Go with the flow

I often wondered where the IT boffins in our department found those nifty diagrams for servers, patch panels and routers ... they all probably subscribe to Gliffy.com. The site was intuitive and easy to use, a note to self to visit Gliffy when we are doing our next SWOT analysis for the library team,, a neat flow chart is available for online collaboration in real time. The floor plans are good too. I can see the value of flow charts in assisting with the graphic representation of complex relationships, it would find a place in the tool kit library managers use.

I played with Bubbl.us and got into an awful muddle, it was not easy to use and to me was hardly intuitive. I believe a mind map is a personal aid in studying, best done with a paper and pen - a visual representation to link various concepts of a topic. A doodling aid with a more serious intention. I know it is touted as an aid to brainstorming ideas. however I experienced a degree of frustation with this electronic version of it, maybe I am just old-fashioned.

del.icio.us!

I have spent time going through my favourite websites and book marking them in del.icio.us. This has enabled me to store and access bookmarks from any computer and to share them with colleagues. Also opened up other possibilities by browsing other library users' tags, the ones tagged by Bibliothèques de l'Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris-IV) for instance listed some useful sites, not all were French. This application can be utilised as a reference tool, as has been demonstrated by public libraries; it facilitates collaboration and research can be shared. I explored the tags, the comments were useful, and where there are lots of tags the concept of 'tag clouds' takes shape. One could go on discovering ad infinitum ..... better get back to work now.

Podcasts

Certainly podcasting is a convenient way of automatically downloading audio files to an MP3 player, many ABC broadcasts are available this way, especially when one is not able to listen while at work (the Book Show for instance, aired at 10am weekdays). While checking out the Educational Podcast Network site I came across a useful site to learn French, I can see niche audiences are well catered for. There is a lot of free stuff available as podcasts for research and pleasure. From the number of people on the tram and train with white strings from their ears, podcasting has certainly taken off in a big way. I passed on learning how to podcast - perusing the 'how to create a podcast' notes it seems to be fairly simple, free of tech-speak and user friendly. I guess it can be applied to various situations in the Library scene - for example tutorials on how to use library databases for our remote clients.

eBooks

The World eBook Fair was a bit tricky to use, one had to register and pay a fee. I expected to find a copy of 'The Canterbury Tales' free to view on the web, but it was not so, I had to pay up first. A bit more luck with the Internet Archive - I found a copy of 'If this is a man' by Primo Levi published in 1959, all 226 pages of it (.pdf format) complete with date due slip attached with dates stamped from 27 December 1960. Understandably it took a few minutes to load, but it was remarkable to get a copy of it 'free' on the web. I can see the value of these eBook repositories for out of print material or hard to get classics. It can act as an adjunct to university and public libraries. Even so, I find it hard to read texts online and I wonder how authors would react to their work being available to millions free of charge. At times it may be of value for scholars to be able to be able to actually handle these old texts for study purposes, I am thinking of Melbourne University downsizing its collection of classic and ancient texts at the Parkville campus thus making it harder to consult them. But I digress ... there is certainly value in being able to access older publications so easily and I applaud the online repositories of these resources.

Week 14 already

Letterpop was easy and intuitive to use. By now the login/password creation are in generic mode so it was not much of a bother to register. It was easy to get into the templates that I wanted to look at, I liked the clean and unfussy look of the business selection. The application could be useful in the library context, newsletters can be created and stored easily, updates in a similar format reproduced. Also for school and sports committees outside the workplace, a newsletter with a corporate look and feel could be produced without recourse to too much technical knowhow. The main advantage is the low cost production of a sleek looking product.

You Tube

On a quiet afternoon, I had a quick squizz at You Tube to check out what othe librarians had done with this application. I liked ,the Librarians 2.0 manifesto, the test will be to see if I can embed it successfully in my blog. Fingers crossed. I also viewed the Chasers' video of John Howard; it is a bit dated now but those boys are terribly clever.

I'm not sure how YouTube can be applied in our corporate library environment with its myriad restrictions on introducing new applications. I may be pleasantly surprised by one of the funky young librarians on our team making a video to publicise the library's physical space.

