I love the concept of podcast and video. There are far more positives than negatives. We could have bookchat introducting topics of interest or genre by audio. The best thing about the podcasting is that it is mobile. Load it your mp3 and away you go. I am going to subscribe to my favourite interviewer Margaret Throsby on 106.9FM each morning because I have loved that show for years and vary rarely get to hear it. (Just wait...as soon as I subscribe she'll retire!) But moving right along. Podcasts could actually be used to read books chapter by chapter or incorporate it into storytime with the presenter showing pictures or illustrations or enactments as they go along. The creativity of this is endless for children's presentations.
For library staff education presentation of topics or new developments in the field of management could be downloaded and listened to at leisure. And poscasting and video could be used to demonstrate troubleshooting of equipment or just walking all of us step by step through the task at hand.
Customers can be shown how to download and listen to podcasts of library contents...and even how to find items using the dewey method. Dont' forget our foreign language patrons. We have many multilingual staff on board that could use their talents to do translations of the most common resources available in podcast.
Regular education programs would be great to be able to replay to reflect on content and practice new concepts. Listening to someone for me is much easier than reading an instruction brochure or reading step by step instructions. I am a talking book addict and know the value to the spoken word.
Also, just the common every day procedures in the library such as opening and closing procedures could be podcast or videod.
We could do a round up of reference topics each week and share with other staff where we found information for patrons as a sort of "bank of reference knowledge".
Within each library it will be great for spreading news around locally. Beats email hands down because of different key board skills of individuals, and staff can be given weekly updates of coming events, alerts. etc
It is so good to look forward to that staff or other individuals don't have to be at events or meetings but can hear them directly after the fact. Could be podcast our meetings rather than rely on minutes which are often subjective in the content and interpretation of what was really said and happened?
Podcasting would have been great for me when I was an sole librarian in law libraries when I worked for a locum service. The quick information sharing would have been fantastic.
Nothwithstanding there are probably some legal implication to consider eg speaker, author, artist permission to podcast their work it sounds like a winner to me.
I am starting to sound like War and Peace again but it is very much a way to personalise our library, its staff and our patrons and branch library relationships.
But to make podcasting successful I think we will need to make sure that we don't have outmoded or redundant ways of communication running in tandem with it for too long once it is introduced as the new standard of communication. If we do it could quickly be seen as just another job we have to find time to do with no time to do it.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Answer boards
I loved the answer boards. I am particularly impressed with the ease at which we as librarians can ask questions and get responses from other librarians.
Answer Boards
I enjoyed doing this exercise very much. I am always interested in finding new places to go just to ask a simple question where I have the resource to get an articulate answer from a fellow professional. This is going to be a very valuable tool in our service. Even though our customers do not come to us for a professional service as such they do expect a professional standard of advice when asking reference questions in their area of interest.
The resources for finding out first publications were great eg Library of Congress and British Library catalogue (known to most of us of course) but also World Catalogue and English Short-Title Catalogue. I especially liked The Theatrum Catalogorum that links to Catalogue Collectif de France for publications in Europe. I have a particular interest in this as I once had in my possession two books written by German Jewish soldiers who fought for Germany during World War One. They were lucky to have survived Kristelnacht but fortunately did. The first book was a list of names of Jewish soldiers who had been killed fighting for Germany and the second was a book of letters written home from the front to loved ones. I came across them is a box of old books when I owned a secondhand bookshop. They were authenticated and I donated them to the Jewish Museum in Germany a few years ago when it was the 60th anniversary of Auschwitz concentration camp. It would have been interesting to have been able to do my own research into their authentication instead of having to use a third party which I did at the time.
I answered a question on yahoo about recipes for sweet potato (okay, I'm a kitchen tragic!) but I made it short and sweet and gave advice about making pumpkin soup with half and half sweet potato...delicious.
The resources for finding out first publications were great eg Library of Congress and British Library catalogue (known to most of us of course) but also World Catalogue and English Short-Title Catalogue. I especially liked The Theatrum Catalogorum that links to Catalogue Collectif de France for publications in Europe. I have a particular interest in this as I once had in my possession two books written by German Jewish soldiers who fought for Germany during World War One. They were lucky to have survived Kristelnacht but fortunately did. The first book was a list of names of Jewish soldiers who had been killed fighting for Germany and the second was a book of letters written home from the front to loved ones. I came across them is a box of old books when I owned a secondhand bookshop. They were authenticated and I donated them to the Jewish Museum in Germany a few years ago when it was the 60th anniversary of Auschwitz concentration camp. It would have been interesting to have been able to do my own research into their authentication instead of having to use a third party which I did at the time.
