Gone with the flow

Have had a look at Gliffy flowcharts and Bubble.us mindmaps. I like the look of the examples but don't have any immediate use.

The last gasp newsletter

Running out of steam but determined to finish -

a newsletter with nothing in it

Compared to a hardcopy newsletter there is something one dimensional about even the best presented online ones. The main advantage I can see is that they are quick and free.

There are more than 2.5 billion documents on the web : how much is too much? and what is going to happen to it all? who is going to clean it up - I'm not volunteering - or will it just become information mulch?

e books

I amazed by the amount of stuff available for free. Lots of wonderful things to explore for personal interest but not much of value for a special library looking for up to date reference material.



There are still the problems of having to read on the screen or do a bulky print job. I'm much happier with the audiobooks but they must be read by humans not machine generated !

A plus is that you can easily search the full text. It also makes it easy to find raw material for fun tools like Wordle to create something like this


from a paragraph about Australia in Charles Darwin's Voyage of the beagle:


or the same thing in Tagcrowd (based on word frequency)

although ant becoming being better bird browne cockatoo conical corn-field country crows disappeared diving easily enjoyed entomology escape european fatal feeding fly fortune hollow insect jets latter less lion-ant open paradoxus pitfall poor ride river scenery several shot specimen sport struggles tail took traversed trees uniformity valleys varied wearisome woodland

created at TagCrowd.com

You tube - can you laugh and learn at the same time?

Not too sure. Plenty of entertainment value , and probably good for promoting services and events, but I don't see it working as well for training. Or maybe my mind wanders too easily when I'm watching -I find it difficult to pay attention to what is being demonstrated.

The Professional Librarian (04): Committee Meetings --- more entertaining library goose videos including Informal staff review


Search smarter, Search faster



Boolean Logic & Database Searching (Librarian Goose)



Librarian's guide to understanding academic copyright



Librarian's 2.0 manifesto

Not enough hours in the d.....

What a world of podcasts out there.

The Yahoo directory seems to have disappeared and been replaced by an audio search but Podcast Alley has enough to keep anyone busy for a lifetime. Lots of Library podcasts although may of them seem to be irregular. Not too sure how podcasting would work for our library but I have discovered some such as the National Library of Medicine Medline Plus podcast that might repay a closer listen.

For general listening there is always something of interest and quality listed at: earideas selections

Wiki - first impressions count

First up - all the wikis I looked at made good first impressions. From the standard, wikipedia type, (Library success - best practices ) to the more decorative (Yarraplenty) style they are pleasant to look at and give the appearance of being well organised.

I can see the value in having a place where all comers can easily contribute ideas and share things, particularly for a dispersed user group, but I can't see any immediate applications for our service. A wiki may have a role as a place to promote services and gather information about user needs and experiences but I would think carefully about what user expectations were being created before setting one up.