Videos

It was a surprise to look at Mosman Library and see Paul Brunton's talk on Miles Franklin had been videoed. I think I would be quite nervous about that process, being filmed but of course Paul handled it no problems.
I think our Library could really take advantage of the video technology, especially in terms of making short educational introductions to parts of our collections and using catalogues etc. For example the Quickstart presentations that Pictures staff used to give could be videoed once and posted to our website. As the live presentations are very resource-intensive, a video would be a much more efficient way of conveying the information without the clients even having to come into the Library, and they could watch it whenever they wanted to. It would also be good for the Library to tape some of the curator talks and post them to the website for the public and even interested staff.

RSS

I agree that RSS can be a time saver in that you receive news as it happens, without having to go out and look for it or look for updates at a favourite website. However I have previously subscribed to something similar in the past, email distribution lists, and I found that as my interests changed the usefulness could quickly lessen. Then the temptation is to just delete the news posts as they come in and never actually unsubscribe officially. There's a lot of unwanted and unread info that lands in our email inbox that never gets cleaned up and I wonder if this could happen with RSS too. There is an interesting application I heard of recently in the media however. It's not exactly RSS but similar. The service is for Manly Jetcat commuters and every time a ferry service is cancelled you get notified on your mobile. I think you register for which service you would normally catch and then if there is delays or cancellations you get a message. This could be handy if you catch the same service every day all the time which most people don't, but it's still an interesting application that could be useful. I'm sure there's many applications for the Library with RSS to clients, as long as they don't require excessive maintenance as then resourcing always becomes an issue.

Final post

Generally I've enjoyed the whole Learning 2.0 experience and it's been great that the Library has supported us in this training. I hope to be involved in the set up of the OMB wiki which will be a great way of utilising this area of the web and putting into practice some of the theory we've learnt in the course.
Thanks Mylee and Ellen.

11 September 2008

I've been slackening off towards the end of this program, but I'm determined to finish it today (prompted by a reminder from the Learning 2.0 team!)
I found the Google Docs quite interesting and I think it would be more user friendly than using track changes in word for shared documents in the branch.
Our new manager Heather Mansell is keen to set up a wiki for OMB and this is another useful thing that has come from the Learning 2 program as a wiki was suggested by Ed Vesterberg after he'd done the Learning 2.0 program

Podcasts

The ABC has a great range of podcasts, but I think theirs are so strong because their medium is radio and it fits podcast format well. The British Library's podcasts weren't so interesting as so much of their focus is the written word which doesn't translate so well to a podcast, or it's adapted from a seminar or presentation and so all the visuals are lost in the podcast.
Podcasts have great potential though and I have downloaded ABC ones before where I've missed a program. Don't know if there are library applications for podcasts, perhaps radio interviews that OMB staff frequently give could be podcast, although in those instances people would go straight to the radio website to podcast, rather than the Library.

Board slamming

I think it's a noble idea for librarians to slam boards to show off our skills, but resourcing will always be a problem, unless we plan to do it in our spare time. There would be very few staff at the Library with time to do board slamming on top of their extant duties.

Geoff Law

Read The River Runs Free by Geoff Law in order to do a review for ABP magazine. Interesting history of the saving of the Franklin River in Tasmania. Cameos by Bob Brown and Peter Cundall.
Now I'm reading the Kibble winner Nights in the Asylum by Carol Lefevre, in order to do a brief review for Newsbreak. It's quite good but I hate those large and heavy trade format paperbacks, they're such a drag to carry around.
Am cataloguing the papers of Finola Moorhead at work, should try to read her novels to get a better feel for the manuscripts but they're so hard to get into. She's a very experimental writer, lots of fantasy and very strange structures. Not really my style I just like a good story, well told.

Underbelly & The Fragrant Trail

I've started reading Underbelly, based on the TV series, or actually the book came first but I've gone to the book after the show. It's a very engaging read, I always worry that non-fiction will be boring but this is a ripping yarn, a case of fact being more exciting than fiction.
Also on the weekend I read our own Pat Turner's detective book, The Fragrant Trail, it's very good. I like stories set in locations I know and this one is set in Newtown.
I'm currently reading a book to review for Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine. The review is due Monday and I've barely started it, better get moving soon. Titled The River Runs Free, it's the story of Geoff Law, an activist during the Franklin Dam saga in Tasmania.
I saw The Painted Veil at the cinema last week and am now ready to read the book on which it is based by Somerset Maugham, but must read the ABP one first. So many books and so little time.

