With millions of daily users, I believe social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr provide an ideal outlet to engage a broad spectrum of society and maximise the libraries’ exposure, allowing them to promote services, collections, events, resources and easily facilitate communication with the client base. These networks also function as platforms for sharing media, with specific applications in library services such as Flickr photostreams of historical photographs forming part of the Local Studies Collections, and Facebook applications such as JSTOR allowing patrons to search the library’s JSTOR account directly through Facebook. By integrating these services into social networking, the library is able to maintain an active presence in the community. This is especially useful because many members of the community that may otherwise not be able to sacrifice the time to physically visit a library are able to remain informed and involved with current events and news.
Friday, 16 November 2012
Exercise 16
I have made a comment on Gary's blog, on Investigative Exercise 5 Social Networking:
With millions of daily users, I believe social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr provide an ideal outlet to engage a broad spectrum of society and maximise the libraries’ exposure, allowing them to promote services, collections, events, resources and easily facilitate communication with the client base. These networks also function as platforms for sharing media, with specific applications in library services such as Flickr photostreams of historical photographs forming part of the Local Studies Collections, and Facebook applications such as JSTOR allowing patrons to search the library’s JSTOR account directly through Facebook. By integrating these services into social networking, the library is able to maintain an active presence in the community. This is especially useful because many members of the community that may otherwise not be able to sacrifice the time to physically visit a library are able to remain informed and involved with current events and news.
With millions of daily users, I believe social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr provide an ideal outlet to engage a broad spectrum of society and maximise the libraries’ exposure, allowing them to promote services, collections, events, resources and easily facilitate communication with the client base. These networks also function as platforms for sharing media, with specific applications in library services such as Flickr photostreams of historical photographs forming part of the Local Studies Collections, and Facebook applications such as JSTOR allowing patrons to search the library’s JSTOR account directly through Facebook. By integrating these services into social networking, the library is able to maintain an active presence in the community. This is especially useful because many members of the community that may otherwise not be able to sacrifice the time to physically visit a library are able to remain informed and involved with current events and news.
Exercise 15
I have made comments on
Ruchi and Diane Gelder’s blogs
Ruchi: Filter Bubbles Exercise 8
I completely agree with
your views on this ‘filter bubble’. Users of the internet should not be
constricted to certain information, especially if they are looking for new
information on that topic. I think that especially in a Library, where search
engines are also used, all material should be available to users, instead of
certain information being filtered based on what they believe visitors and the
community need. There was a speculation back in March that Google was going to
launch a social network, when it was announced that there would be no more
private Google profiles after July 31st. More and more of these
sorts of things are coming up, where internet users do not have access to
relevant information or their privacy is invaded! This is something I greatly
disapprove of, and I’m glad that others like you agree with me on this.
Ruchi: Exercise 11
You have some very good
ideas that could be implemented to Parramatta Library, which I would also like
to see happening in my library. My library is Concord Library, and I can
already see modern elements and technology slowly surfacing, with a modern design
and good search engines, however, like you said, more could be done. I agree
with the idea of having an interactive site for the Children collection, as
nowadays children seem to drift further and further away from reading and going
to the library, so fun, interactive technologies such as touch screens and
online stories would possibly incite a love for reading at an early age. For
the Youth and Adult sections I think that they already know how to use their
own laptops, ipads etc. in the library, which means less work in that section.
Diane Gelder: http://dianegeldermonitor.blogspot.com.au/
Diane Gelder: Exercise 6
I agree with you on the
fact that reading reviews are good and that they don’t necessarily belong in
the library catalogue. I find reviews very helpful, especially if no person has
recommended a particular book to me, and I’m just browsing. If you have a book
already in mind, reviews appear tedious and useless, really, however if you
want something new I think they’re very helpful. While my library does not have
reviews in their catalogue, most books in the catalogue are accompanied by a
link to their amazon page, the author in Wikipedia, Google Books and Library
Thing, where reviews can obviously be found. Here is an example, http://webopac.canadabay.nsw.gov.au/libero/WebOpac.cls?VERSION=2&ACTION=DISPLAY&RSN=288992&DATA=CON&TOKEN=T7bQKqK5i73750&Z=1&SET=1
However, I think that more and more reviews are emerging on pages such as Amazon and library catalogues, with advancing technology making it easier for reviews to be posted.
