And now it's time to say good bye.....

It's good to see that there are already a few libraries who have embraced the web2.0 generation and their technology to stay relevance in an increasingly physically disconnected world.

It was interesting to see Le Monde map of different social networking technologies used around the world, particularly NZ's and Australia's majority of users preferring Myspace and Bebo. It certainly seem to reflect my experience in our library's computer room around 3pm.

One of the funny things/patterns? about Beebo, that my sisters and I noticed was that almost every Islander (Samoan, Tongan, Fijian ..etc) who had a type of social networking profile would have a Bebo account. As you can see NZ, being the largest Polynesian community outside of the individual islands, it certainly seem to reflect the majority of their population using Bebo, with Rotorua Public Library having a Bebo account.

Anyway in terms of our library having a social networking profile, I know they were having problems getting approval as Council are still worried about the type of comments being placed on their profile. Here's hoping they would finally understand that their community have a strong Internet/online presence, and they need to equip Libraries with the tools to reach their audience.

Having an online presence would break down preconceived sterotypes about libraries. Who said we weren't hip and personable, and break down barriers (physical), create interest and discussion. Allows personable interaction and increases knowledge and understanding on the range of resources and services we provide. We would also benefit from direct and instantaneous feedback on events and activities we provide. What they like or didn't like.

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Every now and then I'm surprise when a new library member makes a comment about not realising that libraries had DVDs, or books, or another resource that we have had for years. Yes it's true. So to me, not having a social networking profile is akin to not having your contact details in the whitepages.

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Have tried signing up to second life on my friends PC and unfortunately his PC was too old. Will attempt it again on another PC and see what the fuss it all about.

I would like to thank the State Library for the opportunity to undertake this course. It's been crazy and difficult at times with accessing certain websites, but it was all worth it at the end.
I'm off to sign up to the NSW Reference and Information Services Group forum and to check out other blogs now that I've finished.

Personal On Demand

Discover: It would be good if they provided transcript with some podcast as it would have made it easier with some of the interviews conducted by the British Library.
I liked the fact that ABC provided three ways in which to access their podcasts, by subject, by network and also alphabetical. I also came also a podcast which I found interesting, it was Catapult, triple j. Catapult is about new ideas and inventions by young Australian entrepreneurs on triple j. The story, 'Socially networked success' is about the development of the company, thebroth.com which utilised social networking sites, particularly facebook to become profitable.

Explore: I would like our library to have podcasts for the following:

• Podcast for Children - Story books
• Podcasts for Youth events
  
• Podcast for Author Talks
• Podcast from Special events, both video and audio
• Podcast for HLS patrons for local events
  
• Staff: Training podcasts

Adventure: I didn't realise that yahoo had an audio section, pretty good stuff. It's also good to know that OEDB also provides free podcasts.

I download 2day FM radio station podcasts through itunes, which is a simple process, it just requires you to subscribe to a channel and it will automatically update when I hook up my ipod.