Roll your own

One of my trusty colleagues has already used Rollyo and was quite chuffed that he was way ahead of the Learning 2.0 pack. He has placed on one of the weekly alerting services that he provides a customised Rollyo to search all Australian health and welfare sites. It is quite nifty. I managed to replicate a customised search engine for some of my favourite book review sites (yet another user id and password!) and I hope I can find it again. The next book that will be discussed at my book group is 'On Chesil beach' by Ian McEwan; I called up reviews of this book quite easily and quickly. Neat. By the way, I am finding del.icio.us to be very useful, go to it quite often.

iGoogle

It was interesting and rather easy to create a customised home page, it was a bit disconcerting to find some gadgets are naturally geared to US time zones. I fussed around trying to make Melbourne the default map for the GoogeMaps gadget, couldn't get it to work, eventually I had to abandon this quest and leave San Francisco as the default. I now have Melbourne weather, the current moon phases and the calendar as well as news items, and yesterday's Buddhist thought for the day. It was pleasing to find Leunig as an artist listed, so Mr Curly is part of the background artwork.

Zum Zum

View Larger Map

Hopefully I can remember how to replicate saving a Google map, it is quite neat to be able to send directions to get to a place.

Google maps

I love Google maps! I discovered pubs that I did not know existed in Brunswick, and I worked out I could do a pub crawl to all of them that would take about 1.5km, walking from my flat in Brunswick. I inadvertently found those in Germany too, I was too quick hitting the search button. I will be attending a health librarians meeting in Alice Springs in September, and I found out the quickest route to get from the hotel where I will be staying to the venue. The Internet went down this afternoon while I was working, so could not do something really neat and upload the relevant map with the route marked. Will try again later, hope I can get the technology to work.

I can see the applications of Google docs, easily facilitating collaboration between teams and the ability to access documents anywhere in the world - for example the benefits of placing scanned copies of important documents on my site while I am travelling abroad.

Wikis

Wikis can be useful to create online communities and enable collaboration between peers. I could see how for instance, I could try to understand how to design a website (the very idea is mind boggling for me) using this tool, with more tech savvy colleagues providing assistance. The use that public libraries have made of wikis is innovative and I can see how it would serve as a forum for training - some of the training resources gathered in one place were impressive. Equally innovative NZ Police using of wikis in a positive way.

Wikis can be the place to go if you are after an arcane fact or something obscure - I did a Google search on Andrea Palladio (+ wiki in search box) - the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice is stunning - and was instantly gratified to find pictures of his public buildings and plans in Wikimedia commons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_San_Giorgio_Maggiore
There is always a boffin lurking around, collecting little know facts on a topic, wikis can
excel in this regard. Lucky to find archiplanet, a wiki with literally thousands of architects listed and their work.

Face Book

It was interesting to see that NASA has embraced Face Book to capture a younger audience. I can see how young people love this, one can instantly engage with hundreds of 'friends' and send out messages and images. I cannot see the value of this in my work environment (or in my personal life for that matter), and did not register. Similarly the Gen Ys and those younger are enamoured with My Space. I can see this facility being useful in the public or school library scene, it would not be appropriate or indeed useful in our work environment. It was worthwhile exploring the various sites, some are very creative and eyecatching. Victorian teacher-librarians are using Ning quite extensively and I can see how this can be a viable tool to share information on the latest in children's literature and general gossip.

PS

I have already joined HLA blog spot, and regularly receive updates on professioan developments. Blogs may not be as useful to be applied in our work environment; much of our work is sensitive in nature and is not appropriate for sharing via blogs.

Feeds

Spent some time this afternoon exploring feeds. Added about three, and then discovered 'bundled' feeds from Google. This may be overkill, I'll review the situation in a couple of days to see if I am overwhelmed with information and delete those that are not as interesting or useful. I can see the advantages of signing up for feeds, just need to remember to check them each day. It would be good if we can apply them to library alerting services - need to negiotate with our IT people though. I have found that they are terribly partial to chocolate frogs.

ImageChef

This is a cool app, I can see lots of possibilities .... image chef easy to use. I think I have got the hang of entering text beside the image now. it took a couple of goes.

Backsliding

I have dropped out for a few weeks now, never thought I would get back into blogging. It is quite addictive really, so hopefully I am back on track now - a few week's work to catch up on. I really love LibraryThing. I am in two book groups (one more serious than the other) and with LibraryThing I can list and keep track of my reading, add reviewers' comments and what I thought of the books. I have just finished 'The heart of the matter' by Graham Greene, such an anguised guilt ridden novel - there will be interesting discussion tomorrow night. I am re-reading this after a number of years and am reflecting of what I thought of it the first time I encountered it.

Flickr!

Getting started

#1 post
Phew! a couple of false starts, thought I would never get going. Finally registered the blog. Hope to come to grips with the social software tools and be more confident in using them. Learning is not just about 'doing things', more importantly it entails a change in attitude