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.

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.