Thing 23-------yipppeeeeee

How could you draw on what you have learned in 23 Things to help you in your work?
I now have at least some understanding of a range of new "things" . I'll also use Google Books now as an extra bibliographic tool.
How could the library use the technologies featured in 23 Things to improve its service?
I hope that we'll soon get a library blog or a wiki up and running.
Do you think you’ll keep blogging or keep using any of the other tools you learned about?
I'd like to keep blogging and maybe use the blog as away of letting teachers know about new stuff that I've ordered. I hope to keep up with the RSS feeds as there's some really useful information out there.
Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
Take-aways? Do we get chips with that??
What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
I think it was great. If the program is going to be offered to other Chisholm staff, perhaps some extra instructions might be useful so people won't have to keep bugging Jason with questions (like I did).
If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?
Sure would!

Thing 22

From 2005
Library 2.0 Movement Sees Benefits in Collaboration with Patrons. Jason Boog
In
http://www.librarycrunch.com/2005/11/dont_forget_the_need_for_const.html
"They hope that the Library 2.0 "movement" will break librarians out of brick-and-mortar establishments and get them to interact with patrons through blog comments, IM and Wiki entries".
So why hasn't this happened by 2008?
American college students don't seem to think libraries need a social networking presence http://www.oclc.org/reports/sharing/default.htm
and I wonder if ours would be any different. I think the blog and wiki things would be a great tool for us to use internally but, if usage of "Ask a Librarian" is any guide, students may not want to interact with us this way. But I guess if we waited for students to tell us what they want before doing anything we'd never do anything much.
So how do we get the balance right between jumping in to use new technology just because it's new (or really not so new in this case) and providing something that students will really engage with because they've asked us for it? There are so many social networking options out there that a library one might not be something that's really high on our students' list of priorities. We'd need to make our blog/wiki/Facebook page something really spectacular to compete - so there's our challenge!

Thing 21 - iGoogle

I can't believe I've nearly finished! iGoogle is great - I've now got lots of options all in one place. Mostly they're things I've currently got as Favourites like the currency converter and weather so it'll be interesting to see whether or not I'll get into the habit of using this page instead of working in my usual way.

Google Docs and Google Book Search

Google Docs
I guess that internally we don't need this tool so much as we all have access to the S drive docs and can share, edit and track changes that way. The revisions function on Google is really good though as you can instantly see who edited the doc and when. I imported an orientation slideshow and played around with it and although it went slowly at first and the functions will take a bit of getting used to, I thought it worked well. I haven't tried loading the file back into the S drive so I'm not sure how that works.
For anyone who wanted to work on a document off-campus it could very useful. And it is a free service - well, apart from your internet access costs.
Google Book Search
I LOVE THIS! don't know why I've never used it before. A great alternative to Bookfind or Amazon when looking for hard to find materials and it links straight through to Libraries Australia or WorldCat when you click on the "Find this book in a library" link.

Google Maps

View Larger Map
I've used this site quite a bit. Great for daydreaming and armchair travel as well as the practicalities of getting from one place to another.

MySpace and Facebook

Wow! Some of those teen library sites on Myspace are really jazzy! Facebook seems much quieter. I now have a Facebook page and have looked at the VATL LIT group page http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=20435683973 and the SouthWest TAFE page. Once again, these resources look useful but would need to be continually updated to remain relevant.

More and more frequently I'm finding that the "Accessed to site denied. It is categorised as streaming media" message is coming up. While I realise that lack of bandwidth is a problem I think that we are going to be missing out on really useful information by having these restrictions.

YouTube

There's some really interesting stuff here ( and some really dumb). I tried to load a video into my blog but got so confused trying to work out which login I was using that I've given up. I'd really like to get this thing - and all the other things- finished by the end of the break so I'm not going to waste any more time on it right now.
One interesting video is a tour of Information Island on Second Life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTQkzfz5osQ&feature=related