Task # 23 still not midnight but getting close....

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
I have an incredible fondness for my blog itself - before this I barely new what a blog was, and now my blog is winning me prizes (not that THAT had anything to do with it, really truly!) It's been great fun to create groovy images to make it more interesting. Must admit that I've tried to use my blog to do a bit of internal marketing for Learning 2.0 itself - thus the "don't panic" image that I've tried to change regularly. Otherwise I use flickr (which I had never used before) to upload photos from my mobile phone and have started using it to sort out my ridiculous collection of photos.
I do really like the whole wiki concept and look forward to spending some time making my new wiki pretty.... and useful.

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
I've loved it. honestly. It's made me feel as though I know more about what's out there and it's given me the confidence to explore new things - such as stumbleupon. I am always keen to learn new things but sometimes life races ahead and you just get lost in the day to day blahishness of life! learning 2.0 has given me the "prod" I needed to get into this stuff. yay.

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
actually, yes. some of it's been a blow to the ego - I used to think I was relatively up to date but during the first couple of exercises I realised how dramatically out of date I was! This has been a positive thing for me as I;ve taken some extra time to explore. Otherwise, I've gathered lots of new ideas (Google Docs for housebound institutions, wikis for community groups, podcasts for council tours, etc.) which I am aiming to try and "sell".


What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
Great program - sorry, a little overly American in parts. Did anyone else find those podcasts a little wearing? Anyway, I'd like to thank the Learning 2.0 coordinators. I imagine that it was a labour of love, but like all labours I'd bet it was slightly painful during the birthing process! Thanks so much. And I love my digital photo frame.

And there's still so much to learn!!!

Task # 22 (not quite midnight!)

ebooks and e-audio online ... wish we had it. I was fortunate enough to be able to have a play with overdrive, which is a terrific-looking tool. how brilliant, to be able to download a film from home from your local library, legally! And for myself, as a librarian, anything that avoids the regrettable necessity of fines is a blessing. I had a look at some of the audio ebooks - would be amazing for housebound individuals, for example. Also, I found out recently that you can also get software which downloads a book in braille to your home PC - if you have a special printer you can print it out and read it - in braille! now that's incredible. A brave new world.

Task # 21 podcasts

I adore iTunes and stumbled onto podcasts that way. One of the best podcasts I've ever used was one which acted as a virtual tour guide. When uploaded onto my iPod i prowled happily through the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, accompanied by a tour guide who was a) free b) pause-able and c) thorough! it was great. Try it next time you travel! Searching podcast.net - nothing on public libraries! Very sad. Public library singular picked up a few. Podcast alley picked up lots more and some clever ideas for us. Podcasts of storytimes, how brilliant! And author events, reading etc. - something to consider in Outreach work. we could also use podcasts for user education, tours - hey, our council does wonderful free tours - wish they could be done on podcast! I must go find someone to suggest it to!

Task # 20 youtube

I've been using youtube for some time and for anyone who has been bothered to scroll right down to the bottom of this page, you can see some librarian videos! youtube is one of the greatest time eaters in history. Someone today recommended i check out the George Bush sites, here is a great one . Oh dear. Honestly you have to laugh.
on a more serious note, I can see the applications of this for any library websites that have an educative function. You might have a library orientation page and add a youtube video, or any info literacy concept. youtube can also be useful for current events/news - perhaps our mayor should consider posting a youtube video talking about council's recent decision re our mobile library!

Task # 19 Discovering web tools

Going down the list of Web 2.0 awards it was nice to find a few familiar "faces", facebook, digg, reddit, flickr and youtube (of course!) and a big fave of mine, stumbleupon, which I use quite a lot at home. It really works and the more you use it the better it gets (if anyone out there loves craft, it has some fab craft sites! try not martha for a few cute ideas .. found it on stumbleupon! anyway, the purpose of this activity is not just to extol the virtues of stumbling your way through the web. I have a care2 account, which I've used for years so was glad to see that there.
I decided to try to create a wiki, as I can envisage this would be very useful to us. Just to play, created Melbourne Munchers which I am going to encourage everyone to use as a method of compiling decent restaurant reviews and places to find good recommendations. If you're reading this, please feel free to check it out! I would love to see my Library starting up some wikis in association with craft and special interest groups. We could purchase and recommend books and they can help with the content. Something in it for everyone! Wetpaint is easy to use and the template was perfect for the purpose.

Task # 18 Zoho writer

Really can't♥ think of anything to publish, but this seems like a useful tool! 

why does the formatting go all mucky when I publish this document? Anyway, can see the usefulness of this tool, particularly in an environment when email attachments take up too much space in your inbox! And the spreadsheet tool can see more use for in my work context. Quite nice editing features!

new blogger tool...slideshow

try the new slideshow tool! cool and easy!

