Task 23 - Summary

Well, I kind of rushed through the tasks simply because there are several important things happening at the same time at work. I could have postponed this again but thinking there would never be a time when I have the luxurious of just concentrating on this program alone. So I went ahead and did it.

Having said the above, it is no doubt an interesting experience. A few technologies I had never used beforem. By playing with them I could see the potential usage both from personal and work point of view.

Some people are worried that these "social networking" technologies make people less likely "talking" to each other face to face, their communication skills in terms of dealing with people face to face at work as well as outside work may even deteriorate. But I think these technologies are not really replacing face to face social networking, they are like other technologies that they provide people with more choices. These choices make it possible to suit different communication styles from different people. We need to learn these technologies in order to understand and communicate with those customers who use the technologies. In my opinion it is not very professional to turn away our customers simply because we don't know the technologies.

On the topic of self-directed learning, I like doing things this way. I like to be in control and pace my time and pace. I am doing another course in a similar way and I think I enjoy it too.

Forgot to mention that the thing that I think most useful to me was Google Maps. I am really bad working out my route to a new place, now with the help of Google Maps it is really easy.

All in all, this is a good program, it would be good if it offers refresher course sometime down the track or even a short up-date session.

Task 20 - Podcast

First of all, the links provided in the task page were all broken, I had to go to Yahoo page and searched for 'podcast' to get some directories.

Here is the RSS feed link for Asia lecture series

Task 16 - Adding an entry to a wiki

This time the experience wasn't good at all. I followed the instruction, but first of all the search didn't present the search result described in the task, I tried going through pages of pages of results and the last few pages took forever to load.

I will try another time to finish the task!

Task 15 - Wiki

The biggest advantage of Wiki I feel is people have the sense of ownership. If the member of the wiki can take control of what goes in there, they will make an effort to keep it live and up-to-date and promote it to the target readers.

Also the technology is not hard to learn to use, it usually takes a few trial and error then you are pretty much on the go.

I think it is a good communication tool for the clients that one works close with or for an organisation with a clear purpose. Also it is important to make it searchable.

Task 14 - Technorati

Another new thing that I didn't know. I should slow down a bit - all these new discoveries made me feel "overloaded". At least at the moment I can't see any immediate use for most of them.

Technorati is by far the most confusing site. I can't find what those symbols on the right hand mean. When I did suggested exercise search, I only found one blog site in search Blog posts, didn't find anything when searching (well really browsing) in tags and in the Blog Directory. I need more time, which I don't think I have, to learn this one.

Task 13 - Delicious

I have heard of this site but haven't really explored. Again an interesting concept behind it. Like other social networking tools, this one also aims at helping people to organise and manage information in the information overload (sounds like a very old expression now) age.

Would be a relatively effective way to find useful and interesting websites.

I searched EndNote and found:

CiteULike: A free online service to organise your academic papers - an free Endnote like online software

bibconvert - ShaRef bibliography conversion service - again a free online reference tool for easy conversion of the references format.

Also the second on the list was Zotero, UQ EndNote page was on the first page too. Not sure how it lists the result obviously not by popularity.

Google Analytic is a new thing I didn't know before, looks interesting. It can analyse statistically how a webpage is accessed, especially for those commercial advertising pages.

Task 12 - LibriVox

The interesting about this site is people can simply volunteer to record books in not just English but other languages as well, I thought I might contribute to the site by recording a book in Chinese when I have time, maybe after I retire.

The choices are quite limited, I tried to find out how many recorded books there are but to no avail. Mabye I looked in wrong places.

Task 10 - LibraryThing

Interesting concept and way of communicate about books. I am not sure what sort of people would go there and talk. Apparently it's quite popular - 900,000 members! Interesting to browse through those groups and talks. Found "Visiting libraries" topic under Librarians who LibraryThing - surprise surprise :-) and they talked about lots of photos of libraries on flickr ...

I nearly created a group just out of curiosity but gave it up in the end.

Here is my LibraryThing catalogue of the five books:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/uqfyu

Task 19 - YouTube

I love YouTube simply because I am a visual person and watching videos is better than reading the print menus.

I used YouTube to teach me how to use Screenflow - the software produced for making video type presentation on Mac Machine. I also used videos to see other work or non-work related how to stuff.

So again this time I load a video on TurningPoint technology, which is used more and more by education sector: schools and universities.

Task 5 - Flickr

I like Flickr better probably because I have used it before and found it quite easy to use. My son's school has loaded their soccer photos on Flickr and there is very good one of my son's when he was playing First XI last season.

So Flickr is with Yahoo and Picasa is with Google ... there are always competitions and always lots of choices, some people don't like it but I think it is a healthy thing.

