Youtube Exercise

I have selected this video as I am going to see a concert by Wendy next week, which should be wonderful. As an added bonus, I managed to change the YouTube frame to purple instead of gray!

Wiki time

Having checked out some wiki's, the applications for libraries seem to be extensive- internally to share knowledge and work on big projects, and for customers, things like book reviews and local history would seem to be key areas. I imagine that it would be possible to post local historical photos and request the community to help with information on the content of the photo. It wouldbe a wonderful way to try and harness some of the knowledge that is out there.

Who knows, there could even be a Public Library News article in there!

RSS feeds

I completed the exercise of adding RSS feeds a couple of days ago, and was feeling unsure about the value of the whole RSS concept. I had the feeling that I was likely to waste more time than I saved. However, when I logged in today, I was pleasantly surprised-I was not overwhelmed with posts, it was easy to see what was new, and it only took me a few moments to check the posts. I think that I will be tempted to fiddle with it to set up the blogs that really interest me, to make full use of the tool. From a library perspective it could be a great way to help get our message to the customer, with minimal exertion on their part - definately worth exploring more.

Wonderful world of Flickr

I have to admit to having a good time wandering around on Flickr. I found some photos of our town- no one I know, but it did make me think about the issues of privacy and security that could arise out of publishing personal images to a public forum. For instance, on photo had a caption "my desk at XYZ school", and the members profile had a first name and an identifiable photo. With that info, I now know the woman's name, what she looks like and where she works. To me, that is a bit to much info to be so readily available.

I had heaps of trouble finding an image to blog about (what an ugly verb "blog" is - I just don't find it in the least appealing). My difficulties stemmed from an over-abundance of choice - I could easily have spent hours looking. In the end I searched for FRACTALS, and came across this photset, which I fell in love with. I could easily imaging some of these framed on my wall

http://www.flickr.com/photos/micktripp/sets/72157603725305067/

The owner of these has them as all rights reserved, so I have not included a copy here. I am not sure what sort of technique he has used to do the images, but they are just stunning.

First time for everything

I consider myself to be a fairly accomplished web user, but am certainly not used to participating in Web2.0 applications- I know what some of them are, and what they do, but have always looked upon them as something that had no real personal application. Having said that, I am keen to look at ways of utilising Web2.0 for work - there are so many great examples out in the library community, and Iwill be glad to gain the knowledge to make some informed choices about what our library can start to do. I am also hoping to build my computer skills for all of those new and different "how do I......" questions at the Ref desk.