Test Drive #3 - WIKIs

Wikis are wonderful tools! I have had recent experience working with one as a distance ed student. As a group of four individuals located in various parts of Australia, we were able to collaborate using a wiki to construct our group assignment. It worked surprisingly well and as the Common Craft video explains, it is definitely easier than bouncing emails back and forward to each other!

I was surprised to learn that a study found a wiki encyclopedia to be more accurate than its printed version. At university, the use of Wikipedia is taboo and would indeed would count against you if cited in assessment work!

Libraries could find wikis particularly useful to collaboratively produce or update a policy, like a Collection Development Policy, for example. Staff located across great distances could all contribute and at different times. This would translate into cost savings in terms of the logistics of gathering staff at one location for a specific time.

I am very familiar with Wetpaint as I have created a web site with it for an assignment as part of my Librarianship course. I had to create a web site for fictitious researchers of the fictitious Diabetes Research Digital Library. I created pages that listed useful diabetes links, detailed the library's services, provided tips on database searching and how to evaluate web sites. I had a ball doing this and although this wiki was not a collaborative wiki as such, it was a great exercise in web site design.

Online Photo Sharing - Adventure into Flickr

After accepting the challenge to create a Flickr account and upload some of my recently captured digital photos of my library; here are the results.... http://www.flickr.com/photos/alana123/

It is a very impressive library and brand new! It opened in December 2008 and it reflects a modern architectural style, for the modern day. Located in sunny Rockhampton, Queensland, it is affectionately known by staff as "The Shed". This is due to its similarity to a typical Aussie shed, composed of galvanized sheets of iron and glass!

I found Flickr easy to work with and was surprised to learn that it was made easier by already having a Yahoo account!

I have just done a quick search for photos tagged with "slq2td09" as mine are and found some wonderful shots of the State Library of Queensland! I hope to get there one day and immerse myself in it!! I wonder if they give guided tours?

Test Drive #2 - Online Photo Sharing

What a great concept... online photo sharing.

Using the internet to record some of your life and places of interest to you for posterity is the way of the future. According to the Online Photosharing in Plain English video from Commoncraft, it is better than the traditional method of printing photos and placing in photo albums. Tagging of digital photos makes them easy to search for and locate compared to the good old fashioned photo album from the shelf! Just as I had gotten used to downloading my SD Card photos into folders on my computer and creating hard copy backups on CD, life changes again!

Venturing on to Flickr as suggested, I searched for Mosman Library and was pleasantly surprised at how simple it is find photos of interest. I also searched for my public library in, "Rockhampton" and discovered some interesting photos of the original public library, the "School of Arts" as well as some of our newly built library. Very impressive!

The Creative Commons project sounds very interesting and wonderful for its enabling access to rare photos from around the world and for the collaborative efforts that ensure its survival.

My favourite photo (shown at left) from Flickr is of the La Trobe Reading Room in the State Library of Victoria. I visited this amazing place last year on holiday in Melbourne and I thought to myself, this is a "real library"! It had a real sense of nostalgia and presence with the beautiful domed ceiling and old books lining the walls, along with the leather topped desks! I like this photo because of the angle. It gives an interesting perspective of the room from the desk level looking up!

(photo taken by Muhammadldris)

Adventures in Cyberspace with the new Librarian!

Let the adventures begin....
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....
there was a newly graduated Librarian whose inquisitive nature and love of sci fi, led her to create this blog!

Thanks to the State Library of Queensland's initiative, "Licence 2 Test Drive", I begin this journey full of hope that I will expand my knowledge and understanding of the latest web technologies.

I believe strongly that lifelong learning is suitable for everyone. Let's face it, no one knows everything, so there is always something else to learn! Keeping up with technology is also essential in today's linked environment. As a newly graduated Librarian, keeping up with technologies is part of the job and most importantly, an exciting part!

I have not had a chance to read many blogs, but the ones I have are interesting. I see a place for them in libraries of today as a marketing tool (that is my Marketing Degree coming in to play!). Blogs as a way to interact with clients is exciting! They could provide library staff with valuable information on their clients' habits, likes, dislikes and overall provide staff with ideas for creating the best possible library service. We may like to think that libraries are about books and the staff, but I believe libraries are more importantly about the people who use them! After all, if no one used them, we would be out of the job!

Please catch up again next time for the next exciting adventure of the Cyberspace Librarian...
boldly going where more librarians are going than ever before... cyberspace and beyond!