My Dewey

My Dewey Decimal Section:

028 Reading & use of other information media


Class:
000 Computer Science, Information & General Works


Contains:
Encyclopedias, magazines, journals and books with quotations.



What it says about you:
You are very informative and up to date. You're working on living in the here and now, not the past. You go through a lot of changes. When you make a decision you can be very sure of yourself, maybe even stubborn, but your friends appreciate your honesty and resolve.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Rewards are Nice

What a lovely surprise.

Last Friday 15 August, my Library Manager approached me and said he had a surprise for me. "For me?" He asked me to guess what it could be. My only thought was that I had won a prize for completing my mission of discovery in the Learning 2.0 program.

And I was right...a Certificate of Completion and an MP3 player had been sent to my Library Manager to forward onto me :-)

Thanks to the State Library of NSW and its staff for having this program and helping me keep on track with it.

I had totally forgotten about it, and had gone on my merry way, but now I have another blog entry to add and a reminder to keep using the web "stuff".

Hip Hip Hooray.

Yippee!!! I got through it, without setting off any mines.

I've finally finished the Learning 2.0 program and I've come out on the other side without any scratches.

Being involved with in the I.T side of this library, it's been pretty easy for me to wade through the many new applications and "stuff" on the web, but there will always be more new "stuff", even as we speak.

Hopefully, I'll be able to apply some of what I've learnt in the Learning 2.0 program into my work practice. Onwards and upwards....away.

"To be or not to be...?"

...on Facebook or any other social networks, that is the question.

If you have the time to monitor and add to these networks, it would be another way to reach your public, but being in a small library with little resources, there are more pressing matters with face to face networking and reaching out to the local community.

Don't get me wrong, I love using Facebook, but I don't use it to connect to libraries, it's more a fun factor, a place to catch up with friends near and far.

I need to create a document, but I don't have Word.

What a lifesaver!...these online tools are so nifty. Not only can you create documents, spreadsheets and presentations, you can also share it and ask others to contribute to it, as as the video demonstrated, it sure does save a lot of time emailing documents to each other.

I can see lots of applications for these tools for both inhouse and our clients. But especially as a back of house tool for Librarians, we can save ourselves a lot a time and paperwork, by just working on the one document.

Zoho has extra bonuses with other applications like the planner, creator, chat, wiki, etc.

Mashups

So many fun things to make and do on the Big Huge Lab sites, I decided to try and make a magazine cover. Looks good if I say so myself. Have to make time to try the other programs available.

Had a quick play with Google Maps. That would be a good to plot historical buildings and places of interest for quick reference although I think Council already does quite a bit of mapping.

Podcasting or Vodcasting

This looks like a tool we could use to get any messages across, whether it's internally as a staff training tool or to our public to advertise services and events.

Recording storytelling sessions looks like a new way to reach a wider audience as well.

Answer Boards and Social Searching

What to write???

I suppose if you have time on your hands and aren't already busy answering reference questions in your own library, then answering questions posted to these answer boards would be fulfilling.

I suppose you could also post questions which have stumped you and other library staff members and see if anyone out there can answer it.

I know I've used forums and other answer boards to get questions to technical problems that have stumped me, so there is a use for them.

LibraryThing

Well, I've been trying to find a way to put a link to my LibraryThing, but it seems the only way I can do it is through this blog, so I've linked it up, but would have preferred to have it as a page element..but that is just a bit beyond me at the moment..have to read up on html and all that's involved.

Delicious tags

This is also a great idea, but when you are so used to using the bookmark tool in your browser, its a bit hard letting go of customs and adopting a new way to do things.

It is a great research tool and I can see the implications of using this tool as a way to share bookmarks with each other.

Funniest Home Videos...maybe

I picked this Youtube video as I needed a break from the seriousness of Learning 2.0. We need a laugh in our lives daily and I thought this was a silly but good one.

But back to business...Mosman's use of video to record guest speakers and presenters is a good idea.

It's a great way to record the happenings in a library, as well as using it as a tool to teach as in the guides to using library services.

We could make "How to" videos of "how to use the opac", "how to use the self check-out" and other library services.

Wikis: the new meeting place?

I visited the Book Lovers Wiki and it highlighted the fact that you can hold a book club without getting all the participants in one room.

I also took a sneak peek at the Wisconsin Heritage Wiki. It's a great way to get information on a particular area from lots of different sources...a bit like an Oral History project. Maybe I can get our local history librarian to start up a project like that for our area, it's a great way to get contributions to the history of the area, even if it's just what happened yesterday and not what happened 100 years ago.

The third wiki I looked at was Wookieepedia. An excyclopedia for Star Wars fans...anything and everything you wanted to know about Star Wars. But maybe only those who are Star Wars fans would find it interesting.

What a great idea, now if only we could educate our public to use wiki's too. It's hard enough teaching them the basics of the Internet and how to use e-mail.

Its a great way to get other people to contribute information, but knowing what is genuine and authoritative and what's not may be a problem.

I can see it's usage in the workplace, but it does rely on contributors.

RSS Feeds...what does it mean?

Real Simple Syndication...yes it's simple but its a lot of stuff to wade through if you get carried away and subscribe to all and sundry blogs and news feeds.

I've added an RSS feed to the Story of Stuff blog...because we do tend to get caught up in a lot of stuff, so I thought it very appropriate. While doing this Learning 2.0 I've learnt a lot of stuff, some new and some I already knew.

Fantastic use of Reference Books

Trolling through flickr, I've come across several photos which I find interesting, but this one caught my eye by Donaldist. Fantastic use of reference books to make a Christmas Tree. I might even suggest we try doing something like this in our library.

What's in it for Me?

Ok, so I'm not new to blogs or posting , but what can we as library professionals get out of it? So we get up to speed with all the new whiz bang buzz words? How does that help us in our daily work? Will we have more time to serve customers? Will we be adding more value to our service if we add a blog site? Will our public borrowers even know we have a blog site, let alone making them aware of our website.
Also having read some other blogs, I tend to agree that we don't have time to do these things. I've already spent the whole of this afternoon, signing up to Gmail and setting up my blog page (problems with images already), let alone having to register to the Learning 2.0 program...anyway, I'll have to see how I feel at the end of this program.