Made it! #23

I am so pleased I had the chance to do this programme, I have learnt a lot - not just about the applications, but about myself and the people I work with.
My favourite exercises were mostly the fun ones like image generators, YouTube and Flickr but I also discovered delicious which I love and now use constantly when online. So much easier than clogging up 'favourites' on our home computer.
I found that I can be quite persistent when things don't work as they should - I will try a different way until things go as I want them. I have learnt a lot about how websites work in general and found there is a basic pattern to them all.
There are things I know I will use in my job, either to help a patron or to use to promote the library.
I remember looking at 23 Things over 2 years ago and how daunting it all seemed. Now I know I can do it if I try!

#22 Library social networking

Some very interesting views here - the 'Kaleidoscope world' blog had excellent links and I checked out a few.

I agree with Meredith Farkas that it has to be done well - just looking at a couple of examples showed good and boring profiles. Was impressed by Library Loft - music, heaps happening, and a cool look that would appeal to the target audience. Most importantly, it asks for feedback from the users. Obviously popular too, due to the number of friends (1117).
Rotorua Library has a bebo profile which seems to be more of a record of events - a good way to use Web 2.0 but would be enhanced by more opportunity for involvement by the 'friends'.

I do think it is something we could look at to reach out to a different group of patrons. Just do it well!

We didn't start the fire

This link was sent to me in an email. It's relevant images set to Billy Joel's 'We didn't start the fire" Very good and although I thought I knew the song, there's lots I hadn't noticed before.
http://yeli.us/Flash/Fire.html

#21 Get Social

Well I don't usually need an excuse to get social and have been using Facebook for about a year now.
I joined after an invitation form an overseas friend. Being naturally cautious I was a bit wary to start with but figured as long as I only invite friends and set my privacy levels quite high, I should be OK. Now I have added photos and even played around with some of the fun things like quizzes.
I have a sister in London so can see all her travel photos. I recently caught up with friends in Australia that we had lost touch with and will be able to visit them on our next trip over. I can share my travel experiences with a lady from Sri Lanka I met on a bus trip in Mexico. (and I can find out what some of my colleagues are up to if I wanted to...hehehe)
I find MySpace is big on music. Found a local musician promoting her classical music and career details including performance times. Found a Bon Jovi tribute band as well as the real one and it was hard to tell which was which as both profiles looked quite professional.
Checked out bebo but it is way too busy for me - the front page gave me a headache! Rotorua Library page is an exception, I like that. I know bebo is the site of choice by school students and is used like I used to spend hours on the phone with my school friends 'in the day'.
I think if you need to be cautious and be are aware of the potential dangers of these sort of sites, but also you can have a lot of fun.

#20 e-books

While browsing Amazon, I have often seen the advertisements for Kindle, but have never been interested enough to look at them. I still like the idea of a physical book rather than an electronic one.

I can see the use of e-books however, to access material that is otherwise unavailable- be it a rare item or something for a student's assignment where no copies of a text are available in the libraries. Handy to be able to store so many books in a small space too.

I searched for authors Bronte, Homer, and AB (Banjo) Paterson on Project Gutenberg and found works from all three. There was an interesting comment at the end of the publication details;

'Not copyrighted in the United States. If you live elsewhere check the laws of your country before downloading this ebook.' That would involve another search!

The list of options for downloading looked daunting, but I had a go and selected the plain text version of the 'Man from Snowy River' and was expecting complicated download screens, but instead got the text straight away. This will be excellent for library queries when people want a certain poem or excerpt of a work.

Very interesting and easy to use - must remember this one (Will save to del.icio.us!)

The free books blog would be good to investigate further but for now I think Project Gutenberg has plenty to keep me busy.

Google book search is interesting too and after reading how it worked I followed the link to 'Library Partners'. Some prominent libraries in the world are partnering with Google to digitise some of the items in their collections. Libraries are from all over the world - Japan, Spain, France, USA, and also some well-known universities like Oxford and Princeton.
New York Public Library have the books available through their websaite as well as Google. Maybe NSL could do something like this one day, or at least the National Library.

There is more to e-books than I realised!.

#19 Podcasts

Plenty of interesting podcast to listen to here.
Got frustrated when trying to add to my Bloglines account though - the one I chose through Podcastpickle seemed to only subscribe via something called MediaFly. The subscribe button just gave me a long page of HTML and nothing I used from there worked.Then after a bit of digging around I found if I clicked on the radio station logo next to the information about the podcast, it opened in a new window and I could just copy the URL from the page address (http://kuow.org/rss.php?program=nancy).
Wasn't going to give up as I wanted to hear what the famous Nancy Pearl sounds like.
Managed to get feeds via the other directories a lot easier.
I'm not ready to creat my own just yet, but could see it as a useful tool for library events and reviews.

