Blogging in a cold climate

The "Wrap with love" blankets that our library has been the drop-off point for certainly came in handy this week, as my colleague and I worked through the Week 9 module at the public internet PCs. After an overnight temperature of minus 7 , the icy blasts coming through the foyer made us don the wraps!

It took ages for the British Library to download to listen to a podcast. I did manage to listen to the Valerie Holman "Print for victory" talk. The ABC site worked much faster for some reason. I discovered many interesting podcasts to listen to at a later time. Local (Australian) content also appealed to me on this website.

Uses of podcasts for our library could include book reviews, audio book clips from selected talking books, author visits, oral interviews to tie-in with the local Folk Museum and Family History Group.

Answer Boards

I had a look at the Answer board links, and concluded that the questions posed on Yahoo!7Answers were quite trivial/amusing - ranging from Help I need a kennel! to How can I clean my wallpaper, it looks dirty and dusty!

WikiAnswers was easier to navigate and looked less cluttered.

I can see a use for "slamming the boards" in our library, but we would need to advertise heavily to encourage more familiarity with the online services. When hosting live events in the library, given the cool/temperate climate of our region it is often a challenge to gather a crowd (especially in winter months!). This would not be a problem with a computer driven service however!

Currently the library has an "Ask a librarian" link from the Council's website. This attracts approximately 3-4 hits a month. Questions are mainly local history/family history based, with the occasional Census data query.

TECHNORATI & LIBRARY THING

I had a look at Technorati and in my searches got 405 hits with keyword search for bookmobile, 762 in the exact phrase - advanced search. When searching for nswpln2008 I only got 37 hits - what was I doing wrong?

LibraryThing would be a fine thing if you had so many books you couldn't remember what you had, and if you really wanted other people to know what you had. Neither scenario applies to me so I will not be looking at LibraryThing again. But still I know what it is and how some people think it's terrific.

Del.icio.us

I only completed half of week 7 this week, there were problems with our system and I couldn't add the buttons to the browser. Yet again I had to work around our system. The libraries listed are using Del.icio.us in so many ways, from information on local history, environmental issues, health, law, music and even professionally recommended bookmarks.
At least I managed to put the link to my Delicious account in this blog!
http://del.icio.us/corellibach
Tomorrow I am going to attempt to finish week 7...maybe

YouTube take IV

I must confess to becoming addicted to YouTube and Google video for a day! I discovered a new way to cast on my knitting as well as how to carve a gourd, but did also explore some library YouTubes as instructed. The Rosetta Stone @ your library looked liked fun and the Art Express exhibition was terrific. A few of the library tours were a little dull I must admit.

Uses for YouTube in our library would be for author visits, showcasing of story time activities as well as a walk-through of the proposed plans for our new library building. This would be great for the many members of the public who missed seeing the static posters that were on display for a short time in the library. Also, the plans are constantly evolving as more consultation takes place with the architects so YouTube would showcase the current stage of development.

Embedding took a few goes, but this Rock the library is for my son because he looks a little like these guys and plays the guitar : )

Wikis

I looked at all the examples of Wikis on the list, I was drawn to the Wookieepedia one - what a great play on the word Wikipedia. There is so much to know about Star Wars and fans would have a great time browsing. The Wisconsin Heritage Wiki I thought was difficult to use. The Book Lovers Wiki was great, especially the genre listings.

Posting my own Wiki was good fun, and reading the comments from others in my job position was quite amusing.

The Tasmanian State Library site is so easy to use and has such a clean look. I am totally jealous.

RSS

We had to create another user account to work through this module......it is this particular aspect of the course that has been the subject of a lot of discussion in my workplace. How many user accounts will we all have by the end??
I found it quite easy to follow this module, having had a lot of trouble with Flickr. I feel quite overwhelmed by the volume of material out on the internet and it is also taking me a lot longer to carry out the required tasks. This is due to 2 factors.
1. It is so easy to get distracted on the internet, just to keep clicking and before you know it be somewhere you didn't even know you were going!
2. Our library workstations do not allow us to satisfactorily view the instructional videos so I'm having to use the public internet machines before the library opens.
Having said that I found the module quite easy to work through, I now have discovered that I have forgotten a lot of what I had learned. Anyway, I must post this blog.