My workplace is a P-9 school library in the western suburbs of Melbourne. We currently use no social networking technologies to connect with our users. We are a multicampus school with 3 school libraries across 4 campuses. The senior campus utilises the public library.
Blog – A blog is the easiest starting point for any library wanting to branch out into the 2.0 world. Blogs can serve individual purposes, such as a book review blog, events blog and a new books blog; however, a blog can also serve as the predominant library website for the beginning 2.0 library. Blogs are easy to update, easy to design and are all round easy to use, for both the blog writer and blog reader. It has been a plan of mine for a long time to create a blog as a website for my current workplace library.
Good reads – An online form of readers’ advisory, Good reads takes the ‘if you liked ______, you’ll love ______’ format off the bookmarks and into the online world. Many social networking tools do this automatically, such as Library Thing. It makes recommendations going by what other Library Thing users have on their shelves. This gives library users not only the opinions of the librarian, but the opinions of those all over the globe.
Help – To create a successful social networking presence, the library would need full cooperation and input from all staff. Currently, the attitude of most library staff employed by the college is very against change. For any real change in the social networking status of the libraries to occur, benefits of the use of social networking would have to be presented to and backed by higher ranked school employees. Each school library has a Library Technician as their highest ranked staff member.
Slideshare – A media hosting tool which host slideshow presentations, Slideshare can host presentations created by teachers for particular learning areas, by the library staff to promote library services, programs or events, or by administration staff to reinforce school rules, or for general announcements.
Youth –We as a school library are serving students aged from 5-15. This demographic, especially the teenagers use a lot of social networking tools, so it makes sense to use these platforms to communicate what the library has to offer them.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Second Life
What is Second Life
Second life is an online virtual world, with many features that replicate living in the real world. It allows you to connect, communicate and collaborate with people and organisations all over the world.
Second life allows the user to be anybody they want to be. If in real life you are female and want to be male, go ahead. Too shy to walk around with purple hair in real life? It doesn’t matter in Second Life.
Features and functions
With everything accessible via a control sidebar and easy to use menus, navigation in Second Life is relatively easy, once the user has a grasp of what they are doing.
Second Life has its own currency, Linden dollars. These can be purchased by the user with their credit card. There are however, many free items to be found in Second Life.
Second Life allows the user to voice chat using a microphone, or type chat using the keyboard. Headphones are recommended for those using voice chat to avoid feedback for other users.
The user can change the clothes and style of their avatar with the click of a button. An inventory stores all clothes and objects picked up throughout the users’ time ‘in world’.
How information organisations could use Second Life
The Cybrary City II Public Library is part of the Community Virtual Library, a “virtual library that exists in Second Life” (Community Virtual Library). It offers users internet subject guides, which once clicked on, opens a web browser with a hot list of information sources on a specific topic, such as education or sciences. The library also offers users links to free eBooks from gutenberg.org.
Organisations could also use Second Life to offer reference services, readers’ advisory services, book clubs/talks, host discussion groups, and be a meeting space for groups. Libraries could also host computer sessions normally held in the ‘real world’ library ‘in world’.
Second life allows library employees to connect and collaborate with librarians all over the world. Professional Development (PD) opportunities are accessible for anyone who wishes to attend. PD experiences that may not be available for everyone in real life are now easily access in Second Life.
My Second Life experience
Me - Alita Zerundi in Second Life
Unfortunately, my laptop is not as compatible with Second Life as I would like, however I did manage to navigate my way to several places, including giving myself a self guided tour of Info Island. Aside from the graphics lag, this island offers an array of information for users. The ‘collections’ are organised as different buildings. More information on the collections available on Info Island can be found at http://infoisland.org/collectionsinfo/.
Second life is an online virtual world, with many features that replicate living in the real world. It allows you to connect, communicate and collaborate with people and organisations all over the world.
Second life allows the user to be anybody they want to be. If in real life you are female and want to be male, go ahead. Too shy to walk around with purple hair in real life? It doesn’t matter in Second Life.
Features and functions
With everything accessible via a control sidebar and easy to use menus, navigation in Second Life is relatively easy, once the user has a grasp of what they are doing.
Second Life has its own currency, Linden dollars. These can be purchased by the user with their credit card. There are however, many free items to be found in Second Life.
Second Life allows the user to voice chat using a microphone, or type chat using the keyboard. Headphones are recommended for those using voice chat to avoid feedback for other users.
The user can change the clothes and style of their avatar with the click of a button. An inventory stores all clothes and objects picked up throughout the users’ time ‘in world’.
How information organisations could use Second Life
The Cybrary City II Public Library is part of the Community Virtual Library, a “virtual library that exists in Second Life” (Community Virtual Library). It offers users internet subject guides, which once clicked on, opens a web browser with a hot list of information sources on a specific topic, such as education or sciences. The library also offers users links to free eBooks from gutenberg.org.