#18 You Tube

Feel like I'm playing on this!

Seriously though, as we have seen on other exercises, there are some excellent educational and instructional videos on YouTube such as the ones from Common Craft which explain things so well.

Libraries could use this to promote the library to patrons, as long as the video looked professional and wasn't too dry.
I have seen library events like author talks and musicians on YouTube, so that is another use. This one combines two of my favourite things libraries and chocolate. It is by Dunedin Public Libraries. A disadvantage is because You Tube has such enormous content, things could get lost and nobody would ever see them.
The delay in loading is also somewhat of a stumbling block. - people can't be bothered waiting.

I found favourite songs, funny commercials, old TV shows, political speeches, cute animals, Elton John and Lily Allen having a spat on stage and what I really needed - steps to the 'Nutbush' line dance (aaah...memories of a New Years Eve Melbourne street party!)Here's a favourite...

I made myself a YouTube account so I can save these in favourites and go back for a laugh or some good memories now and then. I also couldn't help making a comment on one of a Bon Jovi concert I had been to. The video is a shorter version of the same song which I managed to embed successfully. (And I don't care if anybody thinks I'm sad liking this band!)

#17 Web 2.0 awards

What a great way of finding some of the Web 2.0 applications available. Nice and clear and because they are award winners have already been tested by others.
Some were familiar as we have already explored them on this programme. Others were new and interesting.
I had a look at Geni, a genealogy site that lets you save the data you have collected on your family history research. That would be handy for our patrons who are using Ancestry Library edition - they could have a Geni account and add information as they found it on the library computers. I made an account for myself and found it was really simple to add family members.
Pleased to see WorldCat is on the awards list although sadly, NSL is not on their catalogue. Something for the future?
A fun one was HairMixer (lets you add new hairstyles to your photo) which I will have to play with one day.
The Web 2.0 awards list is another place to find useful resources for librarians and patrons.

#16 Online productivity

I was expecting this one to be a bit complicated but was pleasantly surprised.

I have been using Google Docs and like the way I can access a document on any internet computer and work on it. It enables a group to collaborate on the same document at different locations. Some people could even go on holiday and still contribute from a town past the Bombays!

I can see this technology being really useful for patrons who don't have a computer at home or any other way of saving their work. They can create a document such as a resume, and use library internet to work on it, print it, and save it to access later.

I joined Zoho and typed up a couple of NZ poems - Sea Call by Hone Tuwhare and part of The Cave by Fleur Adcock. I really like how the programme doesn't try to correct things for you - it is one of the most frustrating things in MS Word. In the case of a poem, I didn't want to capitilise the start of every line, and Zoho lets me do this.

The spell check has the choice of NZ English which is nice to see. Overall the site was well set out and you can see what all the buttons are for by hovering the mouse over them. I saved two documents and then realised I hadn't given one a title. That was much easier to change than in Word, just involved typing over the document name at the top of the page.

I exported one document to my blog without any hassle. I thought I'd better not put a whole poem in case of copyright restrictions, so this is just the end of one of my favourites.

from

The Cave

But there is nothing I need to write:

Not even a letter

(I know no one) or a diary

(My days are all the same.)

I am here. It has to be enough

Just to be so much here.

#15 Rollyo

I wasn't too sure about the uses I would have for Rollyo, once I worked out it was a search that only concentrated on the sites you select.
Then I related it to one of my interests (quilting). So much easier just searching the sites or shops I buy fabric from when I am looking for something in particular. I made a searchroll easily - first I went to my del.icio.us site and found all my quilting tags, then I could just copy their URL addresses and paste into Rollyo. Simple!

Managed to put the Rollyo logo on my blog by following the instructions carefully step by step.

Imagine the uses for work! An Any Questions one would be great as I could make a roll with the sites we use often and trust.
Zipperty-doo-dah could do a crochet one!

I still think my Morris Garden jelly roll (after William Morris) is prettier than Rollyo 'tho! One day I might even find time to sew something with it...

#14 Library Thing

Love it! One day I might even work through my physical bookcase and add it to the virtual. Handy to have a list for insurance and those 'mates' that don't return books...

It is also something we could use for reader's advisory because each title has additional information such as recommendations, descriptions, lists of characters for fiction titles, member reviews, and tags. Library Thing for libraries is an innovation we could use to gather the vast knowledge from our readers by giving them a chance to contribute by adding reviews, tags and ratings.

