Someone must have an answer! I hope it's a librarian.

I like the idea of Slamming the boards each month, as yet, I haven't had the time to participate... and sometimes I forget that it's on. Slamming the boards sounds like fun and a good way of marketing library resources and skills. I like a lot of the tag lines on the Answer Board Librarian wiki . My favourite one is Librarians - we eat questions for breakfast.

I had my first go at answering a question on Yahoo! Answers. I answered 2 questions about books. One was for read alikes for the Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer and the other was for fiction suggestions about spousal abuse. I'm sure I could spend hours answering questions.

I am amazed at the questions people have asked. There are lots of questions asking for help with homework or rather asking for the answer to their homework questions. There are also many many questions about things I would never put out there for the whole world to see.

Tag, you're it!

One of my favourite web 2.0 technologies is del.icio.us. I love that I can save the websites I find when playing on the net and use them on whatever computer I happen to be using. I would love to use this in someway on the library website to catalogue useful websites for people to access. I also have started to check delicious before I do a Google search, just in case someone has already found what I'm after. This is my delicious, or you can see my recent additions in the right hand column.

I also like LibraryThing, though it's been so long since I logged in that I forgot my password for a while. I like the way some libraries have incorporated the tags from Library Thing into their online catalogues. We don't have subject headings in our fiction and if someone asks for a book with a particular theme it's had to find. I will check out one of the other suggestions. Here is my librarything catalogue

Ooh I have just discovered Gurulib. You can create different shelves within your library, and catalogue other things, such as CDs as well. What fun! It also looks like you can borrow other people's books... I'm not sure how that would work.... I will have to play with it some more. Here is my gurulib

Human tetris

Now for something fun from Japan!


Hours of amusement for everyone!

Embedded video - a serious one

I found this video on Google video search about using the standalone version of Sirsi. I think this is a good way of doing all library procedures. As well as instructional videos for the library customers.




I hope this works...

Videos online - hours of fun for everyone!

Hey, I've never used Google Videos before. I thought it would be just like YouTube, which it kinda is... It's so good. When you search it searches YouTube as well!! The videos on Google also seem to be longer than on YouTube. I have played with YouTube before, and found some episodes of the Goodies broken up into 10 minute sections. If only the people that uploaded them had known about Google videos!
Now to find a video to embed in this blog...

Wonderful Wikis

I've never really used a wiki before. I've come across Wikipedia and read information there, but nothing other than getting information. It was surprisingly easy to contribute to the wiki set up for this program. I enjoyed looking at the variety of wikis out there... who knew there was so much information out there about Star Wars??!!
I can see the potential for libraries in using them for sharing procedure information and I liked the SJ Public Library subject guide. Though my favourite one would have to be the Book Lovers wiki set up by Princeton Public Library!

RSS - Bloglines Vs Google Reader

As was this weeks' task I have subscribed to bloglines. I am used to using Google Reader. Bloglines looks cluttered and I can't read all the new posts at one time, which I like to do. I have to read each subscription separately. I also like to save things for later, which you can easily do in Google.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that Bloglines has it advantages over Google Reader, but I haven't found them yet.

This is what I like about Google reader. I think it is easier to use. It doesn't look cluttered - until you add lots of feeds. You can read all your new posts with the click of the "All items" menu option. You can star items, which saves them for later. The items don't become read until you have actually seen them. It is also easier to subscribe to feeds. Often I became lost when trying to subscribe to something in bloglines.

I'm glad that I had a go at using bloglines though, all experience with different tools is valuable experience!