Flickr

Exploring

I searched for Bury St. Edmunds, my home town, and found 19,833 results! Here is a sample (credits for photos go to Martin Pettitt):

...and I have added the RSS feed of Martin's photostream to my iGoogle page:


I like the National Library of Scotland's photostream to illustrate what they have in their archive, and the mystery photos from the Library of Congress is a fascinating way to identify parts of their collection! I wonder if people do this to try and identify faces in old family photos...

Creating

I'm very keen on the idea of creating a virtual tour of the Library using Flickr, as mentioned in the How to make Flickr work for your Library blog. I've created an account and started to upload some pictures of the Education Library. This is going to be my summer project!

Tags & tagging

Review & retag

I have now reviewed all tags in my blogs and added a lot more which will hopefully describe the contents a bit better.

The Ann Arbor District Library uses tags within its library catalogue and I wonder how helpful users find these? With Aquabrowser, there will be Word Clouds available for each record which will encourage readers to explore other records and broaden their search. Will the Word Cloud have the same role as tags?

An interesting statement in the BBC link which Emma offered as further reading said that adding tags "is a classic example of how the web is enabling the bottom-up building of categories rather than having such things imposed on users." As Librarians we are used to working with controlled vocabulary when cataloguing material, but by adding and using tags in blogs, delicious, etc, we are suggesting, through our own personal preferences, how an item should be categorised. Tagging can be quite a powerful tool...

Twitter, Tweets & Twuffers

I have had a Twitter account since becoming a member of the Cam23 Project Team and I now have a grand total of 18 followers! I'm also following 21 Tweeters, most of whom are participants of Cam23.

We have had a Twitter account at the Education Library since Michaelmas 2009. We use it to update our readers on changes in opening hours, or letting them know a new Library newsletter is available to read.

However, we use the announcement facility on CamTools to send information to our readers as they are all members of the Library CamTools site. We know then that we are reaching everyone, whereas Twitter is voluntary and relies on the reader to follow us.

I found out this week that you're able to send Tweets whilst you are away from your usual channels of communication - these are called Twuffers. Interesting...I'm not sure why people would feel the need to do this. Perhaps if you have lots of followers this would be useful so that they don't think you've completely disappeared and then stop following you - disaster!

I read an article in the latest Library + Information Gazette by Laura Woods about Tweeting whilst attending conferences and the assumption that people who do this are not paying attention to the speaker. Laura blogged about this later and raised an interesting point:

"I don’t expect everyone to be on Twitter, but as information professionals I really think we should have an understanding of how different people process information, and how some people like to use technology to facilitate that."

It started me thinking about how our students may 'process information' at Library inductions and online research skills sessions. When we speak to groups of readers, I assume that if they are looking at you whilst you are explaining how to locate books or journal articles, they are listening to you. Would I feel the same if they had their head down and were busy tapping away on their lap tops or phones..?

Google Calendar

A new Thing for me

I hadn't come across Google Calendar until I was researching it for my blog post for Thing 6. It's been very interesting to see how other libraries are using it to advertise opening hours (especially if they have several branch libraries) and publicise events, and it started me wondering whether the Education Library would find it useful or not. You're able to embed the Calendar into web pages so it could be an alternative display for our opening hours. I'm also curious to see if it can be embedded within our CamTools sites - more investigation is needed...

My Google Calendar is looking like this at the moment:

I've added some of my meetings to the Calendar, with a reminder to be sent to me by e-mail. For fun, I have the weather icons displayed at the top of the columns & I have added the World Cup 2010 calendar!

Useful for the Library?

I had thought Google Calendar could be an alternative to the Weekly Sheet which we have available on the Library staff CamTools - it details staff hours, the lunch rota, events & meetings. But I think all this information would make the Calendar a little over-crowded and difficult to read. However, I will continue to use Google Calendar for meetings and events that I'm involved in. I might look into creating a general Library Calendar to add details of all the inductions we run in the Michaelmas Term as Library staff may find it an easier way to check when we will be busy with new registrations.