However, I think that more and more reviews are emerging on pages such as Amazon and library catalogues, with advancing technology making it easier for reviews to be posted.
Diane Gelder: Exercise 4
I really admire Nancy
Pearl’s love for libraries! She says, “When you walk into a library, you’re the
equal of anybody else and your options are unlimited”. I completely agree with this
statement. I think many people today don’t realise the amount of knowledge, the
amount of treasure, really, that a library holds. I remember when I was
younger, and we had no internet, no computers etc. whenever we wanted to know
something or research something we used to go to the library and I recall it
being a wonderful experience. It’s so easy to lose yourself in a book, and I
can’t wait till I can work as a librarian and spend much more time in the library! I
feel like in a library you can explore almost the entire world, and widen your
knowledge of the world without ever leaving the same place.
Wednesday, 14 November 2012
Exercise 14
As asked, I invited three other bloggers to my blog.
These are:
These are:
Diane Gelder, Colin Edgar, Nili Chen as well as Sharon Luhr
who was already an author of my blog.
Also, thank you so much Sharon for the helpful forum posts, it helped me find the authors to invite!
Also, thank you so much Sharon for the helpful forum posts, it helped me find the authors to invite!
Exercise 13
Changing the arrangement of my blog:
I think this function is very useful. In order to make my page
just a little more interesting and fun for visitors I have added the ‘Fish’
gadget which enables viewers to feed fish in what appears to be a fish tank on
the right side of my blog. I have also changed the order of my sidebar, dragging
the history above the contributors, making it easier for visitors to navigate
to previous posts. I've also moved my blog posts to the right, and the
contributors and blog archive to the left. I like this new arrangement :).
Exercise 12
Changing themes and colours for my blog:
I found this very exciting, as I found the plain black and white style that I previously had rather dull. My new theme features a background of books on shelves, rather suiting I thought, and I played around with the colour schemes (ranging from grey to blue to green to red) till I chose a nice green to complement the background. I found the template idea very good, as it enables users to choose from many, varying possibilities that are easily installed and changed.
I found this very exciting, as I found the plain black and white style that I previously had rather dull. My new theme features a background of books on shelves, rather suiting I thought, and I played around with the colour schemes (ranging from grey to blue to green to red) till I chose a nice green to complement the background. I found the template idea very good, as it enables users to choose from many, varying possibilities that are easily installed and changed.
Exercise 11
One of the most ubiquitous emerging Library 2.0 technologies are blogs. Due to the immediacy of content delivery, these allow staff to market or announce library news and events, publish reviews of new releases which would generate discussion among the library clientele and inform customers of any changes taking place at the library. By extension, they could also be used for professional development, where staff can write about their work experience or training they have undertaken. Due to the wide scope of these blogs, their posts could be specific to any of the five categories of local studies, children’s, teenage/youth, adult fiction and information/reference. An example is the Mosman Library Blog (http://blogs.mosman.nsw.gov.au/library/), where recent posts include a news bulletin, information on the historical event “Mosman Dresses Up” as well as information on philanthropy such as the donation of books to Mudanjiang Library in China.
Specific to Adult Fiction could be the use of an RSS feed to keep clients iformed of author talks, workshops as well as podcasts or vodcasts of guest speakers. Take for example the RSS feed of the Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/rss/, which lists dozens of free concerts, lectures, exhibitions, symposia, films, notifications of upcoming readings and presentations at the library.
An interesting use of Library 2.0 Technologies is the application of instant messaging services in the Information/Reference area/. This is used in the reference service for quick questions and clarifications. This was trialed in the AskNow chat service in Australian libraries, http://www.asknow.gov.au/. The interactive chat software enables librarians to message users webpages as well as provide guidance on search techniques, or even take questions as referrals so they provide a more detailed response later on.