Task # 17 PBwiki

Well, been there, edited that ... can't work the brackets or the link button (blonde moment!) but putting the address in without either of the above seems to work fine! I would like to know where a decent wiki exists out there for Melbourne restaurants as I would use it, I visit the breakfast blog to find brunch recommendations, but a wiki would be better suited i think. will search. Like a true librarian, though, I'd comment that the PB site is a complete mess and really needs someone to sit down and organise it! (no, I am not volunteering)!!

Task # 16 wikis

Ooo, the SJCPL wiki is lovely - and two amazing things about it - a) it was edited recently (nothing worse than a site that's dusty and out of date) and b) the crafts page has been accessed 49,125 times! Impressive. Someone clearly cares about that section. In some ways a shame that only the librarians can edit their wikis though, as surely the point is collaboration with users in this regard...
I luuurrrv the book lovers wiki. not a lot of content, but a clever idea to integrate a competition with a wiki and then into the library catalogue - very 2.0! also lurv the library success wiki though am terribly disappointed that the Home Library Services wiki is EMPTY (shame, fellow outreachers! i will add to this once i have something to boast of ... ) crazy, as I was scanning the web looking for just this sort of information only yesterday. i have hereby added to my del.icio.us and will use it i'm sure. much better than a forum.
so applications - I will use it myself to look for ideas (one passed on already, thank you to the library success wiki) and i can see applications for reference, subject area guides, competitions, events (e.g. run event on a topic and encourage participants, local business etc. to add to the wiki)... great section

Task # 15 Library 2.0 - It's many things to many people. What does it mean to you?

I was fascinated by Dr Wendy Schultz' vision of Library 2.0 (to 4.0!). It always concerns me, however, that so many base all of their assumptions on the notion that everyone has access to technology. It may surprise many that there are still a whole lot of people out there who don't own a computer or have access to the Internet. In an area such as Dandenong (which has the dubious distinction of topping the SEIFA index of social disadvantage (see ) this is a real and valid concern.
I quite firmly believe that in today's world a computer and net connection are no longer up the top of Maslow's hierarchy but somewhere nearer the bottom - basic fundamental human needs. You need access to a PC to study, for most jobs and services (ever called a government department asking for a form?) And let's not forget that there are a lot of people out there with minimal literacy - how are these people to cope in an online world?
Those of us who live online can barely remember living any other way, but we need to remember that not everyone has this privilege and the that Libraries need to be sure that we are not marginalising some of our members by moving services from the physical to the virtual. So how do we balance this?
The simplest way would seem to provide access in Libraries themselves. Simplest response - how far do you go? To provide a PC for every person who needs one, whenever they need one, in Greater Dandenong alone would likely require a stadium filled with PCs. Which clearly doesn't cut it. In the last census, 31.5% of Victorians stated that they did not have an Internet connection at home. In Greater Dandenong, if I am reading the data correctly, this goes up to 45%. Appreciating also the validity (or lack thereof) of a written census tool for individuals with low literacy ... the real figure is likely even higher. Incredible.
Frankly I firmly believe that this needs to be shunted from Local Government to Federal - bring on the days when concession-card holders can get free PCs, individuals can access as much literacy support as they need and all public housing has cable pre-wired. And that would be just the start...
But back to the topic at hand!! I don't wish to sound like a technophobe or defeatist, anyone who knows me should be able to refute that (or anyone who has read this blog!) I believe that while we move toward Library 4.0 we need to do two things: first, advocate for our users - high speed broadband is a wonderful thing, but what about those who don't have connection at all? and second ensure that we truly uphold the principles of Library 2.0 as a USER-FOCUSED construct and remember that not everyone lives online - yet. If we offer virtual services they need to add value rather than representing a service shift biased toward e-patrons, creating increased isolation and marginalisation of a vast user community.
OK, enough diatribe! Bring on Library 4.0 - for ALL of our users.
Cheers
Donna

Valid excuses for not keeping up to date with blog!

Hello all
anyone reading this blog might be forgiven for thinking i'm incredibly slack - not to mention ungrateful! for not doing anything related to this blog for quite some time - however i do have a completely valid excuse! I am currently taking the longest period of sick leave i've ever taken in my life, owing to a few small dramas with my achilles tendon (think severed - yuch) and some associated complications - fun fun fun. very grateful and thrilled to have won a prize though, thank you Learning 2.0! Entirely unexpected and nice news to get in a hospital bed when you're feeling a tad self-pitying. Now that i am allowed to sit with my foot lower that my heart, I can get moving on finishing this, as many of my clever colleagues have done.

Task # 14

OK, well I've just started on Technorati and decided to try claiming my blog using "post claim", which is asking me to enter the following piece of code:
Technorati Profile, and then click on a button which says "release the spiders"! As a moderate arachnophobic that scares me a bit but I'm going to assume that nothing black and hairy is actually going to jump through the monitor at me and "just do it" as the Nike people would say (sorry)! Wish me luck!

