I feel a bit foggy what with delicious and clouds, and creating g mail accounts. I feel a bit confused with the plethora of user names, passwords and URLs...
On the positive side I found a very interesting site on delicious and I believe I may have tagged it, so hopefully will be able to find it again when I move to another computer terminal. It is a list of the "100 best science fiction and fantasy novels". Not sure how this is determined, but presumably the opinion of the "author" I put this in inverted comma's as by this logic I am an author too as is every pimply kid with a keyboard who manages to put something, however literate or otherwise on twitter. This is a scary thought - most particularly the idea of being an author myself! However I found the list very interesting and am keen to get back to it later. It contains many old friends who actually live on my bookshelf and also a bunch I have never met - and I am salivating.
I strangely found delicious more difficult to use than I remember, possibly because of the need to create a yahoo account and all the guff that went with that. I'm really not keen on the conditions. I normally would print out any contract and go through it with a fine tooth comb. It all seems a little different on computers - and a bit scary.
I am of course aware of the irony of being a troglodyte who enjoys sci fi!
The other thought I have is that it is amazing that libraries manage to at the same time be so fascinating and also so dry and boring. I absolutely love working in libraries. I love books and all the other resources we lend. I love dealing with the general public an the things that we do such as story time and delivering to home bound borrowers. And yet I often find studying things to do with libraries deadly dull. This is fascinating to me because in the past my studies have led to jobs because I was interested in the subject and now I find the reverse is true. I study things about libraries because I love working in libraries, but find the studies quite dull (with some bright highlights). As a learning junkie I find this absolutely weird!
XXX
Harry
Friday, November 26, 2010
Thursday, November 25, 2010
wikis
Well I'm a bit of a fan of wikis too (as well as RSS feeds). And rather excitingly (well for me anyway as a non techno person) I have created a RSS feed to one of the wikis that was suggestedi.e. the library best practice one, and actually done it in my work e mail - so now I am officially using web 2.0 technology in my work capacity!
Wikis, How can we use them? Well I see them as a bit like the documents we have on the common drive e.g. the way we all add in our stats. Of course having them on the common drive works, so we wouldn't need to do that, but it is really more of a parallel for me. One way we could actually use wikis is on our web page where we put book reviews. We could actually open that up to the general public and allow them to put book reviews in as well so that we are not limited by library staff selections and views.... Maybe. Also not sure how that would be done technically.
I'm actually more of a user of wikis rather than a contributor. I do actually like and use wikipaedia - I actually find it a lot more reliable that I would expect and is often a good initial source of information.
As a private person I do use the net for information. Being old fashioned I g to books first but if I can't find a book on the subject or more often if I need recent information or something highly specific I find the net quite useful and will often look at wikipaedia in the first instance. I also look for websites which are .net or .org rather than .com. I especially like government websites and websites of non government organisations. - a bit off topic there...
By the way I looked at wookipedia as well at the Twilight saga one and also the readers advisory one.
Am posting now as I have to go off and do something, so a bit hurried this post.
XXX
Harry
Wikis, How can we use them? Well I see them as a bit like the documents we have on the common drive e.g. the way we all add in our stats. Of course having them on the common drive works, so we wouldn't need to do that, but it is really more of a parallel for me. One way we could actually use wikis is on our web page where we put book reviews. We could actually open that up to the general public and allow them to put book reviews in as well so that we are not limited by library staff selections and views.... Maybe. Also not sure how that would be done technically.
I'm actually more of a user of wikis rather than a contributor. I do actually like and use wikipaedia - I actually find it a lot more reliable that I would expect and is often a good initial source of information.
As a private person I do use the net for information. Being old fashioned I g to books first but if I can't find a book on the subject or more often if I need recent information or something highly specific I find the net quite useful and will often look at wikipaedia in the first instance. I also look for websites which are .net or .org rather than .com. I especially like government websites and websites of non government organisations. - a bit off topic there...
