Week 8: Answer boards and social searching

I had been aware of some social searching such as Amazon and Yahoo answers. However, Slamming the Boards was new to me. It is designed to get reference librarians to provide answers on popular answer boards. I can see that this feature would be useful to our library. I'm sure customers would be also be keen to rate new books that come into the collection like in the Amazon website.

The modern Library

Week 7: del.icio.us & Library Thing

I found setting up a an account with del.icio.us was easy enough to do. It really helped having the notes that were prepared by Sharon Morris to follow though. I can see that it would be a concept the library could really make use of. I had a look at other libraries that had made use of them and they had created a whole range of subject headings that the public could easily access which linked them to great sites. Having the tags and been able to arrange them into groups is great.




I found Library Thing to be an easy to use tool for keeping all your books listed as a catalogue. It is also interesting to see how many book related groups are available as well as information on your particular book you may have listed.

Week 6: videos online

This weeks training was interesting. I have watched a number of videos from YouTube before. However i looked at the ones given as examples in the training session and viewed them through google video. I thought the lego video i watched was cool because it had the lego characters animated. When i looked up a Liverpool Plains video i was expecting it to be pretty boring. However, there was a great music soundtrack to go with the video that made it appealing. There was no actual dialogue to the video. I then proceded to look up the other examples. 'We love our Nj libraries' had a bit of a background rap to it which i thought was cool. The QandANJ was also great. It was promoting online help from libraries but it advertised it being accessible like a Maccas drivethrough! Mosman Library had a array of videos of authors etc giving talks. So it was great this week to see how differently the videos could be made to appeal to the public. Also that libraries could make use of them!

Week 5: Wikis

When i first learnt about Wikis i thought anyone could add information to them. I have since seen alot whereby you need to be a member within the group to add or edit. Looking at 3 of the Wikis on the training site site i also noticed this. In the 'Booklovers' one by Princeton public library you needed to be part of the Summer reading program to add a book review. I enjoyed this Wiki as I liked the idea of the book reviews. I can see it is a good idea for libraries. The 'Full Library Success Wiki meant anyone with a library background could add ideas to the different headings within libraries. Again you still need to register and there are guidelines which i feel are a very guide. For those who are really keen you can add a profile of yourself within this site! The last Wiki i looked at was the St. Joseph County Public Library's Subject Guides. Again to add or edit information you needed to be a specific member, in this case a librarian. As well as the subject guides there were many links leading back to the library.

Week 4: RSS

Well i managed okay with week 4. RSS is something new to me. I don't think it is something i would really use. I added a few news sites and a book site. I can see that it could be handy for some people so they can view it from the one site without having to refresh their favourites all the time. I guess a Library could make use of RSS for events that are coming up and new books that have come in etc.