SOCIAL NETWORKING

This social networking is all new to me. I don't think I will fully "get it" until I sign up myself. I still have a lot of questions about it. Seeing as I have to finish my 2.0 blog tonight I won't get a chance to do this. But I can make a few observations from what I have seen.

I can see how social networking would be useful. It's basically just groups of people. Better than that it links up people with similar interests. Getting together a group of like minded people and telling them about a library's services or events could be very useful. Some of the websites mentioned in our 2.0 course were interesting. There seemed to be a few museums who kept a profile as if they were a person. I don't quite understand how they connect with other individuals. Also I wonder what would stop the Coca Cola company from setting itself up as an individual? Or any company with a product? What stops facebook or myspace being saturated with advertisements. How do you protect yourself against people that you don't want to meet or be friends with? I obviously need to log on and see how it works.

I find the idea of a virtual library in a 'second life' virtual reality is interesting. I could see a lot of the functions of the library existing in a virtual world. You could have an online virtual library with virtual books in it. We could all live in giant test tubes with wires connected to our brains like in the Matrix movies (just kidding). All we need is a small laptop like device (only a lot cheaper so we wouldn't have to worry about it being stolen) with wifi internet access resembling a book . Then we could log on to a virtual library and read it's virtual books. A library could be a warm room with coffee and bean bag chairs where people could bring their virtual book devices and browse books that only exist in a cyberworld. A bit far fetched possibly.

I have now come to the end of the library 2.0 course run by the state library of NSW. I have enjoyed it immensely. It might sound a bit exaggerated but I think it is a 'life changing' course. I am now a serious addict of blog writing. It has given me an understanding of many new internet developments some of which I intend to find out more about. I've gone from knowing very little to nothing, to knowing the basics of a lot of these things. I hope that the State library of NSW keeps this 2.0 website going for a while so I can refer back to it.

Thank You for the opportunity to let me participate in this.

ONLINE PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS

I'm amazed that you can do word processing through the internet rather than through a pc program. I tried both Google docs and Zoho. Zoho had more features, although I couldn't figure out what some of them did, but they were both very similar. I imagine that these were started as competition for microsoft and their word processing programs, although I can see that their "wiki-like" functions are unique in there own right. We charge $3 per hour to do word processing in our library, I wonder if people can use these online tools on the free terminals that we have.

I'm amazed at all the free productivity tools there are available. From Tada to Slideshare; you could start a company just thinking up names for these software companies. If the internet becomes more easily accessible I wonder if google docs will supercede microsoft word programs? This could be the end of the memory stick.

These could be very useful in a library situation. For doing power point presentations or writing a document with coworkers, altering images or audio, doing spreadsheets. The cost factor could make it very attractive also. I don't know how much we pay for our word processing software but having a free word processer could mean we could offer it for free to our library users.

Until next time,

MASHUPS

MELVIL DEWEY SAYS !

The big huge labs are a lot of fun. This picture is an example of a possible library poster I created with it. I also had a lot of fun Warholizing a photo of a friend but I don't know if it has that much relevance to a library.

It seems like the most prevalent mashups have a map and then photos which appear when you click on different points of that map. I could see this being very useful to show the various libraries that comprise my network, to illustrate a local history walk or even a map of the library with pictures as to what you would see there. I suppose that could also be maps with audio links instead of pictures (for example oral history tapes). Some of the "big huge lab" functions could be good for library promotions such as for making posters or calenders.

Most of it though I found a bit gimmicky. I was a bit confused as to whether you would call all of the things "big huge labs" did Mashups. The program I use to alter and enhance my photos (gimp) does similar things, would you call those mashups as well? Would you call the aqua browser on the queens library website a mashup?

I found it very hard to find other mashups that didn't include a map of some kind.

cheers

PODCASTS

I think podcasts are a lot of fun. I didn't realize they were used so much by libraries.

I could see my library using them for the obvious things like storytime for kids.Which seemed to be the most prevalent use of them in the other libraries I checked. Also our oral history tapes could be put on podcasts and as I suggested before with the YouTube videos: author talks. Also just a wrap up of library news would be useful and a promotion of the library in general. Our local history section often gives walking tours of our area that could easily be made into Podcasts as would lessons on how to use the internet.

