Week 9 - The 23rd thing!!

Oh wow this is it.

It has been a great journey, I cannot describe it as anything else. It has been fun but also very frustrating at times. Yes there were times when I was tearing my hair out knowing it was supposed to work but was not and then I would work out the simple mistake I had made and it would all seem so easy.

How do I feel about Web 2.0? Mainly positive, there is so much you can do and it is by and large public domain and free. There are many of the 23 things that I will return to and use again. Also I feel it is important as librarians that we don't get caught up in the hype lose sight of our purpose and our reference skills. To illustrate the point, Auckland City Libraries has launched a new website which includes a blog and chat to a librarian, however, this is at the cost of links to many useful websites for school students (and the general public) wanting to do homework and research. A great deal of effort by librarians had gone into finding those websites and sorting out the wheat from the chaff, now that has gone.

I will finish on an upbeat note and say I feel very informed and the training itself has been great, well structured and relevant.

Thanks to all concerned.

Now how was I almost called Jane Bennett? Bennett is my maiden name and before I was born, if I was a girl my mother was going to call me Jane and I would be beautiful like Jane Bennet in P&P. However, once I was born, I was a girl but I was not beautiful and my mother thought people would call me plain Jane so I was given another name.

Week 9 #22 - ebooks, Project Gutenberg and kindle

Ebooks are rather interesting and I guess the reading devices will only get smaller, lighter and cheaper. Netlibrary seems to work like a real library and you download an ebook for a specific period of time. I do wonder about copying to a cd though, maybe Netlibrary has measure in place to prevent that. I guess it is like using the photocopier to photocopy a book but a great deal easier and quicker.

I had quite a poke around in Project Gutenberg and it was gratifying to see that Pride and Prejudice is in 6th place in the top 100 ebooks downloaded and Jane Austen is in 6th place for the top 100 authors.

Project Gutenberg uses books in the public domain and so they are usually books that were published many years ago, hence the prominence of Dickens and Austen. I searched for titles by Daphne du Maurier but she must be too recent as there were no titles by her. I also searched for Katherine Mansfield, and Gutenberg has two of her short story collections. I was pleased to see a New Zealand author featuring as I thought the focus may have been very European and American. The other points to note about Project Gutenberg are: there is a link to Wikipedia for authors, you can download audiobooks or free and it follows strict library protocol, showing a bibliographic record for the ebook with Library of Congress subject headings. I looked at one of the ebooks on line and the first few pages outlined licencing protocols etc. Also books by Beatrix Potter include the text but no illustrations which are the essential ingredient in her books. The Project Gutenberg ebooks and website I thought to be very vanilla then again it is all for free.

Kindle was also interesting as it looked similar in size to a paperback and cordless, just like a book you could read in bed and isn't that when paper books will be superseded?

Week 9 #21 - Podcasts

It has taken me longer than expected to create the podcasts feeds, however, I did get there. The podcasts tutorial was useful I did sometimes get a little confused as to where I was, on the itunes website or in my itunes directory and then there was the issue of the toggle key to display the images being talked about during the podcast on the terracotta army. By about the third time I played it I found the toggle key and by then I knew what they said verbatim.

I used Podcast.com to add podcasts to my bloglines. I added the Guardian book review podcast to my books folder; Nancy Pearl book reviews podcast and Teens podcast from the Seattle Library to my YA folder. The good thing about an audio podcast is that you can have that playing while you are doing something else on the computer which I found very useful.

Just ebooks to go, I'm on the home straight now!

Week 9 #20 - YouTube

I have spent over an hour going through YouTube clips trying to work out the best one to select. My first choice was New Zealand winning gold at the Olympics and there were some good clips of that. Then I went on to Nigella Lawson and there were quite a few to choose from, there is a great spoof of Ulrika Johnson imitating Nigella. Finally I decided it had to be a Jane Austen clip, but which one? Not sure if Jane would approve my choice, however, as it is Web 2.0 I thought I would push the boat and appeal to the Web 2.0 generation.

Applying YouTube to libraries, well everything is visual these days and I did find through this training that the YouTube instruction videos were far easier for me to understand and grasp the concepts than a page of written explanations. I think there is plenty of scope to incorporate video clips into a public library web page.

Jane Austen: "Maneater" from ehrynL85

Week 8 #19 - Lulu and MyHeritage

Of course I could not look at just one site! Lulu, I found fascinating, and it had a demo which was good to get an overview of the site and what it can do. I am not going to publish anything but it is always something to keep on the backburner. I also had a look at MyHeritage which I joined, it said it was free and started to type in my family tree. I liked the fact that you could assemble a family tree easilyand for free. What I did not like was you get the basics for free when you want to extend and do more you pay. Also, although I was ensured of privacy I felt it was not complete privacy. The other nag I have is how do you 'unsign' yourself from these sites you sign up to. It was not obvious or clear how I did that. A demo for the site would have been good too. Actually as I type this up and think it through maybe I preferred the Geni genealogy site.

Applications for its use in a library setting, I guess it would link up very well with books on how to research your family tree and complete the process for many customers. If ever you wanted to do a book display on genealogy it would be good to include information and screen shots of these websites.