To engage younger clients, such as teenagers, libraries often keep social network profiles such as facebook, http://www.facebook.com/. In particular, facebook groups can foster a connection with these customers by creating a virtual environment where they can gather based on shared interest, such as particular genres or even collaborate or forms study groups. They can also be used to keep the clientele in general informed of upcoming events, as posts are merged into their newsfeeds. An example is the State Library of New South Wales, http://www.facebook.com/statelibrarynsw?fref=ts.
Exercise 10
The Local Studies collection at Concord Library specialises in reference material covering diverse aspects of the City of Canada Bay Local Government Area. The resources include both historical and contemporary material in a variety of formats that reflect themes such as the original indigenous community, colonial settlement, industrial history as well as the natural and man-made environments. Digital collections include environmental reports, newspaper clippings, historical maps and photographs. Also available is the Ancestry Library edition database, which includes records of births, deaths, marriages and cemetery records. One of the most innovative application of Library 2.0 technologies is the Canada Bay Connections, a digital collection of the Library's historical and contemporary photographs. These include images of the City of Canada Bay and many local organisations, ranging from the nineteenth century up to the present day. A selection of these are also accessible via Flickr.
For youth, the library has a “Project Y - Youth Space @ the Libraries”, which includes a Facebook page, X-Box Competitions and online collaboration homework groups. In addition, there are interactive programs regarding cybersafety on the library website, as well as a plethora of external links to youth forums and so forth. Furthermore, the Library provides access to a range of databases to assist students. These include ANZ Reference Centre, Health and Wellness Resource Center, Literature Resource Center, Science Resource Center, Factiva, Standards Australia Online and Britannica. This is an extension of the many databases already available in the library’s information and reference service areas.
For Adult Fiction, there is the OverDrive eLibrary 24/7 Digital Media Collection. There, you can download hundreds of audiobooks and eBooks, bestsellers or classics from home! Your OverDrive eLibrary24/7 never closes and is available anytime, anywhere. All you need is an internet connection and a current City of Canada Bay library card.
For children, there are seemingly no Library 2.0 Technologies, but rather there is a rhyme-time, story reading and playgroup. This is presumably because young children are more active, preferring to play together or sing a rhyme, rathen than use a computer. Furthermore, many parents believe limited exposure to television, computers and other technology is beneficial to their child's upringing. Furthermore, these younger children may have trouble navigating or accessing traditional computer user interfaces.
Wednesday, 7 November 2012
Exercise 9
Investigative Exercise 9 - Community Profiles
State which local council area you live in – you will be investigating your local library service.
Write a post (about a paragraph long) giving a “community profile” of the people/area your library service is for. Include links to the Council website for your Library service and to the Library section of this website.
This might be a good post to add an image of your library or Council area.
Write a post (about a paragraph long) giving a “community profile” of the people/area your library service is for. Include links to the Council website for your Library service and to the Library section of this website.
This might be a good post to add an image of your library or Council area.
Concord Library - City of Canada Bay Council
The library caters to a very diverse demographic. For senior citizens, there are Author Talks, Wrap with Love knitting group, Reader's cafe at Concord Library, Reading group at Five Dock, Local Studies and Home library service. Youth activities including youth space, game space, school holiday activities, HSC resources, HSC talks, schools collection, book week activities as well as recommended good reads. Children’s activities include baby rhymetime, toddlertime, preschool storytime, school holiday activities, afterschool book group, research skills for primary school kids and other reference links.
Exercise 8
Exercise 8
Watch the two following Youtube clips – post a comment in response to one of the clips.
Robots
Robots
The Automated Book Delivery System and Virtual Browse Technology being implemented at the James B. Hunt Library Jr. Library heralds an exciting new era in library technology. The print collections which will be housed in a climate controlled environment, containing up to two million volumes, will be serviced by a state-of-the-art bookBot. This allows the library to maximise shelving space by storing less frequently viewed collections in the ABDS as well as those more fragile which would benefit from environmentally stable conditions. This technology is derived from high-density automated shelving processes already in place in automotive manufacturing. This fascinating new technology will engage patrons and extend the accessibility of the catalogue. Materials can be requested only, with a robotic crane retrieving the order only minutes later.
