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The Yahoo directory seems to have disappeared and been replaced by an audio search but Podcast Alley has enough to keep anyone busy for a lifetime.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