My Zoho writer document

"Oh, Mr. Bennet, you are wanted immediately; we are all in an uproar. You must come and make Lizzy marry Mr. Collins, for she vows she will not have him, and if you do not make haste he will change his mind and not have her"...

"I do not have the pleasure of understanding you," said he [to Mrs. Bennet], when she had finished her speech. "Of what are you talking?"

"Of Mr. Collins and Lizzy. Lizzy declares she will not have Mr. Collins, and Mr. Collins begins to say he will not have Lizzy."...

"Come here, child," cried her father as she appeared. "I have sent for you on an affair of importance. I understand that Mr. Collins has made you an offer of marriage. Is it true?" Elizabeth replied that it was. "Very well - and this offer of marriage you have refused?"

"I have sir."

"Very well. We now come to the point. Your mother insists upon your accepting it. Is it not so, Mrs Bennet?"

"Yes, or I will never see her again."

"An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. - Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do."

from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Week 8 #18 - Zoho

Ok, I managed to publish the document I created in Zoho. It seems to be an ok wp product, although I did not really test it by creating a document with tables, columns or multiple tabs. It is a free package so I'm not complaining. What I did notice when I created the document was, I put a line spacing between paragraphs but Zoho squeezed the document on the screen so it looked like there were no line spacings between paragraphs, then when I published the document in the blog they were there. Also when you mark text and then go to underline or enhance it in some way the block effect disappears and you think you have to mark the text again but it is still marked. I did find it easy to publish and it is very similar to Microsoft Word so it's simple to use and you can see I had some fun with the emoticons. What would Jane think!

Week 7 #17 - Social Networking

This week I have ventured into Bebo and had a look at the Auckland Library bebo page then I searched a few names and saw the pages of friends' children!! I did feel like I was prying so I then went and had a look at Facebook where I created a login, it was rather amusing that in occupation they are really expecting you put in a high school or university the only other option being company or nothing. I signed up as a fan of Hennepin County Library. I continued to explore Facebook having a look at some of the groups in the food and drink category. The pages are quite good to dip in and out of as they have small snippets of information, video clips, photos and forums. I can see the attraction these forms of networking have.

What I liked about the Hennepin Library page was the way it encouraged response and interaction with customers. It encourages a sense of belonging to and identifying with the library for individuals and that the library values and respects their thoughts and comments. Facebook is a way of pushing the library out into the community and reaching people.

Week 6 #16 - Library 2.0

New version of the University of Huddersfield Library's Tag Cloud, as created by David Pattern.

Tags and Controlled vocabularies. How these two will partner up and get along will be interesting. Maybe tags will complement library subject headings and make it more user driven as that is the message coming out of Library 2.0. Tags are more intuitive and perhaps that will bridge the gap between subject headings and the customer. As the last article points out 'tag clouds are diverse connections not focussed expertise.'

The other points that struck a chord with me are that in the first article libraries should move away from the 'just in case' collection. That will demote libraries to the same league as Paper Plus as opposed to Borders or the more unique booksellers such as Unity books. However, I do totally agree with the last article by Dr Schulz. Comments about the library as a space and a sanctuary will become more important along with a well informed librarian who can cut through all the hype. I am disappointed in the amount of advertising being shoved my way when looking at sites like Technorati.

Week 6 #15 - Technorati

I have had a look around technorati, however I chose not to claim my blog. The main differences I noticed searching for "learning 2.0" (I did enclose learning 2.0 with "" to narrow the search) was that searching in posts, you could vary the search choosing the entire text of the post or tags only, vary the authority and the language for you search terms. I searched selecting tags only, a lot of authority and English only. How Technorati detemines levels of authority I'm not sure but it did limit the number of blogs in the search, I did see posts from a fellow Manukau library blogger in the a lot of authority search!

Searching for "learning 2.0" in blogs brings up a list of results that are blogs about "learning 2.0" so the blogs do not have to have the tag "learning 2.0" or the posts contain the text "learning 2.0". The name of the blog or the description of the blog needs to have the words "learning 2.0" is my understanding of it but I may be way off track. Manukau libraries Learning 2.0 blog appears on page 5 of the search results and no one has marked it a favourite, I did try but you need to register to join Technorati and I chose to remain aloof and anonymous.

Week 6 # 14 - Delicious

Sorry I find the punctuation in the word delicious very difficult. I did create my own delicious account as I had actually heard about delicious and wanted to learn more. I have not however, embraced the social networking side of it and kept the bookmarks and tags private.
It was impressively easy to set up, and delicious imported all my existing bookmarks automatically. How to create tags for the bookmarks took a bit of fiddling but straight forward once you knew how and then I got carried away organising it all. I did look at other users tags and that gave me the idea to tag with hyphens when I wanted two words for a tag, for example family-history. I was finding it rather limiting with only one word tags.
Tagging as a useful tool I'm still uncertain about, but I am a cataloguer and am very comfortable in the controlled vocabulary environment. Tagging is personal and I may tag a bookmark differently to someone else. Variances in spelling was another I saw while looking for example visualisation and visualization, olympic and olympics. But then again it is not as cumbersome as a controlled vocabulary.

On to #15.