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.