The Outro; Social Networking - Week 12.

Well I'm in overdrive now, and I love it! I've certainly got a heck of a lot out of this amazingly put together course. Just how you put it all together for us makes my mind spin. There are now resources on the net net that I have never used before, a few i have never even heard of before, that i know have the confidence of utilising from hereon in, not only at work, but for my 'other life' as well, so thanks heaps for this opportunity.

Chorus- This article from the museum is quite thought-provoking. While written using some organisational jargon the framework from Forrester is helpful in working out ways that libraries can use social networks to both promote themselves (marketing) and support their clientèle using such social media applications as blogs, communities, Facebook and MySpace (social networking sites), embedded widgits and Wikis to name the obvious.
This reminds me of how I first became a user of 'Myspace', long before I weakened from my higher than thou stance that MySpace was just a site for showoff musicians that needed attention. It was when I was shopping around online for a place in Australia that sold and soldered together BYOC (Build Your Own Clone) guitar effects pedal kits, and I found a link to their Myspace page, but I had to join myspace in order to view it correctly or order from it or the like, so I did! So even though it was not a community organisation like a library, this commercial company made me always think of this type of social networking site as a very effective way of gaining new customers. I did buy the pedal and it can be seen in my "big huge labs" photo at the top, it's the spray-painted purple one.
I have since had lots of experience with Myspace and I do have my own page: http://www.myspace.com/fxstocker
Reverb- Like the American Library Assoc. Myspace page, I have had discussions in staff meetings and casually over the past year about our local council library creating its own MySpace page, and then like our Council's website, it could be advertised as a place to go to find out all about our services and events. Having 'friends' link themselves to our page would be an obvious and effective way of social networking.

Online Applications - Week 11

Chorus - Well, I have posted as a contributor on Google Docs to nswpln an example of a roster that others in my team, (in this case my church team) can add to. And that is the great advantage that Google Docs has, even over Wikis in my opinion, even though the idea is similar. As the video so well illustrates, and sells me on completely, instead of doing it 'the old way' -(sending everyone the roster as an attachment via email, then getting availability or changes back, then having to then resend the updated version, or ring those affected, and of course there is always the chance someone is going to refer to the wrong roster); we could now have the one document placed by me, the coordinator, and all others invited add their preferred 'shifts', which I can view at any time and tweak until the final version is there. And even then any changes can be swapped during the roster period rather than ring everyone, all participants just need to check before the weekend.
Distortion- The only inconvenience I can see with this approach is that each contributor that i want to include in my roster or other 'project' has to join and have a google (ie gMail) account as when they get the 'link' sent by me they do have to log in their account name and password on the site before they can see the document and add to it. I can see it could be a difficulty to get everyone to join google when they are used to getting a word type attachment and not having to be very internet savvy. This shouldn't be a problem for work situations though.
Reverb- Libraries can easily take advantage of Google Docs. A progressive library can maybe start letting all staff have an input on putting themselves on the desk roster when they are available and saving the admin staff some rostering headaches. I t would 'save trees' if the location of the desk roster was on everyones' google docs link, and check it each day for changes due to staff sickness, etc.
Also i can see a huge advantage when library staff from different branches, or even across councils are doing a joint project. Say for example, the recent planning for the HLS Group Seniors seminar at the State Library. One central place on Google docs sent to all 'planners' of the seminar, who add in their suggestions for speakers, timetables and themes, until the final program is agreed upon.

Mashups - Week 10

Harmony -
Here is my example of Mashups.


Above is a photo of mine of when I met my idol, vocalist of the Babys and solo and Bad English, backstage in a New York venue after his solo acoustic show last year on my U.S. holidays.


Above is the same type of 'motivator' screen Mashup, this time on the theme of this blog, these are some stompboxes I used at church in an effects board.
Big huge labs is such a fantastic site and tool, and it's FREE! There are many ways we could use this technology to help with our library fliers and websites.