I am very surprised to learn about these ‘filter bubbles’ as
I have recently noticed things disappearing when I go to news sites and do a
Google search. I think the concept behind this idea is so incredibly foolish, because the internet
was made in order to bring people together and connect the world with the
ability to share knowledge. The notion only hinders growth of knowledge and
makes us blind and ignorant. I almost feel as if we are being treated as
children, search engines such as Google covering our eyes to stop us from
seeing what goes on in the world. The internet enables users around the world
to have a voice, something which everyone has a right to see. Especially in
today’s society where media has an immense effect on our choices, I strongly
feel that this biased technology takes away my rights to information in a
democratic society. Although some people may prefer keeping out any unwanted
information for convenience, I prefer to know current events and not constantly
feel ignorant. I am concerned of what the culture of the world will transform
into if the internet is so incredibly selective with its information for
individuals.
Tuesday, 18 September 2012
Exercise 7
Investigative
Exercise 7 Podcasts
Find
a podcast in any Australian library. Post to your blog a short summary of the
podcast. Include the library’s name, title of podcast and link. Make certain
you label your post.
A
podcast from the State Library of New South Wales, Australia
I
found a podcast from the events and talks podcast section (http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/podcasts/events/index.html).
The podcast I chose is called Anne of
green Gables (http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/podcasts/events/anne_green_gables.html).
In this podcast Susannah Fullerton, the author of two books about Jane Austen,
explores the lasting appeal of Anne of
Green Gables, which now celebrates its 100th year of publication
and analyses the life of its author, Lucy Maud Montgomery.
Ms Fullerton begins with an interesting excerpt from the
famous book, followed by a close analysis and focus on how the author’s life
impacted the characters and storyline. She mentions that the book transcends
the age line, being a novel that is able to be read by both adults and
children, with a mix of both romance and realism. Ms Fullerton also describes
the Lucy Montgomery’s ability to write books which cross cultural borders and
are loved all around the world; Anne of
the Island was sent to polish soldiers in WW2 as it was thought to be an
uplifting read to prepare them for war, in Japan Anne of Green Gables has been taught to generations of children, a
musical production of The Blue Castle was an absolute hit in Poland, and Ellen
Montgomery received fan mail from around the world, including letters from
Australia. Many modern writers have been greatly influenced by Ms Montgomery’s incredible
books, journals, short stories and poems.
Anne of Green Gables
concerns itself with sibling Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert who own the sprawling
Green Gables estate on Prince Edward Island. Marilla, who is cautious,
religious and has no tolerance for nonsense agrees that the best way to
maintain the property would be to adopt an adolescent boy. When Matthew arrives
at the train station, and the child waiting for him is freckle-faced,
red-haired Anne Shirley, he realizes there was a mistake, but can’t bear to
break the heart of the ecstatic orphan who somehow found her way to Prince
Edward Island. Marilla agrees for Anne to stay for a trial period, and at first
her rapid tongue, dreaminess and knack for finding trouble seem to suggest she
will soon have to leave. Through trials and tribulations, Anne does win over
those important to her, including Marilla, who cannot even imagine what life
would have been like without Anne.
Thursday, 13 September 2012
Exercise 2
This weblog appears to be about the State Library of
Queensland. This blog interested me because at first sight it is well set out,
with a modern and imaginative design and has a variety of information already
on the front page. Since I am moving to Brisbane after my son has completed his
HSC, I would love to learn as much as I can about the Queensland State Library,
after seeing the magnificent NSW State Library.
The eye-catching links on the sidebar lead to Floodlines, Tea and Me, Asia Pacific Design Library, Australian Library of Art, Indigenous Voices and SLQ today. Interesting Topics on the front page included the passing of the first Aboriginal person elected to an Australian state parliament (Eric Deeral), the New State Library’s Indigenous Language WebPages, as well as a post on Family History Week. These topics caught my eye, as I realised that the Library appears to value the integration of the aboriginal community, encouraging viewers to learn more about Indigenous Australians.
