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The Yahoo directory seems to have disappeared and been replaced by an audio search but Podcast Alley has enough to keep anyone busy for a lifetime.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.

del.icio.us - bookmarks that follow you (and talk to you)

Having established an account and put some random bookmarks from my favourites into it I tried clicking on a "saved by other people" link and got lucky. The first one I tried had an extensive user notes with lots of suggestions for other related sites. The next ones I tried were more of a lucky dip but I can see some usefulness of the function when chasing obscure things.

I like the convenience of having bookmarks accessible from any machine, the ease of using the button on the toolbar to add them, the tagging and grouping facility, and the possibilities of following the "other people" links.

Google iNdigestion

Is there anything you can't do with google?

My igoogle page has my custom search engines, local weather, Melbourne maps, google book search, my facebook, my selection of news, gadgets to search librarians' book reviews, my own gadgets I can share with others, all presented in a style I have chosen to make me feel good and which I can change at any time...

Google goodies

Google docs

Experienced a few problems getting google docs to work properly in the work browser. I googled for a solution - putting "s" for secure in front of the address (https://docs.google.com) and refreshing a few times seems to work.

Apart from the ability to log on anywhere and access documents, I like the Publish as a web page and Publish directly to blog facilities.

Google doc helps with formatting

• I was able to copy a web page into Google docs then publish it to a Wordpress blog and it retained all the formatting. When I tried pasting the web page directly into the blog a lot of the formatting was lost.

Google maps

Lots of fun and amazingly powerful.

Spoilt for choice?

Pubs in Brunswick

Google books

Another amazing service, offering limited previews, selected full text of out of copyright works...fun and useful but I still don't like reading onscreen.

Lost in Myspace

I have done a walking tour of some of the Library Myspaces on the list and now feel very old. I can see a role for event promotion but it gets a bit lost in the "be my friend" networking and author self promotion. I eargerly clicked on the UCF Ask a Librarian - we use the "Ask a librarian" tag ourselves - but other than a quick service description it only offered more of the same.

Happy to admit I may be missing something and/or the solution is still waiting for a problem. I can't see much immediate value for this library.

Library 2.0 on ning has a bit more to offer- it has some structure, and a clearer purpose.

Signed up for Facebook as Ned Kelly - along with a lot of other "characters" using the name (I'm the talking horse one with 0 friends). It classified me as a State Government of Victoria employeee on the basis of my email address! Its not a paddock I expect to spend much time in.

Gasp - I missed a "thing"

Must have been too busy reading...

have now made a start with a book that features librarians as minor players :

RSS feeds and the Best Paper.Ever

I have a Bloglines account where I keep an assortment of feeds to provide me with information for the weekly Report Watch alerts., and a Google Reader account focusing on journals - one day I will decide between the two (or maybe not).

The best paper. ever? (found it in 43 folders blog)

Another blog

I have set up another blog to give staff of an agency, who aren't on our intranet , access to some free resources. Because I was cutting and pasting I had the usual problems with formatting and layout but it came up looking ok with minimal effort.

With a bit of effort in the Edit Html view (pasting code generated by Google) I incorporated a Google custom search engine for Australian departments. It is very like the Rollyo one but you can give Google some extra words to emphasise in the results. I am trying "policy".

From the horse's mouth

A chicken walks into the library. It goes up to the circulation desk and says: "book, bok, bok, boook". The librarian hands the chicken a book. It tucks it under his wing and runs out. A while later, the chicken runs back in, throws the first book into the return bin and goes back to the librarian saying: "book, bok, bok, bok, boook". Again the librarian gives it a book, and the chicken runs out. The librarian shakes her head. Within a few minutes, the chicken is back, returns the book and starts all over again: "boook, book, bok bok boook". The librarian gives him yet a third book, but this time as the chicken is running out the door, she follows it. The chicken runs down the street, through the park and down to the riverbank. There, sitting on a lily pad is a big, green frog. The chicken holds up the book and shows it to the frog, saying: "Book, bok, bok, boook". (source)

Rapid Flickr effort

End of the week upload:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26854707@N05/

Jumping ahead

This blog will be a record of my travels through the 23 things - and any side trips.

Rushing ahead to week 10 I tried tailoring a search engine in Rollyo:

Try this to find things on Australian health and welfare department sites:
http://rollyo.com/wishiwas/aust_health_depts/




and so I can find my way home again:
http://www.dhslearning.blogspot.com/