Reverb- Also, I looked at the 'public library finder' from North America on "Libraries 411.com" and found the Santa Monica Public library that I visited on my USA holiday last July, and viewed it in Satellite and hybrid form. I thought it was an excellent new library, looking at cities like this brings back great memories, I even used Google maps yesterday to finally look up the satellite photo of my home in Sydney. It's fantastic technology.

Podcasts - Week 9

Distortion- I actually started off looking at the Orange County OCLS Podcasts site, and found two problems, or annoyances that could jade my experience with sites that 'podcast'. Firstly, their current list on the opening page offered me, at the top of the page, a video called Techno Pop, but the computers we are given to do this course on couldn't play it because it turned out the video was in MP4, and secondly when I chose one of the mp3's to listen to called 'National music Week' it is linked wrong by them and plays a story called 'Rabbit's Tail Tale' instead. Check it out for yourself.
Chorus- I chose to listen to an archived 2007 podcast from the "British Library" called 'The Holkham Bible Facsimile', as I am a Christian and that appealed to my interests. I think watching the streamed video version would have been a bit clearer.
From the "ABC" site, I went by subject into the 'sport' section, and found a stream of Roy and H.G's program 'This Sporting Life', which I must say is right up my alley.
Reverb- Going into the list on 'Library success Wiki', and looking at 'Atwood Library and Computer Centre' I saw they had a talk by 'DarcyJenish' on 'explorer David Thompson' and our library has lots of author talks that we could get permission to tape and then put on-line for those who missed them on our library site. But then again would that make the numbers of students coming along to the actual talk, which is what the accountability is on at present, decrease?

Answer Boards - Week 8

Chorus- Like all the others on here I love the idea of an on-line brains trust who then drop the plug in at the end. Way to go reference librarians.
Reverb & Harmony- I love the expression, 'slamming the boards', it's an accurate description, but it really gives me a chuckle. I am full of admiration for those who are looking through answer boards and answering those questions with a 'why didn't you think of asking your local librarian' theme.
The 'http://answerboards.wetpaint.com/' A.B.L. wiki is a good starting point to help / show how to become involved in such an endeavor.
It really does remind me this whole concept of what our Young adult and Reference librarians initiated on our own library /council website, where High school students can ask a tutor a question online and have a tutor engage with them to help them with their assignments. Only thing is, it's a tutor, not one of our staff. http://www.canterbury.nsw.gov.au/www/html/1765-online-tutoring.asp
Distortion- I do feel a bit guilty that I can't see myself ever having the time to go online and answer peoples questions in the name of promoting the library.

Tagging, del.icio.us, and all - Week 7

Del.icio.us
Chorus- From the first video I was hooked on the idea as I have never known what delicious did before and i have a computer at home that has sooo many bookmarks on it, "and that's the old way"!
Distortion & Chorus- From the exercise 'account' I can see how libraries can use one of these, but I must agree with fellow workers I heard commenting on the technology shown here that they don't look much like "CLOUDS", more like a paragraph, but it does save space in the column compared to a long "list".
Reverb- For the purpose within the library scene as a whole, creating a site like that on delicious is going to be very helpful in finding sites on stuff we need to research for putting on events with what other libraries have done, statistics and relevant Australian sites. For our own library I think wikis could be used more for day to day uses.
Check out my account- http://del.icio.us/fxstocker
I've started to add my favourites on there, and there are heaps more I can add from home.
To be honest, I think I'll be using this tool more as a way I can 'access my bookmarks from anywhere'.

Technorati.
Distortion- Well I joined Technorati, but it was having a lot of trouble tracking down my fxblog after I gave it the address for it from the address bar. I might try again another time, otherwise no biggie as I don't plan to become a world stage player anytime soon.
Reverb- I found that using the general search netted 63 results for bookmobiles, whereas there was less (54) when using advanced search under the exact phrase. Next time doing the same search I got 46 results. When I looked for nswpln2008 I only got one hit, which ironically was another of our bloggers saying the exact same thing in their blog, called Grab the Hour. What's goin' on!?

