Friday, June 27, 2008

Mashups -- The value of Energy and Teamwork


Recently we've been seeing a lot of Energy and Teamwork on our floor. In this mashup I'd like to pay tribute to some of Ela and Chris Fam's excellent work. It was well appreciated by all!!! The only problem is that Joanna will have another title to catalogue but then she loves doing that. Good on you Serials Team!!!

The law of precession


I started looking at Stanen Design and what it does and it reminded me of The law of precession. This is like when a bee makes honey. That's it's goal. It's purpose is to fertilize flowers. This is like when you tag pictures on Flickr and then some one like these guys comes along and makes a mashup with tagged photos of peoples holidays and then mash them up with place names from the United States postal system. You never know what your goal is going to end up producing. So you better keep doing it! Flickrvision blew my head away as well. All these places all over the world and all these moments from people's lives being fired back at you. What is this all about? How can you take it all in?

Monday, June 23, 2008

Podcast Opportunities



I went into Online education database and Yahoo podcasts search with some interest but soon I was mentally back at university wondering why can't I understand any of this stuff?

Am I an idiot, I wondered. Of course I'm not an idiot, none of us are; totally. It's just either the recording situation or the speaker is not up to par. This issue was highlighted for me the more podcasts I looked at.

If we want to use this media at the State Library I would hope that we would consider:
  1. Choosing a form of file that is compatible with a wide range of recievers (does everyone have/want ITunes?).
  2. Get a type of file that downloads quickly (do you really want to spend a long time downloading a file?).
  3. Make recordings that are of a good quality (clear to listen to and the speaker actually knows how to speak).

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Library Success at the State Library

At the State Library podcasts could be used for a number of purposes we have previously used flyers and other written material. Young clients seem to be keen to take up the new information technology and we can exploit this self provided conduit. Here are some of the ways:
  1. Oral History tapes online or MP3 player
  2. Presentations by interesting speakers in the library on interesting items we have in the collection. Elizabeth Ellis and Paul Brunton doing a Betty Churcher.
  3. Answering frequently asked questions on reader education subjects
  4. A personal guided tour of the Library
  5. Talk me through I.T. procedures.
  6. Talk me through cataloguing procedures.
  7. Induction information for new workers in the library

ABC and British Museum Podcasts


I went onto the ABC podcast site and found an episode of the Gruen Transfer (which I watched at home). What an opportunity we have now, you can catch up with back episodes of your favourite shows and documentaries.

I listened to Evelyn Waugh's voice that the British Museum has in their collection. This made me think of all the oral history tapes we have in the Library. Podcasts connected to the State Library's website would be a wonderful way to make them available.

Regina Sutton has already made use of podcasts so we can visit or revisit Towne meetings and other presentations on the intranet. I think we are just chipping away at the potentiality of this medium. With the popularity of MP3 players I think we've got something.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Yahoo 7 Answers

The Yahoo 7 Answers "Adventure" assignment was a lot of fun. I posted a question and I felt all responsible but as I went through it started to seem more and more funny. The question was all about naming this woman's future child Freya or Wyatt. I said think about how that child will feel living with that name but then I weakened and said:

"If these are names that refer to some sort of media association then in ten or twenty years time everyone will be able to tell their age by that association and be thought terribly cheesy (all those Britneys and Courtneys are probably already having a hell of a time).

All my best wishes, Sue
P.S. Terribly sorry if your name is, in fact, Britney or Courtney"

I was checking through the questions that other people had put up. Similarly there were a mixture of serious and humorous answers. As one person pointed out, here they are asking total strangers about the most personal issues of their lives. Maybe this isn't a good idea.

I remember an anecdote that the presenter of a seminar on social networks on the internet told us. A man wrote in "what do I do when I have these pains in my chest?" and people were desperately writing back "for God's sake man, go to a doctor". What I mean is these sites are a lot of fun but you have to use your own judgement when asking a particular question.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Slamming the Boards



What a great idea "slamming the boards" is; getting in to where people are doing the searching and giving potential clients free samples. That's always been a great way of advertising. (Hold on a minute, we're usually free).