I have loaded two library photos but I would like to put my son's photo on my blog instead - I am a very proud mother :-)

Task 9 - Library related feeds

I am interested in news and information from authoritative sources, so I am not so interested in blogs, however if a widespread big debate is going on then I would follow personal blogs to see different opinions.

So having had a look at those suggested feeds and blog search tools (quite a few I couldn't even find - error message) I think Bloglines is the best for finding interesting feeds for both news and blogs. And I am happy with iGoogle so far. I am also taking to Facebook except it is not for work but mainly for purly social networking even if some of the friends are from work.

Task 8 - Bloglines and RSS

The thing I like most about news feeds is they are short and to the point.

We can definitely use this sort of technologies to communicate with our library users. The news feed should also be accessible from their phone or iPod.

Task 21 - Twittering

Have had a very brief explore on Twitters before: UQ site and ABC site. Interesting concept - almost like chat type of communication. I guess many ways of communicating have been created just to suit different communication styles from different people, as an information specialist (I quite like this name), we need to know or even better to be able to gather information by using these communication means.

I have created an account and invited my son to participate (or to follow me or rather I follow him - if he allows me to follow him!) because he is going overseas soon and I would like to know where he is and what he is doing NOT as a mother but more like a friend.

Task 11 - Google Books

I have been using Google Books for sometime. When I introduce Google Book Search to first year students they are all very impressed. I think it is really a good search tool for people who just want to find specific information within books. It does what the library catalogue can't do - searching the entire content of the book.

I found many students do not know that library catalogue search only covers title, author and notes area. If the specific topic they are searching for only listed as the chapter title or only mentioned in some paragraphs in the book, they can't find by searching the library catalogue. I have met many frustrated students complaining - I can't find anything useful in the Library. Now I tell them to search on Google Books to find the book that contains the information, then click "Find a Library" to see if UQ Library holds the book, if yes, find the call number and the branch library which holds it. I have many happy customers ever since I discovered Google Books :-)

I have added three titles of digitized books in My Library.

Task 18 - iGoogle

Now this is an easy task as I have already created an iGoogle account. On my iGoogle page, I have News and Weather - the two most important things for me. I have also the Calendar but I don't use it - I don't use any format of e-diary still love my A5 size week-to-a-page diary book. I put everything - work and personal as well.

Back to iGoogle. I have now added gadgets of Google Map Search, Google Book Search, Facebook Chat, Google Docs and Google Spreadsheet. Not difficult to do - used Search Gadgets function to find all of those and just clicked Add button. Wondered if there is an equivalent thing on Yahoo - iYahoo??

Task 17 - Paly with Google around the World

I had a good time playing with Google Maps and Google Doc, of both I have heard but haven't really explored.

I have seen street directories on Google and they are quite useful - look exactly the same as the print version. But Google Maps are interactive and live. The live colour coded traffic information, the suggested route from A to B are all very useful. I looked at the suggested route from home to work and the options - they are pretty accurate!

I also made a "power point slides" presentation with Google Doc. Very much like Microsoft Power Point, it has all basic functions, enough for people to just make a simple slides presentation. I suppose the biggest advantage of using Google Doc is you don't need to worry about taking your USBs or CD/DVDs and compatibility issues. You are on to it as long as there is a computer and internet access! Of course you have to remember your login information :-). The ability of dragging and dropping images from a website to your ppt slide is really cool! Need to remember though if inserting images, it has to be smaller than 2mb.

Picasa

Had a play with it. Would like to compare Picasa with Flickr because they both seem to do with photos. I chose to do Picasa first because I had created an account with Flickr and had a bit of play wth it already but Picasa was a new thing to me. To me uploading photos was not very intuitive. I had to resort to Help to find out the steps to do it. So far I only did the very basic task required - upload photos and tagged one photo with "UQLibary" (I could see why you have to make UQLIbrary one word). I feel with Picasa I can spend hours playing with it like any these sort of technologies.



Left is the photo I actually found in LibShare. I tagged this photo "UQLibrary".

There is another photo I liked. It was taken on Level 2 Biological Sciences Library (BSL). It was the Computer Availability display screen but on that day the Australian Biggest Morning was on and the library staff used it to pomote the event which was happening in front of the library to the students.

I had a bit of problem putting photos in the position I want. I could resize the photos but that's all. I am not confident at all editing html.

Hello

I have seen quite a few blogs and now I have my own. It's exciting but also kind of scary - I feel i am exposed ....

This is the start of 23 things I have to do to familiarise myself with those social networking technologies. I have already created a Flickr account and a Facebook account but am not really sure how I can use them to its maximum potential.

I would like to see opinions from fellow bloggers on those social networking technologies, how to use them and what we really want to achieve. To me it seems different generations and different cultures will probably have different answers???