Newspaper Digitisation Project

This is pretty amazing and you have to have a look at it to find your way around.
If you can see the screen shot above- on the left is the text from an article (from the Brisbane Courier, pg 2, Thursday 9th June 1864) which can be edited by subscribers and on the right is the article itself highlighted and how it appeared in the paper itself.
Did I say it's amazing?! And you can save want you want as a PDF file or print them.
This will make it easier for people to do large chunks of their family history from home.
Will this put clunky old microfilm readers/printers out of service for good? Probably not.

I have to suss out if something like this is available for New Zealand.

Best Tea Room Anywhere

Fort Denison you can see in the middle of the photo.

The weather hasn't been great for a couple of weeks but today (Thurs. 16th) was super- clear and 20 degrees.
This is on The Mitchell Rooftop where staff can have their lunch. I put a slideshow of the photos I took on Flickr.

Library 2.0 Conference

I found a post from one of my library feeds about a Conference being run by the State Library of Queensland.
It's in late November and they are asking participents to show a slideshow of your libraries experiance with Web 2.0 tools in your library.
The slide show tool to be used got my interest- it's called Pecha Kucha and was designed by two people in Japan (Wikipedia link). The unique feature of this tool is it sets a limit of 20 images to be shown for 20 seconds each- so all slideshows get an equal showing.

And just when I was going to say the library barely makes use of Web 2.0 tools they announce a bunch of historical photos have been uploaded to Flickr.

Blogging for a Living

I saw this article in the Australian this week about Bloggers in Australia who try to make a living out of Blogging. It mentions long hours but most don't make enough to equal the average pay.

The article mentions a few times that Australia is five years behind the States in terms of the impact blogs have on media and the general viewing public.
(links to the blogs)

TV Tonight

Media Spy

The Inquisitr Blog

Radio News

Girl With A Satchel

Campaign Brief

Robert Scoble At Library of Congress & Seagate

Above is an interview (recorded on a phone) that Robert Scoble did with Matt Raymond who does a blog on The Library of Congress website. Matt talks about some of the projects that The LOC are working on and the purpose of his blog which is letting people know what's going on at The LOC. (click on to the next 2 clips to see LOC's photo collection and stereograph collection. What's a stereograph you ask? From the LOC site:Stereographs consist of two nearly identical photographs or photomechanical prints, paired to produce the illusion of a single three-dimensional image, usually when viewed through a stereoscope). 

I've been checking on Scoble's blog for a while now but I've never checked out his video interviews before, but as he ran a post about a bunch of new hard drives released by Seagate I thought I'd check the vid out:

I've been thinking about getting a hard drive for a while now and some of the portable ones sound good. I've got all my music backed up on to a dozen DVD's!

The guy he's speaking to has been working for Seagate for 24 years- back then a 300 MB drive was the size of a washing machine and cost US$12,000!!

Helene Blowers

It's been a bit over a year since Helene Blowers spoke at The SLNSW and I'm dissapointed I missed her talk but thanks to the net I can keep up with presentations she does give- a recent post of 67 slides on her Blog doesn't quite put me in the audience but it's worth a look all the same.
I can't say for sure that I'm on the right side of The Digital Divide, but I'm enjoying getting involved all the same!
Check out the slides, they are quite uplifting!

Google

Google has just turned 10yrs, I read an article in The Good Weekend about how it grew so quickly and permeates our lives. What will Google achieve in another 10 years?

99% of Google's income comes from advertising.

Does Google have any other choice but to continue growing?Anything but will see it get left behind.

What other areas will Google move into?

Google is offering $3o million to the first company to send a robot to the moon, land and transmit video and images back to Earth. To find out why go here, it's to do with saving the planet or something. Whateva.

Above is how the page looked way back when.

This is Google's Corporate Philosophy which seems to come up because it is so huge, particular it's point of making money without being evil- those who question Google's level of evilness say that Google has more information about "us" than governments do.

Library Tours

After reading this post @ Information Wants To Be Free Blog I got to thinking about how difficult it must be to engage the public when they attend a SL Introductory Tour. (the video from the post is not bad too).
I really think this is something that I could work on - a similar clip but alot shorter showing how to get a Readers Card, Request a book and use the Set Aside service.
I'm not saying it will get used but for a little bit of effort it might get someone talking about the idea of how do we inform our clients on how to use the library.

Library 2.1

I was checking out this Blog and it got me wondering how do you add screenshots to a Blog? Just to make things a bit more visually appealing and to learn something new while I'm at it.
Also reading this Blog reminded me about looking into Library 2.1 which I'd like to do too.
See how other people can inspire you?

