November 14, 2009

Week 2.1

It's been a long time but I'm back again! Web 2.1 these days.

So I've just signed up to Twitter and I'm a happy little tweeter.

My Twitter is twitter.com/gailxforce.

Here is a youtube link I was shown that describes it quite well.


May 11, 2008

Week 15



O.k this is just getting silly! It was just a 12 week course and now I am up to Week 15. But this one is really just for my Library friends so they can see Kia's friend's latest You Tube clip. We think False Start are awesome! Hope you enjoy it. (p.s I love youtube)

May 05, 2008

Week 14

You're Right! There definately is not a Week 14 but new sites keep getting sent to me and they are well worth looking at so this is where I am putting them. Thanks GM. http://explorediscoverplay.ning.com/

April 12, 2008

Week 13

O.k so there isn't really a Week 13 but a colleague sent me some web-sites that she found while working on her Librarianship studies relevant to the course and this seemed the most logical place to put them and my thoughts on them so that I could share the sites at my workplace. Thankyou KF.
The first article I read was in regard to Sirsidynix which to me was like trying to read a foreign language and when they started quoting API this and API that I got a bit lost until I consulted the friendly librarian available at the end of the phone, thankyou GM, I was told that it is of course Application Programming Interface, which I should have known but you know what it is like when you feel completely over your head anyway, things you should know fail you as well. This article talks about Web 3.0 as well quoting the Croquet project that involves multi-user virtual world applications with avatars and furniture. This just about pops my head because I was struggling with 2.0! A little warning when I went into the links for Enterprise portal Solution and Horizon Information Portal I sort of got stuck in so much as I was not able to Back out and had to change screens etc to get out of it.
Another article I read was written by Jack M. Maness also about Library 2.0 theory this was an interesting article speaking about all the things we looked at in the Library 2.0 course over the past 12 week. It was encouraging that I could understand this article and I thought it had some relevant thoughts on the subject. One paragraph that particularly caught my eye was the following :
"Libraries may do well to continue adopting this technology as it evolves, as it allows reference services in an online media to closely approximate the more traditional services of the physical library. The time will almost certainly soon come when Web reference is nearly indistinguishable from face-to-face reference; librarians and patrons will see and hear each other, and will share screens and files. In addition, the transcripts these sessions already provide will serve library science in ways that face-to-face reference never did. For the first time in the history of libraries, there will be a continuously collected transcription of the reference transaction, always awaiting evaluation, analysis, cataloging, and retrieval for future reference."
This made me think of the "My Tutor" program that we have recently made available to our Student Public at our Library. The My Tutor peole are taking advantage of this technology and in the future why not us in the Library itself.
The scariest thing about these two articles to me was that they were both written in 2006 which puts me at least 2 years behind in what is happening out there and that is an huge head start for this type of rapidly advancing technology.
The third article I read was a blog about Learning 2.0 and talks of the 23 Things, which frightened me at first because I thought it meant there were 11 more weeks of learning out there to be done to really complete the Library 2.0 course. However, the 23 things basically include all the applications we have done using some different web-sites in some cases but still included flickr, del.icio.us, and Library Thing to name a few. The 23 Things were to be learnt in 9 Weeks for this course. The most interesting thing I found in this article was that Melbourne's Yarra Plenty Library had been one of the first libraries to take this course on board. And again it was 2006 that they began. The course was offered as Daily Lessons so they obviously had time on their hands. I wish I had known about this blog when I was working through the course.

April 06, 2008

Week 12

The Last week, yay! 34 hours later I am at the end of the Course. Wrap up, social networks and catch up. Myspace is often spoken of in my house. My teenage daughter communicates constantly with her myspace friends. Bebo and Facebook are also commonly used terms. Proboards is a different format and was not mentioned throughout this course but seems to be constantly used by teenagers as a commonly used communication tool. Livejournal is another website commonly used by young people, it was a shame we did not get a chance to look at these websites as they seem to be the new way. Which just goes to show us that no matter how much we try to keep up there is always something new to learn!
The types of sites mentioned in Week 12 don't really afford themselves to a simple format to communicating unless there is a pre-specified group, myspace sites are quite labour intensive to set up and there are better ways for library staff to communicate to their colleagues or to the Public. Livejournal could be used as a Blog style site and Proboards could be a useful message board.
Well that's it for me. Week 12 complete!

Week 11

Google docs seemed to be the most useful of all the online applications and tools that I looked at for this week. Slideshare looked useful as well to store Powerpoint presentations but I wouldn't have use of this at this time, having seen it though I know it is there if the situation ever arises.
I sent a book review I had written by Google docs to the email address provided. For awhile I seemed to be going in circles with the process but then it all suddenly became clear and I will be able to do this in future. In my work situation Google docs will be very useful just for this purpose, sending book reviews I have written to the Library IT people so that they can be published with all the others in our Staff Review publications. It is envisaged that very soon in the future Google docs will be used to forward Staff Rosters and Leave Calendars so that all the Staff have access to them. I liked that Google docs allows the sender to either allow or not allow editing to the document by the recipient.
I also noted several useful websites from the slideshow offered on the Slideshare presentation that will be useful in the future such as the tadalist that looked like it could be used similar to wiki as explained in Week 5 in that lists can be created and shared.