The post concerning Vale
Eric Deeral http://blogs.slq.qld.gov.au/jol/2012/09/11/eric-deeral/ interested
me particularly since as a European, Aborigines are a new topic for me and I
love learning about different cultures, especially ones that I know nothing, or
very little about. It’s great to see that the State Library of Queensland has
implemented an Indigenous Languages Project, which is sure to spark the
interest of many people, who like me, want to learn more about Indigenous
Australians.
Exercise 1
Write
a paragraph on your blog describing your understanding of Library 2.0. List
three Web 2.0 applications commonly used by Libraries.
Library 2.0 is a service derived from Web 2.0, which
has focused on the web services as a platform for information sharing and
collaboration, coupled with a user centred design. These aspects have been
translated to a library service model that reflects a new era in the way
information is presented and delivered to users. Library 2.0 attempts to engage
the customer in the design and implementation of various library services by
encouraging active feedback and participation. This facilitates the constantly
evolving and changing dynamic of contemporary service delivery while promoting
a participatory role for library users. This has been epitomised in the Online
Public Access Catalogue, with features aimed at greater user interaction and
participation with the system, such as tagging and reading or posting reviews.
In
addition, Library 2.0 provides a multi-media experience, with collections
including a wide variety of video and audio components to complement written
texts. Another application of Web 2.0 innovations in the Library 2.0 interface
is the inclusion of communication platforms such as instant messaging or wikis,
through which users cannot only communicate with each other but also library
staff. These also allow for professional development and collaboration, whereby
librarians from different branches can communicate through chat sessions. Wikis
on the other hand can be used to make library staff manuals or procedures for
various system or database applications readily available or even conferences
and meetings. Image sharing, another prominent feature of Web 2.0 has
facilitated promotional activities for libraries in particular, such as record
building projects that involve the community, author visits and special library
displays. By extension, video sharing can be used for training, promotion,
tutorials and lectures. These also often take the form of podcasts, through
which author talks, seminars or storytime recordings are distributed, which can
easily be viewed on many platforms, including mobile devices.
Web 2.0
Examples of Web 2.0 technologies which are widely used:
Blog (short for Weblog)
A blog is an online personal journal that enables the writer
to write, reflect and comment daily- it is the most common web 2.0 tools. Blog
software includes Word Press, Movable Type, Blogger and Tumblr. Blogs are
generally used for News/Events, professional Development, Marketing, Newspaper
columns and TV shows.
RSS (Really Simple
Syndication)
RSS is software which can be used for delivering regularly
changing web content. Used especially by news-related sites, weblogs and online
publishers. Examples of RSS feed readers include Bloglines, Google Reader,
Feeburner and FeedDemon. The General uses for RSS are in Articles, Newsletters,
News and Events and Presentations.
Instant messaging
(IM)
A messenger that allows the user to have a live conversation
with people around the world via computers connected to the Internet, allowing
almost instantaneous responses. Features include Buddy Lists (Listing of
trusted friends and family), Chat Window (the window in which communication is
done) and Status Indicator (a notation of being, e.g. ‘At Lunch). IM services
include examples such as Yahoo, Windows Live Messenger and Skype.
Wikis
A Wiki is a Web Site developed collaboratively by a
community of users, allowing any user to add and edit content. Examples include
PBWiki, Media Wiki and Wetpaint.
Image Sharing
Websites such as Flickr and Picasa allow people to share
photographs online, with features that allow images to be tagged and browsed.
Video Sharing
A video hosting service allows individuals to upload video
clips to an Internet website. These sites are increasing in popularity, with
websites such as Youtube, Blip.TV, Google Video and Yahoo! Video becoming more
and more prominent among internet users.
Podcasts
A podcast is a multimedia digital file made available on the
Internet for downloading through an RSS feed. Podcasting is made easy through
software such as Audacity, @Podder, iTunes and Garageband.
Social Bookmaaring
Social Bookmarking enables users to save and organise links
to favourite websites to share with others. Organisation methods include tags
or descriptors. Examples of Social Bookmarking sites are del.icio.us,
BlogMarks.net, Digg and PHPDug.
Folksonomies and User-based
Tagging
These go hand in hand with social bookmarking, in which
subject descriptors and tagging make things easier to find. These functions
enable users to catalogue their own Libraries, organise their favourite
bookmarks, classify image collections and share their information with other
people. An example of a Tagging site is TagCloud.
