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...