News from SLNSW

Government 2.0

This blog post analyses Australian government web traffic - and web 2.0 use http://egovau.blogspot.com/2008/10/putting-australian-government-web.html
This post (by the same blogger) shows how some recent planning consultation was done in Melbourne using a wiki and other online tools
http://egovau.blogspot.com/2008/10/success-of-future-melbourne-online-wiki.html

Statistics

This blog from the ABS makes exciting reading for lots of different statistical reasons http://abs4libraries.blogspot.com/

Week 11 Online apps

Had a go at the Google Docs presentation:

Week 10 - Mashups

Not another thing to join, another sign-up to remember. Once I got over this hurdle, I found it immensely enjoyable to create my own mashup......

How clever are some of the webistes we visited? I loved the images associated with maps, googlemaps (including streetview - did you check out your house?)...the starry night sky in Star Viewer, London - a life in google maps....

Will we all be creating calendars with our own photos for Christmas now?

Second Life?

Are you interested in research into second life?

The Eduserv Foundation are producing snapshots of use of Second Life focusing on use within the UK Higher and Further Education sector.

You can read about the snapshots here:

http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/studies/slsnapshots and the most recent report is available from here http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/sl/uksnapshot102008

For Caledonia

Week 10 Mashups

Highlites this week have been London a Life, and Voicefreds; I have had the DNA mashup from Bighugelabs on my flickr profile for some time and use it regularly because it gives more detailed info than the standard flickr stats which only pro accounts get anyway. The poster is the motivator from BHL.

Mashups cont . . .

Having spent a fair time puddling about with web 2.0 and ignoring the trolley of cataloguing at the side of my desk this week, I'd PROMISED myself I would knuckle down and get through said cataloguing . . .

However, my beloved side-kick here has been doing Week 10 and asking me questions and I've got sucked in big time. We've had quite a giggle. She'll hate me telling you this (sotto vocce), but she Warhol-ed herself and ended up with a fabulous beard. All shredded now sadly . . .

Thought I'd let you know about two other mashup things while I remembered.

First up is AutoMotivator. Similar to the Motivator in Big Huge Labs. Helps you create posters. How creative could we get at work? Very I think.

Here's one I prepared earlier:

The second is Wordle. Have I mentioned it before? Take a muckle great wad of text and put it in Wordle and see what happens.

This is how To a Louse came out:

Now, isn't that so much easier to read??

Podcasting how-to

I've got a feed to the Columbus Metropolitan Library (CML) web 2.0 23 things programme, called Learn & Play @ CML. (Don't, whatever else you do, look at the Home page and see what incentives they're getting!)

There there is a couple of links to how-to's for pod-casting. With all due respect to the SLNSW, I feel that's what's lacking in this Library 2.0 course - the how-to's. It's all very well to show us stuff but, I for one, need more meat (or nuts, or lentils, coz I don't eat meat).

Anyway, here at Thing 21 there are some links for how to do your own podcasts.

RSS

I have just finished Week 4 - RSS. I found the Powerhouse Museum's picture of the day very good and chose Food as my favourites for Bloglines.

Search me

Puddling about in other blogs this morning I stumbled upon another widget we can add to our blogs - oh goody!

This one is called lijit and it enables you to put a search box in your blog. This search box will not only search your blog but also, should you want it to, your other web 2.0 stuff - flickr site, delicious site, blog roll and so on.

It's free. It's easy. I've just added it to Readers in the Mist - go and have a look.

Week 9 - Podcasts and Audio

This week was a bit harder for me to get into as I am much more of a visual person than audio - give me a YouTube demonstration any day! However, I did find this Storytelling session on the Orange County Library website:

http://media.libsyn.com/media/oclspodcast/september08kids.mp3

And I added the podcast feed from the British Library to this blog. Have a look down the side....

Week 9 Podcasting

Cool! I just did the Brain Systems podcast from MIT and am now ready for brain surgery...But seriously folks this stuff is nifty especially for portability. I checked out the British Library program on edison wax cylinder music and loved it. It's a lot easier to access than YouTube clips because there's no download lag time and the picture quality is not an issue. I also noticed there are book readings available which makes it quite relevant to libraries. I downloaded some podcasting software and will take a closer look and keep you posted. Cheers, Jacko

10 Tips about 23 Things

Here is a fun article about Library 2.0 stuff....

