Week 9 with Podcasts and Audio

According to the introductory video, Podcasts mean Personal On Demand casting. How cool is that? As the word suggests, Podcasting can be done by anyone on a variety of topics and can be subscribed and downloaded to your computer or MP3 player.

In the OCLS podcasts I took note of Meet the Author, the kids podstory and the Teen podcasts -especially the upcoming Teen Tech week program. The Denver public library podcasts were aimed at kids and contained stories, nursery rhymes and songs. Download these onto your MP3 player and let the kids listen to them in the car! The Libvibe was also interesting giving us library news ranging from the state of libraries to a library visitor being arrested to National library Week.

In the British Library podcasts I was intrigued by the entries of Neil Gaiman on the Ramayana, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Healing through medicine and faith... to name a few. The ABC website was more into current topics as I noticed the podcast on PM, News and current affairs. I checked on subjects and noticed the variety of the Audios there - Sciences, Weather, the Arts, Indigenous Community and even lifestyle.

In the Library Success Wiki I chose the Pierce County Library System and liked their idea of book reviews podcasts - a way to promote your collection and would be good for your book club. There was also a section on general advice on how to podcast, which I thought was good reading for anyone who was seriously thinking of embarking on podcasting.

When you consider what's already out there, our libraries could make good use of podcasting. Something like a library orientation/tour promoting our programs and services, podcasts of author talks, book launches, oral history recordings, past HSC talks or even for libraries that are lucky to have large spaces with library foyers, could make use of these podcasts via a multi-media screen.

It's easier said than done. Libraries should take into consideration staff time, training, script writing and equipment, for staff to be involved in producing these podcasts. If you are hoping to do a podcast on your library services and programs, it should be done professionally so as to further promote your libraries.

Check out Murdoch University Library, Western Australia, podcasts.

http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/about/podcasts/

Slamming the Boards@Week 8

Having gone into the links suggested in week 8, I've realised more and more people are using answer boards now. How serious is this information? It seems most of these web forums now have ways of measuring the quality of the answers.

I liked the idea of slamming the boards for us Librarians. We are not confining ourselves within the walls of our libraries. We are heard and sought after across the globe. Most libraries have the service of 'Ask a librarian' through their library website, but those answers might be limited to one person's view. With slamming the boards professional librarians will produce answers on popular Answer boards, still keeping their image of reference services.

I checked out the Answer Board Librarians wiki and went to the Exemplary Answers section and discovered the diversity of the questions and the many answers and ratings. I also checked on Signatures and Tag lines that promote libraries. Also, it was good to add/edit those tag lines. The best for me was "Librarians. Make them your FAVORITE search engines"

Answer Board Librarians can be a good way of promoting your library (In Signatures and Tag lines one can be directed to your library website) and to project the image, we Librarians are well into all these web technologies - the more hi-tec version of the Reference Librarian I suppose. Just like the Amazon website, patrons can rate, review books in your collection or even your services!

On a lighter note, I stumbled upon this delicious recipe on taste.com.au

Here's the picture and the link below.

Mocha Chocolate Brownies

http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/17299/mocha+chocolate+brownies

Why not add this recipe to your del.icio.us account.

To all Librarians, Happy cooking while slamming the Boards!

Tagging it

I seem to be doing Week 7 in bits and pieces!

As the Discover exercise stated I was checking out the Sutherlandshire Library's tag cloud and Cleveland Public library's del.icio.us tags. In Sutherlandshire I noticed the tagging in list order and tag clouds. The bold and larger headings meant those tags were used a many number of times than the more lighter shaded and smaller ones, thus allowing its users to bookmark and organise on-line sites. Cleveland Library had a slightly different approach in their link to del.icio.us account. I liked the link of bookmarks from their library website that takes you to their del.icio.us tags. My library too has bookmarked sites on our website and it would be good to go a step further and link onto del.icoi.us.

I came across this interesting article on Library Journal why tags help make libraries del.icio.us

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6476403.html

Technorati & LibraryThing

Amazing there over 112 million blogs tracked by Technorati. I did a search with bookmobile and was succesful in getting 715 searches. With nswpln2008 I had 6 entries tagged under posts and heaps found under photos. Not sure whether I'm doing this exercise the way it's meant to be done.

LibraryThing was more of a 'my type' thing and found this to be a wonderful tool to share your personal best books. Cataloguing your own books was a plus point, discovering others with your taste in reading and commenting on books can also promote not so familiar titles. Knowing what others think about a book, a critical review of a book or just a review/summary of a book can be shared globally. We have book clubs in our libraries and LibraryThing can be a smimlar on-line book club, but of course, it all done via the web.

It's del.icio.us

Wow, I've reached Week 7!

So far the Learning 2.0 has been a great flow of knowledge for me and I'm looking forward to completing the rest of the course. I tried my hand at del.icio.us today which was all new to me. It is a very simple concept and a good one at that, as you can save and share your favourite bookmarks with others.

With the help of the instructions I saved some of my bookmarked sites onto my del.icio.us account. I used their recommended tags and also added my own. I was also able to post a link of my del.icio.us account onto my blog and display my favourite bookmarks on my blog.

del.icio.us is good for work as well as for home. I posted a few children's crafts websites, which I use for library storytime, onto my account and it would be great if other users can join the network and share their favourite craft websites. We can all be inspired by new shared ideas. Through the del.icio.us network we can discover interesting new websites and share our favourites with others.

YouTube for libraries

It was interesting to check the videos on You tube & Google videos which was the exercise for Week 6. I particularly liked the Qand ANJ:Now your library is open late night too! This video was a brilliant marketing strategy. I also liked guides to using library services. This video promoted the use of the Reference area, research assistance, databases and other reference services. Mosman library under Google videos had their guest speakers' presentations on videos posted. A really good idea - even if you missed out on these presentations on the day, they are there for you to watch.

It would be a good promotional tool for libraries if we can publicise our programs and events via video. Seeing is believing they say! Videos of Guests authors, oral histories, book launches, promoting our youth programs like the HSC lectures or even promoting our Databses and navigating through on how to get started on them could be made into a video and posted on You tube. More and more people are now into this web technology and there is a good audience out there who would be interested in seeing such stuff. Not only can we raise the profile of our library this way, our library can be heard and seen on the world wide web!

Here's a short video on why you should fall in love with libraries!

A Love for Reading on YouTube

Wikis for everyone and everything

Wikis is an interesting concept. Of course I got carried away with week 5 and realised how popular wikis are and how they can work great in your work place, be it libraries or anywhere, your businesses, family, etc. It will be something like your mobile, everyone will be having a wiki! I came across this article on the web called 7 things you should know about Wikis. Worth reading.
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7004.pdf

For the Discovery exercise I chose:

Subject Guide wiki of St Joseph College County Library - questioned my self about the authenticity of Legal & Government information.

the full library success. A best practice wiki - liked the idea of sharing information on programs, collection, professional development, readers advisory, marketing etc.

Book lovers Wiki - useful for our book clubs, reviews under genres.

A team has been set up in our library to draw up policies and procedures on Digital Imaging. I do think it would be a great idea if we could create an intranet based wiki for this purpose, so that staff could freely contribute, edit or comment on content. This way, we can have staff input and comments across the board and the final report can then be compiled by the Digital Imaging Team.