#20 The last hurrah!

It has certainly been a fascinating journey of discovery. Just looking at all the listings in the Web 2.0 Awards is mind boggling. I decided to compare Microsoft's Live Search maps and Google maps and found Google maps much better. I don't know if I was doing something wrong, but I could not get a map for any Australian addresses in Live Search. I find the constant competetiveness of these 2 companies fascinating - each trying to break into the other's market (eg Google docs to compete with Microsoft Office products and Live Search to compete with Google search).

Thanks for the journey. But just a suggestion for the future - a few more hints on how to navigate and use some of these websites would have been extremely useful.

#19 Flowcharts and Mind Maps

I was very excited about the possibility of doing flow charts for various library procedures. I write up a lot of procedures and thought that a flow chart might make the procedure clearer to follow. I decided to register with Flowchart.com. However, when it came time to use it I found it extremely difficult. I couldn't work out how to navigate my way around it. I managed to add some wording to one of the bubbles, but couldn't get rid of the wording already there. And I couldn't find any instructions. After several frustrating attempts I gave it away and decided to try Gliffy.com. Once again I struck problems as I was unable to open the page to register. All I got was a blank page. Thinking it might be our network I tried on a stand alone PC and still could not get the 'registering' page to open. So I moved on to mind maps - and gave Bubble a go. This was certainly much easier to use, but was really just a forum to clarify my thoughts on a procedure rather than helpful in actually setting up a procedure.

#18 Letterpop

I have created a 3 page newsletter on our travels in the USA so far, and even uploaded some pictures, but can't work out how I can publish this on my blog - is there a way to do this? It seems that you can either keep it private and create a directory of people to e-mail the newsletter to, or you can make it public for the whole world to see.

I can see the usefulness of Letterpop for our library. It would be a good way of keeping patrons informed of what is going on in the library and we could make it look interesting with photos, etc.. However, it would be good to be able to publish it on our intranet page.

#17 E-books

Isn't the internet fantastic - here I am in sunny Seattle (whilst all of you are freezing in Melbourne) and doing my homework on e-books.

Project Gutenberg looks very interesting and I have no qualms about accessing the full text of books online provided there are no copyright issues. I had a look at the library of Dr Widger and found the books of John Galsworthy, including the Forsyte Saga, but I'm not sure if reading books online suits me (I prefer to sit on the couch with my feet up or maybe in bed at the end of the day). I read about Project Gutenberg and how it favours plain text because of its longevity (text is available on all computers and text is insurance against future obsolesence).
I also had a look at World Public Library, but it required a membership to access the full text - though at a modest price of $8.95 per year.

The main winners of e-books would be academic libraries - instead of having to queue for limited copies of set texts, students could read the texts on line. I had a look at what Springer have to offer, and they can provide unlimited access, archiving rights, book level chapter searches, etc. However - price is by negotiation! There may be opportunities for e-books in our library, if certain texts are set as reading for those in training.

#16 YouTube

I am not unfamiliar with YouTube as family members will often upload their videos to YouTube and this is better than e-mailing large files to everyone. However, I am not convinced that it can play a large part in our library community. I cannot see the advantage of uploading a video to YouTube over just placing it on the library website. This is what we have done with a marketing video of the library - and those interested in seeing it can go to the library's webpage rather than trying to find it on YouTube. I can see that there could be advantages of having the sessions of a conference, for example, placed on YouTube, where there is no permanent website.

I certainly enjoyed "Introducing the book" - it was very funny and relevant as the monk moves from scroll to book. Just like the problems we have all had moving from printed material to electronic material.

There is probably lots of similar material on YouTube but I would never have the time to find it!

#15 Podcasts

I've heard a lot about podcasting but never had the time to explore them, particularly as I don't have an mp3 player. I can see lots of useful applications for podcasting in the library environment - particularly public libraries where you could have podcasts of film reviews, book reviews, cooking shows, etc. They would be most useful on an mp3 player as you could listen to them whilst driving, sitting in the train, or even whilst preparing the dinner!

I added a few podcasts to my Google Reader - some film reviews and some walking tours of Melbourne from the ABC. The film reviews worked fine, but I could not get the walking tours to play. I 'googled' for some podcasts of book reviews and selected a couple - one from Curtin University and the other called 'Nancy Pearl book reviews'. Again I could not get the Curtin University podcast to play but had no trouble with the Nancy Pearl podcasts.

#14 Rollyo

Rollyo seems to be a pretty good tool by allowing searching across a number of web sites - how many times have I had to visit a number of different web sites repeating a search in order to find information. My only criticism is that the search function is very limited - by default, Rollyo searches for any of the words typed in the search box. To limit to a phrase it is necessary to add quotation marks around the words. But beyond that, there is no ability to add proximity limiters, Boulean searching, etc.

I also thought I would try using Rollyo as a substitute federated search engine. I added a number of different library catalogue URLs - such as the AIC library catalogue, the Victoria Police library catalogue, and the EMA library catalogue. But when I searched for a subject, it did not search the catalogues, only the parent website. What a disappointment!