Chrystie Hill

Recently Chrystie Hill came to Australia and gave talks at a few public libraries including The State Library of NSW. I was kinda disappointed to tell the truth- Chrystie herself was enthusiastic, told some good stories and generally was a good public speaker.

I just couldn't help thinking during her talk that if you've done the Library 2.0 course that you would know all about the tools she was speaking of and that some of the community building things she was speaking of weren't quite applicable in a library such as The SLNSW.

At the same time I'm keen to see the tools used to prove me wrong and a little impatient to see these things happen now rather than later.

What was excellent was finding out about WebJunction and all the learning possibilities therein and hearing this term Webinar which is a kind of online conference.

I'm still reading the Meredith Farkas book and just days after hearing Chrystie talk I read the two pages that she contributed to Meredith's book- in particular how libraries get it wrong with building community online. I wish I had of read this before the talk as it would of been great to hear her further insights into why some libraries succeed more than others using these tools.

The Almighty All Blacks!!

Last weekend the All Blacks beat the South African Springboks 19-0, what is so amazing about this is the fact that the game was in South Africa. I am certain without checking the record books that no team has EVER kept the Boks scoreless in their home country.

It was such a strange game:1) Dan Carter missed something like four penalty attempts, 2) Percy Montgomery missed 2 penalty attempts, 3) The Boks just couldn't finish off-at least 3 times the last pass went to the sidelines. It was Percy's 100th game and it's possible it may be his last! Poor Percy had a shocker and alot of people may hold him to blame for the embarrassment of a scoreless loss at home.

For those not in the know, South Africa won last years Rugby World Cup and their world ranking previous to this game would was #1- but not now. It's somewhat typical that the AB's do something like this 10 months AFTER the World Cup- break a record like this and humiliate the World Champions @ home. When apart from the Tri-Nations a record like this amounts to very little in the scheme of things- New Zealanders will be asking why can't they perform like this when it really counts: at The World Cup. Since 1988 it has been a frustrating rugbylife being an All Blacks supporter- 1987 was the 1st Rugby World Cup and although "we" won it we haven't won it since, despite being favourites each time.

Ok, i'm going to go lookin for some reviews of this game.....

I found a 10 minute highlights vid on You Tube:

According to the IRB website:"The 19-0 victory - the first time South Africa have failed to score at home in the history of the Tri Nations - means that New Zealand now sit on top of the rankings with 91.21 rating points, more than three points clear of South Africa".

It's still my contention that the Boks have never been kept scoreless at home- I've just gotta find the stat to confirm it!

According to this blog it's the first time the Boks have been held scoreless at home since 1903!
I'm able to confirm that from The Rugby News that i bought today!
This is my first post about sport.... The Olympics is on at the moment but that's pale in comparison to the above news!

+3.7 megapixels

Here's the same spot as my last post, shot a week or so later, but this time with a 5 megapixel camera- I wanted to see the difference in details for myself. The water looks a lovely shade of blue in this shot-as you can see we are enjoying some nice albeit cool weather in Sydney.

Stuff

I had two weeks off and went to see my family in kiwi land- my brother's partner gave birth to their second boy and it was my sister's 40th birthday, so it was very much a family break and no real time to work on this blog tho i took some photos's for another blog I will start on soon.

This past week I saw an iPhone in the wild- Mitchell RR to be precise- for the first time. I saw a client typing the wireless password into this handheld device and quickly sussed out it was an iPhone, I wonder how he got on with the wireless .......

I was using the libraries wireless (midday Sat 2nd August) and it was so slow, went to speedtest.net to check just how slow it was and got a reading:

But it seemed alot slower than that!

When I was d/l it was less than 30 kb/s where at home my broadband d/l's at 50+.

On the up side, I saw on the library catalogue a little box with a picture of a mobile phone promoting the use of the site on mobile phones. A pat on the back for all those involved in making that happen.

More phone stuff: I went for a walk the other day, heading towards Iron Cove Bay and I took a photo with my phone (a Sony Ericsson K608i) which has a 1.3 MP camera:this is the result:

It's pretty blurry but i guess what can you expect from 1.3MP. The map below is a rough indication of where this photo was taken.

Streetview on Google maps in Australia has been big news.

View Larger Map

I'm still hanging out for a iPhone but Optus won't talk turkey even tho I have both my home phone and broadband with them they just said the prices are the prices. I can wait and just like everyone I'll be waiting for an iPhone that has:cut and paste, a better camera, video camera and less expensive plans!

Bad News

No sooner than I speak and the Beijing Olympics Blog won't be happening. (Why?It's not that unusual, check here, #3, bullet point 3)
That's life.

