#23 - The Final Frontier

For me, the most important result of going through the Learning 2.0 process has been the opportunity to be guided step by step through so many new resources, and to see what they can do for you and for your library. The pace of technological change is so rapid that it's easy to feel overwhelmed by the advent of more and more options; you feel a bit like "Alice in Wonderland" running faster and faster to stay in the same place, uncomfortably aware that you're slipping behind in the change process.

This programme has picked out the best and most universal applications and given us concrete examples of what they do and who uses them well; that's been inspiring for us and at our library we are already planning to implement some Web 2.0 options. We are talking blogs, podcasts, Delicious bookmarks, Library Thing and much more.

Sometimes I used to look at the web pages of big US libraries and get envious about the staff, money and time they had to put their fabulous pages together but the participative nature of Web 2.0 means we can use so many of these resources for no cost. You don't need to pay licence fees for Delicious or Library Thing or any of the other programmes, all you need are enthusiastic staff who are confident with Web 2.0 and all its possibilities- and Learning 2.0 has certainly made sure of that.

#22 E-Audiobooks

I have listened to audiobooks in the past and have happy memories of Garrison Keillor enlivening the long drive to Goondiwindi one year, with lurid tales of the misdeeds of Lutheran ministers or Norwegian bachelor farmers from Lake Wobegon. ( I've just found there are weekly Lake Wobegon podcasts, so I've subscribed to those too.) Long ago I bought two LP's (that dates me) of Ezra Pound and T.S.Eliot reading their own poetry, and both of those LPs ended up in the attic because I have nothing I can play them on now.
The Gutenberg "Human Voice" collection has some gems, like the Conan Doyle stories. The computer voice is not nearly so appealing but if I were visually impaired what a bonus it would be to have a list of over 2,000 titles to choose from, and I'm sure you would get used to the voice just for the pleasure of having a wonderful book made available to you. Having said that, both podcasts and (especially) audio books make you appreciate the skills of the speakers and actors; it's a gift to be able to speak or read a part so well.
I also liked the idea of "sample chapters" being available so that you can try out a book before you buy or borrow it: inevitably, it's a lot more effort to download a whole book rather than just borrow it, so why not see if you really like it first?

#21 Podcasts

I've had a look at various Podcast directories, and have listened to some very interesting downloads. It seems to me there is a tremendous opportunity here for libraries to network events such as speakers to other locations. Especially with the distance issues - not many people would drive from Mildura to Mornington to hear a famous author speak about their work; but lots of people could listen to it from anywhere in the country. I always miss Phillip Adams on the ABC as I am at work from 4-5pm and usually asleep by the time the show comes on at night, but now I have him at my command via Bloglines. Another staff member (Vamp Girl - have you met her? She casts no shadow) showed me the podcasts available from the Library of Congress; talk about Big Names eg. Ken Burns, Terry Pratchett and David Baldacci just for starters.

#20 Can I You Tube

There was so much brilliant stuff on You Tube - not to mention all the dross - that I spent hours looking for some clips, and have come up with a winner. One thing that struck me was how vital production values are; amateur clips are mostly grim to watch, with people standing in front of doorways in bad lighting, waiting for a signal from their cameraman to start, or even worse, filming themselves. Presentation is vital; if we ever used this - for instance, for demonstrating library resources, you'd have to have professional actors and producers.

It was difficult to pick a favourite; I kept looking at the clip about the kitchen from "Withnail and I" and excerpts from "Black Books" but here's the winner:

"Reading is for Losers" featuring the wonderful Catherine Tate: 6 minutes of hilarity. Where can I buy a sonic screwdriver?

Favourites from Web 2.0.
Silly favourite has to be "The Cocktail Builder" where you can design your own cocktails from the contents of your "bar"; interesting mixtures come to mind from my cupboards, like a 10 year crusty bottle of Green Ginger Wine - would that be good mixed up with my son's Stella, and a bit of cough mixture added in for that syrupy effect? maybe garnished with an umbrella?

For real work-related options, I thought Yahoo's "Upcoming" was impressive, with a decent coverage of Melbourne events; the "Medstory" search was useful too.

Zoho Writer

Dickens has a wonderful character called Mrs Hominy, a lady with literary leanings, who has her work published "with all the indignation in capitals, and all the sarcasm in italics" - she'd have loved Zoho.

This has been fun; and I can see how it could be very useful too; being able to share, store and edit documents online, and not to have to worry about different versions of Office etc. One more thing - what are wingdings for? Who uses them?

#17 PB Wikis (Personal Best?)

