Grand Finale



Web 2.0 Awards



What a great site! I went to the site Wetpaint which lists free wiki websites and I came across "Book reviews for the average Joe". This is a well designed site that has links to recent reviews, past reviews, and current reading. Being Web 2.0 there is also a discussion board.



Reflections on 23 things



I find it mind boggling that there is so much out there in cyberspace and it is so easily accessible , (once you know how). Although this course has been time consuming, it has also been invaluable as a way of introducing me to technologies that I didn't know existed, but which are second nature to our children and library users. Just glancing at some of the information regarding Web 2.0 it's obvious that this technology is the way of the future and is already being incorporated into libraries around the world.



Because of time constraints, I haven't experimented as much as I would like so I intend to come back at a later stage to further explore this new world.

Podcasting

I have downloaded episodes from "Enough Rope" to my iPod and checked out Podcast.net and Yahoo Podcasts. The Podcast. net site listed 48 podcasts for the keyword "library" but when I went to listen to the podcasts there was a problem with loading Quick Time. However Yahoo Podcasts is extremely user friendly and I listened to a discussion between 4 librarians discussing the way Web 2.0 either has or hasn't changed their libraries. One example was how the introduction of tagging and user feedback has made the catalogue more user friendly.

YouTube & Yahoo Videos

I did a search for "librarians" on Yahoo Videos and came accross a clip from the Colbert Report where Robert Colbert interviews the Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. They discussed the issue of anyone being able to add information to Wikipedia regardless of merit. In the example given, Robert Colbert had gone in and deliberately put an misleading entry under Elephants stating that the population had tripled and there was now an overpopulation of elephants. Apparently there is a process whereby such entries are monitored and the person entering the wrong information is contacted and asked to behave and if this doesn't work, then they are blocked from any future editing. In serious cases, they put a block on the entry itself so the material can't be changed by anyone. A very amusing & informative interview.

Social Tagging

Technorati is a very easy way to see what blogs and videos are available. It was interesting to see the various videos and Blogs that different libraries had produced on Web 2.0. I can see that this is a useful way to share experiences and information between libraries and the social tagging makes it easy to find what you want.

Del.icio.us

I'm not too sure yet how I would use this in a professional way but it would certainly be good to be able access my bookmarks from home. I will need to come back later and follow this up in more detail.

Second Life

I can see the attractions to using Second Life; 24 hr reference service and collaboration between librarians throughout the world. Makes me wonder if in the future, virtual life such as Second Life will be our reality.

Stretching... ♫♫

Stretching... ♫♫,
originally uploaded by bocavermelha-l.b..

Sucess at last!

I can now move onto week 7. Who knows? Maybe I'll get through this in time after all. Don't want to miss out on the morning tea!