Flickr revisited

I had a go at loading an image onto Flickr. It wasn't a picture of the library but you can't have everything. I found the process very easy, suprisingly so actually. When I 've loaded other photos its generally been to Picasa Web Albums or Snapfish, and these at times can be very time consuming, although the uploading process is usually fairly easy.

The photo is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/17703478@N06/

LibraryThing

I first starting using LibraryThing since 2007 after it was presented at an Emerging Technology session. I thought it was a good way to organsie my books at home, as it is an ever expanding collection. To begin with I was very enthusiastic and quite particular about the information used to describe my books. My use of it then petered out but doing this has got me back interested in it.

I've added some more books and looked at some of the functions that weren't available in 2007. There is one where you can bring up the entire series written by an author, and then add books from this series to your library. I've found this one quite useful because I have a number of series that I began to add, and have since had further books published. It was an easy way to add these books.

I also checked out Shelfari and Gurulib. I found that Shelfari was very similar to LibraryThing. I was impressed with GuruLib because it doesn't just limit itself to books, it also allows you to catalogue music, videos/DVDs, computer games and much more. For someone who likes to keep everything in order I was very impressed with this. If I wasn't already a member of LibraryThing, and I don't want another account, I think I would prefer Gurulib because of the larger range of items you can catalogue.

Finally I had fun adding a LibraryThing widget to my blog.

Technorati

I've had an explore of Technorati. I'm not quite sure how I would use it. It is interesting in the types of blogs that are available and what information people put out ranging from technical such as information about Play Station 3 (PS3), to politics to purchasing metal detecting sandals. The website is actually, to me, a bit too overwhelming.

I di the search for "bookmobile" and got 196 results, including videos, and often it is was just the word "bookmobile" in a blog entry. In the 'Advanced search' you can actually select to search tags, and this gives you less results that are more what you are looking for. Actually connecting it to libraries instead of what might just be someone's childhood recollection.

Del.icio.us

This is the first time I'ved used Delicious, but I have seen it before. It was fairly easy to create an account and I transferred what was in my Favourites. The only annoying thing that happens when you do this, is that each entry then has the tags 'imported' and 'bookmarks' plus whatever name of the folder it was in.

My account can be found at http://delicious.com/kirleaper/. It is a handy way to link together all the websites I use to create family history guides. I can see how it would work in libraries as a guide to recommended web sites, very similar to our NetLinks. I can also see how useful it could be for my personal websites I like to visit, and being able to use them anywhere that I logged in to the internet.

RSS feeds

A few years ago I did a course at the State Library along the lines of Emerging Technology and we covered RSS feeds and setting up an account. I must admit that even then I found it interesting but found I didn't really use it.

I am always willing to give things a go and have set up another Bloglines account. It was easy to do and I found it handy that they already have a number of feeds to chose from. I'm lazy, so not having to do much searching appealed to me.

Of the ones I chose I stuck to my interests, and used both the ready-made feed selections plus what was suggested. They are as follows:
Simple recipes (always looking for simple, easy recipes)
The Shifted Librarian
Quotes of the Day (quotes fascinate me)
Movie Guru from The Courier Mail
LKH Blog (blog of favourite author)
and of course the OPAL Training as per the lesson

It was fun to look at these feeds but whether it is something I will keep up with I don't know.

As for the uses in libraries, I can see how it would help libraries to gain contact with their more technology minded clients and be able to keep clients up-to-date with new items in the collection, new activities in the library and general things affecting the library or its service.

Social networking

I've always had an interest in the social networking sites before they became more commonly used. I was never quite sure how I felt about them and how much info I should be putting on them. I'm already a member of MySpace and Facebook and both sites have provided me with interesting things.

Through MySpace I have access to pages created by favourite authors and musicians that allow me to keep up with what they are doing. I can also access a blog published by one of my favourite authors, and I really enjoy reading this. Through FaceBook I have gained access to friends I had long lost contact with and this has been great because I get to find out about what's happening in their lives and vice versa.

Of all the social networking sites I looked at I felt that Ning and Twitter were two that could be used successfully by the State Library of Queensland. Ning offers a chance for all sections of the library to contribute and is more user friendly for an organisation than Facebook. There are opportunites to have more than one blog going, provide forums for client comments and generally market the library. Twitter would also allow both library staff and clients to interact with the library generally as well as with the collections. It could be used to easily promote activites in the library as well as displays.