Week 13: E Books

Personally I have never been interested in reading books online ( even Bill Gates is quoted as saying computer screens were never designed for this purpose) -but the personal e book readers you can buy now are definitely an improvement. I can see the value in obtaining out of print books this way and the printQ option within World E Book Fair could be useful although there was no indication of prices. I can also see the advantages in providing class sets of books this way if the copyright issue could be resolved. It would save having workroom shelves in the library filled up with multiple copies of books which have been purchased for training courses in the past and only required for a couple of years. Project Gutenberg was of interest and I was pleased to see my favourite Pride and Prejudice was in the top 10 recently downloaded books.

Week 12 : YouTube

I have had to use YouTube for work reference enquiries eg people wanting comedy clips for icebreakers at workshops and one more recently on videos of police behaving badly( overseas of course). I spent some time in my lunch break amusing myself watching a clip of Mr Bean in the Library . Some clips stall on our system and are therefore not easy to view. Our organization has its own Bluetube for a whole range of video clips on the Intranet -organizational messages , training etc. The Library has its own promotional DVD which has been put onto Bluetube. Unless we wanted to make these videos publicly available I can't see any advantage in placing them on YouTube.

Week 11 Podcasting

This has been a very frustrating exercise as I seem to come up against downloading software prompts all the time and of course we are not allowed to do this on our network. Firstly I had to fathom out the terminology as in some places podcasting is said to be an audio feature only but in other places the term seemed to cover both audio and video. The ABC site finally clarified matters saying that podcasting did cover both audio and visual but the more correct term for video is "vodcasting". I was particularly interested in the podcasts of author talks as I am about to attempt one myself in two weeks time. Unfortunately the Yarra Plenty Regional Library link to a recent author podcast took about 10 minutes to download to my desktop and then the audio was so soft I could not hear it even with the volume at its highest level. I read with interest the How to podcast tutorial and the Beginners guide to podcasts and creating podcasts but again kept being instructed to download software such as Audacity. Fortunately our Multimedia Unit is giving me assistance in organizing the podcast so I hope they can bypass our network issues over downloading software. I am planning to put the podcast on our Intranet but as we do not have the capability for RSS feeds yet I am not sure how this is going to work. I did subscribe to some RSS feeds for podcasts in my Google Reader account but as for actually being able to listen/view the podcasts some worked and most did not.

Week 10 Rollyo

I created a Rollyo account and a search roll using about ten links to websites from my favourites on policing topics. I also selected some of the pre-made search rolls both work and recreational. I added my searchroll to my blog but ran into problems as soon as I tried to add more than one search roll. I thought maybe the searchroll had to be selected one at a time but that didn't work either as I just created two Rollyo links instead of having all my searchrolls in the one place. When I manage to sort this out I can see how useful a tool this could be. Well I did sort this out the next day -must have been something wrong with my cutting and pasting technique

Week 9 Wikis

I looked at several of the links to information on wikis and can appreciate the wide range of uses a wiki can have not just for our library but for our organization. I was particularly interested in the New Zealand Police Act wiki giving the public and other interested bodies an opportunity to give their views on legislation reform. I liked the Library Success wiki and found some great information on marketing for libraries . Conference wikis are a great idea especially for the social networking aspect of conference attendance . In our library if we could add wiki functionality to our catalogue I can see terrific advantages in readers being able to comment on the books they have found useful and that they would like to recommend to other personnel. I can also see that our Links to Useful Websites could be expanded by contributions from other sectors of the organization. I personally have never liked the idea of wikipedia and would not trust the entries -but then even Encyclopedia Britannica can get the facts wrong sometimes. Public libraries could definitely cement their position as being a hub of the community by developing community guide wikis. I did look at the information on wiki farms but decided not to attempt to set up my own wiki at this stage as our Library Manager has already created a wiki which I am sure we can use when developing library policies and procedures particularly as we have staff working in two locations and do not have many opportunites for group discussions.

Week 8 Social bookmarking

I created a Del.icio.us account but I know I will not be able to use it at work as we are not allowed to install new programs on our network. I can see the advantages of having portable bookmarks and also being able to export my existing favourites into the del.icio.us site.
It is also useful for finding websites that I haven't already discovered such as the most popular travel bookmarks.

Week 7 iGoogle

I liked iGoogle and having everthing all on one site . I added a tab for travel and added stuff that I use on a regular basis to plan holidays. I changed the theme -edited settings of gadgets to reflect a local perspective rather than a US one - rearranged gadgets on a page. The instructions were really simple and useful. Some of the gadgets couldn't be added and I received an error message " missing xml header" -it seemed to be the Australian gadgets that had this problem. I also added an RSS feed to my travel page.
Who wouldn't want to work for a company like Google . It seems they have read all the articles on work/life balance and how to motivate and retain staff and actually put it into practice. A lot of organizations have gyms and day care facilities but free food, language classes and laundries take employee benefits to another level. It is heartening to see a company ploughing back some of its profits into services for their employees. But can you imagine the chaos if everyone brought their dogs to work ? Personally I would love it and I am sure my canine family would too.