Librarything.
I must admit that even though I am a librarian I don't read that many novels.
In my Librarything account,
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/fxstocker
you will see i have added in books I have at home that have stayed with me over the years.
It would be so good for people who love raving about books as much as I do about guitarists.

Youtube and GoogleVideo - Week 6

Chorus- All praise youtube. Gosh how I and many cyber friends love this technology. I've been hooked to this youtube site for over a year. I can't even remember the first clip I watched, but now I can't get enough at home on my brother's broadband connection. We both watch heaps of filmclips, interviews, and recently I've discovered even missed Home and Away episodes on there.
This tutorial has taught me the difference between the two, I never knew that Youtube was limited to 10 minute clips, but that explains why H&A episodes come in two or three parts!
Reverb- I did look up for the first time some library content. First I noticed that if you try for Mosman Library on Youtube nothing comes up, but when searched in GoogleVideo all these clips are found, because they are 40 mins long. I chose to view Peter Fitzsimons who we've had here, and Nolene Brown. That had a link to a two minute Blankety Blanks tribute clip. Man, that was a great show. Good to see Jon English on the panel too.
One other library clip I found was -"How Long Has It Been Since You Last Visited The Library?", only 32 seconds but a great ad for the Orange County libraries. I liked the ad for the NJ libraries where the online service of a librarian answering your questions made me think how great it would be to advertise our YourTutor online service that way. Anyone got the funds!!!
Now the best part- embedding a video;

The Babys-Piece of The Action
This video is the rarest of all The Babys videos on Youtube. If you look at the comments on Youtube on this video, under fxstocker, you'll see my comments.



The Babys- I'm Falling
My fave song of all time (really!) and you can see and hear Wally Stocker (lead guitar) in all his glory (as mentioned in the flickr blog).

Week 5 Wikis

Chorus- I've always known about wikis in only one way before, through Wikipedia, which I have come across ages ago to find information on a favourite artist, then I found they even had entries on individual guitar effects, like the Big Muff Pie or the Electric Mistress Flanger, and I was sold. Any site that has so many varied entries that it went into this level of depth was alright by me.
Reverb- Now thanks to this 'Learning 2.0' course I have started to understand the breadth of the whole 'wiki' scene, it's quite hard to take it all in.
Distortion- The first site for libraries I visited was "Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki", and the concept, as shown in that excellently explained intro video, had me excited for the instant gratification I would get as all the hard work of finding other libraries 'tips' and 'success stories' would be mine at the click of a button. I went to Services for Specific groups, then clicked on Services For the Disabled , AND ...no-one as yet has entered in to share any Success stories or Tips for providing quality services!! Oh well, just goes to show that wikis only work if the people with the knowledge know they exist and contribute to them.
Although I must admit, I can't see a time in the foreseeable future when i will have the time to contribute to a wiki!!
Reverb- The Antioch Uni Wiki for staff procedure manuals was very interesting to me as our library is about to launch into collating all ours, and I'll suggest at a meeting that we could collate them on our intranet like that.
I looked at those wikis listed and the book lovers wiki I think would be the easiest to impliment here. The wooki one made me think of looking up for a guitar effects one, and I got onto one, called guitarwiki.com.

