# 23 Reflections

I couldn't help myself - even as I breathed a sigh of relief that I had reached the end I had to follow just one more link - Learning 2.0 is licensed under Creative Commons. It is worth a look if you are putting original work on the Web.

What did I learn from the program?
I discovered things I didn't know about (Librarything, Rollyo etc).
It made me investigate things I hadn't bothered with (Youtube, MySpace, Facebook).
It whetted my appetite for more.

Where will I go from here?
I probably won't changed my learning style; it is too much a part of my personality. Learning through play was unfortunately drummed out of some of us as we left childhood so tackling a program like this was a bigger challenge for some than for others.

The program itself?
A bit like yum cha. An opportunity to sample a small selection of what is on offer, knowing that next time you visit there will still be new things to try.

Would I do it again?
Yes.

Things I would change?
I wouldn't be so presumptuous.

Personal challenges in doing the program?
I could not do it at work. The mind set of playing and browsing was, for me, incompatible with work mode. There was the added irritation of waiting patiently for something to load (with pressing work on the desk in front of me) only to find the site had been blocked by the IT dept)
At home I pulled rank to get the computer with internet access.

General thoughts.
In a few years time we will look back on these early days of Web 2.0 and marvel at how we accepted the 'clunkiness' of it. It promises so much, but the delivery lets it down: the pages that won't load, the security that blocks the relevant and lets through the irrelevant, the stilted presentation of even the shortest video while it is loading. It reminds me of the comparison between the early days of internet access when we used 14.4 modems and a dialup connection and our present middle of the road connections.

The biggest constraint for me was time. The fifteen minutes per day might have been actual time, but add in the time waiting to reach sites and the time committment was much greater. I ended up devoting time before breakfast at the weekend when it became obvious that I wasn't going to get it done any other way.

Congratulations Lynette and Leslie; you have done a great job.

#22 audiobooks

Lesson - for the purposes of this exercise (if you don't have cable but are stuck with adsl) choose sonnets or other short items to download.
I ended up choosing Shelley's Ode to the West Wind which still took a while to download.

Once highspeed broadband becomes a reality, free audio downloads will take off; books on tape are already on the way out, books on CD are giving way to books in MP3 format and suppliers of our audio books are offering them (from December 2007) as downloads - for a fee. Before we cut out the middleman (local suppliers) remember that they publish local authors and use local readers (no American accents).

This is an area where we need to get on board. Overseas and some local libraries have been offering downloads for sometime - perhaps the Council could fund a study tour for staff (overseas of course, not to Yarra Plenty) for interested staff.

I think on-line demonstrations such as http://www.overdrive.com/products/dlr/demos/salesdemo.htm would be a good starting point to getting strategic partners interested in funding this next step in collection development. Because of the obvious benefit not only to the print handicapped, but those who are unable to hold a traditional book because of arthritis or other handicap, we could look for grants in the disability area to fund this expansion of our collection. Others have been there before us - let's not reinvent the wheel but look at what others around us are doing.

# 21 Podcasting

I tried Yahoo podcasts (could not access it from work - blocked as a streaming site, but no problems from home), Podcastalley.com and Podcast.net.
Yahoo consistently returned more hits for each search but the other two returned more targeted results.
I think www.tvdownloadhome.com/ten could be quite useful for finding episodes of tv shows, movies and software. They also offer free CD burning software and a good tutorial (a podcast of course) on how to use the site.

Yahoo returned 11,432 results on the word library (most of them referred to music libraries etc)
while Podcastalley.com returned 126 more targetted hits and Podcast.net returned 63.

I used Podcastalley to search for library darebin and found a podcast of their equivalent of our Boroondara Bulletin which they are trialling as part of their Disability and Inclusion Plan. This trial is worth watching as it has an obvious use for our service.
I have added this feed to my bloglines account.
http://www.darebin.vic.gov.au/Files/darebinnewspodcast.xml

# 20 You tube

So easy!!!! I played around with a few political videos and some of the pets and animals. Talking cats seem to be very popular. A lot of the stuff didn't interest me and I can't see myself spending much time on it. I'm very impatient with the time it takes to load and with the stilted delivery while it is still loading.

# 19 Web 2.0 Awards

I had fun with one, but decided to be circumspect and talk about Eventful.
I can see great potential for this site. All Library events could be listed here. It is early days yet, so the listings are not comprehensive and they have the dates in the dreaded American format. There is also the ability to set an alert for particular catagories of event and an RSS button to track additions.
Most of my searching was for Melbourne, Australia but just for fun I tried Rochester, New York and lo and behold there was a library event :
Wood Library (map)
134 North Main StreetCanandaigua, New York 14424
It's time to trim your tree! This ornament-making workshop for children in grades K-2 will feature several special projects. Registration is requested. Call 394-1381 or stop by ...

#18

After a hesitant start, I'm now using Zoho writer.  I love the idea of not having to email documents to myself at home and then email them back to work.  It is good not to be tied to Microsoft products, too.

I'll play around with speadsheets next, then see where I go from there.

Week 7 Wikis

What an effort for something so simple! Was anyone else as confused as I was? Hopefully my blog is now sitting happily in the sandbox.

Wikis, I predict will take off. I'd love to see a calendar of community events on the Library website. All the information on our Community Information System (list of organisations and the services they provide) could be updated in real time by the organisations themselves.
The possibilities are endless.

