test drive #6

Delicious seems like an excellent way to share links, and to create a useful subject guide or research tool. The AskNow site is a good example of how useful this could be. I really like the ability to have all my bookmarks available from any browser. But isn't it funny, I remember 10 years ago when we were creating websites that contained pages of "useful links" to different subjects. The Noosa Library website had heaps of links for staff and public alike. I guess the great thing about this is it's web 2.0, anyone can do it.

test drive #5

I explored rss feeds with Google reader which makes it really easy to add a feed, simply go to any feed and when you click on the link the option is there to add it to reader. Google reader is under the "more" menu on the Google homepage.

RSS feeds are a good way to push info to your clients, so libraries could use them in a lot of ways, such as advertising events or a regular "how to" on an aspect of the library catalogue.

test drive #4

I have had a Facebook page for a while (be my friend :-), I first signed up as a quick way of keeping in touch with family members while they were travelling. It works well for that, but the "I'm just sitting here waiting for the kettle to boil" thing doesn't do it for me.

Sunshine Coast Libraries has a Facebook page and I guess for people who are keen to follow the library online this works, however it remains to be seen how succesful this type of promotion is.

Our LMS vendor has created a Facebook application which hooks Facebook pages into the Library catalogue, I think that will have some takeup, same as the Spydus gadget, which loads on your desktop and interfaces with the library catalogue.

test drive #3

Wikis are one of the better ways to share information. At Noosa Library we have used wikis for a couple of years, we have an internal staff wiki for sharing policies and procedures, linking to documents etc., and we have Noosawiki , a heritage wiki for the former Noosa Shire. Both these sites have worked really well. I am also a big fan of wikipedia, and as discussed in this program, the accuracy of the information in Wikipedia is quite good.

For libraries, wikis are a very useful tool. And as to the reach of information available, I was surprised to find that the tiny town of Kin Kin, Qld had an entry in Wikipedia, and to my knowledge the information regarding the origin of the name was correct.

test drive #2

As I said in my hiking group blog I have tried using Flickr and I found some of the uploading and display options tedious, for instance I wanted to display older photos first, and in practising I burned up my 1 month 100 meg upload limit in 1 day. Still I found this photo of our SCL kids card there, so that's cool. This card was an innovation by our staff that won an award from Civica and our fellow Spydus users, illustrated by Terry Denton it's a reminder that it doesn't all have to be too serious, remember the FISH philosophy. I found the Picasa Web Album site a better tool for my web album.

test drive #1

The test drive initiative is a great one, and although I have some experience with Web 2.0, I see it as an opportunity to increase my awareness of what's out there on the web.

Life long learning is a must for me, it's a way not only to keep current at work, but to make all of your life a more interesting journey. And they say it's good for your brain as well :-)

I haven't really taken notice of many blogs I like, because to me the flip side of this there is already so much information in the world, we are overloaded.

I can see the use for blogs in the library world as a way to promote library activities and new items, however dont forget we already have a highly visible website to do that.

Blogging to a client audience seems like a good way to go, have a topic, focus on an interest group and provide some useful information.

The Sunshine Coast LMS

We're using Spydus as our LMS, from Civica. It's pretty good, has a lot of neat features and is integrated pretty well with the web. Civica have developed a couple of web 2.0 features for the catalogue we are pretty keen to implement. One is a Google gadget, so if you are using them you can search the catalogue from your desktop, and there's a facebook app as well.

We will have to wait a while and upgrade our system for some other features, there's linking to library thing that displays their links cloud in the catalogue, now that's cool, and some nice changes to the catalogue display, faceted searching is one of them. But we wait while the Council, and all the staff go through the drawn out process of amalgamation. Did I say the a word? That can be another post some other time.