Walking in a wiki wonderland

FINALLY I have had a look at Wikis. I love it!!! I was really impressed with the St Joseph's library subject guide, and I used the booklovers wiki to put a hold on a few titles. We simply have to jump on the bandwagon at Brimbank - luckily I have many colleagues who are more on the web 2.0 ball than I am and this is well in hand. Besides the obvious potential of a library wiki for the community, I see it as a simple solution for a user friendly library intranet that can replace our shared drive at last (says me, who hasn't a clue how to set a wiki up).

This has been the most exciting web 2.0 topic for me so far - I feel really motivated.

Library 2.0

When the Internet first appeared in the mainstream of public life, I recall the near-panic that we in the library profession felt about the need to stay relevant amidst the dire predictions of the death of the library. How amazing then that our public libraries have in fact become even busier, more vibrant social places. Instead of the predicted death of libraries, what we are now facing is the challenge of finding enough new blood to follow us into the profession.

And new blood indeed is what we seek. "People people" who relish change and challenge, who embrace new technologies and who understand the changing needs and expectations of our community. We're up for a challenge alright! Not only to recruit these people, but even more importantly, to help and nurture our existing staff to develop and grow to meet these changing needs.

That's where this Learning 2.0 program is so terrific. It's been really mind opening and enlightening. It makes the future of libraries and 2.0 something that is exciting rather than terrifying (well ok, it's still pretty terrifying...). The possibilities for reaching out to the user, in their space not ours, seem so much more attainable now. It's something we've known for a long time that needs to be aimed for, that we've talked about for years... will it actually start to happen?

Wow! What an opportunity - how many other jobs offer "old fogies" like us the chance to learn, catch up and be involved with social networking like this? We just have to feel the fear and do it anyway.

(PS, I don't think my last pinging attempt with Technorati did a thing. Sigh)

Hmmm...

Not so sure that I got it right last time with the ping thing. For a start, I realised that I didn't have my html link done correctly - had an extra ] that shouldn't have been there. Have amended it, pinged again - let's see what happens, if anything.

ping-a-ling

Well, I put the HTML link for "learning 2.0" into my last post. Then did the ping thing (how exciting.. I've never pinged anything before... except for ants crawling up my arm). It says it could take up to an hour to be added to Technorati. I spent several minutes gazing at the scrolling new posts in the hope that I may witness myself becoming famous, but so far, nothing. Oh well. Not sure if I'll ever know how successful my feeble attempts have been.

Technorati

Feeling guilty about my lack of learning 2.0 time, so pinching a bit of Sunday time to take a peek at the next thing on the list...Technorati. I can't see myself using this much, although I can see the value of the search function if blogs are your thing. I wonder how many people would cotton on to the advanced search options? Over 9,000 results for the blog posts is a lot compared to the 800-odd tag and directory searches.

I guess it really rams home to me how old and out of touch I am! Had a look at some of the popular things on Technorati - the top searches etc. Took me a while to figure out what on earth adam4adam was!!!! I'm now just a little bit savvier. So it could be a good way to have a quick peek what's "happening" out there in the weird world of today and catch up a bit.

I'm going to have a go at adding a tag to this post - see if I can handle the challenge. Hmmm. Here we go:

learning 2.0

Del.icio.us revisited

It's been so long since I last found time to look at my 2.0, that I really felt the need to re-cap on del.icio.us. This time I signed up and added my toolbar button - easy as pie. Then I watched the video again and it all made brilliant sense having just done the exercise. I reckon I could get to like this.....

A Del.icio.us Dip

Just touched on Del.icio.us today...my first peek. I guess I'd have to put it more to the test to really get a grip on it, but, as with Rollyo, I like the idea of having bookmarks that are not attached to an individual PC. I also quite like the social feature of Del.icio.us...for some reason there's something rather nice about knowing that others share an interest in the same thing. I'm beginning to understand the connectedness that web 2.0 can offer.

Hooked on Rollyo

Now, this is more my thing. Very nifty, and easy as well. What a great idea. And as you can see (look right), I was able to add it to my blog without a hitch (now that I've had the practice with the page elements thing).

I like the idea of uploading my bookmarks, which I may do one day when I have once again built up a decent list. You know how it is when you get a new computer...things like favourites seem to disappear into the ether, which is probably not a bad thing come to think about it. It forces you to keep them fresh..instant weeding!

What would we do without a mate from the bush?

After my failure last week to add my Library Thing widget, today I am celebrating because I have done it. Thanks to my buddy at work who told me I just needed to add a page element in the template section, which wasn't intuitive to a techno-phobe like me. Thanks Bushblog!

