NZ 2.0

I've just been reading about the NZ govt's Web 2.0 initiatives and it is pretty interesting. Even though they say it's early days for govt experiments with Web 2.0, the list of initiatives is already fairly decent and spans a large number of different agencies. It is interesting to see how some govt agencies are exploring different methods of engaging the public in govt policy-making as well as for inter-agency communication. How successful they have been is not necessarily apparent but it is hopefully a starting point for encouraging participation in govt from those who wouldn't normally engage.
Interesting to see that the NZ Poet Laureate has a blog through the National Library where she will share her poetry - seems like a great way to reach a wider audience.

Local government
I've had a look at the Auckland Youth Council on Bebo and I'm just not convinced. Bebo would seem to be a logical platform from which to engage young people, but only 437 profile views and 29 "friends" over two years represents a failure in my view. Plus they have hardly any content and their blog is about a year out of date. Not impressed.

Education
The University of Auckland library provides a number of useful RSS feeds including new books, databases and e-journals for their various faculties. You can also get a feed for posts added to their blogs of which they have 11. I've seen their Business & Economics blog before and it has a good spread of posts on library news, new books, info on useful databases, websites etc. I've been interested to see how other libraries' Business blogs are working as I've been thinking of ways I can better promote our business resources and services to customers. When I visited Auckland Uni a year ago I asked them about their Business blog and they acknowledged that it hadn't gotten much of a response from students. One of the problems I've seen with library blogs, especially subject-specific ones, is that often the posts are too few and far between. I think for a blog to be successful it needs to be posted to regularly, not just once or twice a month. I also believe that technology should be the slave not the master i.e. the technology you use has to fit your purpose. There's no point starting a blog without thinking through what you want to achieve and whether it's the best and most efficient method of achieving that purpose.

New Zealand GLAM
This was the most fun part of the module for me as there is so much to explore. I have used KRIS a few times as part of research enquiries for customers and it is a great research resource. I hope the participating institutions contribute more records to KRIS as I couldn't find some theses that I know of. I know it is a challenge for universities to get people to add their work to their institional repositories though.
I really like DigitalNZ. As well as aggregating NZ digital content and making it searchable they have lots of other cool features like allowing people to suggest and vote for ideas for new digital content, and create their own search tool.