Mashups

This time I explored Mashups - I didn't know whether to expect recipes for root vegetables or what????

The first time I tried to open Kier Clarke and Star Viewer I couldn't open the site, but it worked the second time. It's absolutely amazing.

I'm not sure what application you would use this for in the library, but I look forward to reading what other staff members think they could do with it.

Podcasts and Audio - Week 9

This was a very interesting and informative topic for me as I had never heard of podcasts and had no idea of what they were or did.

After exploring a bit, I could see that they could be useful to promote local libraries by talking about coming events, guest speakers and so on. Regular updates could keep patrons informed about new releases and so on.

I couldn't believe the variety of topics there were. You would never be able to explore them all.

Answer boards and social searching

I spent some time looking at the Answer Board Librarians wiki and can see the advantages of the site.

As our library is small and has only one full time employee, I don't see how we could take part in offering this service to the public. After reading some of the answers I can see that it could be very time consuming.

If staffing was no problem, then I would love to be part of the service.

LibraryThing discoveries

Today I waded through Week 7's topics, trying to come to grips with the article which was loaded with jargon that was quite difficult to comprehend.

Some of the instructions were not very detailed and I thought they could have been clearer.

The idea that we could complete each of these topics in 15 minutes is absolutely laughable.

Following Step 3 of the instructions in the Technorati section gave me no results for the search of "nswpln2008" - I obviously missed something!

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

Videos Online

After a couple of false starts trying to embed a video from Youtube, I was successful. I was very excited to find a clip on our recent country festival which I chose to add to my blog. I accessed the help section on how to embed a video from youtube and when I followed the steps I had no trouble. The main thing was choosing the Edit Html tab first.

Crookwell Country Festival

What a success!

Wiki, wiki, wiki all the way home

Today I discovered wikis in Week 5 of the libraries learning 2 activities. At last something I could understand! I looked at five sites and thought they seemed to be outdated. One was updated in 2005 - or would that have been when it was set up??
I looked at the Book Lovers wiki which featured titles from last year and found that of interest.
I think a similar site could be of benefit to our library. It could feature readers' reviews and reviews of selected new titles.

RSS - not an easy road!

Today I tried three times to complete Week 4's tasks -RSS; Use an RSS aggregator to connect to 5 RSS feeds - I had great difficulty as I found the instructions very hard to follow for an elderly beginner.
Eventually I added the required five "feeds" - I think!
I suppose the majority of people wanting to carry out these tasks have an idea of what they are doing so may find things easier than I did.
Good luck to the rest of you - I hope you manage much more easily than I did!

Flickr image

My attempt at importing a photo that I previously downloaded to my Flickr account didn't work. I then took this image from a memory stick and after some time it eventually appeared. I found the instructions on how to link a photo to a blog were difficult to follow for someone who knows nothing about the process and I would find it hard to remember how I actually did it.