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!