Technorati and Library Thing

Headed over to Technorati and did a basic search on bookmobile. 556 posts tagged with bookmobile, there was only 16 actual bookmobile blogs. It's good that Technorati provides options to search within tags or in posts, it allows for greater retrieval.

Did advance searching and the results seem pretty consistent, except in the field for NONE of the words. I assume that the bookmobile will not be listed in any of the results, however it did? Which, unless I'm doing something wrong, seem to negate having a 'NONE of the words' searching capabilities. They also have something called authority, is this similar to how libraries uses authority records?

Looked up nswpln2008 and was able to view the photos tagged from flickr, was excited to see my picture was also listed. This is a good search option to have included on Technorati.
I initially had no hits with any posts for nswpln2008 until I change the authority from alot to any. In this sense we can see which members have actually been tagging their posts for the learning 2.0. I have to admit I never bother with tagging in my post, because I wasn't really aware that it can be applied to individual posts. However if I go to all the trouble of adding tagging would my post be picked up by technorati?

Note to self: Apply tagging to posts for all up coming weeks and do search on technorati.

Looked up what authority meant on Technorati:
Authority is determined by the number of unique blogs indexed by Technorati that have linked to yours in the past 180 days. So to build your authority, encourage bloggers to link to you and to ping Technorati

Library Thing

Amazingly enough I still remember my login details. The first time I checked out Library thing, I was impressed with the amount of resources online, but aside from showing staff the recommendation tools I haven't access it again until today.

***1 1/2 hrs later*** oh soo much to see, so much to explore and I've just stumble across book swapsites...oh dream, which site to register on?!? what a dilemma. I never knew that there were this many book swap sites out there. I know of only book crossing, which is another fantastic site, based on a shared passion for reading by leaving registered book crossing books in public places where they can be picked up. The person then logs onto to the website to register that the book has been caught, and blog about it. Once you have finished reading you then re-release it out into the wild again. One of the great things is that you can see how well travel a book is and follow it's journey. Admittedly I haven't done this yet, it would be exciting to see whether one of my releases gets caught and blogged about. If you're interested in reading a book that has been release you can go hunting, and find out whether any books have been released near you.

Give me a shout out if you have.

Okay need to focus, I added five books and wanted to place the librarything widget, but as I mentioned I only have five books currently in my library, so no point at this current stage. It was very easy to add books to your library. Out of the five titles I added, Castle of Wizardry by David Eddings was the most 'owned' book with 1,808 members.

Well I better move along to answer boards and social searching.

Last word about videos

Just a few more words about videos.

Firstly while doing the discover exercise for Week #7 – Tagging, folksonomies, delicious and LibraryThing I jumped onto the Cleveland Public Library website, and just have to mentioned that I was impressed by their inclusions of video clips which they have embedded in their youth pages. They preview videos of award-winning and cool books', they also show case authors talking about their books and also, simulations of books story line, a great initiative! talk about bringing books to life.

Del.icio.us?

I'm registered with digg, which is kind of similar to del.icio.us in a sense, except instead of sharing websites, you're sharing stories and ranking stories in terms of popularity. With that in mind I thought del.icio.us would be similarity structure with familiar features.

However after viewing Cleveland and Sutherland Shire Library del.icio.us accounts, I was taken aback on the low readability of the website. I had difficulty adjusting to the way the information/websites were presented.

In the initial viewing it looked completely unstructured with just a list of websites based on a subject matter. Save this and save by 1 other person features just added to the confusion. It probably didn't help that I didn't completely comprehend the full functionalities of tag clouds, and that in addition to how it appears, with related words all grouped together, I also did not realise that size and boldness of fonts relayed certain information about the subject matter .

**I wiki-ed tag clouds and discovered that tags clouds can also be presented according to different categories such as alphabetical, weight, random order plus more.

I was relieved that Cleveland Public Library have an 'connect to' webpage which structures subject into alphabetical order, clicking on a subject will take you straight to the listing of websites for the selected topic. This would assist those not familiar with delicious and would enable them to make the most of the website.

After saying all that I'm sure it will probably require time and practice before I'm comfortable with the functionality of delicious, and the benefits of it will outweigh my initial impressions.

As Sharon Morris listed in her notes, why do we need it. There's much to gain from utiltising what is essentially a free tool, especially when it enables shared knowledge, and the minimising of repetitive Internet searching for individuals.

