Technology is still a strange and wonderful thing to me at time.

I am of course kidding …. thinking about some of our wackier borrowers, I don’t think dealing with them completely sloshed would really improve the desk experience.

I’ll see if it works linking the blog page that I’m talking about to this post.

Having said this, it does seem like an interesting way to get your blog known amongst the sea of other blogs. When I did the suggested search for ‘bookmobile’s I was entertained by the site that I included in my title with the poignant tale of about the author’s Mum running away with the bookmobile driver & that their last memory of her was the bookmobile parked down the end of their driveway and their Mum stepping into it. Good to see library staff upholding our noble tradition and creating happy memories everywhere.

I did notice that there wasn’t really any difference when I did the same search using the ‘advanced’ option, but after all, it was a single keyword search and you can’t really judge the capabilities of a search function this way.

I noticed in doing the search for nswpln2008 that the only hits were the blogs from people in our course who used this exact phrase. A big wave to all the library folk who are still plugging along in the course like yours truly.

I can definitely see the potential for this in a library setting, especially with it’s potential to create networks and share interesting links with other library professionals. Similarly, I can easily see that this will be a standard link to library websites within the next few years which might allow a greater number of users to access our online resources. There are probably other ways in which people can utilise this technology, which I will keep in mind as I familiarise myself with the site.

I’ve enjoyed reading through the ‘Videos online’ material, and appreciate how much of a practical application it can have for libraries and for the sharing of visual media in general. Having said that, I think this is one application that is used primarily for recreation, and along these lines I thought I would include the link to my favourite clip that I discovered in my brief search:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeaFndlo-2g&feature=related

It is a video of a great band called ‘Rocket Science’ that I went and saw on the weekend. Perhaps there is a way to link this more neatly? I may go back and read through this week in a bit more detail once I have progressed a bit more through the weeks. Onwards!

I also learnt something via trial and error, and that was if you put in ‘[ ]‘ this form of bracket, that it forms a hyperlink on the page.

And my last words on wikis? They rock.

 I enjoyed watching the tutorial, for although it was quite simple in it’s format, it showed in a concrete fashion the benefits of this technology. And although I’ve been a fan of this technology for a number of years, I’ve never tried to actually set one up before, and as we were shown in the tutorial, it’s not difficult at all.

 The wikis that I examined from the list was the:

• Book lovers wiki
• Wookieepedia
• The full library success.

I was quite impressed with the first site, I can see why they decided to retain it for archival purposes. It was so nicely set out, with the book cover illustrations and the categories chosen to link to the different sections of reviews were well chosen. I felt really quite inspired by this one, and thought of the potential applications for the three book groups that I organise through our library. Our online library catalogue is being updated shortly and our manager is quite keen on the concept of utilising wikis as part of the new format, so I will most definitely keep this address as evidence of what we could possibly do with this kind of technology.

The second sight was fairly lame – I am a bit of a Star Wars fan [though like so many people I know, this is limited to the first three movies that he made - shame on Lucas for disappointing so many millions of people with the travesty of the other movies] but the appeal of this site was fairly limited to me. It’s design is good, it was quite easy to navigate through and there was a wide range of topics covered. This would a good site to have linked to the young adults online resources.

 When I looked at the third site, I was initially so excited - a huge massive wiki dedicated to all sorts of issues for librarians all over the world! I looked through the topics offered, and wondered excitedly where to start …. This is obviously building up to a grand disappointment & I was disappointed – hardly anyone has contributed to this site, other than the US based librarians who set it up! Perhaps it has not been established for very long? Perhaps our wonderous community of worldwide librarians aren’t actually aware of this shared space [I was certainly ignorant of it's existence until today] or perhaps I haven’t searched the site enough [I only searched through half a dozen topics, I will continue]. The possibilities of this site really grabbed me though, to think about how many amazing things we could share with each other. It is a site that I will most definitely keep an eye on.

 I have also been chatting with the other branch librarian here about the amazing possibilities offered by the library launching it’s own wiki through our new online catalogue [when it is up & functional]. I feel quite inspired, which is not such a bad thing to be able to say on a Friday afternoon.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25271156@N06/with/2382395088/

 As for how I can use this in work, well, I can think of many ways – keeping updated with all the minutae of the world …. as for how I can use it in a productive way, this might require some pondering.

 For the next installement, I might try adding a news feed to my blog. Not even the faintest idea of how to do this, but that is the fun part of undertaking this course.

This picture is titled “lalala believers of fairy tales” and was posted by  zingara della Boemia.