Thing 23

This has been a very interesting course. I think it was a great idea to involve the whole of ACL - lots of people have been talking about their different discoveries and I've enjoyed reading some of the blogs tracking my colleagues' progress. By having everyone participate we've also really increased the skills and understanding of ACL staff as a whole. Another excellent aspect was the incentive - not just a prize draw but an actual (and desirable) prize for everyone completing. That's a great idea. I'd like to see more whole-of-library programs (with good incentives) in the future. My only concern was the time this took. When I started out I thought the time commitment was about 15mins per day. It has been much more than that - more like an hour a day. I don't begrudge it but it has affected my planning.

Thing 22

Creating a Netlibrary account was insanely difficult and has put me into a bit of a bad mood. It took me about 10 goes to find an unused username - and each time the software made me re-enter all my account details before taking ages to tell me I couldn't have the username. And it crashed completely three times. I also don't like the search engine. If it is a library, I should be able to browse books. But if this is possible then I can't work out how to do it (and yes I did read the help). So not a good start. And then we come to the problem of the reader. I don't want to read on a computer screen - I like to hold what I am reading in my hand. But the ebook readers are problematic. I quite fancied the Sony version but it is only available in the US. And it is expensive, as is the Kindle. And the wireless updating part of the Kindle sounds problematic for the NZ market as well. I could buy a suitable PDA but that is more expensive still. I think I will have to wait a bit longer before embracing the ebook.

Thing 21

Podcasts have reminded me that I stopped listening to the radio because most of what I heard didn't interest me - but no such problem with podcasts. I love the ability to specialise. One of my favorite rants a few years ago was "stupid TV Olympics highlights never shows what I want to see or shows three minutes of the winning performance without all the other competitors and therefore the excitement blah blah blah..." I am going to watch the Olympics via podcast. I'll be able to see what I'm interested in without having to sit through the boxing first... However that isn't until next year - so meanwhile I've posted a nice ranting political feed to complete this exercise. Apparently (according to the description) it will train me up to win any argument.

Thing 20

Well there was only one choice of video to post in my blog... check out my daughter showing off on her birthday. What I like about Youtube: all kinds of videos of every conceivable type (my son is enraptured by Gene Kelly singing in the rain). What I don't like: dodgy image quality and super slow streaming. No doubt both will improve over time - after all, only a couple of years ago I couldn't watch video over the internet at all.

Thing 19

I chose to have a look at lulu (the "Books" category winner). This is fascinating. I collect NZ science fiction which includes a number of self published books - I can see that lulu will increase the numbers of books to buy... in fact I have even found one on the site today. What is interesting about that is that it is not published in New Zealand - place of publication is one of the ways I find books for my collection. So I will have to watch for this in future and work out some more clever search strategies. Interesting for library purchasing strategies too - allows us to buy books on request and have them printed on demand. These will never be out of print so we don't have to buy them "just in case".

Thing 18

Online word processors are a great idea. I already have problems with transferring files between work and home because at home I use a Mac - and open source office software - and there are always formatting problems when I move from one to the other. I have created a document and emailed it to myself at home in OpenOffice format - will be very interested to see what arrives.

Thing 17

Favorite book and blog duly added to sandbox wiki.

Thing 16

I think the wiki is a fantastic tool for sharing knowledge. We all know about wikipedia... and let's face it, we all use it. I have lately been using the Greenstone wiki. Greenstone is the name of an open source software we are considering adapting for library use - the wiki works like a manual where I can get answers to my questions, but also benefit from the practical experience of other users around the world (which you don't get from a manual). There is another really interesting example of a wiki application for libraries at Horowhenua library. Here people in the Horowhenua community (and beyond) are uploading their own content to build an amazing local history/community resource.

Thing 15

I agree with Rick Anderson that library users out there want "everything". But I don't think that means getting rid of the hard copy just in case collections quite yet. I think our customers/users do want everything - including hard copy, digital, web 2.0 technologies, catalogues, indexes, human librarians, online reference... they want it all. So how do we provide it? Well in reality we will have to either abandon some services, or spend more money. Or perhaps both. Or we need to get more help from users as Chip Nilges says. But let's remember this won't be free either - tagging, commenting, adding content etc all need to be actively supported and technology kept up to date.

Thing 14

My search for "Learning 2.0" found me a bunch of people around the world doing this course... tag searching found hundreds more hits than searching blog posts, but of course the directory was most helpful if trying to find blogs directly about the topic. What surprised me about the top blogs/searches were how terribly earnest and worthy most of them are. I was expecting 90% Britney but not so. People are taking their online life very seriously! Although number 10 was all cat pictures so perhaps not that seriously. And it is certainly possible to locate Britney in there.

Thing 13

Del.icio.us has the potential to suck me into a vortex of ever expanding links until I can't remember where I started... I enjoyed it to play with, but if you are trying to research somethin how do people keep on track and not wander off just to see what you get if you click on that tag? And then that one? I got from libraryblogs to alcohol in four clicks and now I can't remember what I was trying to do with libraryblogs... also, the sites that were really popular had a lot of, um... not terribly helpful comments. Although this might have been a result of the subject matter - perhaps 'the online guide to drinking' is never going to get a range of thoughtful and considered comments.