Well, no spiders here ... however in further playing around with searching for Learning 2.0, found this interesting piece on youtube.... very appropriate to the topic at hand!


Having a look at "Popular" in Technorati. People are clearly interested in Dumbledore and JK Rowling's recent revelation about his sexuality. Wonder why people really care who a fictional character does, or does not, sleep with....

Having done some searches and found a few things of interest, I think I'm getting the hang of this.

Week 6 Task #13

Hello again to anyone reading this. I've been exploring with del.icio.us and it seems like quite a neat tool. We need this one on the ref desk for certain. I haven't quite got my head around it yet, though, so I think further playing may be required! It's not the most friendly interface I've ever seen, but perhaps once I get used to it I won't mind that. It's interesting that so many of these sites seem to have a social networking component. So much for those who claim that increased use of the internet will lead to increased isolation!
Another tool you may want to have a look at if you have time to kill is stumbleupon (www.stumbleupon.com). similar sort of theory to del.icio.us in a way, but based on "interests". you can browse through some really terrific online content but talk about a time devourer ...

Week 5 Task #12

e-books on Rollyo - how fab! have created a rolled search on recipes which I may actually use. See "aussie recipes" for some of my favourites.

see http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/14822/flourless+orange+cake for a delicious recipe for the following cake:

Week 5 Task #11

Had a look at LibraryThing - looks interesting. Have catalogued a few books but I always find that I can't remember books that I've read and enjoyed when I'm asked (thus my love of fiction guides etc.!). Link to catalogue: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/ameithyste

Week 5 Task # 10

Well I said I would turn off the PC, but this is just too much fun (yes, I'm serious!)

Made my own romance novel cover at http://www.glassgiant.com/romance/ , also made a snowglobe and did my own makeover (hah hah hah).

Love my little avatar, made at http://www.doppelme.com/

And put a message for you in coffee at http://www.imagechef.com/

A Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto

incredibly apt - look at this

Week 4 Task #9

OK, more on RSS feeds! First thing I did was to visit a couple of sites I already know about and see if I could subscribe - http://taste.com.au has a great feed - if you live in Australia and love to cook, you should already know about this website, so no more information! Found a couple of others using stumbleupon (recommends websites according to your preferences and does a pretty good job at picking interesting ones) and subscribed to those - once the novelty of this wears off I am really going to have to prune these subscriptions, as there is no way I will ever have time to read them all!!
Visited feedster to have a look for information on public libraries - initially received a lot of irrelevancies, tried a phrase search which returned more of the same. Hmmm. The topic search was more interesting. Found a travel website which sounded OK. Overall, not incredibly impressed.
HINT! For those of you working on IE 7, I have a very nifty little button in my toolbar that tells me where a site has feeds.
I added Melbourne news to my bloglines via Topix - wonder how it knows where I live? Also added some Offbeat news (who can resist a good brain-eating amoeba story?) Found that they have a Libraries news section and subscribed to that too. Using "Dandenong" was too specific for a Topic search.
Google blog search made me sigh a little with relief - nothing like a little familiarity sometimes when you're off exploring new worlds. Lots of blogs that mention public libraries, including some belonging to Learning 2.0 participants. Seems as though a lot of public libraries have new books blogs - unfortunately not us, though (as yet). All so easy when you know how! Monash has events listed (love the lovely Google) but mainly American stuff. A search on "Dandenong Library" revealed a blog written by one of our customers - (an "ah ha!" moment for anyone who questions why we are doing this program!) and another - (including a photo of the library! OK, maybe we are only barely visible in the corner of the photo, but still!) and another! right, moving on....
(sooo easy to get sidetracked!) Technorati picked up quite a bit on Dandenong and some incredibly vile racist stuff about the Sudanese. A reminder to me that the net has it's dark side. I also learnt that people are ripping pages out of our manga books (there's that dark side again!). OOo, found Natalie's blog!
Fed up now :-) One last thing before I turn off this computer ... checked out the ANZ Ref Centre and have discovered that it lets you feed searches - which seems like great way of tracking what's going on in the media. I've fed in "Dandenong Library" and have found an article by one of our talented staff and (in some ways thankfully) that's it. *yawn*

Week 4 Task #8

Well after some very entertaining times, we have discovered that it's actually not us doing something WRONG with Bloglines that's creating the problem - it's our blessed security software at work! Thus the fact that it is now some ridiculous hour at home and I am busy playing with feeds. Oh well. Bloglines is very interesting and I'm very pleased that I can pop RSS links into my own Blogger blog also. I couldn't see the tab to make it public, so have included a small screenshot of the feeds I have subscribed to.

