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!

Geocaching

I can honestly say I had not heard of geocaching. It is a concept that had not reached me or any of my close friends or colleagues. However it certainly looks like it has taken off in a big way across the world and it was interesting to look at geocaches located close to me. We have GPS on our mobile phone but we have not needed to use it yet as I find it just as easy to follow a road directory and it is a skill that is good for your brain.

I think if we were to use geocaching in our library the best ideas would probably involve a treasure hunt that educates or promotes services. Some of the examples given were innovative. It could be a way of attracting current non users especially teenage boys. The combination of using technology and a 'treasure hunt' would I imagine be quite a drawcard.

Hangzhou West Lake - Online videos

I have just been checking out the National Library of Australia Youtube channel and they have published a video of the staff performing an interpretation of copyright law - Puttin' on the Writs at their 2010 Christmas party. It could start a new trend at library staff christmas parties! Our library could use online videos for childrens activities such as delivering storytime or perhaps talks about children's books on themes such as 'encouraging poor readers'. Perhaps short tutorials on themes such as using the library public internets, how to use the OPACs or completing online bookings for library events could all be helpful.


This is a video we took of an interactive touch screen of the famous West Lake in China.

Delicious and LibraryThing

Here is the link to my delicious account - http://www.delicious.com/linda.cockburn. It contains lots of links to favourite recipes I have collected over time. I find this a lot quicker to my access favourite recipes than just making them favourites in my browser also this way I can share them with friends and family and they can also add to there favourites as well.

We are building a new library at Cockburn and have just finished refurbishing an older branch and we used delicious to record all the relevant websites we find for suppliers, other library experiences and sites on new library projects.

LibraryThing is a great tool for keeping a record of what you have been reading and also discovering what others are reading as well and the reviews they publish. Here is the link to my LibraryThing catalogue -
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Linda.cockburn.

At Cockburn we subscribe to an interface for LibraryThing which is embedded in our catalogue. Once a month we export all our new records to LibraryThing which creates a link in our catalogue so that our library members can click on a title that takes them to the LibraryThing website where they can read reviews and use the genre clouds to find similar titles. There are also clouds embedded in our catalogue that link to titles within our collection.

Wikis

Wow - so much information out there. So many people willing to share information and expertise. It's a bit daunting in a way - I worry about the time you need to keep up with everything as well do all your day to day stuff and still have some leisure time left over to relax!

I could see a wiki being a useful tool to create procedure manuals and job position descriptions. All staff would be able to contribute and edit the documents.