# 23 (Week 9) Is this really the end? Or is it just the beginneing....

I really really hope it is the end. This has been an interesting exercise, but I can't say I exactly enjoyed it, as I felt pressured by time constraints. I felt I didn't really get the time to play with anything I enjoyed. I got sick of having to sign up to so many sites, and remember all those usernames and passwords. There were a lot of things that seemed pointless and I wouldn't use again: eg technorati, tagging. I did think some things were quite good, and either I would use them myself (such as RSS feeds, googledocs or zohowriter) or I could see a use for them on a library site (eg wikis, podcasts). I do feel more confident now helping patrons at the learn.net

# 22 (Week 9) ebooks

I'm trying to finish my learning 2.0 by next week, as I will be having a bit of a break after that. I've watched the introduction to netlibrary, and have been having a play in e-books.com. I read an exerpt from Deepak Chopra's book, Life After Death. Project Gutenburg is easy to navigate, but of course all the books are old and classics, because they can only add books whose copyright has expired. You can download from the main site, or mirror sites, whereby you are downloading from somewhere closer, like Sydney University, or you can download peer to peer. I wouldn't really use ebooks as I'd rather read from a printed page than a computer screen. Maybe this new wireless electronic book reader that Amazon have released would be easier to read. They say it has a digital ink screen.

# 21 (Week 9) Podcasts

Getting nearer to the end! This one has taken me quite a while. I explored the suggested resources, and found podcastalley.com quite easy to use. Found some interesting podcasts on science. I had forgotten how to add RSS feeds, so had to do a refresher on that. Added some feeds to my bloglines account, then added some straight onto my blog. Actually found it easier to add them straight to my blog. I think podcasts would be quite useful on our library website. We could have podcast of book reviews, or children reading stories.

#20 (Week 9) Discovering YouTube

Yay I'm up to Thing 20!! I played around with a few other video sites, couldn't always get them to work. Then explored Youtube. I chose the bird video first, because I thought it was cute and I like Pixar short films. Then I did a search for library, and found the zombie clip, so I added that too. It was apparently an entry in a competition there. It's really simple adding a video to your blog (if I can do it!) There certainly is a lot of rubbish on these sites though, some quite unsavoury. You certainly have to be careful what you look at. I found links to library sites, particularly one that helped you find a library anywhere in New Zealand.

Thing 17 social networking

Today I've got time to work on social networking from the learn.net computers, so I'm coming back to #17. I found Myspace best for searching music. Did a search for Evermore and am listening to them while I write my blog. I found some great photos of them, but would have to sign up to upload them, so just looked. Had a play on Facebook, found my daughter and some of my neices, as well as other library staff. Will definitely sign up for Facebook, so I'll be able to keep up with my daughter while she's in the UK. Had a look at Hennepin County Library site. It's good how you can chat with the librarian, add comments, give feedback online, as well as the usual things like search the catalogue, find out opening hours, etc.

#19 Discovering Web 2.0 tools

Galaxiki is the science fiction & fantasy galaxy that anyone can edit. Join the community, get your own solar system & help to build a new online world. A fantastic place for science fiction and fantasy lovers. You can choose "Beam me up" or "use a wormhole" to visit distant areas of the universe. You can read about other solar systems, the orbits of the planets, and whether there is any life on them or their moons. You can buy a star or gift one to someone else. Cool!

#18 Online productivity tools

I'm leaving Social Networking for the minute, as I can't access MySpace or Facebook from the staff computers. I'll go back and do that when I have time to do it from home. So for now I've skipped ahead to online tools. I signed up for both Zoho writer and Googledocs, and had a play around in both. Kept forgetting my username in Zoho writer, 'cos it wouldn't let me use my usual one. Zoho writer has maybe more cool features than Googledocs, but I quite like Googledocs, as I use Gmail, and it saves using yet another site. They're both very good tools, so you can save your documents online, and access them anywhere.