Social Networking
Social Networking is the use of a Web Site to communicate
with other members of the site by posting messages, photographs, etc. Features
that users experience when Social Networking are: User profiles, friending,
groups, individual messaging, announcements, individual message boards, photos,
blogs or journals, searching and privacy controls. Popular examples include Facebook, MySpace,
Ning, LinkedIn and LiveJournals
Mashups
A mashup is a website which uses content from more than one
source to establish a new service. Examples of such websites include Google
Maps, Biowizard, Delicious Library 2 and Rivers of the World.
Widgets
A widget is an application that enables a user to perform a
function or access a service, using embedded codes in web pages to grant access
to the weather, news, time, polls etc. Examples include Polldaddy and SurveyMonkey.
Monday, 10 September 2012
Exercise 3
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sheenalashay/7032706093/in/pool-libraryofcongress
Photo from the Library of Congress, USA- This photo depicts an image of the Library of Congress building, with particular focus on the ceiling. Graceful columns form arches which supports an intricately decorated balcony, along with cherubs and angels. This draws the viewer's eye to the ornate ceiling, adorned with patterns of golds and browns.
Photo from the Library of Congress, USA- This photo depicts an image of the Library of Congress building, with particular focus on the ceiling. Graceful columns form arches which supports an intricately decorated balcony, along with cherubs and angels. This draws the viewer's eye to the ornate ceiling, adorned with patterns of golds and browns.
Exercise 5
Write a post on your
blog about why you think it is a good idea for a library to participate on a
social networking site, or why not. Make certain you label your post.
An involvement in social networking sites allows
libraries to reach out to a broader social specrum and especially engage
younger people to visit the library and kindle their enthusiasm for reading.
Statistically, youth make up a large percentage of social network users, making
it an ideal platform to engage them. Furthermore, a social networking profile
allows libraries to quickly communicate information about upcoming events, for
example a facebook post about a new book club starting up, or certain library
resources being out of order due to maintenance work. In conjunction with other
community profiles and council pages, social networking allows one to promote
the other. An active presence on social networking sites also communicates that
the library is ‘up-to-date’ and representative of other online resources it may
possess, such as access to journals.
Exercise 6
Write a post on your
blog commenting on the usefulness of these reviews. Do you think libraries
should be providing this service? Does the library you use have this option
available on their catalogue? Make certain you label your post.
I believe it is very useful and
informative for patrons to have access to reviews of books before purchasing or
borrowing these. While my local library, City of Canada Bay Library, does not
offer this service, I personally always look up and read reviews for books I
intend to borrow and having such a review system integrated into the library
catalogue would be very convenient and appealing to me. Furthermore, people may
feel encouraged to sample new authors or genres by reading reviews, expanding
their literary horizon. However, on the other hand, these reviews may be rather
subjective, and a negative review, especially when highlighted through an
integration in the library catalogue, may discourage patrons from reading a
certain book. One possible option would be to present a myriad of reviews and
aggregate ‘score’ for each book, similar to Amazon’s review system, where each
item receives a mean score out of five stars sourced from user submitted
reviews. This would be more representative of popular opinion of the book as opposed
to the view of a single, possibly biased individual.
I believe it is very useful and
informative for patrons to have access to reviews of books before purchasing or
borrowing these. While my local library, City of Canada Bay Library, does not
offer this service, I personally always look up and read reviews for books I
intend to borrow and having such a review system integrated into the library
catalogue would be very convenient and appealing to me. Furthermore, people may
feel encouraged to sample new authors or genres by reading reviews, expanding
their literary horizon. However, on the other hand, these reviews may be rather
subjective, and a negative review, especially when highlighted through an
integration in the library catalogue, may discourage patrons from reading a
certain book. One possible option would be to present a myriad of reviews and
aggregate ‘score’ for each book, similar to Amazon’s review system, where each
item receives a mean score out of five stars sourced from user submitted
reviews. This would be more representative of popular opinion of the book as opposed
to the view of a single, possibly biased individual.
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