I answered a question on yahoo about recipes for sweet potato (okay, I'm a kitchen tragic!) but I made it short and sweet and gave advice about making pumpkin soup with half and half sweet potato...delicious.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Videos
I think that the videos that can be created on Youtube etc are great. It certainly gives a different perspective on the regular dose of distorted rubbish that we are dished up nightly from News Limited and Fairfax Group. Youtube is real information and not edited. The only concern I have is that obsessive people can zero in on their obsessions and become more confined in their neurosis by constantly feeding it with input.
However, from a library point of view we can promote libraries and target all groups through a simple search facility eg NS libraries and a young person's point of view can be easily viewed as to what their needs are, and the value to them of libraries. We need to target our youth as they are our future leaders. I liked the video on "Got a question, get a live answer". Although being still a novice at many aspects of this technology I am not sure one could not find out the answer by doing a google search in the first place.
I adored "All about Olive". It is about time that oral history took on movie history. Olive wasn't about recreated her youth for herself. She was about telling her story to the youth so that they could understand that there is nothing new under the sun as far as the human condition is concerned, nothwithstanding her bodily aging and its dysfunction.
The only problem I see is that we may be making too much information sharing on-line through things like Youtube rather than face to face. I don't want to loose the human presence in our lives. However on a positive note I loved the subject "How not to conduct a reference interview" and recall it quite vividly from my librarian study days. I must say that in this day and age the more I am subjected to the availability of information regarding daily worklife (outside my personal life) via computers the more I go out of my way to value my friendships (and I mean face to face....let's do lunch....let's have coffee..etc). But I love the 23 things and am enjoying every moment of it.
However, from a library point of view we can promote libraries and target all groups through a simple search facility eg NS libraries and a young person's point of view can be easily viewed as to what their needs are, and the value to them of libraries. We need to target our youth as they are our future leaders. I liked the video on "Got a question, get a live answer". Although being still a novice at many aspects of this technology I am not sure one could not find out the answer by doing a google search in the first place.
I adored "All about Olive". It is about time that oral history took on movie history. Olive wasn't about recreated her youth for herself. She was about telling her story to the youth so that they could understand that there is nothing new under the sun as far as the human condition is concerned, nothwithstanding her bodily aging and its dysfunction.
The only problem I see is that we may be making too much information sharing on-line through things like Youtube rather than face to face. I don't want to loose the human presence in our lives. However on a positive note I loved the subject "How not to conduct a reference interview" and recall it quite vividly from my librarian study days. I must say that in this day and age the more I am subjected to the availability of information regarding daily worklife (outside my personal life) via computers the more I go out of my way to value my friendships (and I mean face to face....let's do lunch....let's have coffee..etc). But I love the 23 things and am enjoying every moment of it.
Wikis
I really love Wikis and find that they would be beneficial in the library environment in that writing and editing procedure manuals would be much easier than a complete revision. It goes without saying that only certain parties would have editing writes but i see it as the future for us. Procedure manuals are impersonal ways of communication and a written form of demonstrating how something is done is quite the norm and has been in most work places for many years.
Friday, September 5, 2008
RSS
Hi everyone, I am up to RSS on my 23 things project and am enjoying the experience....although it takes a bit of concentration. I like the ability of RSS to be able to choose what I want to read in my daily intake of info. I have chosen mostly library, music, books and general news sites as a start, but as I become more proficient I will tailor them more to my taste as I get better at it. I know that the ability to use these technologies will assist patrons find what they want. Also we are probably going to be teaching these technologies to staff so we need to know this stuff. We should also use these RSS to be able to connect with other libraries blogs to share information.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Provence is beautiful. But then so is Paris with it's rich history of museums beautifully dressed people and great wine. The south of France is my favourite part of the world. There is a small fishing village 20 kms east of Marseille called Cassis. It is has great small beach where the water is brilliant azure blue/green in summer and the swimming wonderful. The hotel right on the beach is called the Hotel de la Plage (The beach hotel). I will save up all my pocket money for a few years just so the next time I am in Europe I can go and stay there for a week in the high season and swim every day. The markets in Provence are wonderful and full of fresh fruit and vegies. I guess that is why the french have been able to retain these markets because they are still are highly ruralised country.
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