I love seeing the covers view of my library. The choice of how they are sorted is overwhelming - title, author, Dewey, rating, date acquired, and on it goes. I'll stick to alphabetical for now:)
Here's my developing collection-
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/craftykatnz

Image generator

#13 Image Generators

This is my sort of play...
First I tried a Bar Drink Generator from The Generator blog (although I don't know any lazy librarians)

Lazy Librarian
1/2 oz Currant Vodka
Dash of Cherry Brandy
1 oz Welch's Strawberry Soda
Serve in a Pint glass. Add a Crazy Straw

TV show title mashup created a few laughs (The Muppet she wrote, Dukes of Flipper), but I want more!

Image Chef is for me. So much to choose from. Easy to add to your blog. And you can even adapt it for legitimate work promotions!

Finally I tried a Google search for 'image generators' and found this interesting blog - Librarian in Black. Will have to check that out later when I have more time.

Wetpaint wiki

I managed to add my blog to the list without looking at the demonstration first, as it is nice and easy to do. Firstly I just put the URL but thought it would look better if I put my blog name and made it a link. Very simple to change.
Having said that, I did go back and watch the wetpaint wiki demonstration which is a good overview and illustrated what else you can do.
I added a reply to a thread and as I didn't want to be 'Anonymous', had to join up. That was really easy too - I'm getting good at joining things now.
Looking forward to checking out the lists of favourites as they grow.

Wiki wiki wiki wacky

Have had some experience of wikis as I find them really useful to use when I want to be able to work on something at work and at home. Not quite into the collaborative bit yet as my control freak tendancies can't quite cope with someone changing my words!
Guess the Fitch is a type of wiki.
I can see this as a great tool for patrons to add reviews like in the Book Lovers Wiki where I found some books to add to my request list and was delighted to find someone had given one of my favourite books, 'Water for Elephants', a 5 star rating.
The subject guides are also good - and unlike a list of links, there is room for explanations. I noticed it could only be edited by librarians, which gives some degree of control and authenticity.
Wikis are also an excellent tool for collaborative workspaces - between libraries and library systems. Saves on meetings and conference calls!

#10 Library 2.0

Found some really interesting viewpoints here and found lots to think about. I especially liked Michael Stephens' comment in 'Into a new world of librarianship:
''Librarian 2.0 also listens to staff and users when planning, tells the stories of successes and failures, learns from both, celebrates those successes, allows staff time to play and learn, and never stops dreaming about the best library services."
Another important comment was when deciding whether to implement some of this technology, ask "does it meet users needs in a new, improved way?".
I see Library 2.0 as a new way for us to communicate with our patrons and for them to communicate with us and buld new relationships by letting them contribute to their library. Presently rating an item on the OPAC is one thing we offer along those lines.
I would like to see our patrons reviewing books online, commenting on library events on a blog, suggesting things they would like to see happening at the library - all these things are possible with Web 2.0.

#9 Social bookmarking

After exploring Technorati I came to the conclusion that I might use it if I was researching a particular topic, but otherwise it wouldn't be something I'd normally look at. There seems to be a lot of rubbish on blogs and it takes a lot of time to find the good stuff.

Searching for 'Learning 2.0' in blogs retrieved more hits than searching in posts. I also clicked on the photos tab which came up with some good pictures. I especially liked this one on Flickr where an artist has created a painting with Learn 2.0 in it without knowing there is a programme of the same name.
I got the same search results in the advanced search using tags, probably because I had grouped the words with parenthesis in the first search.

I'm not interested in the world reading my thoughts so didn't claim my blog which would have let me add tags so others could find it in searches. (At least that's how I understand it works)

Of course I'm happy for NSL Web 2.0 people to read my blog though as long as they are nice to me and forgive my typos and ramblings!

Searching blogs on technorati lead me to Helene Blower's blog (creator of 23 Things). She had a link to this poster you can make on the ALA website. Of course I had to have a go. I think I need to find a better photo though.

#8 social bookmarking

I can see this being useful. Many times have I thought 'I know a really good website for that...' and realised it is saved in favourites on the home computer.
Speaking of the home computer, my favourites list is quite long now, so it would be prudent to have them saved elsewhere in case of computer disasters.
I installed the del.icio.us icon on my links bar at home and will start adding things there (one day!) Found again I could spend a lot of time looking at other's favourite websites.

I looked at Thunder Bay Public Libraries internet links page and found it very user-friendly.

Having this function on our library website would be great - patrons could search using our tags and receive a list of relevant websites we have found. Imagine how useful that would be with the current Olympics topic, where lending copies of books are like hen's teeth! Of course, it isn't that simple as we would have to keep things updated and current.