The thing about the Library Thing...

Today I had a look at LibraryThing. Nice. Isn't it funny, though, how when you try to think of your favourite books you go blank?

Anyway, I'm going to have a go at linking to my new LibraryThing Library..here we go....

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/buzzwords



Next I'll have to try to create a widgetty kind of thing. I could have achieved more tonight, except that of course I HAD to go and watch the first episode of The Librarians on TV. What on earth did you make of that, I ask!

Still trying to have a go at generating.... so much of it seems to be user-pays (or in German!).

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FINALLY managed to actually generate something that would save to my blog!

Meet Laverne, my Avatar.

Sigh....

I'm an abject failure....

I tried a few things on Generator, but couldn't get my pics into my blog. I'd done such a nice portrait of a lady too.... You'll just have to believe me.

Must ask a buddy

Bloglines Blowout!

At last I have found some time to finish the Bloglines tutorial and have conquered Bookmarklets. My Bloglines is getting pretty full as a result... I think I'd have to clean it out a bit if I was really going to use this stuff, or I'd never get away from the PC! I did unsubscribe from a couple of feeds, just to get the hang of that as well.

Unshelved is kinda cute!

I have added RSS feeds to a couple of my colleagues blogs. How could I resist astrokpsychiksoda, with its amazing name? I wish I was imaginative. I guess the world needs its share of boring people too.

You know what else I wish? That you could have the option of using Word as your editor in your blog. I can't stop being pedantic about punctuation and stuff, and I'm a lazy 2 finger typist who relies on Word fixing things up for me as I go, so I keep having to go back and correct my typos . Sigh. I'm really showing my age now, aren't I?

RSS...for Really Savvy Souls

At last I am having a go at the RSS feed segment. I'm ploughing through the tutorial...have got to section 9 (bookmarklets) - thank goodness I have this blog or I wouldn't remember what I'm up to.

YOU can tell the tutorial is getting old...things seem to be far more streamlined now. I haven't seen an orange RSS tag yet! Which is cool...you can't afford to be too literal or fixated on something when dealing with the Internet, a living and breathing beast by its very nature. You never really know just what you might find.

To be continued.....

Flick'us a photo willya?

Just had my first go at Flickr by uploading a few pics from Thailand. Of course, the new 7.1 megapixel camera means BIG photo size (3 mb+ each). Did I think to re-size them? Of course not! So it took a while to upload and I used up half my monthly allowance in one hit. Sigh.

I haven't got the hang of the tagging business yet or the other organisational and sharing features.

Here's where my selected photos are:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14686645@N05/?saved=1

PS, the room at the top of the waterfall with the tree in front of it was ours. We had our own pool above the big one. Cool, hey?

Hi Honey, we're home....

Sadly, we are back from our fantastic holiday. No, we didn't crash (although we had EXACTLY the same seats going to and coming from Singapore - how weird is that?). Yes, the resort was as beautiful as it looks on the website. Yes, it did rain...and rain...and rain. So, no tan. But you know what? I didn't care.

Thailand is great - beautiful, cheap, relaxing. Khao Lak is especially quiet, with no hassle. No good if you are taking kids (they'd go stir-crazy), or if you are a party animal or shop-a-holic. But wonderful if you want a peaceful, quiet and lovely holiday.

We'll go back one day for sure....

If you want a geek, check out the website:
http://www.khaolak-hotels.com/khaolakmerlin/

I REALLY don't want to go back to work.

Now, wonder if I can figure out Flickr? Stick a few pics on.

Ode to Shining Emily

I wish I was a glowworm
Coz glowworms are never glum
For why would you be grumpy
When a light shines out your bum?

What's in a name?

In case you were wondering where the name for my blog came from (and I'm sure you would lose sleep if you didn't know), I have a little brown dog called Buzz. And she's a girl. And she's fat. And she's lazy.

Of course our plane won't crash......

Heavens, I've done it! I've managed to join the blog-a-thon at last. After that Google sign-in loop problem I'd thought I'd never get here. There, I've had my whinge and now I can start playing.

This is my last day at work. Tomorrow my husband and I are off to Thailand for 11 days, to shelter from the rain, dodge the tsunamis and hope our plane doesn't crash. You know what? I don't care, as long as it's warm and there's nothing that I have to do. Looking forward to a read-a-thon.

I'll have a go at loading a couple of our snaps into Flickr when I get back...


In the meantime, just to make you a wee bit jealous, this is a picture of where we're staying:

Wonder if it will really look like this?