Library 2.0 and Web 2.0

I read most of the articles on this resource list. In "Away from the icebergs" Rick Anderson says "We need to focus our efforts not on teaching research skills but on eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need" and "if our services can’t be used without training, then it’s the services that need to be fixed—not our patrons." I think that is very true, our services need to be more user-friendly if we expect all our customers to be able to use them.

Technorati

I found this a very frustrating exercise to do - spent a lot of time with no results. Didn't have much luck with the discovery resources. The Technorati tour wouldn't load for me. I did get very different results searching for the term "learning 2.0". When I searched in all blog posts, there were 9,706 results. Searching in the blog directory I got 685 results, and searching in tags I got 397 results. The most interesting thing I found, was when I randomly searched for the term "Piha", most of the results were of a new lipgloss being released by Lancome - it's black.

Tagging

I read through the useful beginners' tutorial for Del.icio.us, but the other two suggested resources were blocked. Had a look at the site and can see some people would find tagging better than bookmarks. But it doesn't suit me. I like having my favourites all neatly organised into folders so I can find them. I can see some people would find it an advantage to be able to access their favourites from home or work.

PBWiki

Finally finished adding to Manukau's wiki. Added my blog to favourite blogs, and an entry to favourite music. Seem to be getting further and further behind. Can't really catch up by doing some at home, as we're between broadband providers at the moment, and have to make do with dial-up!

Wikis

I learned more about what wikis are and how they work. I was of course familiar with Wikipedia, but hadn't really come across any other wikis. They have advantages and disadvantages, and the fact that anybody can edit comes under both. However, I enjoyed playing around with BookLoversWiki by the Princeton Public Library. I notice other staff have too, as any book I found that looked interesting, had already been requested by other Manukau Library staff. Book reviews on a wiki would be something we could look at doing.

Technology

At our branch we've just had installed onto one of our computers the 3M conversion station. It's really cool to use, much better than the machine Botany Library have for their old system. I had a drawer full of books that had lost their barcodes, but had already been tagged. I have learnt how to reprogramme the tags to the new barcode. So my drawer is clear at last!! Yay!

Flickr Color Pickr

Here is my picture I chose from all the great range of colours on this site. I really love deep purples and blues. Had a play with montagr too, and that was clever. Fun isn't it when you click on a link (such as libraries that flickr) and you get the message "Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn't here"

Found this neat image on flickr. Think it's really cool. My family come from Orkney, and my g g grandfather would have walked here. The link is http://www.flickr.com/photos/haggisvitae/114861182/
I liked the way they had coloured the picture sepia, and put different images together to make this mystic kind of image.

I'm getting further and further behind, just finishing week 3, and here we are in week 5? Didn't get much done last week, what with the happenings at our branch. Quite enjoyed Rollyo, and added my search to my blog okay. I can see that will be quite useful to me.

Played around in Librarything, added 5 books to my bookshelf, and added a link to my bookshelf into my blog. Found Librarything quite good to use.

Spent most of this week playing around with image generators. Didn't like the ones linked to the training very much. Had some fun with some I found myself, imageGenerator.net and jellymuffin.com. Frustrating at times when sites were blocked.

I've added some more feeds to my blogline. I found it quite straightforward to do, after watching the tutorials. Added some feeds from the New Zealand Herald: that was nice and easy to do. The difficult part is trying to find time to work on this. Didn't really use any of the suggested news feeds - prefer to use my own favourite sites.

Had a go with this RSS. Think I've followed the steps correctly and added some feeds. My URL is http://www.bloglines.com/public/hilandlass. Took quite a lot of time to go through the tutorials, and some of them wouldn't work on the staff PCs.

Well, I've registered my blog. Took a while to get set up, so will see how I go. School holidays not really a good time to find extra minutes to work on this.

Been a busy day in the library today. School holidays next week, so final pre-school storytime for the term today. Lots of kids, and parents, and some grandparents too.