Thing 12

I can see Rollyo coming in quite handy. I've set up a search across various booksellers that I use regularly so that I can look for books for my collection more easily. This may of course prove to be a more efficient way of spending too much money. I had to take Amazon out of it again though because searches that work well on the other sites get too many hits on Amazon - they just aren't compatible for cross-site searching. Anyway there is a wee search box on this page now for you to use if you like.

Thing 11

Welcome to my LibraryThing account. This is another one I had already played with before. I tried using it to make a record of my collection of NZ science fiction and fantasy. However I have only done the first 11 books in my collection as I found the process quite time consuming. Not many of them had been catalogued before and of those that were, I generally wasn't happy with the standard of cataloguing and did it again. Which seems far too much like being at work, so I lost interest. But here is the link anyway:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=Wilberforce

Thing 10

OK, these generators are just plain silly. But strangely compelling...

My random German name is : Tatjana Sahm.

My homespun analogy for the day is : He's as jumpy as a holy bumble-bee in the cow shed.

And I still don't really enjoy image generators but here is a custom road sign just to prove I am paying attention to the lessons:

Thing 9

These are my current favorite work related feeds: Slashdot, Shifted Librarian, USA Today book news. Between the three of them I feel much more up to date. I also love The Onion, but struggle to connect it to work (perhaps keeping morale up?) And I enjoy following some of my colleagues' blogs - but Nancy Pearl seems to have fallen silent!

Thing 8

I would love to post a link to my Bloglines account, but I can't work it out. As far as I know my username is my email address, however when I create the following link http://www.bloglines.com/public/keziah.singleton@aucklandcity.govt.nz , it doesn't work - I get the message 'incorrect username'. I don't know what my username is and I can't work out how to find out. So someone will have to tell me? I notice that the link given in the training blog has the same construction as my attempt ie. http://www.bloglines.com/public/acl.elgar@gmail.com, and that doesn't work either!

Update: have battled my way to a username so here is the link as requested:

http://www.bloglines.com/public/Wilberforce

Thing 7 (Wot I like about Technology)

I like:

MP3 files, in the specific form of my ipod. Oh I do love my ipod. 768 songs awaiting my listening pleasure. Or the same song over and over again. Playlists of stuff the kids will like. Playlists of stuff I like. Little pictures of album cover art. Itunes for every piece of music I have thought of wanting so far (and I do not doubt there will be more). And I can play it through the radio in the car.

Email. I know it has been around for a while but every so often it still blows my mind. We can contact anyone, anywhere just like that. It has made the world so much smaller.

Mobile phones. How did we survive?

Thing 6

I neglected to mention third party applications in my previous Flickr post... probably because I didn't really like any I tried. I made a Warhol print with a picture of my son - but Warhol did it before me and frankly, did it better. I made a mosaic thingy - the first one didn't have enough pictures and just looked like a bunch of tiles, the second one had too many and I couldn't focus on it. Then I tried retrievr, in which you draw a sketch and it searches flickr for similar images. I drew an amulet, and got lots of pictures of kids. I drew a mouse, and got lots of pictures of kids. I drew a cat's ears, and got lots of pictures of kids. At which point I decided that manipulating images just isn't my thing and the results don't justify the bother. But one third party app which I do like is the uploading tool, as mentioned before.

Week 4, RSS feeds

Well, I've just spent an hour reading book reviews and other people's blogs. It has been great fun - and I don't even have to promise to be anyone's friend! It's like secretly reading someone's diary, but without the moral queasiness. There are some great posts out there - I'm especially indebted to the lovely Nancy Pearl of ACL for the porcupine. My question now is this: can I spend an hour reading feeds every day, and call it working?

Week 3 (but a bit late)

Flickr is one of my favourite sites as my family is insatiable for photos of my children! By posting them on Flickr I can keep a dozen people happy with one upload. Sure beats emailing enormous files around the world.

Accessing it for this training has proven a bit of a challenge... I couldn't remember the password for my account (my computer at home kindly remembers it for me). I requested a reminder which got sent to an old (dead) email address. So I have had to go home, update the account on Flickr from the machine which knows the password (although it won't tell it to me...) then come back into work and request another reminder. At long last I have access and have been able to post a picture of my lovely children for your viewing pleasure.

The best Flickr tool ever as far as I am concerned is the Mac photo uploader I found some time ago. Suddenly uploading photos went from fiddly and time consuming to a one-click effort. Now the hardest part of the process is remembering where I put the camera!

Thing 4 (week 2)

The trouble with social networking sites is that I'm not very sociable and don't like networking. But since it is part of the course I have dutifully signed up to Bebo, although I don't know if Auckland City Libraries will want to be my friend... I've enjoyed MySpace but got distracted finding out that one of my favourite bands has put out a new album - didn't even know they were still playing. Have just bought the album, this could turn out to be an expensive training course! Couldn't find any old friends in Facebook, there were only three people admitting to be from my (large) high school.

My second learning was to check the settings... my time zone was a long way from home!

Welcome to the Wilberforce blog. I have set it up as the first step in a workplace training course on Web 2.0.



The main challenge so far has been thinking of a name for my blog which was, as instructed in the course notes "anonymous, yet uniquely you". I've utilised (wasted) a great deal of the allocated training time on this.



The name is a reference to a (fictional) race of giant world-eating slugs. If this is uniquely me, then my attitude may need a little adjustment this morning.