Thing 9

I can't believe it but we are looking at thing 9 already. I must admit that so far i have been really enjoying looking at various social media platforms such as wiki's and everything google :)

Here is my photo from Flickr using Creative Commons ---

This is by http://www.flickr.com/photos/ozmark17/

A lovely view looking towards Brisbane City.......

I can now say that i am a Flickr lover.
I really like the fact that this site allows you to share your photos with family and friends. To be able to have a diatribe with others through the comments section is great so you know what your family and friends think.....

Other positives of Flickr i like are --

• You can connect Flickr to your facebook or twitter account
• I like the fact that it is a program that can easily complement other social media packages. The option to embed a slide show to view your photos is great.
• The ability to upload photos to flickr through various channels such as  through your mobile, from your email and from the computer browser is an added bonus.
  I also took the time to look at The Commons in Flickr. The option to view  some of the world's greatest photography archives, including The Library of Congress and the New York Public Library was terrific.

I have even now started to read the flickr blog ;)

Over the weekend i had a closer look at some of the photo sharing sites such as Instagram and Tumblr. I think instagram is a cool app and is one that i will be downloading to explore further.

Thanks to Sarah and Jo for their contribution to explaining what pinterest is all about. I took the time to look at Sarah and Jo’s Pinterest page as well as the ACU Libraries. It was great to see photos of library staff and other interesting tidbits.

http://pinterest.com/aculibrary/   J

I managed to read Phil Bradley’s weblog in regards to copyright issues with pinterest. I agree that when it comes to images and copyright it is a grey area. But I think if we the user remember to try and quote the original source then in a small way we are helping to maintain some form of copyright.

I personally think that there is a benefit when it comes to Pinterest for academic libraries. It could be very beneficial for information usage and content sharing. I think it could be a great source for collaboration and a great way to discover and share pictures online and to develop and deliver a visual online resource that could be used solo or as a group.

 

Things 7 and 8

I have done it…. I am now able to subscribe to RSS Feeds via Google Reader. I tend to look at a lot of the world news sites so I was able to add some of those to my 5 RSS Feeds, such as Brisbane Times and the Courier Mail. Other feeds were sports and entertainment sites which I have been able to add. I found the Google Reader Video to be really useful in explaining the basics involved.

I have been a follower of the ACU library news site for a number of years now. I always find it easy to use.  The ability to organise our feeds in folders and to use a dropdown menu, I think is a great step to have.

I personally feel that with the amount of RSS Feeds and blogs out there in cyber space there is always something of interest that I can now follow.

The things I like about the RSS feeds are –

The feeds are apt because I am able to get updates and breaking news items as soon as they are available.

Having an RSS feed with ACU library Biz I have found that it works well with my email. I love that I can receive, view and manage a feed in outlook.

Thing 6

This was my first experience with using Google Drive. I found it not only to be very interesting but very easy to use. I like the fact that you can create a new document, presentation or even a spread sheet instantly and have other users work together at the same time on your document. I could see a benefit of this application for both staff and students.

This would be great for library staff in Brisbane when we sometimes use a spread sheet for our high demand and restricted loans. To be able to have an application like Google drive that gives multiple users the chance to add or edit information I feel would be really useful.

I could see students using this when doing group presentations. I love the fact that you can send just a link through Gmail rather than an email attachment, and that people whom you wish to share your document with can have easy and instant access to this information. I guess this could do away with the sending of large email attachments. I can see that Google Drive is a nice alternate when it comes to the cloud based storage services.

I also love the fact that Google Drive is available for Ipad. For many years now I have used a lot of Google products from Google itself to Google Maps and Google Scholar.  I tend to stick with Google as my preferred search engine. At the moment I have just recently started to explore Google Chrome.