Saturday, November 24, 2007

#17 Playing around with PBwiki

I've just been playing in the PLCMC sandbox for a while. Before that I checked out www.pbwiki.com and www.wetpaint.com as sites which provide for wiki creators. I also had a reference from #16 to a site called www.wikispace.com but it appears not to exist. I played around and looked at various things, corrected some spelling, added a few restaurants and with the new editing tool adding a url to one of them was easy. With the new edit features the instruction for adding my blog url had changed and it was much more straightforward. Fortunately I had seen some posts by colleagues who had been there before me so it was easy. What was confusing was that the Victorian public libraries weren't in alphabetical order. Maybe I need to go back and put them in order ;>).

I can really see a benefit in setting up wikis for local history. I am currently working on a couple of projects researching hotels. I can see great benefit in setting up a trial wiki for the smaller of the projects and seeing how it goes. I am starting to see lots of tangible evidence of benefits of this course. Bloglines is really useful as is Del.icio.us, both of which I am now using regularly.

Friday, November 23, 2007

#16 So what's in a wiki

Wiki wiki, Hawaiian for quick. I was familiar with Wikipedia before I looked at this task but hadn't really thought about what wikis could be used for in libraries. In terms of community content and input wikis are ideal. Examples that I read about were developing subject guides, annotating the catalogue, community information type wikis, booklovers' wikis, local history wikis.

I was particularly interested in the library that converted their reference desk manual into a wiki - that was something that it would be good to emulate! I can see potential use for wikis in working on joint projects, developing joint documents and I think particularly in local and family history where the world can comment on a particular topic or artefact. It's another version of oral history in some ways and such an exciting way to get information from anywhere. Anything is possible. I note a few places to start such as www.pbwiki.com, www.wetpaint.com, and www.wikispace.com but I haven't tried them yet. And, of course, there is always that great social networking encyclopaedia!

#15 On Library 2.0 and Web 2.0

This whole question of Library 2.0 is a fascinating one and not one that can easily be covered in one post! I see the two main directions for public libraries as being libraries in a virtual environment and libraries building communities. Both of these converge and have as their key component social networking and user participation. I agree that we certainly need to get away from the "just in case" collection and the "come to us model" of libraries as they are traditionally perceived - except that there are other definitions of what these mean. The 'just in case" collection might be a combination of virtual and physical as may the "come to us" model. I can participate and form social networks at home with my computer, as much as in the library or in a face to face forum. I can come to the library virtually and I can search and find all sorts of "just in case" stuff out there from my computer at home.

But I am not sure that I agree with the issue about getting away from user education. I know this article was talking from an academic library point of view, so maybe it is different there. In public libraries, it is the Web 2.0 tools to say nothing of basic computer skills that people are thronging to the library to learn from us. I am thinking in particular of our hugely popular Computer Savvy Seniors program, a peer based one on one training program in computer skills for older adults, and our computer classes for older Chinese. Both of these are overwhelmingly successful, as has been our Click goes the library series which has been introducing the community to blogs, e-bay and other Web 2.0 tools.

We are atavars for the community and I don't see why we can't continue to be so. We want empowerment of users, we want user input into content creation, we want to participate, we want social networks, but we also want to help the marginalized and the dis-empowered and show them how to do all these things. We are there to help people meet their potential.

#14 Getting not so technical with Technorati

I like the idea of a word play on technology and literati! I first came across Technorati in an earlier task in Learning 2.0 and remember being surprised that this very blog was appearing in its search. Duh! I obviously did not realize the focus of Technorati then, nor the comprehensiveness of its coverage. After quite a bit of time playing around with Technorati (including watching a video of two cats talking!), I think that I still have a lot to learn about its potential. I found 11 blogs with Hecuba in the title and lots of photos.

I find the site a bit confusing and feel that I need to spend a bit more time on it. A couple of actions for me relating to Technorati are to go to my photos in Flickr, tag them and see if they appear in the Technorati photos search. I thought I had tagged them, but they don't appear so there must be a glitch somewhere. I also haven't been putting tags on the posts to this blog, so that is another action that I should take both prospectively and retrospectively. Then I can explore what "ping" is all about.

As we have been reflecting in an email exchange at Boroondara this week, this topic, like many of the others, is simply showing me how much my knowledge of Web 2.0 is simply the tip of the iceberg. There is so, so much out there! Some of it I want to know about and I want to learn how to use, whilst I know there are positively millions and even billions of blogs and blogposts on topics that I simply don't want to know about.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

#13 Tagging, folksonomies & social bookmarking

This is an interesting topic, and not one dear to the heart of those interested in things like LCSH, DDC, and other library structures. Ranganathan comes to mind too, but my memories are dim. I registered with Del.icio.us and found that pretty frustrating as I took about 15 goes before I got all the elements to meet their desires. It may have been my incompetence in answering their questions, of course ;>). However, I didn't ever receive the confirmation email so I think there might have been glitches on both sides.

Now I can save links there and search them. I also explored other links that were there and pursued some through subjects and those who had bookmarked them. I tagged the Boroondara Learning 2.0 site and one of my tags was Boroondara. I was amazed to see that there were other people who had set the tag Boroondara for all sorts of reasons. I will explore this further and see already that this will be useful tool for exploration. What will I search tomorrow?

Finally I explored the option of creating a bookmark: you can see my bookmark on the blog!

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

#12 Roll your own with Rollyo

Rollyo provides a search engine that is customized by you. It is easy to register and copy favourite urls into a search engine. I registered and loaded some Breast Cancer websites from my bookmarks and then added the searchroll to my blog. This was very easy and I can see that it would useful to store favourite sites and add them to a blog or elsewhere.