I would like our library to create something similar to what Cleveland Public Library has accomplished.

Youtubing it.

I'm fairly proficient on this topic, having used it mostly for recreational use, ie: looking up the latest music video clips, tv shows, previews to movies and so forth. Like many things on the Internet, you can get stuck spending a whole night just checking out stuff on youtube. Seriously addictive!~

I created an account on youtube when I brought my digital camera and filmed a short dance clip of my brothers, and ended up uploading it to youtube for laughs, and partially to share it with our families overseas.

There were initial concerns in the family about having our brothers up there for the world to see, however the more 'perceived sensitive' clips were made private and can only be viewed by those I 'invited'. Needless to say my brothers became 'famous' when it got out they were on there.

Having an account definitely came in handy when I flew out year to attend a funeral, and was asked that the memorial presentation shown at the service, be uploaded to youtube. I had reservations about placing something so essentially private and emotional on there, but it was an expressed wish of the family and so it was uploaded that night.

It is still up there now, and every now and then family would comment on how they would watch the clip, time and time again. I have to admit I am strangely reassured that anytime I want to remember my nan I can youtube her, and reminisce.

Now to back to Explore...

It's great to know that Libraries like Mosman have such a strong presence on the web and a little envious (holding arms out wide) with the amount of diverse content they have out there. I know with the completion of this course, that the gap between those libraries without presence and Mosman would certainly lessen, however it is good to have a great example on the type of web 2.0 technology libraries in general should be applying and to use Mosman Library as a standard.

Just a couple of the things I would like our library to implement:

- Author talks - video clips
- Training talks - different topics (on intranet)
- A competition for youths to create a funky, informative, short video on our library and to run it within the library and include it on our website

There are so many great ideas to implement with each one of the topics covered for the learning 2.0 course, one wonders whether we may need to have some type of project management course to ensure that certain great ideas are implemented.


Have an urge to dance? Too shy?, no partner?, completely uncoordinated? Totally unfit? Have no fear, taking dancing lessons has never been easier, and cheaper. All you need is a computer with Internet connection and you're good to go.

Log on to www.youtube.com or www. video.google.com.au

What are you waiting for? Grab your dancing shoes and let's do the bus stop.

Wicked Wikis

I had a look at the 'discover' wikis and the work applications wikis, and I have to admit that I never fully understood the scope of what wikis can do . The first wiki I used was Wikipedia and I still remember my first impressions of it, skepticism mostly, on whether the information on it was accurate, and also its longevity on the web, why would people want to access information from an encyclopedia that was essentially edited by anyone. Who knew!

How many years later, and now not only do I use it to quickly fill in my knowledge gaps, but wikipedia actually has become famous in its own right, with mentions in some movies. Amazing! Actually wikipedia is probably a case in point for web 2.0 and how the social revolution has evolved the Internet.

Anyway, I thought the wikis mentioned for this week were interesting and fun. I enjoyed Wookieepedia, I had fun looking up my fave characters. Also I just wanted to put it out there, but after I watched "Phantom Menace" I wished they had left the originals alone, I still have yet to watch the other two prequels, oh well.

After exploring other wikis, I keep thinking how wikis can be utilised in my library, and these are just some wikis I would love to create, of course this depends completely on time and skill level in creating wikis, however these are my rough ideas.

1. Procedures/Training Wiki - This is one that I would really love to develop, I will need to search for more examples though.
2. Readers Advisory Wiki ? I'm not sure whether to create one specific for the library or get staff to access the NSW Readers Advisory Working Group wiki
3. Computer Course wiki - resources particularly for those who have enrolled in the public Computer / Internet course at our library.

Well that's it for now, better to keep it small and somewhat possible to implement.

I'm off to see whether I can add/edit information about my suburb in Wikipedia, well that's if some else hasn't beaten me to it.

Had a chance to play around in the nswlearning2 wiki which was a lot of fun, was lucky enough to also add an new entry into the list rather than edit one previously set up. Had a look at wikipedia and they have quite a few rules when adding, editing and sourcing, am 'scared' to edit in that wiki, lest I make a mistake and ruin the whole entry.