I've started reading this book called "Social Software in Libraries". I've got it on staff loan but luckily for you there is a companion website. (And authors Blog here) I strongly recommend that you check out the website if only for all the links- try this one for starters, RSS feeds for librarians.
More tips as I come across them; I'm happy to say that an RSS idea I suggested in a previous post has been in use by a few libraries overseas.
The Robert Scoble book I ordered has arrived- he encourages businesses to use blogs to show a human face and enable two-way communication or risk being left behind. He mentions a book called The Cluetrain Manifesto that started as a website whose view was that thru the internet people are talking about the way companies treat their customers. The conversation is happening not locally but globally, and big business mightn't like whats being said. Amazon review here.
That's two books on the go! I wish i could read faster or have more time to read.

Good News

So the green light has been given for the Beijing Olympics Blog, now the real work begins! We now number three; draft posts are in the works; we'll be going live and showing our team mates very soon. The possibility of a link on the library web page has been mentioned, so if it's up to scratch we'll be out their for all to see!


The video blog I couldn't find was on the BBC- it's a program called Click and presented by Kate Russell who gives tips on new web applications and they publish a video each Friday to the net. It's worth a look.

I thought I'd have a look at the Library and Information Technology Association website- don't ask me why, or what came over me to do such a thing, but I did and I headed straight to their Blog link where I read this story. The post was about "Top Technology Trends for the American Library Association Annual Meeting"

What caught my attention and what I could relate to was the following points:

Visually appealing websites- wow what a novel idea! Costly I'm sure but too important to ignore.

Mobile phones/iPhones - Telephone enquiries being taken and answered with text messages? Yes. Requesting a book by mobile phone or sms on the way to the library to save waiting for a book? Yes. A mobile phone browser friendly website.

Social Networking - Using these tools to connect our clients and our unique content is just waiting to happen.

OK, that's all for now.

Busy busy busy

It's been a bit busy in the Reading Room lately so time has been in limited supply, however......

I was walking around stack looking to see if a new copy of Macworld had arrived when I found a copy of Library Journal (v.good site) on the Journal put shelves. The copy I found was from November 2007 but it had a headline that said "Why we Blog" that caught my interest. So i thought i'd check it out and I thought it was great- really positive and encouraging and something I felt compelled to show others. So click here and have a read and be enthused like I was.

This is too weird- i'm checking out library science journals!!

I was checking out a BBC Blog about mobile video (further to a post i wrote about journos using their mobile phone to file video news events) and the writer linked to another Blogger who is big in the techie/blogosphere.

The guy is Robert Scoble who has worked for Microsoft, written a book (no we don't hold it but this is the results from a Libraries Australia search) about blogs for business and more. So i've signed up for RSS feeds from his blog and read a post where he mentioned Mahalo (which is thank you in Hawaiian) - so i then check out what that's all about.

Mahalo claims to be a "human powered search engine" with results only to great links. They have a browser extension whereby you can have Google and Mahalo results side-by-side for your comparison- hmmm, tempted. It will be interesting to see if this search engine will catch on. If nothing else they promise less spam.

See how easy it is to go off on tangents?

The whole time i was looking for a video blog that i saw the other day but can't remember where i saw it.

The Beijing Olympics Blog project has been going along slowly, I think we will reach a crossroads shortly- it's hard to say which way it will go.

I haven't made a podcast/audio instructions on how to request a book yet but it's on my mind.

And to finish off with a visual, here's a clip about the announcement of the 3G iPhone, ya know, in case you didn't hear about it.

Twitter

I was stapling the newspapers and I found this article - I thought "Hmm this is interesting" but it was quite long so I best not read it - maybe i'll remember to check it out later... and i did. (The other story I saw was about a carpet snake that ate a kitten! Included is an xray of the snake and a picture of it's bulging stomach, here.)

I don't think we looked at Twitter in Libray 2 but it's definitely a phenomenon that all the kids and tech savy old folks are using, so it's worth a look.

I just read the article and I will have to look into twitter further to get a grasp of what it's all about.
I d/loaded a plug-in for Firefox at home called tweetbar that shows the most recent tweets(sp?) that have been sent - it felt like I was perving in on other people's lives as none of the messages were meant for me and most of them made no sense to me.

I just added some RSS feeds from the SMH and 2 from the Beijing Olympics site and an Olympics countdown widget!- see to the right of this post.

Social Networks and more...

It's the last week....... in some ways it's taken a long time and in other ways I'd like this to continue... to learn (more) and apply all these different types of tools in a creative way.