On the computer I was looking at when I listened to different libraries podcasts there was a picture of a dancing sheep that would change when clicked on to various funky costumes, It was so simple it was like a DOS illustration that would have been state of the art in the eighties. At first I thought it was linked to a library but It came up for everything and was a bit visually tiresome. Where did it come from? I am mystified.

I've never done the podcast thing but I am seriously thinking about getting hooked up to it. I am particularly interested in the author talks about Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh I saw on the British library site. On the Yahoo site it seemed to be mainly pop songs.

I've got to get an ipod.

cheers

ANSWER BOARDS

My first encounter with answer boards on Yahoo!7 answers seemed to be full of silly questions that bored teenagers must have posted. Although having looked a bit further I could see that there were serious questions in amongst them. I posted one question to see the response but received no response at all. It was a question about deleting multiple emails on Outlook express that I could have asked a colleague or looked in a computer book about. I assume that it was such a basic and uninteresting question that no one bothered to respond to it.

Working on the information desk of my library, recommending that a borrower use an answer board did cross my mind a few times. Sometimes I get asked a question that is a bit unusual and not really a thing that you are going to find in a reference book or database. Usually they are the questions that you ask your colleagues about on the off chance they will know something. Unfortunately I can't think of an example of this. I think answer boards would be perfect for some questions. The problem is again for this and a lot of this library 2.0 stuff that it is inexcessable for people who cannot use the internet (eg some(most) older people).

The idea of troops of librarians decending like ninjas on to these answer boards and answering questions seemed like a great idea. It kind of globalizes the local library. Some of the example answers on the slamming the boards wiki were excellent. I wonder though in a way who should fund such a thing. I assume that the librarians who are slamming the boards are doing it either outside of work time or when there is a quiet time in the library. If they were paid to do it how could you justify someone spending time answering queries from another city, state or country. If you had some kind of international agreement that each library donated so many hours to answering international queries that would seem a bit fairer. I would hate to see a system develop where borrowers have to pay for an answer for a query.

I can see how, as well as getting great answers, it also promotes libraries and the role of information librarians. I would like to see some kind of local answerboard for my library or the state library. It will only encourage people to use there local library.

LIBRARY THING

Library Thing is just up my alley, as a book reader and library worker. I love the way you can rate and review the books you have read and the way you can see what other people, who have read the book you have read, are reading.

I find it hard to find books that I like. This is going to be a great tool not only for my own reading but also for finding books that other people would like. I could see if you were in acquisitions or the home library service this would be a great resource for finding stuff.

I am occasionally asked to recommend books for borrowers particularly young borrowers (often boys) and either think of things I liked as a boy or I see other people reading. I also get the book lists out that we keep behind the desk or the books we have in the reference section such as "Who else writes like..."(I hope I got this title right). For the avid reader that is trying to find more things to read, and is comfortable with the internet, this could be very useful. I can see it adding one more thing I can recommend to people to find more reading material.

Adieu for now

EMBEDDING A VIDEO

This is my attempt to embed a Youtube video into my blog. I have struggled with this for over an hour and am not optimistic about it succeeding. I tried to copy the html script in the little window to the right of the Youtube video I wanted and pasting it into the window. But it didn't work. I am now trying to upload a video from my hard drive that I downloaded earlier. I don't think that is going to work either.

If you find no video here you will know that I have thrown my PC out of my bedroom window in disgust.

This is so frustrating!!!

DEL.ICIO.US

I love these pictures of galaxies!

De.licio.us is a site that lets you bookmark websites online. It is useful for people who do not use the same computer for all there internet use which, lets face it, is most of us. It's also has a neat function that allows you to look at other people's bookmark sites. I guess that's where the name 'social bookmarking' comes in. Each of your bookmarks has tags which can be displayed as a list, in bundles or in a 'tag cloud'. You can look at other people's sites with similar tags, and it tells you how many people have used the same tags. The tag cloud is similar to the aqua browser at Queens library network(NY) although it's more static. I would like to see it more like the aqua browser. It interestingly makes tags which appear more than once bigger, which I liked.