Plenty of applications for this technology in a public library - people can subscribe to our blogs (for instance, latest events or new items in the library), we can set up feeds to sites we think people might want to check out, etc. etc. For myself, I've subscribed to a large number of extremely frivolous sites. So for right now, it seems like a new way to spend even more time online doing frivolous things, but now that I actually know what that RSS button does, I will see where it takes me!

Week 3 Task # 7

OK, well blogging about technology ... first, I can barely remember what it was like NOT to own a PC, my first PC was a Mac with an unbelievably tiny monitor, black and white like the picture. Awwww shucks, ain't it sweet? Bit different from the flat-screen wonders of today, yes? I like to think that I am something of a techno-holic - love the lovely toys produced to make life easier/prettier/more fun! My iPod is a wonderful thing and it's been a long time since I've bought a CD anywhere but iTunes. Another "toy" I adore is my GPS nav system, which means I can actually find my way from Hampton to Ascot Vale without needing to do a "quick" detour via Niddrie or over to the airport!
As for the online world... I live on the net and my current addiction is facebook, though I think it's giving me a complex about how many friends I've got in comparison to some of my other friends! I do pretty much everything online, from paying bills to finding out about anything I need to know.
I am hoping that at work we will be able to work some of this Web 2 stuff into our daily tasks, as I truly believe that if we put our heads together we can produce something new and interesting, which we can use to help our patrons. I can see possibilities for ELLA, for readers' advisory, for adult events, youth, reference, you name it!
Cheers,
Donna

Week 3: more flickr stuff (#6)

Hello all,

Well, I've just discovered what a mashup is - and hey, I thought it was just something to do with potatoes, but NO! I created this adorable (if I do say so myself) playing card by "borrowing" (ahem) an image from flickr - there are some very clever photographers out there! - and using the playing card tool recommended on the site. Fun, yes?

Let's see if this works ... I've been playing with a mashup called PictoBrowser (http://www.db798.com/pictobrowser/) , so you should be able to see all of the Librarian Trading cards posted on Flickr (provided it works, of course)!!!

Flickr continued ... (just for fun)

Very excited - found the flickr mobile site (http://m.flickr.com/), which works really well! I can now get photos from my Mobile phone onto flickr and onto my blog. I love this shot of my cat, Elmo (Mo for short).

Week 3: flickr (hints)

CIMG0147
Originally uploaded by ameithyste

Hello again,

A couple of hints with flickr - you can either sign in to flickr by creating a yahoo! account or just browse and copy in a photo. People have had some dramas connecting up their blogs, so DON'T PANIC if you can't do it - it doesn't really matter. If you want to try and connect your blog to flickr, use this link: http://www.flickr.com/blogs.gne and put in your blog's details. Then you can find a photo you want to put into your blog by searching or browsing through the massive selection available. Click on the photo until it is as big as it can get. On the top of the photo you have selected there should be a series of small "buttons", one of which says "blog this" (see left). Click on that, pick your blog from the list and you should be OK! If you aren't connecting up your blog just right-click on a picture, save it and add it to a post in your blog.

Anyway, the other photo is actually one of mine. I am not a brilliant photographer, but somtimes I get lucky and I do like this shot. It was taken in Fiji just before I started in this job.

Cheers! :D

Week 3: flikr

IMG_0551
Originally uploaded by ameithyste

Week 3: flikr
flikr seems like a good thing, but now I've ended up with a yahoo! email address to add to the collection! Anyway, this is my photo of the Great Wall of China, from a trip a few years' back. China is an amazing place - i've been twice now and am considering a third trip. But how to decide when there are so many amazing places in the world to visit?

Week 1 - better late than never!

Week 1: Learning
Habit 1 – Begin with the end in mind
Habit 2 – Accept responsibility for your own learning
Habit 3 – View problems as challenges
Habit 4 – Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner
Habit 5 – Create your own learning toolbox
Habit 6 – Use technology to your advantage
Habit 7 – Teach and mentor others
Habit 7 ½ – PLAY! Have fun! It's never too late to become a lifelong learner.

Hmmm, so we're supposed to say which of these we find most difficult... well, I love to learn and am always looking for a new challenge, love to solve problems (or at least try!) I also like technology (just check out the contents of my handbag) and believe very strongly in the value of play, PARTICULARLY when it comes to technology. And I love to teach/mentor. Perhaps the first one - sometimes I can go off on learning "tangents" and dash off trying to find out about new things that I don't really need to know about for the specific purpose. But that's fairly typical of me (easily distracted)! Anyway, hope you're still having fun and thanks to the anonymous Springvale staff who reminded me about this particular task by doing their homework properly!

Week 2: Blogging
Well, my first ever Blog, how exciting! And not so tricky to set up (although a tip from me - don't try putting GIFs into your title bar, as you will never be able to get rid of 'em). Hope you're all having fun. Bye! :-) Donna