#15 On Library 2.0

My first computer was top of the range. It was an Amstrad with two 5 1/4 floppy drives.....
I remember our awe when Tintern installed a new library system with a 1 gigabyte hard drive...
Now I'm totally blase about Web 2.0 and just frustrated that the technology available to me is slow and clunky. How long do you have to wait before the audio kicks in? Do you have to download the video clips in snatches and then watch the whole thing again to see it without frequent pauses? It is even worse on the Library machines. I know the technolgy is there but the Library is dependent on other departments for IT policy and budget and I don't have cable at homecome, only ADSL.
But back to the topic. I like Rick Anderson's comment that if our services can't be used without training, then it's the services that need to be fixed - not our patrons. Perhaps we should have librarians heading IT departments and IT managers heading the libraries.
His comment that the " come to us" model of library service "worked moderately well for those with access to a good library led me to the thought that the new web-based services will work moderately well for those with easily accessible internet access.

Constraints such as the following are some of the things that need to considered as we move forward.

strict time limits on access (one hour per day per patron in the library service I work in),

cost ($2.50 per half hour at my local library),

not enough machines to meet demand

slowness of system

cost of printing (time constraints make note-taking not an option)

Pity the people who have signed a two year contract with a major ISP who think their internet access is going to cost them less than $20 a month. The system is not shaped and the excess usage charges are high.

These are all just teething problems which soon will be in the distant past, just like my Amstrad.

John J Riemer has touched on one of my hobby-horses: "The features of Amazon and Google of interest to students and scholars ought to be incorporated into the services libraries make available". In particular, we should add a 'did you mean' feature to our public catalogues.

Finally, back to Rick Anderson:

"We need to shift direction, and we can’t wait for the big ship of our profession to change course first. It’s going to have to happen one library—one little boat—at a time."

Yarra Plenty is our little boat.

#14 Technorati

The problem with having a break from the program is that you forget some simple things. Adding this link took much longer than it should have. I have claimed my blog and suggested how I might use it when I have finished the program.

Week 6 #13 Del.icio.us etc

What a wonderful tool! Having bookmarks tied to one machine was always such a pain. I have used del.icio.us to tag sites I refer to on a regular but not necessarily frequent basis as well as a few library sites. They can be found at htpp://del.icio.us/pickwickdiary.

Rollyo

#12
Mission accomplished. Results on the right. Instructions were OK , but if I hadn't known how to cut and paste by now I doubt if I would have got this far. (What about right click? It is easier than the suggestions I think.)
I searched for some of my areas of interest and found some useful sites but identifying them would identify me and I'm sure you have realised by now that I am a privanoid - a lovely word coined by a fellow participant. I'm sure it was meant in a derogatory sense but it is a label I'm happy to wear.

Librarything

#11

Librarything was fun. I was delighted to see other people had a copy of Winter sparrows on their shelves. I wonder if it is as tatty as mine. I can think of a few non-library friends who will be pleased to be introduced to Librarything.
It was very easy to use. The results are on the right for all to see.

Finding feeds # 9

Yeah for Ebsco. It had to be the easiest (and potentially the most useful) to subscribe to.
This is an area which requires some common sense. Even with all the tools at our disposal just how many sites can we monitor in a reasonable amount of time? Do we sit at the computer instead of kicking a footy with the kids or do we eat our lunch at the computer instead of going to the staff tearoom? Be selective, be very selective.
I tried bloglines - I typed in little known medical condition and came up with a remarkable number of results. Were they useful? Not very, and often they were inaccurate as well. I repeated the exercise with other areas of interest to me and again concluded it wasn't worth the effort.

Still playing with images

From http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/ I followed a link to What animal are you?

I am apparently a bear. When I used library as my first name and user as my family name,
this is what I got. Do you think I need to take a hard look at my customer service skills?

Playing around with images

# 10

http://www.imagechef.com/ic/final_widget.jsp

Not very original but you get the idea.

RSS and Newsreaders

Week 4, # 8

At last.
Something more in tune with my learning style and, I suspect, that of other time-poor people: clear instructions to achieve a goal (and an outcome which will save me time).

Technology

flickr 7

I hate some aspects of technology but I can't live without it.

In the not so distant past I relied on letters and the telephone to keep in touch with family and friends overseas; the former was slow and the latter expensive.
Now we use email and VOIP. Recently the ABC serialised some letters from early settlers in which one writer said she had not heard from her brother in two years. Now the only problem is getting the time zone right so the phone does not get the brother out of bed.

I wonder if some of the public sharing of what is essentially private information might one day come back to bite us. Perhaps recruitment companies already trawl the internet as well as checking references. What seems funny now could be an embarrassment when we are ten years older.

Frustration of technology

flickr 6
Mappr won't load. Imageshack creates a dialog box suggesting it is a phishing site and then refuses to load the picture I've created and I dread to think how much bandwidth I've used while 'playing' with Web 2 today.

Mappr

flickr 5
Only once could I access the mappr site. Since then it refuses to open in both Mozilla and Internet Explorer. Very irritating when time is limited.

Does this concern you?

flickr 5
http://mashupawards.com/rottenneighbor/
Having had experience of a neighbour from hell, I might be tempted to add her details to a site like this. More concerning, however, would be the scenario where a paranoid neighbour took a dislike to a resident because of their age, ethnicity, sexual orientation or the colour of their eyes and posted biased or untrue material. The internet is now the first port of call for most people looking for rental properties and sites like this have an equal potential for harm as well as good.

Mark Twain

Mark Twain
Originally uploaded by pickwickdiary

flickr 5.
I chose this photo to upload from my hard drive because it does not identify any member of my family and has some connection to the world of books.
Mark Twain's study is at Elmira in New York State. On this particular day the sole visitor was allowed to handle Mark Twain's pipe and other items.

Call me picky but..

My last post was submitted at 12.43 pm not 7.40pm as displayed on screen.
Reading other people's blogs, I was full of admiration for their commitment when the time displayed suggested they were burning the midnight oil, but perhaps all is not what it seems in the world of blogging.

Getting started

Will blogs replace Hyde Park?