I like the way you can, in effect, look over people's shoulders and see their bookmarks. I think it's a great way to find relevant websites. It's a bit like cheating on an exam, looking at other people's work. I can see how it would be helpful for researchers. You can be isolated and connected at the same time in a way.

I still can't get a Youtube video onto my blog. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Cheers.

YOUTUBE

I have always seen YouTube as being fun thing rather than a useful thing. My experience of it comes mainly from the television show Friday night download that was showing on channel 10 last year. In it, there were various YouTube clips of wacky and hilarious stunts.

The useful applications of Youtube are obvious. You could have clips that give new members a tour of the library or new employees an introduction to their job. I know in my library there are a lot of things I do, such as showing people how to research the history of their homes, that are repetitious and could be easily made into a short YouTube video for people to watch.You could have clips of people giving book reviews or of book group discussions.

My library would benefit by videoing book talks by authors. I know a lot of people cannot get to the library when the book talks are held, as it's during office hours. The clips could be accessible on our website over the internet. I've heard it suggested that we could do our Oral history things on video. We could even call it something like VidHist or FuddyDuddyHistory (remember you heard the term coined first on my website).

There must be loads more things you could do if the technology is cheap and accessible enough.

This last thing is a YouTube clip I thought was funny. Cheerio.

........................................................Bugger I can't get it to download. I'll do it next week.

WIKIs

I guess like a lot of people I had only heard of Wikipedia. I didn't know that wiki's were used in other ways. Some of the examples given on the learning 2.0 site were very interesting. I had previously thought that Wikipedia would be very unreliable and subject to "Vandalism". I remember seeing an entry in it for the Sydney suburb of Naremburn which had obviously been tampered with by high school aged boys. But having experimented with changing the library wiki myself (a couple of spelling mistakes and an added entry for my libraries local history page) I could see that there are some safeguards against such things. They were 'signing in' which seemed to stop totally anonymous entries and providing a "History" of changes so that mischievous entries could be changed.

I can see how organizing events with a group of people involved could work with a wiki, but I hope that it doesn't mean the end of the meeting. What if we spent our working day looking at a computer screen instead of looking at the faces of our colleagues. I know It's not always possible to have face to face meetings I admit. I guess people have been saying things like this since computers were invented.

The Wookiepedia was very interesting, I didn't know there was so much detail of information about a few silly Star Wars movies(I'm joking I loved them). With the New Zealand police wiki I couldn't see where one would edit it. Interestingly I saw mentioned a problem that they had with people who were changing 'New Zealand' to 'Aotearoa'. It shows that editing can be political and not just high school pranks. The Princeton book review wiki was a bit different in that you add reviews to it instead of editing the information that someone else has written. Editing other people's opinions would defeat the purpose of a book review I would have though. Would it have been better if it was a blog rather than a Wiki?

My exciting find of the week was the Aqua Browser on the Queens (NY) library website. It looks extremely primitive as it is, but I found it fascinating. I could imagine a more sophisticated version with subject headings which would make searching much easier. If you are reading this and you haven't seen an AquaBrowser go to this website and check it out: http://aqua.queenslibrary.org/

Bye.

Youth

Youth

This
is a book
written by J.M.Coetzee the nobel prize winning South African writer.
I had mixed feelings about this book.
On a few occasions when I was reading this I asked myself why was I reading it? Indeed why did he write it? I've read two other books by him, Disgrace and Waiting for the barbarians. Both of which I really enjoyed. Youth was not what I was expecting it to be. The main character is so passionless and lives such a mundane existance and yet in a funny way it is interesting.

