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.