I am currently also working on a blog for some breast cancer women who want to tour South Africa. I can imagine using this this tool to put together some useful sites on that blog.

#11 All about LibraryThing

This is a fun tool. It certainly is easy to catalogue books! I just added a few that came to mind or were lying around; it was interesting to see the range of records that came up. I chose ones with covers as I wanted to display them on my website. As you can see I also uploaded a list of my recent books to the side of my Blog. There were lots of things to do in this book community - apart from cataloguing books, one could blog, review, etc. My library is at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Polyxena.

#10 Play with online image generators



There seems to be an absolute mass of these. I tried using http://www.festisite.com/tools/generators/cardgame/ to generate personalized playing cards and this was the image of me as the Queen of Clubs. I also went into Letter James http://www.letterjames.com/ and created graffiti. It seems to me that there are endless sites which will allow you to generate anything!

Monday, November 19, 2007

#9 Finding feeds

In this section I reflected a bit upon my previous post about RSS. Yes, I am a convert but I really need to work out how I want to do it. I note that Firefox facilitates the use of Bloglines and I really should be exploring the possibilities of that. I explored the various search tools. Feedster was down for work on the website. I found Topix very US based and newsy though did manage to pull up some articles from the Age so maybe I wasn't giving it much of a chance. Bloglines search and Googleblog were quite accessible. And Technorati actually found this blog, Hecuba's story! I think that my knowledge of RSS feeds is still on a learning curve. Maybe it always will be with the current rate of change in technology and access to information! What an exciting time this is to be a librarian!

#8 Using RSS to make life simple? Convert?

I had seen and heard of RSS feeds before I tried this module, but I wasn't sure that I needed them. I already subscribe to a mass of email news feeds and they don't clog up my inbox as described in one of the training videos. I have them organized so they go to separate folders so that I know when they come in and I read them when I want to.

However, I have set up a Bloglines account and I have subscribed to a number of blogs and Flickr sites as well as the BBC and some book and library sites. I had a hunt around some of my colleagues' blogs and have linked a couple of those in. I made the list public and have published the link to that on my blog. Though it shows the proper link in Explorer, it doesn't seem to show the whole link in Firefox, although it links properly. Now that I have worked through this module, I think that it will be a useful tool for keeping up with blogs and Flickr sites for example. Before I was always having to search for them. So I am a convert!

I have also played around with the template and put Hecuba's photo on the blog. I hadn't worked out how to do that before.

#7 Reflections on technology

My aim at the beginning of this program was to learn about Web 2.0 so that I could work out applications for local history. I was particularly interested in it for Boroondara's history but also for other research projects of my own. Doing this course has made me look at tools in a systematic way and finally to sign up to use them interactively rather than just as a passive user. I think that the potential for using local history to foster a sense of place in such virtual social networking environments is amazing and represents a real growth area for public libraries.

#6 More fun with Flickr: Anne Warholized


Anne Warholized
Originally uploaded by Hecuba's Story
This is one of Anne Warholized; as it was from a black and white original it seemed to work better because of the different contrasts.

#6 More Flickr Fun


Polyxena in Warhol
Originally uploaded by Hecuba's Story
When I started looking at all the tools for having fun with Flickr I was amazed. People must spend all their time thinking of new ways to play with photographs all the time. I played with different things but particularly liked the Warholer! This is Polyxena who has been Warholized. I think it works best with photographs that are black and white in the original, but Polyxena only has colour photographs in her files.

#5 Flickr Letter to you


letter to you
Originally uploaded by miss mardi
This is a small tapestry done by Miss Mardi, called Letter to you. she says she has trouble doing such small works but it really works for me. The layers of the original come out and the interface between the woman and the letter. Look at Miss Mardi's work further at Flickr

#5 Flickr

I don't seem to be very good at sticking to instructions: I have just discovered that I should have labelled my previous posts #5 Flickr and that I should have posted a link to MissMardi's Flickr account. http://www.flickr.com/photos/missmardinowak/ She has great shots here of her exhibition in Munich as well as her own corpus of works. As part of pursuing this further, I also discovered how to link my blogging to Flickr so that I can post from Flickr. That was another step in my learning!

Week Three: Photos & Images again

It is great that Learning 2.0 has finally made me set up a Flickr account. Why haven't I done it before? I know it is partly that I find it very tedious to set up and keep track of different accounts. Now that I have set up Flickr I can see lots of uses for it in terms of sharing photographs, be they personal ones, family history ones or ones related the local areas whose history I am particularly interested in.

Week Three: Photos & Images

Photos and Images are themes very dear to my heart and particularly important to my Learning 2.0 goal of working out the best ways to use Web 2.0 for local history. I have been viewing other people's images on Flickr for a long time and have many favourites there. I like MissMardi's site. Mardi is our stunning Gallery Curator at the City of Boroondara and also an artist in her own right. She creates multi-layered woven works that you can see images of on Flickr.

I also really liked the geographical function and had lots of fun clicking onto images relating to Athens, Greece. Obviously many other people share my Hellenophilia and even my love of Athens. There were not many Australian photos taged, so here is our chance to put parts of Boroondara on that map. It is good to be able to publish photos to the world but also to be able to limit them to friends or family. I limited my photograph of me and Hecuba to friends, but they really aren't private. I assume at any stage I can change the status, so I will try that too.

Getting started on Library 2.0

This is my second attempt at starting at Library 2.0. I created a blog in September and didn't note down the address or login details! That has provided me with an opportunity to mentor others in my workplace who have been doing the program, so hopefully they have learnt from my errors. This time I hope that I will stick to this and get through beyond step 3.
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