Week 4 Blogger and RSS Feeds

Well here I am back again after a long break.
Delay- Why the gap. To be honest, besides the workload recently and the library here having to set up computers for us to access most of the sites linked to for this course (that's another story); it was mainly because the idea of what to say about RSS feeds daunted me because I don't have much to say about them because I'm pretty much non-plussed about the whole thing.
Negative I know, but honest. Following is why-
Distortion- While I had no trouble understanding the concept of or joining 'Bloglines', I do find it disconcerting that instead of it coming up on the top of my Firefox browser, or emailed to me each day like a digest of a newsgroup, you actually have to go to this particular website, log in, and then see the RSS feeds from the sites you have selected. I suppose it is the idea of checking most sights only occasionally, like Youtube for example, that I really get something out of, as if I want to go to bloglines each time to check if a feed has been added. I'm sure there is a way of them coming more directly to you, but this exercise didn't explain how.
Chorus- The sites I linked to are
1. City of Canterbury: Library Events
2. Gilmourish. Comments on the Early Years.
3. Librarians Internet Index: New this Week
4. Powerhouse Museum: Photo of the Day
5. Bloglines: News
6.PVRBlog
7. (Just added) Big Brother: Message List- Big Mouth.
Reverb- I searched sites I knew already had RSS Feeds like our libraries site and the Gilmourish site under the blogs there. I also looked through the courses recommended sites and recently seacrched for forums on the tv show Big brother.
For my job it would be great if other aged and disability librarians had a forum and I could get updates from there. But usually for my work I'd search google for websites rather than trying to link up to feeds from blogs or the like.

How I love looking for photos (or Week 3)

Well thank yoooo for introducing me to the wonderful world of Flickr.

As you can see I couldn't choose which photo to upload into my blog, so I went with both.

Both these photos I have never seen before and were found on Flickr using the 'Tag' search function. Both follow my blog theme of fitting library learning in with my insatiable hobby of guitar effects.

While the photo of some posters guitar effects boxes is pretty obvious, the photo below is a rare concert pic of The Babys, taken in 1979 by ... and uploaded in Jan this year. There are also recent photos of John Waite, the ex-lead singer under the babys tag in Flickr of around the time I saw him in New York last August, but this photo, taken b4 they broke up in 1980, features lead guitarist Wally Stocker, who on there 5 studio albums has my favourite guitar tone and melodies of any guitarist ever, just in front of David Gilmour.

Will Learning 2.0 Fx me?

I've never created a blog before, so I'm already off and running into what life-long learning is all about, which in my funny way of looking at things is "keeping up with the youngsters".

I'm looking forward to getting to familiarise myself with sites I've never used before, Week 3 using Flickr will be a first for me, and from the questionaire we filled out in week 1 there's a few more I've never had much to do with to come!

I've read blogs and posted on them before though, in the broader sense. The site 'Gilmourish' has a blog each couple of weeks and I'm addicted to reading, and writing in questions and communicating, with the guitar guru Bjorn on that, and I've learned heaps about effects through him alone.

Distortion- I thought at least one of the blog examples in week 2 was more just a website, not much of a blog site at all, and I can see that the line can be a bit fuzzy at times if the site has information added regularly. A bit of Chorus can be added here as a few colleagues I've spoken to agree with me about that site.

Delay- Our library work PC's cannot link to sites like Youtube, GMail, facebook and myspace, so this caused and will continue to cause delays in doing those type of explorations, as we have to get time on the public internet computers, or I guess do it at home. Work's been good about it though, showing the clips via projection for group viewing, and supporting emails. But it took me 'til Friday to be able to start the blog because I couldn't do the joining GMail part until then. At least we can access blogspot, ie Learning 2.0 course and my blog, from our workstations. Boy that last bit of delay had heaps of distortion in it, delays can cause that though!!

FX- Effects Rule!

Each Week I'll put my thoughts into sections. These include:
DISTORTION- things I might be a bit FUZZY on. Thoughts that are unclear, noise that interupts. Not necessarily problems, to me distortion is a fantastic sound,
CHORUS- What am I thinking everyone else is thinking, what is the vibe I'm hearing.
REVERB- What are some repercussions, longer range forecasts.
DELAY- Self explanitory.
HARMONY- Am I in agreement or am I off tune?

You get the general idea. Now I've tuned up, let's play!!

We'll Make Beautiful Music Together

Well here we are. Technology doesn't suck. It sings. Each week on this journey we are creating a new melody. This blog just is a vehicle to tell you my thoughts, things I know think due to my experience. So is a song's lyrics if you think about it. And to make it a great song, in my opinion anyway, you need to add some guitar with guitar effects. Well that's my theme and I'm sticking with it, however tenuous the links may be.
Lets turn on the amplifier and crank it up!!!