# 6 (Week 3) Authors on the Web

I don’t think that the site Authors on the Web would be a very good tool at all for readers advisory, as it appears to me to be a private business site, promoting its own work.

Yes it provides links to a lot of Authors websites, but they all appear to be clients of this company, therefore it is biased and likely to only be certain types of authors. There is no search function or classification, so I think it would be really unlikely I’ll ever use this site for Readers Advisory purposes.

I didn’t really like any of the sites, but if I had to chose one it would be Author Yellow Pages. I liked the fact you could search for authors and particularly that you could search for genre. Genre is my favourite way to find new books to read as I'm a bit of a crime buff.

# 5 (Week 3) Lit Lovers

I've always been interested in book clubs. I think they sound really interactive and enjoyable, but I've never even considered joining one. Lit Lovers really reinforced never joining one for me.
I thought Lit Lovers was okay as a base point, but didn’t have most of the books I’ve ever loved enough to wanted to talk about. It seems aimed at middle aged women, and fair enough, as I’m guessing they are the main book club members of the world.

I eventually chose ‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’ by Jonathan Safran Foer
I thought the collected information was very interesting, and I really enjoyed seeing the user attributed questions to stimulate book club discussion. They actually reminded my why I liked the book in the first place, so I think I’ll check it out again! This would be a great tool for people keen to start a book club, and if I ever find myself in a position where I'm asked to run one, I'm glad I found out about this site!

#4 (week 2) Genealogy

This week was quite interesting. I've always been vaguely interested in my family tree. My grandfather is adopted and took both his birth parents and adoptive parents names, which is where my surname comes from. It's nice being one of less than 10 in the whole world.

I think of the sites I looked at, I prefered My Heritage because I found it easier to use on the whole However Geni didn't try and help you every second of the way. I thought it was pretty easy to use as well.

I found it really interesting that my heritage asked for women's maiden names and Geni didn't. i think maiden names make more sense. However, My heritage assumed that if we have kids, they will have the surname Rivera (my partners last name) which is a bit much. (For the record, I will call them "Name Town-Treweek-Rivera").

I can't see myself recommending things like this to customers in my current job, but nonetheless, it's really good to know they are out there. A lot of geneologists come into this library, and it would be good for them to know they can keep track of all their research online with these tools.

Ooops. What I would like to learn

I didn't even do last week's exercise. I am teh sux.

I'm doing this course for a couple of reasons:

Firstly, I want to support my staff who are doing it.

Secondly, I'm hoping this will reignite some of the excitement I felt last time I did the Web 2.0 stuff. It really made me think about ways I could use the things I'd learnt in our working enviroment. We even started up a couple of things, like a Wiki and a Circ blog, but they fell by the wayside, mostly because the internet connection in the library is really slow.

Also, there are new things in this course, and I like learning new things. Keeps me up with the kids. Hey, maybe I can even journal this for my professional registration diary. I'll have to check.

Looking forward to doing next weeks stuff. I'll start doing it on Wednesday when I am back at work.

License to play - more on web 2.0 technologies

I am resurrecting my old blog in order to do the 5 week License to play - more on web 2.0 technologies course.

About 5 of us in Circ are doing it, so it should be rad.

:)

hello again

I totally forgot I had this blog, and then I found another one called the chair and it looked exactly like mine (well kinda) and I was all worried it was gone, but I found it again. phew.
all that web 2.0 training from work didn't go astray and that is great news.

I like this blog it's pretty. Got nothing much to say at this stage though. xxx

Week9-#23 The end- My feedback

I want to say that I really enjoyed this course, and have learnt a lot from it. I'm using some of the things I learnt here on a regular basis, and have found some excellent books to read through LibraryThing, which will help me both at work and when I'm not at the library.

Thanks to acl eLGAR team who commented and read my thoughts and whose hard work made this possible.

My team and I have already started thinking about ways we can use what we've learnt to improve our service and processes, and I'm grateful for this taster of what's out there.

Thanks again, and enjoy your holidays if you get some!

Week9 #22- eBooks

Well I had no idea we had so many eBooks through our digital library! I'm really impressed and think that this is wonderful. We really should push this more to customers!


I found lots of items I would like to read, but because I prefer to read my books in bed, on the bus or in the bath, I'm going to see if we have hardcopies of these items.

1.
Title: From Kung Fu to Hip Hop : Globalization, Revolution, and Popular Culture (eBook) SUNY Series, Explorations in Postcolonial Studies
by Kato, M. T.
Publication: Albany State University of New York Press, 2007.

2.
Title: Dishwasher : One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States (eBook)
by Jordan, Pete.
Publication: Pymble, NSW, New York HarperCollins, 2007.

3.
Title: Animated Man : A Life of Walt Disney (eBook)
by Barrier, J. Michael.
Publication: Berkeley University of California Press, 2007.

I'd be interested to see how many people actually use eBooks regularly, and if they prefer them to the good old fashioned paperback...

Week9-#21- Podcasts

I found when I was looking at the podcast directories Podcast.net and Podcast Alley, that it was difficult to find Indie music podcasts that were recent. All the hits I got for podcast series showing 'the best of new indie music' were from 2006 or something, which was a bit of a pain.

But I found a couple of library related podcasts like Library Geeks, which was kinda boring, but I'll keep looking to see if I can find something interesting to me.

I doubt very much I'll become a heavy user, but I would like to try and make me own at some point, but I'd have to find something worth talking about!

Week9 # 20-YouTube and others.