Wikis

I wish there weren't so many American sources used in this training program, surely there are similar examples of what we are learning that have been done by Australians? So many of the links are to US sites as well, I wish it could be a bit customised for us Aussie students or at least maybe a range of overseas sites apart from just USA. Makes me feel like I'm doing a correspondence course through one of those shonky US midwestern unis that will post you your degree once you send US$10000.
But I digress, the wookiepedia was cleverly titled. I also selected the Princeton one because I've been thinking about book clubs lately. Marion RB mentioned to me that the Library might set up a regular Book Club event as part of its public programs. When I've been trying to think of how blogs could be useful at work it occurred to me that maybe a staff book club could run via a blog. But as for wikis, one could have been useful when Brian Fletcher was researching his book on the history of the Mitchell Library. He researched by interviewing staff to get historical anecdotes, or that was how he conducted part of his research. People kept coming out of the woodwork with information and as he didn't know how knew what he might have been able to post a wiki with the info he had, and staff could enhance or correct the data according to their knowledge and experience and recollections. Potentially I wonder if there is an application for wikis with our catalogue records, if the records could hypothetically be duplicated into a wiki that the public could contribute their knowledge to, however we are so fussy about wanting all our public contributions correctly sourced and 100% accurate that it could become a bit of a minefield. We don't want the public accepting the speculation of other members of the public as being validated by the Library when it's not. Interesting that the German wiki encyclopedia was so accurate, in fact more accurate than the standard encyclopedia. This would suggest users only make contributions that are very high quality, so at least that is reassuring

Boxing

DSTV-Womens-Boxing
Originally uploaded by Robyn Vickers Snaps

I like the gender role reversal depicted here. Women's boxing is illegal in NSW but not in Qld, and Fox Sports used to broadcast women's bouts on Friday nights from the Gold Coast casinos (where else!)

What has this got to do with Library values, remember the task was to find an image expressing Library values and comment accordingly? After the week I've had so far with a lot of union stoushes my first thoughts turned towards the battle between management and workers that drives the modern industrial workplace, and boxing seems a fitting metaphor for pre-workers revolution relations between us and them.

State Library of NSW on Flickr

I'm wondering what our photography policy is nowadays as I'm sure we used to have a ban on interior photos, I suppose it's not so easy to stop people pointing and shooting with digital cameras plus the culture now with digital cameras so pervasive is for anyone to photograph whatever and whoever they like, no such thing as asking permission first anymore.

Port - Melbourne

Finished Double Fault, interesting but heavy hitting, to use a tennis pun, the main character very selfish, she was almost a caricature as it seemed to be the sole driver of her personality, the selfishness. Did a bit of a search for reviews and found that Shriver has written a lot of novels on a diverse range of subjects. I think Shriver will go down in history for the Kevin novel, my copy of which I have incidentally since loaned to 2 people, one of whom is called Kevin.
Now reading Careless, the Kibble Award winner from 2007 or 2006, can't remember which year. It's fantastic, I'm about half-way through. I postponed reading it for ages because I hate large format paperbacks, how shallow am I. The characters are all separately set up in their worlds and then gradually they all start intersecting and it's all one world. Again some very selfish characters especially the sculptor who reminded me a bit of the artist in Patrick White's The Vivisector. He just sucks people dry then spits them out.

Port - Sydney

Know nothing about blogs and haven't really got into them previously, one friend sent me a link to hers but I found it all a little boring. Am interested to learn more about them though, I like the idea of a structured course and now's a good time for me to do such a course while we await the new ACMS, as once it finally goes live it's going to be crazy in OMB.
Currently reading Double Fault by Lionel Shriver, leant to me by a colleague after we were both discussing Shriver's famous novel "We Need to Talk About Kevin" which was fabulous. This one not so good but interesting in its analysis of completely unlikeable, ruthlessly driven people. About pro tennis players, or rather players existing on the fringe of the pro circuit, forever trying to raise their rankings and make it big time.