.0, I decided to do the "adventure" task and search for other library related blogs on Technorati.
You can really see the need for adding labels to your blog entries! I'm sure what I was looking for was there "somewhere", as I was looking for something that a friend found, but I obviously didn't have the right tags or labels to find it easily.
Now I'll be sure to add labels to my blogs - although trying to think of what people would commonly call something rather than using library terms can soemtimes be a bit of a challenge.

Learning 2.0

I'm really looking forward to discovering how to use all those programs that we quite often hear about and use once or twice, but don't really have the time to really learn how to use them properly. Mostly, when helping clients, I use the "try it and see method" - if it doesn't work, try soemthing else.

I can definately see a use for blogs in a library - what a great way to put up-to-date info out there without having to have special programs/permissions etc. to update a webpage.