Organisations could also use Second Life to offer reference services, readers’ advisory services, book clubs/talks, host discussion groups, and be a meeting space for groups. Libraries could also host computer sessions normally held in the ‘real world’ library ‘in world’.
Second life allows library employees to connect and collaborate with librarians all over the world. Professional Development (PD) opportunities are accessible for anyone who wishes to attend. PD experiences that may not be available for everyone in real life are now easily access in Second Life.
My Second Life experience
Me - Alita Zerundi in Second Life
Unfortunately, my laptop is not as compatible with Second Life as I would like, however I did manage to navigate my way to several places, including giving myself a self guided tour of Info Island. Aside from the graphics lag, this island offers an array of information for users. The ‘collections’ are organised as different buildings. More information on the collections available on Info Island can be found at http://infoisland.org/collectionsinfo/.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Delicious
“Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source” (Delicious). Delicious is web hosted, so bookmarks can be retrieved from any computer at any time.
Tags
Delicious bookmarks are sorted by tags, which are keywords describing the bookmark so it can be found again through searching (Wikipedia, 2011). Basically, tagging is the layman’s cataloguing. The bonuses of tagging are that terms are usually the most common word used for a particular bookmark, rather than a technical term nobody knows of unless they have a thesaurus handy. The downside of tagging is that some people may only describe a bookmark for what they get from it, rather than for what the bookmark may be offering as a whole.
Tags can be descriptive to what the bookmark is about, or personal, depending on what an individual needs from the bookmark. For example, a student could use descriptive tags to make an item searchable for others, and also use a personal tag, such as a subject code or an assignment description, to retrieve resources used throughout a subject.
An example of a tag cloud for a delicious account appears below
Networks
Like other social networking tools, people can be added to a person’s network, where bookmarks are shared between members. Networks can be organised into groups, for a basic example, personal, professional, or study related.
Add-on
Delicious has a downloadable add-on for web browsers. This feature enables quick access to bookmarks and fast, easy tagging of websites without having to have Delicious open to achieve it. The add-on for Firefox notifies the user of any new activity in their networks, so they are aware of any new bookmarks added.
My thoughts
Delicious is a really useful bookmarking tool. Before undertaking this subject I had used it mainly just to complete a 2.0 course and a lot of the bookmarks in it were work related. I had actually forgotten I had signed up for it. I have since used it to store all websites used while researching assignment 2 and any other sites I find that may be useful throughout this subject. Many of my tags are basic, but I also have personal ones such as the subject code inf206 and ass3 for assignment specific needs.
References
Delicious. (n.d.). About. Retrieved January 29, 2011, from Delicious: http://www.delicious.com/help/about
Wikipedia. (2011, January 18). Tag (Metadata). Retrieved January 29, 2011, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_%28metadata%29
Tags
Delicious bookmarks are sorted by tags, which are keywords describing the bookmark so it can be found again through searching (Wikipedia, 2011). Basically, tagging is the layman’s cataloguing. The bonuses of tagging are that terms are usually the most common word used for a particular bookmark, rather than a technical term nobody knows of unless they have a thesaurus handy. The downside of tagging is that some people may only describe a bookmark for what they get from it, rather than for what the bookmark may be offering as a whole.
Tags can be descriptive to what the bookmark is about, or personal, depending on what an individual needs from the bookmark. For example, a student could use descriptive tags to make an item searchable for others, and also use a personal tag, such as a subject code or an assignment description, to retrieve resources used throughout a subject.
An example of a tag cloud for a delicious account appears below
Networks
Like other social networking tools, people can be added to a person’s network, where bookmarks are shared between members. Networks can be organised into groups, for a basic example, personal, professional, or study related.
Add-on
Delicious has a downloadable add-on for web browsers. This feature enables quick access to bookmarks and fast, easy tagging of websites without having to have Delicious open to achieve it. The add-on for Firefox notifies the user of any new activity in their networks, so they are aware of any new bookmarks added.
My thoughts
Delicious is a really useful bookmarking tool. Before undertaking this subject I had used it mainly just to complete a 2.0 course and a lot of the bookmarks in it were work related. I had actually forgotten I had signed up for it. I have since used it to store all websites used while researching assignment 2 and any other sites I find that may be useful throughout this subject. Many of my tags are basic, but I also have personal ones such as the subject code inf206 and ass3 for assignment specific needs.
References
Delicious. (n.d.). About. Retrieved January 29, 2011, from Delicious: http://www.delicious.com/help/about
Wikipedia. (2011, January 18). Tag (Metadata). Retrieved January 29, 2011, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_%28metadata%29
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