Mashups

I can certainly see the relevance of mashups in our libraries for local history projects in particular (like mapping significant historical buildings or adding voice threads to photos of items in online exhibitions). I can also see how Big Huge Labs could be used for creating cool promotional items. I really enjoyed this website and will revisit it to explore it further. I can't believe how easy it was to create my cool little calendar below. Prior to NSW Public Libraries Learning 2.0 I would never have known that tools like this are freely available on the net.

Because Readers Advisory work is the favourite part of my day as a Librarian I started thinking how mashups could be applied to RA. I would love to see a mashup that maps books set in different countries, as I sometimes have inquiries from people who have travelled or lived in a particular country who want to follow up with a book set in that same country. Another mashup might map authors from various countries - in RA work you often have people wanting Australian or English or Indian authors etc so again I think this sort of thing would be interesting to look at on a world map. Maybe they already exist? I know I don't have the technological know-how to create one yet but maybe with a little bit more exploration and research I can give it a go!

Podcasts

The use of podcasts in our library would be great for notifiying parents of school holiday program activities. We currently use mailing lists and send out many flyers advising parents of the different activities - this takes a lot of staff and volunteer time maintaining the databases, folding flyers and stuffing envelopes. How easy it would make things if we could just direct people to our website with a link to a podcast. I'm sure most of the parents and children would really enjoy receiving news and information in this format.

I think podcasts would also work really well with the general adult population for short broadcasts of news about events at the library (similar to the podcast from LibVibe). We already have a regular spot on local radio which reaches a lot of the older people in our community - I suppose it wouldn't be difficult to record this same information for a podcast.

I would be very interested to read any comments from library staff who have embraced web 2.0 technology at their libraries, and in particular how the older generation have responded to it - I could imagine that older people with some grasp of Internet technology might enjoy listening to a podcast, but posting photos to Flickr, or contributing information to a Book Lovers Wiki... I'm not so sure???? I would be very pleased to read this is not the case, but my feeling is that it might be predominantly children and teenagers in your community that have responded to your library blogs and viewed your YouTube videos etc. Any thoughts???

Answer boards

Wow - aren't these great tools and what an amazing variety of questions. Answerboards seem like a great way to promote the skills of librarians - I thought this was especially evident in questions like the one posted about landscaping. Some of the answers from the general public (like "lots of pink flamingos" and "plants bushes and stuff") were just comical and useless to say the least compared to the considered answer of the librarian, complete with internet links which would have real benefit for the person posing the question. I also liked the suggestions from the librarians to "visit your local library." This would certainly bring public libraries into the forefront of people's minds (oh yeah, haven't visited the library in a while.... maybe I should go and see if it has a book on...). A suggestion like this might also draw people into the library who wouldn't normally visit.

There would certainly be benefits to the general library community for librarians like myself to "slam the boards", but I don't know that management would allow me the time for this type of activity, given that people from all over the world might be reading my answers (and not necessarily the people in my local community). In other words there may not be any direct outcomes for our library service. And in a branch library where we need to be multiskilled to cope with all of the different roles and responsibilities we have, I honestly don't believe we have enough time to slam the boards (especially if it doesn't result in some measurable outcome). In my own time though, yes, I would be encouraged to have a go at answering some questions and promoting our professional skills.

Our library is currently undergoing a review of our website and I would love to see some of the web 2.0 technology that we've explored in this program utilised. I wonder where one would start though - the development of a wiki, posting photos of items in the local studies collection to Flickr, saving Reference favourites to Del.icio.us., podcasts of our school holiday program activities... hmm.. would be a hard decision when it is all so exciting and when it has so much potential for reaching so many people out there in cyberland.

Delicious... and no I'm not talking about food

Have a look at some of my favorite websites on Del.icio.us

How wonderful is the AskNow's use of Del.icio.us to bookmark useful websites for answering reference questions! I could very easily see this site being used in our library for the same purpose. In the last twelve months or so our PC at the Information Desk died and there was some difficulty retrieving our "favourites." I guess with the use of Delicious this wouldn't be a problem. It would also be very handy to be able to access favourite websites from multiple computers at the same time (convenient if the Information Desk is being used). And it would save time adding favourites in one place, rather than having to update several PC's.

Now that I know about Del.icio.us I will also use this site for my personal use. In the last few days I added favourites to my work computer, and then did the same at home. Now, thanks to this wonderful thing called Del.icio.us, it will be a much simpler process.

I found adding the link to Del.icio.us quite straightforward - I found the Blogger Help pages gave clear instructions. Just click on this link for help....

And for all the other chocolate lovers out there

.......try this recipe for chocolate brownies:




Wow - what an exercise. I found embedding a YouTube video easy but embedding a Google video was a completely different story. Couldn't find the "Embed Video" link for the life of me. Consulted Google help and comments from other NSW Public Libraries Learning 2.0 participants but still couldn't find that link that I needed. Then suddenly it appeared next to the video clip. Not sure why - think it must have appeared after the clip had finished playing.... this is the only explanation I can come up with. From there it was easy.

How cool was the video "QandANJ: Now Your Library is Open Late Night Too." Very clever. I think it would be very cool to post videos of our library activities on YouTube. I'm sure videos of our most successful library events would appeal to some of our non-library users and encourage them to come along and take part in some of the fun themselves. Videos of storytime, school holiday activities (eg. Jam sessions, Trivia Nights), family fun days, and other @ your library events (eg. Library Lovers Day, Murder Mystery Nights) would surely draw more people into the library. Who wouldn't want to be a part of fun like that! Video might also be a good medium for instructing users how to use the catalogue and databases etc but YouTube mightn't be the best medium for this. I tend to think the more novel videos like the State Library of Queensland building project would be better suited to YouTube or Google video, and to breaking down stereotypes of libraries as boring places.

Here Kitty Kitty....

This is for any cat lovers out there!

Go Wikis!

At last I know what a Wiki is!!! I've used Wikipedia many times but never realised it was a "Wiki," or how easy it is to edit Wikipedia articles. I was very surprised to learn that anybody can edit without having to even log in.

Also found it very interesting that the German language version of Wikipedia was more accurate than the leading German language encyclopedia!! This made me stop and reflect on the times that I have neglected to use Wikipedia as an information source for library patrons, given that I didn't think that it was reliable. Perhaps now, instead of being so quick to reject it as an information source, I can show patrons information contained in Wikipedia (along with other sources) and explain some its strengths and weaknesses. I also really enjoyed the "Information Today" article for all of the different viewpoints it highlighted.

I would like to try creating a Wiki for our book club though I'm not sure how receptive the predominantly older people in our book club would be to posting book reviews on a Wiki themselves. (Yes I know, very stereotypical but I do believe this would be the case). Maybe I would have to post the book reviews on the Wiki myself or introduce it to our young adult library members who may also like to post book reviews during school holidays. I like the idea of a Wiki for staff use too, especially for event planning where people in different branches could brainstorm and post their ideas for others to build on. A Wiki, used as a repository for policy and procedures and other documents for staff use, would also benefit staff at smaller branches who may not have access to a common drive. I guess the possibilities are endless.....