I found myself getting a bit tangled up with this - I have managed to put in the url of my blog but can't work out how to put in the name rather than the url - some people have done that and it looks good! Will consult my colleagues.
Once again I'm staggered by the time some people have on their hands; so much effort has gone into some of these blogs and wikis.
I'm finding that I go back to some previous exercises now because things seem to "gel" as you go through the process. I went back to Rollyo and did the optional exercise because I was thinking about how we could use it in the library; so the Learning 2.0 isn't linear - for me, anyway - but colours in a whole picture bit by bit.

#16 Wikis

Wikis and libraries; my first reaction was concern about exchanging control for open access. Worst case scenarios include people with an axe to grind AND plenty of time on their hands stuffing up all our carefully created websites and catalogues; problems of intellectual property and quality of information; spam etc. But the capacity to moderate entries should help; and having the option to make a wiki open only to certain groups is reassuring.
Subject guides would be an excellent first step for us into wiki-dom; book discussion groups would also work well, and would be one of the best scenarios for library wikis. I liked the idea of procedure manuals being maintained in a wiki - no-one would ever be caught with an outdated procedure.

#15 Future Libraries

"Away from the Icebergs" makes interesting reading. I agree that "libraries are poorly equipped and insufficiently staffed" to fulfil teaching roles well; if people can't use our services we need to fix our services rather than offer training in how to use them: but if the physical collection of print materials is no longer a priority, because users want everything available digitally, I'd be concerned about several things. First, the way people use print materials is very different to how they use them online; the serendipity of finding by browsing is lost; second, how do users find out about what's available, and what is quality? As Wendy Schultz points out in ""To a Temporary Space in Time" tags offer "diverse connections, not focussed expertise". Online providers may charge for what used to be free; they may link to sponsored results which slant the accuracy of searches or bibliographies. The quality of art prints is lost in the digital world; the look of a beautiful reference book is lost too. Maybe improvements in technology will improve those complaints; but even the OH&S implications of using pcs and laptops rather than reading a book need to be considered. Every physio will tell you of the epidemic of neck and head related problems because of prolonged computer use; apparently laptops are much worse than standard pcs so today's students will be in for some trouble.

I really liked Wendy Schultz's concept of Library 4.0: "The library as aesthetic experience will have space for all the library’s incarnations: storage (archives, treasures); data retrieval (networks—reference rooms); and commentary and annotation (salon). Sounds good to me.

#14 Technorati

I had a look at Technorati and did the exercise of searching for Learning 2.0 in the Advanced Search - I found 6,265 entries by a keyword search; 618 by a tag search and 728 by a directory search. So nearly 100 people with a directory entry don't have a tag for "Learning 2.0".
I can see how useful Technorati is for finding subject specialised blogs; but it's a bit dispiriting to see the most popular tags and search terms. Britney Spears (couldn't that girl's parents spell?), royal blackmail, celebrity gossip....Boing Boing, listed as the "Top Blog", features a promo for a "decapitated doll's head pencil sharpener": you put the pencil in her eye and the shavings come out the mouth. It all seems a bit low rent - rather like the "News of the World' online (ex-Poms will understand).
Then I cheered myself up by finding some really interesting blogs - like the wonderful "Brit Lit Blog" and wasted several hours swanning around there. The blog "The Scottish Patient" has info about the latest Alasdair Gray novel "Old Men in Love" AND photos of him enjoying a refreshment in an Edinburgh bar. His novel "Lanark" is astonishing - highly recommended.

Rollyo exercise # 12

I've done this back to front in the Learning 2.0 training process: Today I went back and stepped through the process of registering and creating a search roll: I put in newspaper and online news sites and then did a search on various topics. It's ok but...you still get sponsored results. I read some articles about Rollyo, and one of them points out that Rollyo uses Yahoo to search, and that if you nominate a site, say the BBC, you can't just get Rollyo to search only the "News" page there: it will search the whole of the BBC site. But I can see that it could be useful to have the capacity to search a group of favourite, quality sites; more useful for broad topic searches than specific ones, I think.

Delicious #13

I've subscribed to Delicious and have successfully imported my bookmarks from my work pc; I've also added some new ones, and deleted quite a few imported ones which I'd added a while ago, and have never used since, so it's been a "cleaning up" and "tagging" exercise.
It will be very useful to have my "work" favourites at home and vice versa; quite often the two areas do cross over and it's infuriating to have to search for a site you know you've bookmarked elsewhere.
I've taken the chance to bookmark quite a few of the participants' blogs as I'm learning a lot from keeping up with them; I agree with Jewinda that it's hard to work out what a website it from the title alone; and once again I'm struck by the time so many people have to spare! By the time you keep up with Bloglines, add more books and tags to Library Thing, keep an eye on your blog etc and fit in little things like going to work, there's no time left to wash the cat or keep up with my ukelele lessons.