Thing #7 RSS feeds

Took a while to work out RSS because if I wanted to add a blog feed while I was working at home, it automatically added it to my Favourites on Internet Explorer because it has a feed reader built in, rather than using Bloglines which is what we are meant to do.
Now I know that if I click on the RSS icon, then copy the resulting url address, I can enter that in the box in the Bloglines subscribe page.
Not sure how useful these will be for work. I find that I have plenty to read daily without more!
However, it will be good for the Any Questions operator blog, The Fitch, and the NSLWeb 2.0 programme.
This technology would be a great service to send patrons new book reviews like PLCMC library system does (when somebody writes them on a regular basis!!) or events as they are announced.


I found that I was looking out for the RSS logo on blogs I visit regularly and subscribed to a couple this way.
Of the sites to search for blogs, I found technorati quite interesting, but with a very US bias. Syndic8.com looked less sophisticated but I quite liked that as there was a lot less to read through. I clicked on a country flag to see feeds from a particular country, but there were only 7 and it took ages to load, so not that successful.

I used Bloglines itself to search for blogs - I clicked what interested me and it added blogs to my list. I only thought one was useful though and unsubscribed from the rest.

This is one of those things that I will use more as I become more familiar with how it works and the advantages there are.

#6 Technology thoughts

Trying to catch up already - this technology that gives us so much, also takes away time!

Technology that has made the most difference to me is communicating with friends and family. Instant messaging allowed me to chat every few days with my friend when she was living in Seattle. I can see travel photos from my sister in London and have renewed contact with friends in Melbourne through Facebook. I love that I can tell my mother in BOP about something on the phone, and then email her a photo of what we talked about .
I resisted using a digital camera but now couldn't do without it - the facility to see what you have taken before printing a photo is great, share them with friends, print individual pictures as you need them and being able to resize and crop. I even use it to remind me of things like a layout for a quilt or scrapbook page while I'm working on them.

Email is great for the immediacy it brings, although I do sometimes feel I waste time managing my email accounts. (Then again, it is the best when I'm notified about concert ticket sales or cheap flights.)

Study is much easier when you can get information over the net and support from tutors and fellow students.

Technology in the form of internet shopping does save me time in the long run as I'm a convert to online supermarket shopping. No more queues or lugging shopping to the car, and I spend less as I'm not tempted by special offers!
That is probably the only time saver though - I am very good at getting sidetracked once I am able to get on the home computer - just as well I have to share it with the rest of the family otherwise I would be there all day.

I look forward to finding out what other applications there are on the Web, and ways I can use them to suit me.

#5 Flickr fun

Explore
Originally uploaded by craftykatnz

I enjoyed using Big Huge Labs to play with my images. There is a good choice of things to do which are easy to follow and don't take too long to upload.
I had a look at at retrievr, where you draw a picture and it matches it to Flickr images - couldn't see the resemblances myself, but then again I'm not too good with drawing with a mouse!
Montagr was interesting, but took a long time to load.

Plenty to keep one occupied!

It's just not true!

It's just not true!
Originally uploaded by craftykatnz

I love looking at all the great photos in Flickr, there are some really talented people out there.

My photos are of around the library....guess which one?
I think Flickr could be used to show what things go on in our library. Just looking at other library sites gives me inspiration for events. They also portray libraries as really cool places to be and somewhere where there is a lot going on. Hopefully this will attact a whole new group of people through our doors.

Blogging

Found out that when I add things to my profile like movies etc., when you click on the link it goes through to all the people on Blogger that have chosen the same as you. A bit scary!

Have been reading a few blogs. I like Beattie's Book Blog - good reviews, lots of book news and interesting snippets. I might even attend a Peta Mathias event in our area that I saw on the blog.

I have found a blog for my favourite scrapbooking shop, NZ Scrapbook and also the blog of Luana Rubin, the owner of the US online quilting store e-Quilter I spend too much money and browsing time on.

Couldn't really find anything interesting on Technorati's Top 100, although Boing Boing was listed as number 5 and I quite liked some of the things on there, especially a neat customised kid's toy car.

One blog I look at occasionally is Librarians Matter by Kathryn Greenhill. There are posts going back a couple of years about emerging technologies -Web 2.0 etc. I saw Kathryn's name in the 'maybe attending' section on the LIANZA 2008 Conference Facebook page so maybe she'll visit our shores to share her wisdom.

Now, the blog to comment on...took the easy option and wrote on the eLGAR programme office blog. Had to wait a couple of days before the post was published, as they must check them first.

Well, this is the first post on my blog!

The most frustrating part is finding time but I guess I will have to stop getting sidetracked on shopping websites and stop watching rubbish TV!

I am getting better at this with trial and error and have found deleting and trying again works well for most things :)

Have to remember to open a new window (or tab on my home computer) so I don't lose the NSL Programme exercises. Hardest part has been finding a user name as the ones I wanted were already taken.

Looking forward to learning more and getting creative with my blog.