By the way I looked at wookipedia as well at the Twilight saga one and also the readers advisory one.
Am posting now as I have to go off and do something, so a bit hurried this post.
XXX
Harry
Monday, November 22, 2010
RSS feeds
I actually think that RSS feeds are one of the aspects of web 2.0 which have the most direct application to libraries. I have noticed this since doing the feeds and plan to actually subscribe to some in my normal working role. Not sure which yet. I actually subscribed to one before I noticed that there was a cost involved and quickly un subscribed again. This is one of the things about the net which I am not so comfortable with.
I think I will discover the feeds I want as I trawl through the net looking for things for my work, although I don't tend to surf so much as search the net.
The other thing that I have discovered is that not all interesting sites have feeds and I have actually ended up putting a lot more sites in my favorites to go back and look at. So now I have to figure out a way to manage my favorites file! Learning never ends
So what have I subscribed to you ask? I have had a look at a few of my hobby's and subscribed to those as well as to the training one and some of the sites of my fellow students (of web 2.0). I am not subscribing to all the blogs, just the ones I am particularly interested in as I am going to eventually look through all of the blogs of the participants. I have also included a couple of library sites including state library and the movember site of one of my colleagues. I had a bit of a mental blank when looking for feeds - as usually happens.
I must confess to finding other library blogs a bit dry. I think the best example I have seen so far is the book club site from my fellow students blogs - so onya to you :)
XXX
Harry
I think I will discover the feeds I want as I trawl through the net looking for things for my work, although I don't tend to surf so much as search the net.
The other thing that I have discovered is that not all interesting sites have feeds and I have actually ended up putting a lot more sites in my favorites to go back and look at. So now I have to figure out a way to manage my favorites file! Learning never ends
So what have I subscribed to you ask? I have had a look at a few of my hobby's and subscribed to those as well as to the training one and some of the sites of my fellow students (of web 2.0). I am not subscribing to all the blogs, just the ones I am particularly interested in as I am going to eventually look through all of the blogs of the participants. I have also included a couple of library sites including state library and the movember site of one of my colleagues. I had a bit of a mental blank when looking for feeds - as usually happens.
I must confess to finding other library blogs a bit dry. I think the best example I have seen so far is the book club site from my fellow students blogs - so onya to you :)
XXX
Harry
Monday, November 8, 2010
Image of the kids space station from our school holidays at Altone Library
Hello all
Well, with much help this image has been added to my blog.
Over the last school holidays, we got the kids to make space ships, which we put in to this "space station". Some of these space ships were very creative and this is the overall shot.
In the mean time I have learned everything from how to point an shoot a digital camera (I had done that before - honest), to how to upload the image on to the computer to adding the image on to the blog! I missed some really obvious steps and needed help to get through them - thanks to those involved - you know who you are.
So what is the use of this technology in the library system? Well we can put photos of events and show our libraries on our blogs so that people can see what they look like. We can also share with other libraries. I once saw fabulous photos of a library returns chute which was designed to look like Dr Who's Tardis. I forget which school had this, but the woodwork kids had actually made it.
On the dark side, I have concerns re the taking of photos in libraries in terms of privacy of members (and of staff!). We need to ensure that we comply with guidelines requiring written permission from anyone in photo's.
Technology exists. It is neither a force for good or for evil, but can be used for either (or for both). It is up to us how we use it.
On another note. This was supposed to take about an hour to accomplish. It has taken me half a day and I have a headache again (as I usually do when trying to get the computer to do things which I know it can do, I just don't know how. Hopefully it will all start becoming a little easier - which is one of the objectives of this exercise. In fact that is already happening. Ironically I have been helping other people so sort out how to do things on their computer, so am becoming a participatory member in this community of computer users and not just a student (although I think I will always have the student role).
XXX
Harry
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Troubles with technology 2
Whoops - just lost my blog. Is there a save button on this thing? I was just trying to spellcheck what I had written and it disappeared and froze. I am going to forge on in the hope that it is somewhere in Blog purgatory waiting to be reborn as the first blog.
