podcasts

I can see why podcasts appeal to some people, access and view a program at any time you want, or bits of it, and watch it again without having to use up more bandwidth.
The programs are going to have to be good for me to want to do that again, given the size of the files I downloaded. They will have to be interesting and have a point and not take too long to download - I downloaded one that took 5 minutes on cable - way too long and was disappointing.
I like the idea of having library tours as podcasts and perhaps some events could be podcast - particularly some of our big ticket events, and some of our storytime sessions, which I hear are fantastic - "library wiggles" anyone?
I did find some cool things on the SciFi channel website, so I guess if we provide good content, people may want to download it. I'm not as keen on this as the video streaming. With the video streaming you can stop the video if it's boring and you haven't necessarily wasted time downloading the whole thing to view.

slamming the boards

I think this is a great idea. I love the fact that librarians are keen to share good and factual information with those who seek it, where ever they are! I have read some really rubbishy answers to questions on these sorts of boards sometimes it makes you want to cry. Especially when it's clear that the person answering the question has no idea what they are talking about.

More power to you board-slamming librarians! It would be a good way to expose people to the value of libraries and librarians.

It could be very interesting if LSB customers' reference questions were answered on a board, rather than individually. The bonus would be that customers may not always need to ask a question then, if the question had already been asked and answered. It would certainly keep us on our toes to provide good quality answers. I wonder whether this would increase our profile and the number of questions asked?

Technorati

Hello again, well I searched for bookmobile, and I did get different results when I did a regular and an advanced search. I didn't get anything when I looked for nswpln2008 though - nada - and I searched twice over two days. If anyone can explain this I'd be glad to know, but for now I am moving on to the next puzzle.
I found some interesting and random blogs about "singing" though - many times it was mentioned on the periphery - shows a more specific search would be needed to find content useful to me, same as for any other search.

Well library thing was fun. I added a few more than five books, and happily found a few of Brian Lumley's books I haven't read :) I would like to buy these, he's the only author whose books I just have to buy.

social bookmarking

Hmmm, not sure about this one. It was simple to set up the account, but I doubt I'll use it much for personal use. I don't need my bookmarks following me where ever I go!
I'm not convinced that folksonomies in their basic form is a good way to find good websites - people use such a variety of words to name the same thing so it is perhaps an unreliable or time-consuming way of finding information if you don't think the same way as another person. Also, you can't use two words as a tag (eg 23 things) without making it one word - limitation of the software?

I do like what Cleveland Library has done though, using their professional librarian skills to select good web resources that everyone can make use of - I see the value in that. I am much more likely to look at the links recommended by an expert than a random person who has put links on the web.
Do we do this already? I don't remember seeing that sort of resource laid out like this. Perhaps sharing professional resources links inhouse would be helpful too. Sharing our favourite websites would widen our resource base. It also means we can access them from anywhere, especially if we hotdesk.

11 1/2 things!

Yay, half way through. I have learned some interesting things. Some I probably won't use much, some I will explore further. The internet is a double-edged sword though. It would be too easy to spend half your life exploring it, and there is a lot of meaningless stuff to find here. However, there are some good things to find and use - searching is the hard part in my experience.



Videos on the web (youtube etc). Again, some cool ways we could use them in libraries: self-paced intro to libraries, book reviews by staff or customers, tours of the library. They would have to be carefully marketed though, so no-one thinks we are getting rid of staff and replacing them with pixels! Some of the videos I saw were pretty awful - as you'd expect, since you can put up what you like it seems (I will never get back the 10 seconds I wasted watching the first lego video I saw!) but at least then people will comment on your stuff and you might improve your video creation skills.

Image from photobucket, mmmm pancakes! Person who created this seems to like pancakes, and cats! Good combo.

Found a cool video to put in here, but will do it later after I've read up on the terms and conditions.
Catch you later :)

Wiki whispers

Well, this is more like it! Some of those wikis I looked at today are just the ticket to help me in my job...

The Antioch University and the Library Success Wiki both have given me some great ideas for our own library procedures revamp, which we got underway last week (thanks to some good friends and colleagues) :)

Although our procedures pages won't be wikis, they have a great layout that would be easy to follow.

I also liked the reader reviews for books on the Book Lovers Wiki http://booklovers.pbwiki.com/Princeton%20Public%20Library. A similar setup on our library wiki would tap into some of that reading passion in LSB...

Something about RSS

RSS makes it simple to quickly check for updates from interesting sites you've found. I didn't find many sites that I wanted to add, but I chose the local ABC news, some library sites, some gardening and philosophy sites, and I added my favourite online comic "Order of the stick" which is hilarous (highly recommended for RPGers)! You can check it out here: http://www.giantitp.com/index.html. I also took the cheaty option and selected from bloglines' suggested feeds, some of which might be quite interesting.

I think this will be useful for work by prompting discussion of library related things - ideas and solutions that we might be able to use, and seeing what has worked for others.

It would be handy way to distribute new procedures, if people wanted subscribe to such a blog.

The libraryBytes blog has plenty of ideas to digest, which is cool.

I'm sure I will add more RSS feeds as I come across them.

The Cats Whiskers

The Cats Whiskers
Originally uploaded by no1chrism

Well after much tooing and froing and adding access and deleting access and granting it again it is working!

Woohoo! And I have a nice kitty picture to match my blog name :)