Library Thing

Today I've been discovering more of the glories of Library Thing. I think I should make up a song along the lines of "Wild Thing"

Library Thing, I Think I love you...
Library Thing, you make my heart sing...

Well, ok, that's overstating it a bit, but isn't it fun? There are actually some other people out there who read the same book as me - and know that the Daily Telegraph Book of Obituaries is one of the funniest books in the world.
The tagging makes such a lot of sense; incorporating the tags in library catalogues can add another dimension to making them accessible to users. It makes the whole process so participative and co-operative; readers become involved in the "cataloguing" and tagging rather than having to follow prescriptive rules.
I've added a random list of my books from "Library Thing" as part of the Learning 2.0 process.

#7 (Image generators) I flunked image generators first time round, but have had another go - this was a famous piece of graffiti which was on a wall in North Fitzroy for many years, and made its way into some anthologies of graffiti. Nobody knows who the "Desert rat" was! I wonder if he or she ever got their heart back.
I've put it into a Paris Metro sign - the sentiments are international, after all!
I have begun to enjoy the fun side of all this, after thinking it was a hugely vain waste of time: I can see how we could use this in library promotions, and for livening up emails to family and friends.
One thing I still find tricky is resizing photos - some of the ones I tried out with the image generators got very "pixilated" (when I was young, pixilated was a euphemism for being drunk). I'll have to spend some time working it out.

With Bloglines, I have found it very useful for monitoring the various blogs I like; it's especially handy being able to import RSS feeds into Outlook (thanks Pearl Bay).

Summertime and the living is easy...

My creation
Originally uploaded by Marta

(#5 Flickr) I've been having Flickr fun with making posters from photos: I loved this photo; it was
New Year's Day - 105 in the shade - just the weather for a pipe band in full regalia. The bandsmen were all so very very hot; the Maryborough pubs did big business that day hosing them down with cold beer.

Using Flickr

I've been using Flickr - and I'm surprised how many photos of really obscure places there are online! I have looked up some places with a population of 3 and a cat and there are lots of photos of them; I also like the mapping option for planning future travels.
Now I've discovered how to turn photos into posters and have added one taken at the Maryborough Highland Games one very hot New Year's Day!! Let's hope this works out.

I've just added a few feeds to my bloglines account - who'da thought I'd ever have know what that meant, but I do now, and am knee deep in up to the minute news.
But back in the slow lane, I have just re-read a wonderful book which I can highly recommend, if it sounds like your sort of thing. Tom Clancy fans, stop reading here.
It's called "Aristocrats" by Stella Tillyard and tells the true story of four sisters, Caroline, Emily, Louise and Sarah Lennox who lived in England in the 18th century. They were aristocrats, moving in political and regal circles but were also truly remarkable women; for instance, Emily married the richest man in Ireland, had nineteen children, and then ran off with their tutor and had three more! They have left vivid letters, diaries, and household accounts, and the book makes their lives and times absolutely fascinating.

Too much information?

I'm feeling a bit jaundiced about all the volume of information that people are putting up on the web, whether it's blogs, RSS feeds or personal web pages. Is all this stuff worth saying? Or worth reading? Are we creating a monster which needs to be fed constantly with trivia?
It makes me realise that I'm a "book person" - I prefer the slow lane; or is it a generational thing? Perhaps it will change in the next few weeks - we'll see.

Eldorado, near Beechworth

Today's trivia - Benjamin Disraeli was a novelist, and the Prime Minister of Britain - a busy man, and a very thoughtful husband. He was concerned about his wife feeling cold when dressing for dinner, especially in the bitter English winters, so he designed a little heater on which he would warm her pearls for her before she put them on. Gorgeous, eh?

My first blog entry - so it has to be about books and food! So - latest favourite book -"Suite Francaise" by Irene Nemirovsky- do read it if you haven't already, and then celebrate the good things about France with some Crepes Suzette.
Crepe mix - 6 tablespoons plain flour, 3 eggs, 250 mls milk, 50g. melted butter. Sift flour, add a pinch of salt; make a well in the centre and break in the eggs. Slowly mix in the eggs with a dash of milk and when the mix is smooth, add the remaining milk gradually. Cover and leave to stand for an hour. Butter a small crepe pan, heat and pour in just enough batter to cover the base of the pan.When the edges turn golden, flip over and cook a little bit longer. Stack all the crepes on a plate; they freeze well if you can stop yourself eating them all straight away.