Summing Up!

I looked into the Web 2.0 awards in several topics.
Under Health - the runner up site Medstory I though was really impressive. A topic search would give you leads under headings like Drugs and Substances, Conditions, Procedures, Complementary Medicine. Then links to sources in the Web, Research Articles ( Pub Med), Current clinical trials, News Media reports and Audio links...! Not sure if we have this site in our faculty links?

Under books, the Lulu site appeared to be a neat resourceful spot for people wanting to publish, sell and distribute, as well as link to others similarly engaged.

Under blogs I explored the Technocrati site a bit more. Interstingly I found an advanced search option, and this way I found more blogs on my previous Libary Orientation search than in the other sites. Technocrati allows you to link to videos and this way I found more titles than I had when searching directly in You Tube (because of their limited search option perhaps?)

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Well, I had meant the pictures above to come in at this point, so as to be a nice lead-in to any summing- up comments , but I guess I still have a lot more to learn about successfully placing images and loading videos etc...

The programme has been very worth while, despite not having enough time to get on with it at the beginning, and not trying to complete in the final week of the year! ( it would have been useful to advance together with other colleagues at the same time and have more interaction). Whilst I had already dipped into a few blogs, and had some vague notions about wikis and podcasts and RSS feeds, by needing to set up my own blog and work through a programme of exercises, the possibilities of Web 2.0 have been clarified a great deal more for me. Probably one of the more surprising discoveries was YouTube - how very easy it was to access and the extent of material there.

I do feel the Library should be utilising this new technology to make its services and resources more meaningful and relevant. Yet I feel we probabaly need a conservative approach at first to target just those mediums that we can resource and back up best (IT support) and that perhaps are not seen as competing with the more favoured means of student social interaction. This might mean a series of blogs and feeds to advertise and update library services, podcasts and video clips to augment faculty Information literacy programmes and provide self -guided modules (orientation and general IL) .

Podcasts

I explored the Podcasting at ECU site which did seem to have a lot of information and help links. Unfortunately I wasnt able to play any of the actual broadcasts as my computer didnt appear set up. Did the itunes software need to be set up?
In fact, this became a problem when searching the podcast directories for some sample broadcasts or trying the tutorial - same issue!
However, for some reason occasionally I could connect, and I did listen to a broadcast "Podcast Hotel" with Chris Pirillo. This was a kind of conversation and discussion on why people would want to develop their own podcasts and with various useful tips and practical information, applied more to a business setting.
I had the impression that the Yahoo directory in partcular was more involved in popular and recreationl material. A search on Google, restricting to audio, did retreive some broadcasts on academic library info literacy programmes.

Videos

This video (entitled French Library Orientaiton) wasn't quite the video I had intended to add to my blog! I had searched under library orientation in Yahoo Videos and found an interesting one on intro to Univ of S.California Libraries, however I expereinced no luck in getting it to post successfully. I then went back to You Tube which I had explored earlier on. Doing a similar search, and as an example chose the one above -- after several goes it worked! At that point I decied to stick with it! Well its quite humourous in a Gallic way...
There is a huge range of video resources in these two sites alone, and the search field obviously retrieves under tags. Then there are the comments posted that can lead you further into the subject or on a tangent of course!

Social Tagging

I watched the short video Social Bookmarking in Plain English. This was an excellent, easy to understand, simplified way of presenting these ideas.
(I tried to upload the video onto the blog but didnt succeed!)
I created a Del.icio.us login and set up the bookmark and the tag function and have started to tag various sites to see how it works.

I can see how at a personal level it is a great way to orgainse bookmarks and to provide multiple access points to the sites and blogs that one has found. For researchers it may have the benefit that in chosing the tags then presumably they mean most to that person and could work better to index and retrieve than the constaints of an external thesaurus. For those working in groups such as team teachers then agreed or commonly understood tagging terms could offer great oportunities for sharing resources.
I am not sure the concept of social tagging would ever replace the subject thesauri that have evolved to uniformly index published research, if these dataabses ever became "dynamic" or wiki-fied?

Second Life Virtual Worlds

I had seen the video on ABC at the time, and a second viewing probably hasn't changed my inpressions that much. Fantasy and imagination have always been part of the human experience. In the online age its probabaly understandable that the vicarious appeal of "another life" - that is safely insulated from the real one - would hold fascination for some.
After looking at Kathryn Greenhill's slides, I managed to find a later video - Murdoch University Libary Second Life. This was interesting and thought provoking.

I feel that for the Library to explore this medium it would need expert gaming skills and IT software backup to successfully produce its programmes. Maybe it's unlikley that complex library and database searching skills could adequately be presented on virtual world? Perhaps there's a place here however for a quick overview of the libary's services, or a sampling of library resources and options to a particular clientele level?

photos and Images

This was fun! I searched around for new libraries

narrowing down my search like a true library

user, but not getting much closer home!

To the left-- by searching thru the comments that had been posted on the Flickr site I deduced it was a University library somewhere near Vancouver, Canada.

The other one above to the right is in Norwich, UK. No relevance really, but I always like the lookof libraries at night, looking in -- you can admire similarly our new ECU Joondlaup building at night!

In fact some may say its a better view after dark!

Wikis

Again , this was a while back -- I thought the US public library wikis a great way to display the range of services available and to engage the clients (latest books by themes , reading clubs, local organisations etc). There's clearly applications for us in library announcements, changes in services, corporate info etc., rahter than the static, mundane layout on the web site.
The "unconference" site suggests another use in supporting a discussion forum that might last for a specific time period.