Thursday, September 18, 2008


Thank you - there were good times and bad times! but overall glad to have gone through the process and had my web 2.0 horizon broadened. Lots of good things that you can play with but overall I think zoho is going to be my most used favourite - at the moment anyway!

Friday, September 12, 2008

Thought the Rotorua Public library bebo page was good - visually and the way the information on it was set out. On reflection I can see a place for organisation like libraries to develope profiles in bebo, facebook etc but I still couldn't bring myself to login - I know it's widely used by everybody - my daughter is on facebook and sister in law - but I've also seen too many young people angst over how many friends they have and it becomes a competitive body count so call me boring, but it's not for me.

Social networking is something that I could never really put my heart into. It has become a way to communicate without really communicating. Young people particularly have learned to reveal themselves in a way they could never do face to face.
However if a library chooses to be part of it, and I can see it would be another way to reach younger people it would be good to aim to ultimately still draw them to the library and not just become another page to click on and play.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Looked for Romeo and Juliet in Librivox - putting in Shakespeare as author resulted in 3 searches - 1 version available and 2 to be completed. When I searched leaving out author I found 15 other matches - however some were monologues from the play, or just 1 act or scene, not the complete play. Listened to a chapter of David Copperfield ( chap 27) and put in a blogline feed of the chapter by chapter book podcasts. A list is sent to you of the current books being read. Anyone can volunteer to be a reader! Some can be downloaded onto a portable player or listened to on your own computer.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Much prefer the idea of podcasts to youtube for spreading the library word - saw lots of library podcasts which had regular storytimes, book reviews. There could be talks on events at the library and specific collections or services that people may not know of.
Added a podcast feed from the British Library plus a couple of related feeds that let you know of new and interesting sites.

Monday, September 1, 2008

youtube is fun - you can see everything from weird cats to whole documentaries in segments -
I managed to embed the video I liked. The whirling dervishes have always fascinated me and to have them in a library would be great. Libraries could perhaps use videos as a means of advertising and showing what a library can provide. Most of the ones I've seen on youtube seem to be more preaching to the converted and having fun which is good but I'm not sure if they would attract people who don't know much about the services libraries can offer people now.