What about mobile phone technologies? 3G Networks are going to become common place and the library has time to catch up and find ways to utilize these features to it's best advantage for our clients. Anyway..........

To find out more about this photo go here - it's the largest LED display and it's powered by solar energy.

I've added to and organized my RSS feeds on my Bloglines account- where would we be without folders!

I had a look at the Communities of Practice front page- I thought this was pretty good - we need something like that for the Library for sure. The point that this highlighted to me was that a good idea will stand up to criticism otherwise it's probably not a good idea. And yes, the library is not the the only place for good ideas.

I liked this line:"Nonsmoking Capricorn Museum Seeks Networking, Dating, Serious Relationships, Friends" LOL! And i'd be so impressed if Sun O))) played at the library!! All the windows would need to be replaced but it'd be worth it!

The Newsgrist article was interesting- a lot to think about.

I read this post from the Beyond the Hype blog about Kiama Library and how they use blogs for most internal communication and wiki's- this person claimed no-one uses e-mail internally. (a task i will set for myself is to try and familiarise myself with all the tools this guy listed and said they use).

The wiki about 2nd Life was so long- kinda complex really. I'd like to find out more so I can say I gave it a go but it does look time consuming.

The Library can make use of these social networking sites in much the same way as other institutions. I think the opportunities are there....... The team I'm in is Leisure Clients and Tourists - I hope to create a series of blog posts focusing on commonsense tips for Australians who are thinking of going to the Beijing Olympics - stuff like visa's etc.

I've set myself three things to do:

1)Put up a voice message of instructions on how to get a book

2)Idea: for Leisure team to make a blog post of links related to the Beijing Olympics.

3)Find out more about the (web 2) tools used @ Kiama Library.

Online Apps

I thought Zoho looks great, and the vid explaining Google docs was pretty good too.

Zamzar looked good to but it wouldn't let me convert some .ogg files to mp3 so that was a shame.

The slideshow was an eye opener- esp. Jott where you can have a spoken message transcribed and texted to yourself AND added to your blog using your mobile phone!

I tried Google Docs and it seems OK- not a bad idea and I'm sure some people or organisations use it quite a bit.

It got me thinking about what tools are available online that can/could take the place of meetings and the best tool I could think of was Message Boards.

Podcasts

I thought Evelyn Waugh was an Australian tennis player? But not so. OK, I was way off the mark on that one. The podcast at the British Library was a pretty dry affair for me, tho it's a good concept to give punters a taste of what your currently flogging.

The ABC is really moving forward with all that they have available on the net, and the BBC provides alot of content too.

I of course, listened to Roy and HG discussing Barry Hall's punch - a Zen moment they claim.

I had a look at some of the podcasts available at the Orange County Library in Florida. The impression I was left with is this place is more than a library it is somewhat of a cultural hub-a place where people want to go to- they have talks by authors and musicians (& the first female Chief of Police) available in formats that will suit the majority of users. On top of all that, if you don't live in the area or missed an event for whatever reasons, you can still view or listen to one of these events in the privacy of your home at your own leisure. But wait, that's the appeal of podcasts isn't it?
However, I can't say I listen to podcasts very much, I leave any spoken word stuff on my player to this man.

So the SL's challenge is to appeal to a wide range of people-to be an information portal people will use.
Towne Meetings could be podcasted. Training of any type that would benefit from verbal communication could be podcast and better still videotaped.

Mash it up!

This isn't really my kinda thing- but still you never know when you might use something like this.
Since I don't have alot of photo's on flickr i've posted this map of the world that has the places i've been to in blue...kinda lame but also highlights how many places i haven't been to.

Where I've been so far....

Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.com

In the workplace: looking at Big Huge Labs the options seem enormous- more each time I look at it- I guess it's a matter of finding the time and having the right circumstances fall into place to make the best of all the utilities they have on this site. Mash ups add a bit of colour and creativity to ones blog.

Librarians - what don't they know!?

Which is a parody of what Homer (Simpson) said about Rock stars.
I use answer boards for any problems I have with my laptop and I find them quite useful when I'm in the lurch and pleasantly surprised that people are happy to share their knowledge for free.

Yahoo Answers seemed silly to me, one question asked "What will a tattoo on my chest feel like? Hello?

In my opinion Ask Now should be promoted/marketed big time-but since that won't happen overnite, maybe staff that are rostered to Ask Now could answer questions @ Yahoo Answers and leave a link to Ask Now- that's if they have the downtime??

I DON'T LIKE BOOKS!

I think they are over rated. They just don't do it for me. That's right.

So why do you work in a library Davo? people ask me. I says, "have you seen the movie Kenny?" Do you think people who work in Waste Management like the product they work with??

