#23 The Finale

Less than a week ago I had given this away as I hadn't looked at it for 3 weeks and thought there is too much to do, in too short a length of time. But after being given a 'pep' talk by the AVL team (you know who you are!) I was back on track and have surprised myself with the way I've managed to work thru the second half of exercises. It has meant some late nights but I really think I have learned so much and didn't have a clue that some of the things we experienced were "out there".

Loved Flickr, Generator, You Tube (if only I could have got to see David Cassidy!). Didn't like Technorati (nearly finished me off!), RSS Feeds, Rollyo.

If we were to tackle something like this in future, would like consideration given to time at work to research, discuss, work thru as was a bit demoralising at home getting more and more frustrated (and behind).

So this Raven is flying the coop ...

Ex 22 Social Networking

I had a look thru the suggested resources and liked the "Your Space or My Space" article in libraryjournal. com. It surprised me that the younger ones don't necessarily get their emails thru traditional means, e.g. Hotmail, GMail etc but thru their MySpace inbox, etc. So I suppose this is a way of connecting with a particular age group but you'd need people who were on the same wavelength to be on top of this all the time and maybe in a Council run library there are not enough resources and 'moolah' ($) to go around. And what % of library users would this account for? For alot of people visiting a library is so much more than picking up a book ...

Ex #19 Podcasts

Back to this one after getting my daughter to sign me into her itunes a/c - I'm the only one in the house without an ipod but the one who sees the charges for it on the credit card! Found it quite interesting and heaps of things to look at, subscribed to a couple of downloads but they were going to take too long, so may need to look at this again later.
Tried to add an RSS feed but it kept coming up with an error - it could be me?!?

Ex 21: Getting Social with it: Facebook, Bebo etc

I thought the library Bebo sights were quite good, especially Rotorua's one - it's another tool to get out what we do, are, and are going to be in the future in the world of libraries and thats got to be a good thing.
Surprisingly I had already set myself up with a Facebook account but then chickened out thinking I didn't want to make myself available to the world but I guess you can put as much, or as little as you want. I searched for someone I know is on there and when it came up with 252 people with the same name, I wondered how I might find her as there didn't seem to be a picture of her (unless that was her mountain biking!!). Clicking on her friends answered the question tho'.
MySpace looked quite good and I was keen to watch a couple of videos but unfortunately the speed (or lack of) was offputting for me, so I will come back to this at a later date.

Ex 20 - E Books

I went into Amazon, Kindle to do a book search for "Wuthering Heights" and found many different copies available in various formats: Hardcover, paperback, audio download, kindle edition. Eh? Backtracked to find out exactly what a 'Kindle' was - quite strange when you have absolutely no idea what it is and there are headings saying:

"See a Kindle in Your City. Want to see a Kindle? Visit the See a Kindle in Your City area to connect with Kindle owners and get a chance to see a Kindle in person. "

What could it be? Oh such relief when finding out it is a device to listen to your books on!! (Rather expensive though).

It made me think of when I was doing a "sell job" on playaways to a patron with a stack of Audio books and him saying "I just download them onto my ipod and listen whenever I want" - I was pleasantly enlightened ...

Ex 18 You Tube etc

At last I thought something that I've at least heard of and have visited before! Unfortunately I was to find that it was painfully, painfully slow at loading and as time is of the essence I didn't have the patience to wait and wait.
As I said I have dabbled a little bit before in You Tube and I really like it - just had a look at the old TV show "The Partridge Family" (I used to luuuuve David Cassidy - Who? I hear some of you say?!?) but would love to have another play when its back up to speed.
What I have learned is that my daughter has a username and even when signed in it doesn't make it any faster.
I think a library video could be both entertaining and informative - each library could make their own production - as long as we all don't have to dress up as "Super Librarian" - some of us look better in tights than others!!

Ex 17 Web 2.0 Awards

Quite an interesting place to go to get the "best of the best".
Tried to sign-up for a Genealogy page but encountered a few 'security' issues; had a look at travel and then Lulu which looked quite good if you wanted to publish your own work - could be a 'step in the door' but maybe you'll get buried in the thousands who came before you and after you- sorry thats a bit negative!
Also looked at Cocktail Builder, great idea, just put in ingredients you have and it'll show you something you can make - handy for those "spur-of-the-moment" cocktail parties we all have!!!