Finished - WhooHoo!

Well, I can't believe it - what a journey! I made it. I can talk about Library Thing, Delicious, Mashups, Podcasts, Second Life etc and actually know what they are - amazing. Thank you to everyone involved, it has been great fun (especially Mash Ups) and only a little frustrating but I was able to figure most things out eventually and with a bit of "Clicking around" and of course things that you thought would only take a short time ended up taking ages. But then other things were so much fun ... you just wanted to keep going.....Cheers and Congratulations all.

Test Zoho Document

This is my first Zoho Document  and I think the Zoho writer is pretty easy to use and I can Link to my blog  and also add comments. Lots of fun.

Social networking and library promotion

I think social networking sites would be great to promote library services, books clubs and events like author talks. Members of the club could really interact and post comments about they are reading, giving feedback to the library and feeling part of an on-line community. It would benefit borrowers and library staff. I don't know how we will have time to do all this though. It is sure to become part of the normal role of librarians to keep wikis, Facebook and blogs etc up to date. The example of the Scottish Council shows it is the way of the future and a likely road we will all follow.

On-line applications whole new world

Who knew all those applications were there? Fantastic? I want to try Jott and write a blog posting while I'm on the go - it is all just too amazing. I'm trying out Google docs - very straight forward and very handy for editing a newsletter or other document that requires a few people to check it. But I think I like Zoho better - there seems to be more options that are easily explained. But I'll get back to you on that one.

More on Mashups

Hey - if you can't read the saying in the previous post, it says: "He who has a garden and a library wants for nothing" - Cicero. And for more on Mashups? Well.... I clicked around quite a bit and thought it would be great for local history buffs to have photos and maps and stories together and for family historians to find more about the history of each building in a street. So you could look up a Google map, click on a place, and see an historic photo and then read a history of the building - who lived there, incidents, architecture etc all in the one place - that would be useful.

My Motivator Mashup

My Motivator Originally uploaded by indigogirl2008

That was fantastic!!!!! How good is Big Huge Labs??? - I'll be going back there and we can use it for our own blogs and presentations for the library. Here is my motivator. I thought I would just put a photo and a saying together. This rainbow appeared over the Orange Botanic Gardens during our Garden Weekend of events - we all took it as a lucky sign. And the saying? - it was passed onto me from a member of one of our book discussion groups.

Bring on Podcasting

Oh this is an eye opener. I really didn't know how much was out there - definitely great for Writers Festival events and podcasts could be used more by libraries for author talks. I enjoyed searching the British Library and found a snippet about Jane Austen and The History of England written when she was just 15 and one about Evelyn Waugh. It was also good to tune in to the ABC and listen to some news stories I missed during the day. The best thing is you get to listen to the things you want to listen when you want to.

"Slamming" the Answerboards

I've never asked a question before and I had an answer within 24 hours. It was exciting to see an answer waiting in the email inbox. I rated the answer but I guess that is not a really important feature to look out for. Answerboards just go to show some people have too much time on their hands or are really happy to share their expertise! I think there is a role for libraries "slamming the boards" because it would be great to know you are being helped by someone with expertise in finding the right answer and it would create a great resource to be used by all. I might ask a few more questions.......

The Library Thing

I really enjoyed learning about Library Thing and selected 5 or so books and changed the covers to the books I have on my shelf but I haven't been able to add it to the blog yet. So look out for that when I figure it out. I think it is quite amazing that people are putting their libraries on-line. Who would ever have thought that would happen?

Am I a Technocrati??

Well I'd never heard of this before but following the exercises I discovered more. The search for bookmobile revealed 481 results and then using the advanced search feature for the exact word found 372 results. Weirdly though I have still not found nswpln2008 photos but they are mentioned on two other people's blogs which came up in the search. In an interesting update I have found my original blog!!! - the brilliant one that went into cyberspace because it was thought to be Spam. Just goes to show if you wait long enough - things will come back. Cheers for now - up to Library Thingymajig!

del.icio.us and Yummy

Hey, that is a lot of fun. Another username and password and I have been clicking away like a champion tagging and adding notes. I can see lot of advantages for librarians and educators it is a fantastic way to share information. It is a much better way to organise websites rather than scrolling through a long list of bookmarked sites - brilliant!.