Of course not.

Yes I own a few dust collectors, but i'm not about to get carried away and tell the rest of the world about it- my cred will be ruined. Hence Library thing is not my thing.

I liked Delicious tho- I've been using it alot. I can see it being used in teams as a way to introduce new sites to workmates and generally build knowledge.

Wikis et el

I thought PB wiki was quite good and could be used by teams in the Reading Room to communicate- the calender feature would be handy.
The SLNSW visitors guide wiki needs a bit of work for sure. We haven't been given a password for this, have we?

Choose Your View

What I like about the internet and particularly Internet video's is that you can choose what you want to view at any given time, with little commercial interruption compared to television.
After checking the NJ Library video I got to thinking how it could be used in the reading room.

As an aside i found this on how The BBC are looking at reporting the news in the future- a mobile phone is all one needs.

As for the library, a "How to" video or video's would be excellant -how to get a Readers card, How to request a book, how come WE DON'T LEND books would be good too! A video that doesn't require sound using a style (the Library has a great Graphic Arts department- you just have to look at some of the brochures and pamphlets they produce- world class) that can be used frequently that is recognisable and inexpensive- if this could be visible on the front page of The Library website it would be ideal, both for onsite and offsite users.I find the idea exciting and progressive - it remains to be seen.

We could make video's of training sessions, video's of important meeting's and (my personal fav-not that i wanna see myself on screen!) video staff on service point's to look at ways to improve ones perception to our clients and aimed at service excellance-
However, on a slightly different note,I found a OK video on coping with angry customers:

The Psychology of Customer Anger

It's a bit glossy but there are some pertinent points all the same.

This was also the first time I've looked at Google Video.

Really Simple?

So I had a bit of a play with RSS Feeds and set up a Bloglines account- I'm going to add that to my Bookmarks Toolbar at home and at work, otherwise i'm not sure I'd use it.
I just subscribed to a few techie/gadget sites and some sport news sites.

I found Yahoo pipes interesting but couldn't seem to get feeds from The SMH or other Southern Hemisphere sites. I tried to get a feed from The New York Times and limit it just to travel stories about New York City, but to no avail. I will try this again tho.

Again I think RSS feeds or something similar will be good for informing people of new books of interest to them but given what I've seen i'm not sure if it can be done or many libraries would do so already. Someone prove me wrong?

Opps, Scrap that!

Since Gmail is public it can be hacked into, so certainly don't put sensitive details up.
Use your discretion, but do be aware that Gmail can be hacked into.

Password Problems??

I've noticed a few people have found remembering all their different user names and passwords has been a problem, as it has been for me too.
I've decided to save all my user names and passwords in a draft e-mail in my Gmail account.
This way I only have to remember my Gmail account details and only need web access where ever I might be.
If anyone has a more convenient idea please add your comments?

The (New York) Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Similar to The Powerhouse Museum's Photo of the Day The Met has a blog with a new photo every second day of a "Addressing Fashion" exhibition they are currently showing.
As a form of advertisement this type of thing seems worthwhile but I wonder if this doesn't spoil seeing "the real thing"? Are they getting less on site visitors or more?
It doesn't appear they have a RSS feed.
Anyway, if you have a interest in fashion history you may like to check it out.

Flickr etc

I already had a Flickr account but i don't use it, maybe I will in the future but right now it doesn't do much for me - the same can be said for Face Book.
I'm not alot wiser after checking out the information that was suggested to check out.
Anyway here's a link to a photo that I liked.
I still might take some photos at work and post them, but I'm waiting for some more fine weather.
I'm looking forward to finding out more about RSS feeds.
OK, goodnite.

So far so good

Blog set up.Check.
Check out 3 blogs, yep. Liked the Library of Congress blog but thought the Powerhouse blog was visually attractive but didn't draw me in further than the front page.
IBM Guidelines. Check.
Watched the YouTube clip. Lucky my broadband is faster than it was 2 weeks ago - if people wanna do this from home they will need fairly fast net access or a lot of patience.
Lifelong Learning wiki. Check.
Stephen Fry clip, check. Didn't know he was a techie but checked his website which has a blog.
Within the library blogs will be good for communication, expressing and refining ideas.
Also for training I think it would be good to video all training and post it on servers, only available to staff, of course. (Not to go overboard or anything, but I think it would be good for staff on service points to see and hear how they interact with clients on videotape as a means to improve their client service.)

The other techie thing that will be good for Staff and clients is an RSS feed of New Books whereby you are notified of a new book that fits your interest or subject headings. I know I would sign up.
OK that's all for now.