The book is about a young man who finishes uni in Sth Africa and then moves on to London with ideas in his head of becoming a poet. Coetzee writes entirely in the third person, although we know the main character is based on himself. He probably did that to give some apparent objectivity to his study of himself as a young man. The "He" of the novel is for most of the book unhappy. He is devoid of passion and lives a miserable existence of a computer programmer. His relationships with women are completely unsatifying. He realizes that he in fact is making himself miserable through his attitudes. But his intention is to live the life of an artist and so he justifies this as a worthwhile experience. We see him struggle through things and know the ideas he has of how to be an artist are misgiven. He seems to think the best way to be an artist is to cut himself off from his family, his country and his feelings. He idolizes writers like Henry James who seem to write in a vaccuum, with brilliant passages issueing forth from the higher cortex of their brains, and Ezra Pound with his cryptic ramblings. It is so unlike Coetzee's other writing that comes from his feelings and his Sth African roots. I guess that's the irony of the book. The author is writing about himself as a struggling artist who could never, with the mindset he's in, ever write the book that he is writing.

I think Coetzee is missing something here about his youth and youth in general. Is this book meant to be a criticism of his own attitudes as a young man? Or has he just forgotten the full experience of his own youth?.....I think he is too great a writer to say this. He seems to be trying to convey the banality of our lives, which we are confronted with even when we are young. His book stands in contrast to cliches that we often see of youth being a time of passion and thrills. I don't think it's an accurate picture but I guess it's not meant to be.The saving grace of the book is the truth in the writing. The detail and clarity of the youth's observations about himself is striking. I could see many observations and experiences that I myself have had. As the book continued I felt more sympathetic to him. He is brutally honest with himself. On one level I felt a bit sickened when I was reading it but on another level it was also very intriguing. I do find myself thinking of reading the other book he wrote about himself; entitled "Boyhood".

I wouldn't recommend this book although I can see that it is a well crafted work of art.
To me he's avoided all the "youth" cliches but in the process lost something important.

RSS

Here I have put in a photo of a galaxy because it is symbolic of the expanse of information available to librarians. Sound corny? I guess it does. I really just love this photo. I like RSS aggregators as they help you narrow down your search for information. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. They are also called feed readers. In simple terms it's a computer format that allows you to see a number of blogs, that you choose, on one site (an example is bloglines).

The amount of information that humans have produced is "galactic" Anything that allows you to focus in on information of interest or relevance is very useful. As librarians we are the lens of the telescope focusing on the stars in the galaxy of information that the borrower want to look at. No, wait! the internet is the telescope we point the telescope. No. The computer is the telescope the internet search engines are the lens....Oh God, This is getting very corny.



I have chosen blogs related to book reading (ie book reviews) as it relates to my job, and my interests. I also chose some blogs about libraries in general, about news and one about alternative energy.


The sites I chose on Bloglines are: About Contemporary Literature, Alternativeenergy blog. Bloglines News, Librarians' Internet Index, New York Times Book review, The Shifted Librarian, USATODAY.com Books, Washington Post Book reviews and Powerhouse Museum picture of the day.


I think RSS Aggregators would be helpful in my work in that I could increase my knowledge of what books are being written and I could recommend books that we could add to our collection. Also the up to date information about library issues and problems is also helpful.


Library's blogs are very useful to pass on information. If a blog serves the function of the 'old' bulletin board Then an RSS is a bulletin board of different bulletin boards. Or maybe a diary of diaries (I'm getting corny again) It's more up to date than a bulletin board and the information can be more global and cheaper to create and pass on. It's all about being able to find more information for our borrowers and find it quicker and easier.



I think some of the drawbacks should be mentioned as well. If you are not ofay with the internet as a lot of old people are, you are locked out of a lot of this. As a library worker I see a lot of old people who cannot use the internet let alone the library catalogue (let alone a mouse). I also see a some computer/internet jargon/abbrieviations used that I don't really know.



I have looked at the ACT libraries blog and found everything from opening hours to reading challenges to fun competitions to news about authors. I can see that this is a wonderful promotional device to facilitate more library participation. I hope my library will be getting one soon. The ACT library blog is well done. It has a pleasant look about it. The entries are brief and easy to read. There doesn't, though, seem to be any facility for the public to comment on the blog, unless I missed it, as you can with the blog I'm writing now.

That's all I have time for now.

"Kangaroo" is another D H Lawrence book that I have always wanted to read. I saw the movie version many years ago and really enjoyed it. I find Australian books (or books about Australia) always have a little something extra for me in them. It can be a average book but If it has an Australian connection I will still enjoy it.