You and me and you tube

Greetings, well this has been fun. I've tried adding a You Tube clip a couple of times to this blog post and haven't had any success yet - obviously - but I have managed to add one onto the blog - check out the first clip on the right hand side - it is about our In Site Out exhibition which included the Green Words Workshops. Just ignore the other clips. I haven't figured out how to get rid of them yet. Adding the clip was easy following the Blogger page element prompts and just using the search words to bring up the clip and then save changes. I'll get back to you on how to achieve this in a blog post. Challenges!

A Wiki or two

I think wiki's should've been covered first - pretty easy and straight forward! Woo Hoo ... and I can see they would be useful for ibraries and reader's advisory - everyone adding their favourite books and reviews. It was simple to edit Wikipedia - a little too easy (raised eybrow) but again another day another username and password. I'm thinking it shouldn't be relied upon for academic work but it is very handy when you want an overview on a topic quickly especially for current cultural topics like films and music. Well here is my tip to check out this wiki (not wookie) uklibraryblogs.pbwicki.com - really handy.

New tricks

Author Fiona Ogilvie Originally uploaded by indigogirl2008

What have I been doing lately? Well I thought I should finish uploading photos to Flickr which I have completed doing and added tags and rotated a couple of them. So I thought I would practice blogging one and here it is. Meet author Fiona Ogilvie photographed at the beautiful Orange Botanic Gardens when she was a special guest for our Garden Weekend. So hopefully you will soon be able to see some other images from Orange City Library on Flickr soon. Until next time.

RSS Feeds Success

Back again. It all sounds simple and it was a bit easier this time, but again logging in, etc - there must be an easier way - of course it doesn't help if you make a typo. I enjoyed looking at the Powerhouse Museum Photo of the Day and that was much easier. I also managed to get away from subscribing to batches of blogs (6 RSS Feeds at a time) on Google Reader - talk about overload - and did individual searches for RSS Feeds that interested me. It helps to be more selective but again it took awhile to search for them. This will be handy for posting blogs about the latest information and books and using them for newsletters. So now I have subscribed to Powerhouse Photo of the Day, Washington Post Book Reviews, The New Yorker, Library Bytes, Sydney Morning Herald, ABC News just in and our local newspaper here in Orange - The Central Western Daily (CWD). So you see I finally got the hang of it and it was fun searching for things that interested me. So check out my RSS Feed - the latest local news from the CWD. Can you tell I'm a news junkie?

Having a go at RSS Feeds

Well it is all interesting and great way to get the information you want but again I have been "clicking around" too much - am I doing something wrong? I had to log into blogs, subscribe, verify email by going back to gmail and then I could pick up feeds . I'm finding subscribing and validation a pain. No, it says there is a problem wih this database and to try again later. Frustrating times. Stay tuned will report back later.

A Flickr Photo

bookshelf spectrum, revisited Originally uploaded by chotda

Hey, here is a photo I really liked called "bookshelf spectrum". There are a few photos like this of people's bookshelves and it is obviously a craze that is catching on but I liked this one the best from Chotda's Photostream. It was pretty challenging uploading this photo. I went from help page to help page and then figured out you had to be logged in to Flickr, find the image, click on "Blog this", then "Add a blog" came up, then you go to Google - by just clicking on the link, you click on "Grant Access" to Flickr and then you return to Flickr and click on the photo and then the prompt comes up "Blog this photo". Easy when you know how. And you do not want to know how long I have been clicking around trying to do this! WooHoo! RSS Feeds next.

Flickr and bad library signs

Okay, so it seems to be taking me a bit longer with everything? I'm enjoying it though. I really loved looking at all the Mosman Library photos and I can see where using Flickr is a good idea for a library and personal use. Mosman Library has a great range of photos showing events and that is a lively and happening place and the Taronga Zoos visits are really unique. I loved the Vegimite kid pics but wasn't sure about the "vegemite challenge". I'm looking for a photo to upload so that will be my next post but what about the Bad Library Signs - instead of welcoming people it's like they are really saying "go away!".

Is it just me?

Well I don't know about anyone else but I'm finding all the Learning 2.0 activities take longer than 15 minutes per day - but maybe it is just me!

Finally Made It

Well this hasn't been easy - my first brilliant blog - if I do say so myself - was called "spam" - can you believe it? and despite my efforts to tell the technological abyss I was human my blog has not been seen since. So here I am again, back but better than ever before and really looking foward to lifelong learning and everything there is to know about blogs, wikis, mashups etc etc. I may even be able to have sensible conversations with more tech savvy people - but hold on - I could be getting ahead of myself. No it is going to be great. So hello world!