It's a wrap

My progress through the course has seen a few stops and starts. A few times I would find myself up late at night trying to think of an intelligent comment to make on the many and varied participants blogs (and what fantastic blogs they have been). I have been so impressed with the myriad of subjects covered and the effort put in to their content.
The course has generated much discussion amongst my colleagues and I see this as one of the more important benefits. Comments both positive and negative on different technologies were debated at many morning and afternoon tea breaks. We have been able to give each other help, support and encouragement to complete each assessment. Many have shown real determination and commitment to get to the finish.
The content covered has been comprehensive and given us all a good taste of the web 2.0 technologies out there - some that have been around for a while whereas others that are fairly new on the scene (for me anyway). Everyone who completes the course will be better equipped as a knowledge professional. Swan Libraries are to be congratulated, particularly Melissa and Mark for leading the way for WA public libraries in setting up this course. So a big thank you from all the participating libraries and also a big thank you to our local support person Lawley for his patience and hard work.

Social Networking

I have been using Facebook for a few years now and to lesser extent Twitter. I joined Twitter a few years ago and my username is Cardamom as I happended to be looking in the pantry for inspiration at the time. I suppose I have been one of those people who has had doubts about the seriousness of Facebook and Twitter. I use Facebook to keep in touch with family members and friends when they are on holidays and post holiday snaps to share them around with everyone.

However this week, in light of the Queensland floods, the advantages of both Facebook and Twitter has really been highlighted. When watching television journalists have reported the importance of the information they have received from the general public who are out there experiencing events as they happen. Comments are made and photographs posted that show the human face of this disaster and if journalists get anything wrong they very quickly know about it. To be able to jump onto Twitter and have access to what is happening at the very minute rather than having to wait for the television or radio to let you know is amazing.

We use Facebook and Twitter at Cockburn to reach out to our library clients to promote programs, events and competitions. We have around 124 followers on Twitter and 178 on Facebook not a huge amount but over time has gradually increased. We think it is important to be in any medium that our clients use by allowing them to use communicate with us using what ever they are comfortable with.

Podcasting

Woops - I missed the week #9 blog on podcasting. The uses for podcasting just seem endless. I don't think there are too many public libraries in Western Australia who are using podcasting however we at Cockburn have just produced our first successful podcast and we see it as an opportunity to make available suitable programmes to those who could not attend the event on the day. Some of the issues we considered before launching our first foray into podcasting were -

• how much staff time resources required
  

• technical expertise needed

• specialist equipment needed

We decided that we had the necessary expertise on staff and equipment required and that it would be a useful experience to test the waters and see if podcasting would be something that our library users would find useful.

Personally I find podcasting great. I quite often catch the end of an interesting interview on the radio when driving in the car and know I can go to the ABC website and listen to the whole interview.

I also really enjoy iview and catching up on all the great TV programs I seem to miss!