Library Thing's the thing!

I've looked at Library Thing before but never bothered to sign up before now and I just love it. It's really like the ultimate reader advisory service and will be a great way of keeping track of my reading. I can usually remember if I've read a book and if I enjoyed it but often can't remember anything about the plot, so with Library Thing I can tag and add notes or reviews to entries in my library.

Away in the cloud

I think I have my head around what cloud computing is all about now. The module readings were fine in theory but it all became much clearer after looking at some of the applications and working through the exercises. Loving Google Docs! I have been aware of it for some time but had never used it. I think this is an application I could see myself actually using - so much quicker and more convenient than emailing documents back and forth when you're working collaboratively on something. I guess some people might be concerned about not having their documents stored on their own computers. Does this bother you?

Am writing this post in Zoho Writer to see how it compares. I prefer Google Docs personally as the interface seems more straightforward to me. Both seem pretty easy to use though. Which do you prefer?

Google Calendar also looks quite good. Looks better than my Outlook Calendar and has more features e.g. there's a link from the location in your events through to Google Maps (cool!). Right, I am going to try posting this to my blog direct from Zoho. Let's see if it works...

Social networking

I've really enjoyed this module and I think I have a greater appreciation now for what social networking tools can offer in terms of facilitating communication and collaboration between people and communities. The Building the Social Library Online slideshow is definitely worth looking at. They outline quite nicely the characteristics of social software and also how libraries can utilise Web 2.0 tools e.g. to disseminate information, start conversations with our customers/communities, provide services where are customers are, capitalise on the collective wisdom of the crowd etc. I definitely agree with their advice to "avoid technolust" when implementing social software and to first ask "will it improve library services?" and "will people use it?" - I've talked about this in a previous post. That being said, they do provide some really interesting examples of how libraries are using social software and it's got me thinking about how we might use some of these tools to better engage with our customers.

Mashups and more

Have been looking at some mashups and other image tools. I love the Flickr Color Pickr - it's so pretty! The Flickr Montager is quite clever and fun to play with but I don't think I would bother to go back to it. I feel the same way about Wordle - it was kinda fun but I can't thing of too many uses I would have for it - maybe as part of a library poster or display? I created a Wordle of my blog which I tried to add to this post but I couldn't get it to work. Read the Wordle FAQs but still couldn't do it. Anyone know how?

CCL photos on Flickr

I have finally got back this after a week off. I found some old photos of the New Brighton Library 5th birthday staff party from 2004 on my computer so I uploaded them to the CCL Staff account on Flickr. It was actually pretty straightforward. This is a picture of our cake:

Flickr

I'm progressing really slowly through this module because I got totally diverted looking at all the CCL photos on Flickr. There's a lot of interesting stuff on there...

Facebook

I'm already signed up to Facebook and I really like it even though I'm not a particularly active user. My brother has been living overseas for a long time and I only see him every year or two so I initially joined to see his travel photos. I'm not really interested in collecting lots of 'friends' - I have just a small number of people who are all either family or my actual friends, not work friends who I see every day. One of my friends has over 600 Facebook friends - what's the point? I'm pretty lazy at keeping in touch with people, so I find Facebook useful as I can check on my friends all in one place. Facebook has also enabled me to reconnect with a couple of old friends who I had lost touch with, which has been really cool. I do sometimes think about the privacy aspect of social networking sites though. In the recent Sophie Elliot murder case, there was evidence presented during the trial (and then splashed across the media) concerning her Facebook activity e.g. her photos, whose profiles she was looking at etc. Terrible for her family to see her life exposed in that way. It is a good reminder that anything you do online is traceable and therefore public.

Reflections on Week 2

I think I have learned quite a bit this last week but I have struggled to get the modules completed on time. I was lulled into a false sense of security after Week 1 which was quite easy. Week 2 has been a lot more work and I can see I am going to have to put in a concerted effort this next week to get everything done.

Podcasting grrrr!!

Got just a tiny bit frustrated with the podcasting section of this module. Reading the blogs of others in the group, I can see I'm not the only one who struggled with this one. In the end my extremely patient husband (a former IT librarian) came to the rescue - apparently it was not my fault but in fact it was the module notes that were to blame (he's so nice!) The part that confused me was thinking that you need i-Tunes or something other than a reader to play podcasts which is not the case. Turned out it was quite easy to add some podcast feeds to Google Reader and then either play them or save to play later. A few I added did not play - this was because the file no longer existed, not because I wasn't using suitable software. Glen is very thankful that sanity has been restored.

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.

Blogging fun

As someone who has never had any desire to have a blog I have to say I'm quite enjoying the whole blogging thing. Now that I've had a bit of a play I think I have a reasonable idea of how to use most of the features I need to. I think that any new technology is only daunting because it's unfamiliar. Practice leads to familiarity and then confidence (and hopefully competence). Though, to be honest, I've enjoyed playing round with the layout and changing the colours and fonts more than actually writing anything...

RSS - tool or time waster?

Have just signed up to Google Reader only to discover that I had already signed up months ago and completely forgotten about it. I now have 836 unread items! Have a vague recollection of overzealously subscribing to a whole lot of business information feeds thinking it would be a good way of keeping up with info relevant to my work. Seemed a good idea in theory but the reality was that I never went back to it, probably because I have a mountain of stuff coming at me from other sources that I just don't have the time or inclination to add more. Information overload is something which really concerns me at the moment so I wonder if a newsreader would be yet another thing to have to check, like email. Or do I just need to subscribe to more interesting feeds? I think what I'll do is try having a smaller number of feeds with content that I really want to read. This should then save me the time of checking each one individually for updates. We'll see... So what do you think - RSS, a time-saving tool or enemy of the low-information diet?

Week 1

Well, I missed the first session but I think I have caught up. Took a ridiculous amount of time to find a name that wasn't already taken though.