When Lawrence wrote Kangaroo (around 1920's) There were very few writers (if any) of his calibre writing about Australia. So When I started reading the book I had high expectations. Having just finished Lady Chatterley's Lover and been blown away by Lawrence's writing style and depth of his observations, I was expecting a lot. As it happened I only got through half of the book.

It did have some great observations and exchanges with the main character,who is an English tourist visiting NSW for a few months, and his Australian neighbour. But I found it had long passages of exchange with the Kangaroo character which were hard to understand exactly what he meant.

Kangaroo is the head (guru) of a secret organization of ex-diggers with "ideas" of how best to run the country similar to the New Guard which existed in Australia at that time. The passages where Kangaroo talks about his philosophy of how to make a Australia a better place is deliberately written in a vague manner. Initially I found it riveting reading. I assume that Lawrence is trying to create something that all sides of politics will find something in. He avoids cliches and creates a new kind of philosophy that is interesting. The problem with it is that it loses it basis in reality.We know the New Guard was a right wing, fascist organization. By cutting off his philosophy from it's grounding in reality, the dialogue becomes more and more nebulous and meaningless as it continues.

The main character starts talking about a second force that motivates people (love is the first) and knowing Lawrence we can assume he means sex. but he disguises what he says so much, (I guess so the book won't be banned) that it's hard to know what he is talking about. Okay so this book was never banned but it's hard to know just what he is talking about.

After reading a few chapters of this dialogue with Kangaroo and the main character and not being sure what they were talking about I gave up and returned the book to the library. After I started writing this blog I became curious as to how the book ends. I have to confess I borrowed the book again and have it next to my bed now. It's funny the effect writing a blog has on people....

Ta

Hi,

I have today uploaded an image of D.H.Lawrence as a young man for your general enjoyment. Being in Black and White is appropriate as that was my impression of him before recently read his most famous book-Lady Chatterleys' Lover.

I had previously, in high school, read Sons and Lovers. A book that left no impression on me whatsoever. Hence I had the impression that he was a boring writer not relevent to a young 2008 stud like myself. A few months ago I was in Chatswood library and saw a nice new copy of lady Chatterley's Lover so I thought I'd give it a go.

I loved it. I found it a riveting read.

It's most famous as a book that was banned because of it's explicit sexual content, but it has a lot more to offer than just that. It's beautifully written and must have been ahead of it's time as it reads like a novel that was written in 2008. In it Lawrence rages against the life of England in the 1920's. Against life in a northern English coal mining town. Against sexual inhibitions and against the futility of the recently fought W.W.I.

What I loved about his writing was it's directness and the way he makes complex observations about human behaviour in an understandable way. You know just what he's talking about. Another writer would waffle on in a way that you would have an Idea of what he meant but would not be sure. With Lawrence his observations are so deep and complex but perfectly clear.

He alsohas a lot of descriptive passages about the setting of the novel. Such as the manor house where lady chatterley lives, the grim mining community nearby, the forests around the manor house. They are all beautifully expressed. You really feel you are there. He avoids all cliches in his descriptions, they are wonderfully evocative

Although it has a positive ending most of the book is extremely grim and I like that about it. He is committed to expressing the truth as he sees it even though as we know now that will mean the banning of the book for many years to come.

I would recommend this book to any adult or teenager. It is much more than you might think.

Cheers

my reading

Hi,

This is my first blog. In it I will be expressing one of my great loves.....reading. I will be talking about the books I have read, the books I am reading and the books I would like to read.

Not being in a book club and not knowing anyone who reads what I read, I have nowhere to talk about the books I have read. If you have logged on to my blog you are the unfortunate guinea pig. You are reading my thoughts and mad ravings about books.

I read novels mainly although sometimes biographies and non-fiction. I like reading classics. usually twentieth century classics. I like american and british novels. I also like australian novels as well which have something extra for me as it's the country I have lived in for the last 34 years. I love american novels also as I was born in that country and have a special connection with that culture.

Don't miss my next entry. I will reveal the novel I am reading at the moment.

See Ya