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6600689.html

Helene Blowers is a Library Journal Mover & Shaker and coauthor of Weaving a Library Web: A Guide to Developing Children’s Websites (ALA, 2004). The Director of Digital Strategy at the Columbus (OH) Metropolitan Library, Blowers blogs about libraries and technology at LibraryBytes.com.

More Flickr fun

Helene Blowers who started the whole Library 2.0 thing posted about some fun Flickr widgets you can play with. Read her post here.

The post is really wild - instead of just links to other sites she has thingys that Snap! and show a screen shot of the site - how does she do that? That's the downside of this Learning 2.0 thing - we are only being shown how to skim along the surface.

FlickrSlidr allows you to build a Flickr slideshow and embed it in your blog - you can choose the size of the slideshow and preview it before grabbing the code.

With Bubblr you can add thought or speech bubbles to Flickr pictures for a bit of fun. Search by Flickr account name or just by one tag set. Hmmmmm it goes to an archive - I thought it was going to show on my Flickr page.

Flickr Cover Flow gives you the chance to show your slideshows in a really flash way. I had a play with this tonight - it does work but didn't pick up all the pictures in a tag set and it was quite slow to load. Looks cool though.

And lastly, using the Flickr Badge you can put widget in your blog to show off your flickr photos.

New Blogs to check out!

Streaming video
You can watch Art after hours talks from the Art Gallery of New South Wales on YouTube http://au.youtube.com/user/ArtGalleryNSW

Blogs of interest
Read Muslib and you can follow Margaret Whittaker (from City of Sydney Library) as she goes on her reseach tour of public music libraries for her ALIA study grant award http://muslibproject.blogspot.com/

Future proof blog is a place for people to learn more about the NSW Government digital recordkeeping strategy and to share information about their own activities, projects and experiences in regards to digital recordkeeping. It is also a place to ask questions and offer advice to others who may be going through similar experiences. This is provided by State Records. http://futureproof.records.nsw.gov.au/

The Australian National Maritime Museum has a different kind of blog - tracking the voyages of the new Endeavour http://anmm.wordpress.com/

Week 8 - Answer Boards and Social Searching

Answer Boards - what a scary place to go. Have you seen the kinds of questions people ask? I went to Yahoo Answers and trying to find a serious question... Anyway, I answered the question:


"What exactly does the word "Incurred" mean?"


http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ap1My6NC7LncbBEIEttrMowJ5wt.;_ylv=3?qid=20081009200107AAjvuNH


I had loads of fun creating my Yahoo Avatar to accompany my answer and you will know me as Librarian 13...

Plus, the Taste Website - have I died and gone to heaven? All these great recipes - and reviews - at my fingertips. Here is my favourite:

http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/16046/lemon+tart

Enjoy!

London School of Economics Library Standards

Have a look at the London School of Economics Library Service Standards.

They have included the relevant statistics.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/SLDs/OurServiceStandards.htm

Thoughts to ponder

You might be interested in this blog post from the Guardian about why poets travel on trains http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/sep/26/poetry.trains.oriordan
It also explores some ideas around writing poetry.
Are there particular things which lend themselves to being read on shorter train journeys (mainly communting for work) or longer train journeys (for a variety of reasons). Or is reading on the train a thing of the past?
How would a reading list for reading (or listening) on the train be?
What would you include?

Update from SLNSW re Library 2.0

Streaming video
The Topeka Rotary Club in Kansas does live video streaming of their meetings, and you can catch up with any meetings you missed later on. Have a look here http://www.downtowntopekarotary.org/ Do you have any local organisations doing this?

Jackspeak
Jack speak is the new Royal Navy blog http://jackspeak.royalnavy.mod.uk/ It is unusual in the blog posts it combines (Afghanistan, logistics and leave). You can read the profiles of the bloggers http://jackspeak.royalnavy.mod.uk/profiles/ (including an admiral).

Week 8 Tasty but...