We could provide links to out site and our library; a kind of paper trail, without the paper. We would have to have a think about this, would we do this on a regular basis, or just hit and run? Build a kind of reference service away from home?

And who would do this sort of thing, just reference librarians? Often questions are from other librarians with cataloguing issues and people with technical services experience would be better equipped to answer such questions. The possibilities are endless.

Tag lines and signatures

I thought the Answer Board Librarians Wiki was a great idea. These were my favourite tag lines and signitures. I couldn't help imagining what the people were like behind the tag lines. This is what I think:

Librarians--Ask Us, We Answer!
She wears flat shoes and never wears a skirt.

Librarians--We eat questions for breakfast!
She's a bit plump and has a wild look around the eyes.

Librarians--Yep, we're here!
This one lives for their holidays and flex days.

Have a question you don't want the whole world to see?
This is the colleague that turns up each day wearing sun glasses.

Librarians ... the ultimate search engines
Works in I.T. and dresses like a goth.

Librarians provide power tools to the people.
Has to be a male librarian, does a lot of work on his home at the weekend.

Librarians are where you are - online! (The Library is a resource, not a building).
This one looks like Ellen and Mylee.

Guess which one looks like me.

Social Searching


In big picture view I think "social searching" makes a lot of sense. Everyone putting in their bit of the picture is like each of us contributing a peice of a zigsaw puzzle. The whole idea of each person being a "neuron" is right. The way I see it there are two sorts of people: the "numbers" people who contribute logic and control and the "ideas" people who contribute courage and compassion. Bring both of those types together on a situtation and you have balance. It's what the world needs right now. If technology can do it for us, I say bring it on.

Monday, June 9, 2008

Del.icio.us - Technorati - Library Thing


Del.icio.us is a must; after a few of these Learning 2.0 sessions I can't even remember what all these sites were. So I started adding some of the sites to my Del.icio.us account as a way of keeping notes. I had a little problem working out where I put the URL from my blog but I suppose I should have looked at the notes from Sharon Morris first.

Technorati is interesting, a way of getting into all the blogs out there by subject. I have started a blog on my own interest and am hoping to tag it and so get people to access it out there on the internet. Otherwise you just don't have a hope (I seem to have the same name as a Canadian detective T.V. program character - so as far as everyone out there is concerned I'm a blind detective with a dog).

Library Thing was cool but I have some reservations. I thought there were privacy issues involved with telling people what books you were interested in; I think they have laws about this in the U.S.A. I suppose when you get onto Library Thing you don't tag all those books about terrorism and the middle east.

Using Learning 2.0


Here's a minor brain wave. How do you catalogue a big pile of crumbling posters? These babies were not intended to exist the day after they were printed; sixty-eight years ago. No problem. Photograph them with a digital camera. Download onto your computer and tag them with the poster number and date. Then you can organise them "virtually" into ten distinct poster groups and catalogue them onto Millennium. Easy peasy. Well it did take a few key strokes but it was definitely better that hoovering all those tiny pieces of newspaper off the carpet. Other opportunities might include adding such photographs onto Flickr, with tags and linking them in some way to the catalogue. It might be easier (and cheaper) than scanning and you don't have to handle the posters as much.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Folksomy - Taxonomy - Mission Impossible?


It seems I've been a taxonomist for some time; adding tags in a more or less organised way. Folksonomists add tags that mean stuff to them and probably don't imagine what the person out there would want to see in a tag. Why should they? It's all about them.

As librarians and cataloguers the challenge (should we choose to accept it) is to imagine our audience and it's view point to add value to our subject headings. This audience will include reference clients, reference librarians and a number of other stake holders. Hey guys - what would you like us to serve up to you?