Doodle & scheduling meetings

I have come across Doodle a few times as it's used by other Librarians to arrange meetings, but I haven't used it myself before this Thing. It was very easy to set up and use which is probably why it's so popular.

The optional extras were meet-o-matic (I have used it in the past to organise Library Advisory Group meetings) and Tungle which is new to me. I registered my details with Tungle (this didn't take very long) - I think it is a better looking scheduler and I liked how you could 'paint' your availability onto it!


I have synced my Google Calendar to both Doodle and Tungle (for those of you who haven't come across Google Calendar, fear not as this is explained in Thing 6), and I will experiment with using both to see how they may be used for work.

The art of blogging

I've been looking at a lot of blogs over the last week, and they vary considerably from the novice (like myself) to the very experienced. Some are visually stunning (see BirdBrain), whilst others made me laugh (I particularly liked the blonde joke from Balfour's 23 Things!). There are some very witty bloggers out there and I shall enjoy following their progress in the coming weeks...

Going back...
I should have mentioned in my blog for Thing 2 that I also set up a page for netvibes:


(I like chocolate - is it obvious??)
I thought netvibes was a much more sophisticated-looking site than iGoogle and I really like its style. I'll definitely continue exploring this after the 23 Things have come to an end.


And pageflakes:


There is a US bias with pageflakes, so I went through and changed it to UK info as much as I could. Adding things wasn't particularly obvious but I eventually worked out that you to go to Menu (iGoogle made it easy by calling this Add stuff!).

The next Thing...
I will be looking at Thing 5 tomorrow and shall blog about my experiences very soon...

iGoogle & feeds (Things 1 & 2)

Revisiting some familiar territory...

I came across iGoogle last year and started to explore how useful it could be. I played around with the different themes available, added a few standard things like the weather, BBC News feed and the obvious virtual pets! Since I became involved in the Cam23 programme, I have revisited iGoogle with my post for Things 1 & 2 in mind & have now added the following gadgets & feeds:

• RSS feed for Cam23
• Google Calendar
• COPAC
• Delicious
• RSS feed for the BBC News Education site - as I work at the Education Faculty, it's important for me to keep up to date with all the changes happening since we've had a new government
  

For fun, I've also added a gadget that regularly shows me a different Italian scene & some vocabulary to learn each day. Today, it's Venice! Who knows what I may learn tomorrow...








iGoogle & libraries

But what about iGoogle's role in libraries and with library readers? I can see that by making catalogues available as gadgets & providing RSS feeds for different services, libraries are using iGoogle as another platform for their users to access information. Here at Education we have an RSS feed for new books, and it was interesting to see other options (see 10 ways libraries can use RSS). However, having an RSS feed does depend on libraries encouraging their readers to sign up for them. We use CamTools to promote library resources to Education students, and as most readers are made members as soon as they start their course, they automatically have access to relevant information to support their studies, plus they receive announcements when something has changed or a new resource has been added (e.g. a new library Newsletter, powerpoint of a library presentation, change in opening hours, etc).

iGoogle is a very straightforward tool to use as it's fun to change the theme & contents when you like, and it's useful to have all your interests in one place. I can see myself using it as a personal tool for the foreseeable future - until the next thing comes along, anyway!

The journey begins...

My Cam23 journey started in April when I was asked to become part of the Project Team for 23 Things Cambridge. I saw this as an opportunity for me to:
1. Work with other colleagues within the University
2. Learn more about Web 2.0 technologies
3. Discover what tools could be used to improve services to readers

I had already started using iGoogle & Delicious before the programme started, and Wikis are part of the CamTools VLE which I use daily. I don't use Facebook, but I've searched YouTube, read blogs, etc, but hadn't engaged with them in any detail.

We all have to start somewhere on the Web 2.0 road and I see the 23 Things Cambridge programme as an exciting opportunity to explore a selection of tools and see what they have to offer librarians & their libraries.