Wow - saved that bit - so hopefully won't loose my blog again. It is soooo boring to redo something you have already done!
Now I also need to find out if there is a word counter on this thing...Nope - doesn't look like it. Back to spellcheck. Lets see if I can work that again without loosing everything... Yup that worked. Ah... now the first blog has been retrieved.
Does anyone else out there relate to technology in this way?
XXX
Harry
Wow - saved that bit - so hopefully won't loose my blog again. It is soooo boring to redo something you have already done!
Now I also need to find out if there is a word counter on this thing...Nope - doesn't look like it. Back to spellcheck. Lets see if I can work that again without loosing everything... Yup that worked. Ah... now the first blog has been retrieved.
Does anyone else out there relate to technology in this way?
XXX
Harry
troubles with technology.
Wow, my first blog (ugh I hate this font - that's the first thing to change).Lets tryVerdana - that's better! Well would you believe that my work wants me to spend my time on blogs, facebook etc... I have just been struggling with getting in to the blog - I know that others have found this easy but I haven't.
The first question is WHY we need to look at new technologies in libraries. especially when we are busy... I was out in the library the other day and a library member was using the computer to create resume. They then had to e mail the resume, which also meant creating an e mail account which they could use. Having just done that as the step before creating a blog, I was able to show them the options available to create an e mail using a search engine and they were off and running and getting their own e mail account.
Of all the services which we provide, the facility to apply for jobs is one of the most important, and having some understanding of the technology to do this means we can help them. People use libraries for all sorts of reasons - mainly information and entertainment, some as lighthearted as checking their facebook accounts and some as serious as borrowing audio books so that they don't fall asleep while driving their trucks.
Libraries save lives as well as providing fun - and everything in between. We use different technology to do this, from the printed page to WiFi. Understanding the language of new technology (is that a tautology?) can only help and maybe it helped the above library member to get a much needed job.
Now to all you tech heads out there - I just know that blogger is not using spell check because I have no red wavy lines under any of this - and I'm absolutely certain it is not because of my spelling prowess! Combining automatically with spellcheck would be an excellent addition.
A few years ago I was saying to people that it wouldn't be long before we could download any movie we wanted to watch from our computers on to our TVs at any time we liked in stead of having to go out and borrow them (that was before I worked in libraries). And this is on it's way to becoming a reality....
How many words is this? I'll have to see how they are counted.
Ah technology - it's a love hate relationship I have with it
XXX
Harry
The first question is WHY we need to look at new technologies in libraries. especially when we are busy... I was out in the library the other day and a library member was using the computer to create resume. They then had to e mail the resume, which also meant creating an e mail account which they could use. Having just done that as the step before creating a blog, I was able to show them the options available to create an e mail using a search engine and they were off and running and getting their own e mail account.
Of all the services which we provide, the facility to apply for jobs is one of the most important, and having some understanding of the technology to do this means we can help them. People use libraries for all sorts of reasons - mainly information and entertainment, some as lighthearted as checking their facebook accounts and some as serious as borrowing audio books so that they don't fall asleep while driving their trucks.
Libraries save lives as well as providing fun - and everything in between. We use different technology to do this, from the printed page to WiFi. Understanding the language of new technology (is that a tautology?) can only help and maybe it helped the above library member to get a much needed job.
Now to all you tech heads out there - I just know that blogger is not using spell check because I have no red wavy lines under any of this - and I'm absolutely certain it is not because of my spelling prowess! Combining automatically with spellcheck would be an excellent addition.
A few years ago I was saying to people that it wouldn't be long before we could download any movie we wanted to watch from our computers on to our TVs at any time we liked in stead of having to go out and borrow them (that was before I worked in libraries). And this is on it's way to becoming a reality....
How many words is this? I'll have to see how they are counted.
Ah technology - it's a love hate relationship I have with it
XXX
Harry
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