Mashups

How cool is this! This is my first time with using mashups. I didn't even know what a mashup really was until now. I'll definitely be doing more of these!






The calendar is so cute. Perhaps we could use the calendar for our events in the library. We could integrate all sorts of photos from previous events, library photos and more. We could mark events on the days they're on or even link a map on how to get to the library on our web page.

There are so many uses for this!

Podcasts

Podcasting would be such a useful tool for us at the library. When we have events it is not always possible for everyone to come so podcasting could be the tool we could use to reach more people. We can use it for author talks, student lectures, storytime, concerts, fun days and much more. I'm looking forward to implementing such a tool within the library.

It's interesting how many different topics people use to broadcast via a podcast. Also the many resources listed on the library success wiki will become very useful in the future. The only downside I can see at this point is the time it takes to download some of the podcasts and it would depend on the speed of your connection on how long it takes. This means that people with slow connections could get frustrated and maybe even give up on using it.

Answer boards

This is a cool thing, but one has to be careful what to believe when the questions are answered in some instances. There are people answering questions left, right and centre and you don't know how accurate the answer might be. The exception to this is the Librarian answer board. The answers are usually supported with evidence and references. At least the asker can depend on this to be as accurate as possible.

Answer boards can be a useful tool within libraries, but in ours we use RefTracker so I can't see us implementing another similar system in the near future. However, a rating option for our borrowers might have some merit. Some people like to have a say about specific items such as a book so from that point of view it may be good tool. (we already have a feedback option on our website so they can also use that for a similar purpose)

Delicious and the like

Looking at this resource it definitely is something that I could use. I'm just getting a little overwhelmed with all the resources that are out there. I would like to utilise them all but am somewhat time poor with my workload already stretched. I guess I'll have to juggle things around a bit more so that I can get into it more.

Setting up delicious was easy but putting the link onto the blog was a little more fiddly until I actually worked it out. So my link is there :)

I also found LibraryThing exercise a bit confusing and not as easy to use as the others. Hopefully I've done the exercise correctly 'cause my list is on the side.

With regard to searching on these, it's interesting what different results you get depending on how you search.

Videos....Yihaa!

This would probably have to be one of the most entertaining of the activities. I've just finished watching Lego 'Indiana Jones: Raiders of the lost Ark'. It was great and made me laugh. The timelapse video was excellent! I particularly liked the user guide videos which show people how to use eg. the library. It think that something like that would be very handy.

People can be so creative....keep it up!

Wikis

Although I've used wikipedia and such resrouces I was always a little down on wikis and preferred the thought of blogs instead. Now that I've used and edited the pbwiki this is starting to turn that around. There is definitely merit in using a wiki especially when putting things like work procedures online which need to be edited at some stage.
I think I'll be investigating wikis in more detail :)

More RSS

I've just been able to check out the RSS feeds on the aggregator in more detail and am finding lots of interesting stuff like 'quote of the day' and the pictures of the day from the Powerhouse Museum are absolutely awesome. Being a bit of a foodie it's nice to check out some of the recipes that are around like Jamie Oliver foods. Yum!

As a professional development tool this is great. It's so easy to keep up with the latest trends in our industry as well as latest book reviews and technical innovations that might become a necessity in our day-to-day lives. It's a whole new world out there...