I signed up to Taste.com.au and commented on a recipe for homous that omitted the tahini - oh horror! I also invoked the spirit of Claudia Roden from whose Book of Middle Eastern Food I first learned to prepare it - with tahini. I checked my feedback and ratings before leaving and there they were. I revisited the site a day later and found my slightly critical comments and just ok rating had disappeared, so I rated it again and checked the rating screen to find my nil rating had turned into 5 stars...Are they fair dinkum one wonders or is the (illusory) feedback merely a way of getting the punters in. Jacko

Week 8 Slammin' the Boards!

Well one board actually and maybe a light tap. I answered this question in Yahoo Answers: "Who was the cammander of American forces in Europe in World War !!?" (sic). Possibly a school project, think they would just "look it up!" in World Book like I did, but I did also quote from a specialised text and include my references. In spite of which I got two thumbs down and none up from anonymous raters - such is life. I did however beef up my profile, revise my avatar and identify as a librarian, as the Answer Board Librarians wiki suggests. Find me if you can! Hint: use the exact spelling of the question. Jacko

Week 7 - Tagging, Folksonomies, del.icio.us and LibraryThing

I have really enjoyed this week - how much fun was it to set up your profile in Library Thing? I hope you all at least tried. Here is mine:

http://www.librarything.com/profile/vix013

del.icio.us will be a fantastic resource too! I will try and add some new widgets to this blog - look out for them....

Week 6 - Videos Online

Well haven't we been having fun viewing and watching videos in this learning week! I have just uploaded my Lyre Bird videos onto You Tube. I couldn't believe how easy it was to do - the hardest thing was coming up with a user name for You Tube - all my usual ones had been taken! But I am VME013 for those that want to know and you can search on "Lyrebird in Jamison Valley" and "Lyrebird at Leura Cascades" to view my You Tube Videos. They aren't great as I took the footage with my phone. Here is one of them.....

Week 7 Tagging at PhM

Here is an interesting link from the Powerhouse Museum, they encourge user generated tags and see them as a way of expanding access.

When I'm tagging their photos in Flickr I like to refer to the Australian Pictorial Thesaurus and will also mention it in discussion groups when members wonder how to properly tag their own images. However a combination of the intuitive and the formal is now emerging, which although anathema to our profession, will I think, and perhaps has already, become the norm out there in userland.

Week 7 Tagging & Folksomonimies

Hey that d.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s thing is a bit of alright. I actually rediscovered a whole lot of cool old bookmarks I hadn't used for simply ages, just because they are re-presented in a new order. And I can now access my work bookmarks from home, and vice versa, alright!

The Sutherland Library bookmarks were an interesting alternative way of presenting recommended sites.

I added all my faves to Library Thang and can now tell what books I've read, in case I forget, like many borrowers do.

I put a blog on Technorati, it rated 4+ millionth in interest, ah well. It was interesting though, seeing the blogoshpere in action...

And thanks to everyone who viewed and rated my Scenic Railway video on youtube!

NSW Public Libraries Learning 2.0 Update from the State Library Crew

NSW Public Libraries learning 2.0

http://nswpubliclibrarieslearning2.blogspot.com/
If you haven't started the learning 2.0 course there is still time. Start the course today. Ring up if you need some help getting started (or in getting restarted).

New from Commoncraft

Commoncraft have produced a new online video - it covers web search strategies. Even if you are an experienced searcher you might learn something http://www.commoncraft.com/web-search-strategies

Flickr commons

The State Library of New South Wales has joined Flickr commons http://www.flickr.com/commons. Have a look at look at the other participants here as well. As Flickr says The program has two main objectives:
1. To increase access to publicly-held photography collections, and
2. To provide a way for the general public to contribute information and knowledge. (Then watch what happens when they do!)

You can read about some of the images from the State Library on Flickr's blog http://blog.flickr.net/en/2008/09/29/australian-firsts-and-more-mappy-goodness/

Sincerely,

The NSW Public Libraries Learning 2.0 Pit Crew Ellen, Mylee, Leanne, Kathleen A., Oriana, Shauna and Victoria nswpln@gmail.com pls@sl.nsw.gov.au State Library of NSW