Curtain Call!

I have to admit that I've had lots of fun completing the course. Like Astrosloth, I liked it how you could work at your own pace. The activities were user-friendly and enjoyable.

I think the most important part, however, was that you had to reflect on the applicability of these applications to libraries -- in particular academic libraries... There's no use jumping on the technological bandwagon if users or staff won't find the applications useful!

The time factor wasn't too bad for me as I completed most of the activities during the Christmas/New Year lull -- I think if this were rolled out as a staff-wide activity, some thought would have to be given to how much time staff would need to allocate to each of the activities, and how this may affect other aspects of their job. Would staff be able to complete the course at a time of their choosing, or would they be encouraged to complete it at a particular time of the year?

While I knew about things like Facebook, Flickr, and blogs, I'd never actually contributed to a wiki, and knew virtually nothing about Delicious or Technorati.

In the spirit of finding something new to discuss, I thought I'd point out something I heard about at the recent ALIA Information Online Conference: vokis! See http://www.voki.com/

Basically vokis are animated avatars which can speak. You can create a unique look for your avatar and can record the dialogue he/she speaks. Not sure about licensing/costs etc, but it certainly seems interesting! Maybe they could be used in Subject Guides or in virtual tutorials. Although recording a real person, such as in this iResearch tutorial: http://elearning.library.usyd.edu.au/learn/plagiarism/index.php is probably just as effective.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to be a part of the pilot!

Googletastic

The Google Books initiative is very interesting from a library perspective.

Pros:

• Convenient, 24/7 access (don't have to wait for someone to return items, no overdue fees etc)
• Many books from the 'canon' are available in full text -- good for secondary students studying Shakespeare, for instance
• Have many more books at your disposal from impressive collections worldwide... negates some of the need for Interlibrary loan?
• As others have said, the search is a full text search, so topics which may not be included in Subject Headings will be picked up -- good for ephemeral information

Cons:

• People may not visit libraries as much even though they are using library collections (I guess this is still 'visiting', however -- just in a virtual rather than physical sense)
• Like Aqua, I'm worried about the charging issue. I guess for academic libraries, this is simply another type of subscription which can be funded by student fees and library budgets. But what about public libraries???
• Searching -- no Subject Headings, so potentially lots of irrelavant hits if doing a keyword search

Library thing is *so cool!* I'm always looking for new things to read, so by examining the libraries of people who have similar items to you, the chances are that you'll find new things you like :)

I can definitely see this being useful in academic libraries. For instance, students working on similar assignments (or even students doing group work) could examine each others' lists to see what materials are useful. I guess librarians could also use it to share good teaching materials (although a lot of good stuff is available online, so maybe Delicious would be more appropriate for this...)

I created an account and added the book I'm currently reading -- White Teeth by Zadie Smith.

Cheers,

Kate

Pod and Vodcasting

Wow -- it's been a while since I made a post. Damn all this O-Week business!

I found some Triple J podcasts which were quite cool. I just did a Google search for 'podcast*' and "Triple J" -- is there some better way for searching for podcasts? (I seem to recall Technorati was a search engine for blog posts, so just wondering whether there is an equivalent for podcasts).

I'm fairly well acquainted with YouTube, so checked out some of the sites that were mentioned. Last year when I was still studying, I remember reading that many unis/tertiary institutions are using YouTube as a virtual classroom... I think we'll see much more of this as time goes on. Since YouTube does have a lot of scholarly and relevant material for students, it is a bit of a shame that this site is blocked on all public access PCs. Perhaps the library could revise this policy?

Now for embedding a video clip...



I had the same trouble as Aqua in terms of copying the whole link... I ended up copying the code by clicking and dragging across it, pasted it into Word, and then pasted it into this.

I hope you enjoy Scuba Cat, AKA Hawkeye! I already shared this clip with quite a few people...

Didn't have any problems with subscribing to podcasts/vodcasts. Just found one that looked interesting, went to Google Reader, pasted in the URL and voila!

I think this type of technology has great potential in an academic library setting. You could make very short podcasts for students on basic library skills (the library had already done this -- http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/skills/). It's apparently quite easy and cheap to do, which is a bonus.

Cheers,
Kate

Wikilicious

Hi Everyone,

After a brief hiatus I'm back in the world of 23 Things. I'm sure you were all bemoaning my absence ;)

Like most other people,I use Wikipedia quite a lot. As Aqua says, Wikipedia is a great starting point for research if you know nothing about a topic and want a succinct introduction to it. This is what I tell students in information literacy classes (I think they instantly become sceptical of you if you run Wikipedia into the ground at the first opportunity!) Obviously Wikipedia articles haven't been subjected to a scholarly review process, which limits your ability to cite them for academic purposes, but this doesn't mean they're not useful. Moreover, as the 'About Wikipedia' page says, some of the more 'established' articles which have been around for a while are quite balanced and are reasonably well referenced, which enhances their reliability.

I can't say I've really used wikis all that much, however. I would imagine they'd be very useful when collaborating with peers on a project, or when trying to create an organisational reference tool (I could envisage, for instance, a library creating a wiki about circulation procedures -- where rules are perpetually being revised).

I made my first contribution to a wiki today! I went to Wikipedia and found the page on Newtown. I edited a photo caption and added some information on the public transport there. I didn't find that I needed to become a member...?

Aqua noted the difficulty in getting students to contribute to wikis. I think many students are time poor, which may account for their reluctance to participate. This is why I think wikis are great for actual project work where people have an incentive to participate...

Goota go,
Kate

Tagging and all that jazz

Hi All,

I just signed up to Delicious (thank God it isn't 'Del.icio.us' anymore -- that was so annoying!). The process of getting started was very easy. I ended up importing the bookmarks I already had on my PC.

I like it how you can choose to share or withhold bookmarks; this way you can use the same account for personal and professional purposes. The tagging process seemed quite easy -- just click 'Edit' to add, delete or change a tag. I used underscores as replacements for spaces. i.e. instead of typing 'Web 2.0' I typed 'Web_2.0'. I did this because I was worried that 'Web 2.0' would be read as 'Web' and '2.0'... I haven't actually tested that theory, however. I can definitely see the benefits in being able to view bookmarks that have been assigned the same tags by other people. It is time efficient to search for sites this way.

After assigning tags I felt as though I had been too general. For instance, I had tagged heaps of bookmarks as 'Personal'. It occurred to me, however, that it would probably have been better to create a 'Personal' tag bundle, and then give bookmarks within this more specific tags... It goes to show the importance of thinking carefully about a filing system before implementing it!

I think the library could use this technology in a number of ways. You could use Delicious to tag useful websites for students (this is what Kathy has done at the Med Library -- soon to be seen in the new LibGuides). You could also use it among staff as a reference/professional development tool. i.e. tag conference websites, catalogues, professional associations etc...

I think this type of technology encourages interaction and a stronger sense of community. I could imagine this would be useful to most students, but especially those isolated geographically (e.g. distance students).

I also checked out Technorati. I guess Google is like searching the full text of a document while Technorati is like searching Subject Headings -- in theory more specific results. The only problem is when people don't use tags uniformly. For instance, I found posts tagged 'Web2' and 'Web2.0'. I don't use tags in my blog posts but will from now on!

Cheers,
Kate

Image Generators are the bomb!

Hi everyone,

I think I am officially obsessed with this topic. I just spent half an hour devising weird images and had to remind myself to stop!

I had a go at 'Warholising' myself, then found out what my gangster name would be if I spontaneously decided to join the Sopranos, then decided to deliver my own library sermon via the Church sign from the Simpsons... Endless hours of fun!