Summing Up

Librarians are confronted by a smörgåsbord of innovative and/or wacky inventions on the web – all vying for our consideration.

Many concepts are bandied about: social networking, convergence, anything prefixed by the letter “e” or suffixed by “2.0”.

Over the past few weeks we’ve delved into a wide variety of software offerings and through practical experience have come to certain conclusions about their value to our libraries (i.e. our users).

Picture this. Now you do all your searching from home. Type in a subject heading and immediately receive a Library Thing style display of books. Once you’ve judged your book by its cover, click on it for further details. Perhaps there is an Amazon.com style facility to “search inside” so you can check the contents and index pages. Look at reader reviews and ratings.

Tick the boxes for books located in your nearest branch that are on shelf and you’ve got a powerful filtering tool.

Then check out the things other library patrons with similar interests found and you’re well on your way to a well rounded library experience.

The librarians’ challenge is to decide on which Web 2.0 style tools to integrate into the library website and to gain control of our websites, separate from council's I.T. departments.

The other point to make is that every element of our site that solicits contributions from the public, be it a review function in the catalog or a blog, must be moderated to ensure it complies with the current political correctness. This will avoid embarrassment and/or litigation.

We could certainly try podcasting library events. What members of the public would not find attractive the video podcasting of authors’ talks and special events. Who wouldn’t look forward to watching one of the world’s leading exponents of Lebanese cooking prepare tabouleh? After all not everyone can make it to a scheduled session

We may need to assign one staff member to take charge of the library’s digital media activities. Once you start posting content it’s not just a matter of filming, editing, compressing and uploading. Someone needs to manage copyright. Release forms must be filled out.

We could also try adding Rolyo search engines for particular subject areas to our site, online book clubs are also worth investigating

The funny thing is, although a lot of these things we have looked at over the past weeks are new to me, I feel like I’m talking about the past and that 3.0 is already upon us.

Vectorized!

Those Stanford Uni dudes are brilliant. Just send them a picture of yourself and they’ll turn you into a very lifelike cartoon character. I'll certainly never be the same again.

"Hi Yo Silver, Away!"

Downloading Books

It was difficult to assess this site as you needed to pay to get past a superficial search - lot's of Spanish books come up when I searched for interesting Chihuahua books but I'm afraid I'm an English only dog . There are other downloading sites that I looked that seemed much easier to use - items were quite expensive but for younger dogs who use the latest technology and have lots of disposable cash this would be the way to go. For older dogs who may have trouble with their eyes and arthritis in their paws the older style talking books would be far easier to use.

Podcasting

For the dedicated dog owner listening to weekly episodes from DogCastRadio is a must!

You Tube

You Tube if full a fabulous little movies - quite a lot of cute chihuahuas! I thought you might like this little film I made - apologies to Nancy - I hope she has a sense of humour.

Wufoo - my pick from the Web 2.0 Award nominees - it's all in the name!

A silly survey, but seriously this site could actually be useful






Powered by Wufoo

The physical 2.0 Library

Continuing on the themes begun in my post Mobile Library 2.0, one needs to consider the community impact of the physical library space.

I'm excited by the access to information via the library website - i.e. fulltext magazine and newspaper databases, ebooks, directories, etc. - and once I fully get my head around the Web 2.0 elements we have been getting a taste of in the Learning 2.0 project - and then continuing with those things that suit my style - I will have a wonderfully honed desktop. My computer will keep me up to date with all my interests.

Selective Dissemination of Information was never like this in my mother's day, and we don't have to go to library school to become experts. And as everyone knows, Boolean searching no longer requires a professional to construct complicated search strings on a DOS based machine tucked away in a back room.

Librarianship has become something completely different.

The physical library is still the place to be though. The place to actually handle books and DVDs and flip through real magazines. The place to talk to people and obtain recommendations on good stuff, not to mention the sheer pleasure of stumbling across something new and interesting that could be potentially life changing. It is also the place to talk to writers about their work and on a particularly good day watch one of Melbourne's top chefs make tabouleh.

You can't smell or taste the parsley on your PC.