I really like YouTube. One of my fondest moments ever is watching the Saturday Night Live skit for 'Dick in a box' (see below) with some of my team and laughing our butts off.

I also really like YouTube because you can find almost anything. I was surprised to find so many hits when I searched for the Vinyl toys I like. I've added one below if anyone is interested.



I really think YouTube has some potential for use in Libraries, allowing public libraries to merge with AV libraries and the like. It makes it so easy to search, and I'm really beginning to appreciate tags.


And you can always find hilarious things to laugh at with your team:



or things that are amazing:

Week8 #19-Discovering Web 2.0 tools

I'm one of those people who always get some booze at Duty free on the way back from anywhere, so I have quite a supply of liqour at my place.

Cocktail builder is totally wonderful for teling you what you need and what you can do with what you have.

This one sounded pretty nasty though:

Pumpkin Martini
Skyy pumpkin infused vodka
cointreau (or other orange liqueur)
ice
swirl cointreau in a martini glass, then dump out. shake pumpkin vodka and ice strain into martini glass rimmed with pumpkin pie spice. garnish with whipped cream and cinnamon stick.

I also went to Facebook, which I'm addicted to and I still love it. Facebook has more of a potential to work for libraries than Cocktail Builder, but I do know a lot of librarians like a tipple now and again!

We are working on a wiki for our team, and had been using PBwiki, but because of this list we think we may actually go with Wetpaint

Week8- #18- Zoho

Man this really took a long time to load up, and once it did it took me ages to work out where to click, even though Postlapsaria was helping me.Once I finally made something, the internet on my work computer kept having to shut unexpectedly. These things combined make me hate Zoho deeply already.But I'm going to soldier on.

And I made it!!! I posted the below using it. I'm so proud, but i dont ever think i'll use it again.

Merry Christmas

I dont think I like Zoho.

Week7 # 17- Playing around with PBWiki

How fun is this?! So easy and interesting, and something I intend to look at lots more when I get the chance to.

And what wide taste in favourites we all have!
http://acllearn.pbwiki.com/Favourite+Music

This could be a great team building tool.

Week7 # 16-Wikis

Well I love Wikipedia for sure. I am amazed at how much information you can find,and how up to date it is!

For example, did you know that:
Today in 1958 - Nikki Sixx, American musician (Mötley Crüe) was born
Today is the 345th day of the year (346th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 20 days remaining until the end of the year.
and
Today in Argentina is Tango Day!

I mean, who knew!

I think that some of the library Wikis are fantastic. Library Success was really interesting to look at, and I can see myself using it in the future for some tried and tested ways of doing things. It seems like a great place for people to share experiences and best practice, and my team and I have talked about looking at one of ACL around policies, procedures and best practice.

I loved looking at the Library blog wiki, and was surprised at all the public libraries that have them for staff use or customer use. We've talked about doing this, and I think with this Web 2.0 course we are all the more better equipped to actually make it happen, and happen well!

Week6 #15-On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0 ...

I find this whole argument pretty interesting, but maybe I don't see it from the same angle that people who speak passionately about it.

I'm trying to be 'progressive' in my thinking about how we deliver services. Even the term 'deliver service' has a certain connotation that Library 2.0 doesn't anymore. I've spent years delivering a service, and it can be difficult to switch mindsets around your core work for the last million years ( it feels like it, anyway).

Wikipedia talks about one of the issues with Library 2.0 being that librarians are being resistant to allowing input from nonlibrarians, without any moderation or interference, and allowing people to create their own resources and to publish their own stories. I have a little bit of this feeling in me too, to be honest, but the deep seated reason for this is because we don't want to feel redundant in this new and exciting approach to information.

Our new website begins to offer our customers exactly what a library 2.0 is about. We are offering a social digital space for our customers, and allowing them to create content, participate in 'reference queries' and tag materials for easier/different searching.

I'm excited about it, to be honest, and proud that we are moving forward. I think that having a website like this will give us opportunities to feel more comfortable with the idea of user created/owned content, and we'll benefit from this.

Library 2.0 is a 'watch this space' kind of thing for me, i think. I'm not 100% convinced that our customer base or staff are completely ready for what it could mean, but I'm open to see what happens.

Week6 #14-Getting not-so-technical with Technorati

758 blogs about Learning 2.0
1167 posts tagged Learning 2.0

Amazing.

Technorati is actually pretty cool, giving me ways to find new and interesting blogs to look at. It was cool to see that postecret ( http://postsecret.blogspot.com/) was there. i got a book out from work a while ago with some of these in it, and it seems pretty interesting if not a little emo. :)

I love the way when you search for something, you get a little graph showing how many blogposts there have been mentioning your search term in the last 30 days. It's kind of mind blowing really. Led Zeppelin were at the top of the most popular page when I took a look there, and since Dec 9th, the number of posts has gone up by about 250 which is fascinating.

I actually found a great blog in a google search for a photo of a worm on the concrete after the rain ( don't ask). I talked about how great that blog was on my journal and tagged it in there and the woman who publishes the blog found it, and left me a nice comment, which was cool. I wonder how she found me, maybe it was through technorati! Maybe not. Who knows.

My only tiny problem with this site is that in the popular tags of the moment was something i had never heard of (well I had, but only in context) which was 'bbw'. One simple click lead me to a wealth of big beautiful women porn, and the associated tags ad photos were defintely NSFW ( not safe for work). I'm not a prude by any means (this could be considered a plus by some!) but I also know some people could have a problem with it.

Here's hoping ITC don't check my history and fire me.

:)