Feed Me

I was looking forward to learning about RSS feeds, as I first heard about them in the Helene Blowers workshop and thought it might be great.............if only I knew what it was. :P

So here I am and what do you know, Eureka! the dots are finally connected. I now understand what Helen was showing us when she showed us a snapshot of her reader. Though mine sure isn't as populated as hers.

In my attempt to familarise myself with RSS I decided that I was going to created accounts with both bloglines and google reader to find what each offered, and whether readers are generally the same. As general experiments go my conclusions pointed to the obvious, and that is....wait for it...yes, both readers were fairly similar in functionality.

Well, after playing around with both readers (2 minutes each way) I decided to stick with google reader for the simple reason, that I had a gmail account and wanted to keep it all in the same family.

Anyway I'm off to ''explore''".........

Feeds Added:

1. Powerhouse Museum Photo of the day
2. SMH - Entertainment Headlines
3. SMH - News Headlines
4. Powell Books - Blogs
5. Powell Books - Reviews
6. Delicious love hk films
7. Love Kozo (blog)
8. Daily Telegraph - Top stories

I was really excited about adding feeds and selected a few based on keeping up with current events, personal interest and book related feeds. All were quite easy to add, as the RSS feed icon was accessible. To fast forward my usage of google reader I search for a youtube clip to show me other features of google reader. I have added this clip at the end of this post for those who may need to fast track their training as well.

What I particularly liked about google reader was that you can highlight things of interest by adding a star to it. This would then place the item into the 'starred folder' for a more thorough read later on. Another feature was sharing your feeds and trends which allows you to view the amount of activity undertaken in the reader.

What I found disappointing, and this may be something that is possible, but I'm not currently aware of it, is that the added feeds can't be group into folders like bloglines, or even group together into interests. At the moment all my feeds are displayed alphabetically.

Something else I've just realised as well, which has more to do with the management of the reader, and that is, after a few weeks without checking the reader I now have over 1,000 items to read. I don't know how people can have more than 10 feeds via their readers, but it probably didn't help that I added the newspapers headlines.

To better manage this I will restrict my feeds to those that I would consider essential, delete the newspapers feeds, and also incorporate checking my reader as part of my work routine.

*************

How can libraries take advantage of this technology? Our library has incorporated RSS feeds on their library events webpage, book talks and book groups webpages, thus ensuring regulars are always informed on events they are interested in.

Another idea would be to create a general newsreader for all library staff to access on the service desks when quiet, and include feeds to websites which would help them in their learning and development, for example feeds to Readers Advisory blogs and book reviews.

As promised the video that helped me get beyond basics (it's not as good as the commoncraft vids, but still note worthy).

Flickr

My first foray into flickr was when our library hosted the NSW Biggest Book Club in 2007. As decided in the Readers Advisory Working Group any pics taken on the day would be placed on flickr with the tags: readers day and read @ your library. Luckily the process was relatively simple and I was able to add the pics without too much fuss.

I think what other libraries are doing with flickr are great I particularly like the photographic competitions for teens at Lansing Public Library. Its a great idea to interest teenagers and I wish our library can do something similar. This sort of project reminds me of another great program, I think it was from the Helene Blowers workshop where a library or groups of libraries ran a video comp for teens to make a video about libraries. The winning entry was showcased on MTV, which must have been a great media opportunity for the libraries involved.

Did anyone else remember Helene Blowers mentioning this?

As part of the 'explore' activity I jumped onto flickr and started looking around for an interesting picture to discuss, but there's so many fantastic pictures, finally I settle on this gorgeous mosiac, which was created from the author's favourite pics. I think this is a stunning tapestry of other artists works.

What I love about this is the arrangement of colours, the diversity of subjects, the simplicity of a form shot from a different perspective.

I located this picture by doing a search under the word ''Flickr''. I was curious as to what pictures would have this tag, and this was one of them. Wonderful isn't it, I wish it was available as a poster I would definitely purchase it. Another reason why I picked this is that there's so much there to view that it would take more than one sitting to truly appreciate the beauty of it.

I've noticed that tags have become increasing more popular with social websites, particularly those with huge virtual communities. I think tags are great, even though there is a commonly acknowledged problem with the semantics of tags, they are needed to help drill down to a subject/content, and the benefits are that, more than one tag can be applied to an item. Allowing more chance for the content/subject to be accessed.

Well I'm off to upload pictures of my library with the tags: nswpln2008.