The final countdown

I joined Facebook last year when my daughter went overseas and although I am not a regular participant I do enjoy the interaction and the wide variety of applications it has to offer. I love the idea of libraries being on Facebook or other social networking sites and I have now become a fan of The British Library.

A Facebook (or other social networking service) page could complement or maybe even be an alternative to a library website for libraries with little IT or technical backup to keep a website updated. A Facebook or Bebo page could be suitable for teen groups in libraries. It may help to boost their membership numbers and enable them to interact with similar groups in other libraries.

These sites may also provide an alternative method of answering client queries especially those about local history or genealogy. Other members beside library staff just may have valuable information to provide.

If a number of libraries were involved there may be lots of opportunities to share resources or expertise. Perhaps an online book discussion group with members in a number of different libraries….

It has been an informative and exciting 12 weeks. A bit of information overload and I feel that I have only scratched the surface of each module's content. Hopefully it will all still be up there to refer to every now and again when I have a moment of inspiration and think "I know how we can do that!"

It's all online

The library newsletter came straight to mind when I started this module. At the moment staff members take a month each to compose the newsletter with contributions from other colleagues. This requires a lot of emailing back and forth. Google docs would make this much easier. Maybe we could all work on the newsletter together with one person responsible for the final editing and tidying up….

After creating and (hopefully) sharing a document with Google docs I set up an account and played around with Zoho. It seemed to offer a few more options as far as editing text and formatting goes. It looked a bit more complicated though so Google docs would probably be an easier option for a first time user.

I loved Zamzar too. We have been looking for a way to convert files to pdf format for ages but I thought we needed expensive software or equipment. How wrong I was! We could convert our newsletter to pdf now to put it onto the library website.

I was impressed by the Tada list from the Slideshare slideshow. That could make me just that little bit more organised perhaps!!

Will I mess up the mashup?

Some great possibilities with mashups.... the Star Viewer was really amazing. I have a few friends and family members who would be really interested to explore it so I will be sending a link to them although they probably know all about it already!

There are so many different types of mashups that there would be plenty of ways to use them in the library. The Big huge labs image generator would provide some great images for the library newsletter or website while Google maps could be used to set up an information page for tourists or backpackers about our region. Could Voicethread be used for an online book review or book discussion perhaps? The possibilities are endless I'm sure.

Now to see if my mashup has worked. Big huge labs was easy to use and I had lots of fun playing with it. I will try to upload a photo mosaic I made of random ballooning pictures from Flickr which were taken over Easter in our town.

Plenty of podcasts

A much better week... I was already familiar with podcasting as I have been catching up on favourite ABC radio and TV shows that I miss at home for a while now. I enjoyed checking out a few different ones though for this module.

The British Library site was very easy to follow - more so than the ABC I think - but both have a lot to offer. I got hooked on the kids stuff that I found through the Library Success wiki. What a great idea Denver Library has to podcast readings of popular kids books. The children's librarian inside me wants to run out now and record the shortlisted Children's Book Week selection ASAP! The Online Education Database would have been wonderful when I was studying. I didn't actually listen to any of those podcasts as I was a bit too tired at the time to take in such heavy topics!

Libraries could do so much with podcasting. My heart lies with children's services so I would love to follow Denver's lead and podcast kids stories - maybe as a follow up to our regular storytime session. Podcasts of the rhymes and songs we use for our lapsit sessions would also be useful for the mums as an accompaniement to the sheets we hand out - just in case they have forgotten the tune.

Podcasts and vodcasts, online video - all are ideal tools for staff education. Inservice sessions would be much more accessible when there was no travelling involved.

Q but not sure about the A's

Have tried a couple more questions on Yahoo!7 Answers with varying results. Have had one or two reasonable answers but a number of frivolous if not downright rude responses. I can see the value in this type of service but I wouldn't take it too seriously. After all the answers are obviously provided by the general public who do not necessarily have any expertise in the particular subject area. I think I will stick to the Ask a Librarian sites.

Q and A

I didn't find a question I felt I could answer on Yahoo!7 Answers but I did post a question - in the pets category about rabbits of course! It was a little bit tricky because I tried to add an email address but we got there in the end.
I was amazed to find answers to my query popping up within half an hour. Some good suggestions too some of which confirmed what I suspected. The answers did vary though as my question was fairly open but I might even try this again.

Slamming the Boards

Being a small library I’m not sure how well used such an online service would be at this stage. With lots of promotion it may take off, particularly with the younger members but we would need to have the time to be able to keep it maintained. Most of our patrons enjoy the face to face service we already offer and would not bother to rate or review items in our collection or services we offer.

We do have an Ask A Local Librarian - link on our website with a link to the State Library of NSW Ask a librarian service. We do get occasional requests from people from other areas who usually need information about some aspect of our community or its history – genealogy requests more often than not.

The possibilities for the future are endless, however and I would love to think that within a couple of years our library will also be way up there with the best of the big libraries. This course is showing me so many ways that we could improve or complement our existing service which is so exciting and I look forward to being able to implement some of them eventually. I just have to remember – baby steps!