Sunday, November 25, 2007

#17 Sandbox wiki

I visited the sandbox and added an entry. I loved the area "favourite vacation spots", and was interested by all the great holiday/travel stories and advice.

#16 Wikis

I had a look around Wikis : what a 'social' tool (so much sharing and caring). They certainly provide a great service eg. BookLoversWiki, with suggestions, opinions and reviews which are always sought by readers. Certainly a great way to disperse information!

#15 Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and the future of libraries

Having worked in libraries for over 30 years I have certainly seen my share of changes. I felt I coped well with them all, but really they were relatively minor changes and all extremely low-tech. in comparison to the advent of the computer in our libraries, the Web, and diverse technologies of today.
Changes/advances/enhancements appear almost daily (or so it feels) and we have no choice but to accept them, learn about them, and use them with, and for the public.
Perhaps more teenagers would access our services if they found them more relevant and in formats that they identify most with. If they are not coming into the library, we need to be going out to them in interesting and diverse ways. Therein 2.0!

#14 Technorati

I had already had a brief look at Technorati in #9 (useful library related blogs). It is certainly a useful tool for searching blogs of interest to libraries and general public interest.

#13 del.icio.us

I can see the benefits of this social bookmarking site, as you keep track of your favourite areas, and have to ability to add from other people of similar interest.

#12 Rollyo

I created an account, and made a search roll on American artists for my daughter who I'm sure will find this very useful.

#11 LibraryThing

Well, if this isn't the way to over-excite an old cataloguer, I dont know what is! The joy I experienced on finding a tool to create a quality catalogue of my own books proved conclusively I need to get a life. Suggestions, critiques etc. were an added bonus. I love it!

#10 Online image generator

What a lot of fun you can have with these! I looked at the Generator blog, Letter James and FD toys where I created a customised badge of my "killer hound" Milo the wonderdog. You have to take my word for it that it looked great, because for the life of me I could not persuade it to come over to my blog page.(I am at home with no one to ask for help - except the dog - and he aint helping!)

#9 Useful library related bogs

I explored the search tools eg. Technorati, Bloglines, Topix.net and searched for current topics. Oddly enough my searches on Kevin Rudd and Madeleine McCann yeilded huge amounts of information.

#7 Technology blog post

Technology - don't you love it! One of the main reasons I come to work everyday! - Not so much to utilizise it, but to earn the money to pay for it!!
As the parent of teenagers, our home is filled with pieces of just about every technology known to mankind. Just when you think you're up with the latest, along comes the new improved version : faster, slimmer, better, with more memory, more features, more expense, more MORE. We are educated, employed and entertained by such a diverse variety of gadgets, I almost start to hyperventilate at the prospect of a power failure or a world wide battery shortage!

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

#5&6 Photos and images

It was fun to have a quick look through some fabulous images that are available on every subject imaginable. It was pleasing to post some of my own snaps that someone somewhere may get some enjoyment from. Having a daughter who has just finished VCE Studio Arts with photographic mosaics as final assesment pieces, we have discovered the likes of flickr and Montager a little too late (but better late than never!!)

Lord Howe Island



Even though there were so many unbelievable photos to choose from in flickr, I wanted to post one of my holiday snaps of beautiful Lord Howe Island.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

#8 RSS & Newsreaders

How wonderful to have access to all this information, music and laughs without all the added advertising to annoy you! After setting up my bloglines account and subscribing to some interesting sites, I realised what a predisposition I appear to have for the frivolous (music, Dilbert etc). I was thrilled to realise that Salon.com which I assumed would feed my hair preoccupation, was actually a serious current affairs site (phew).