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.

Thing 5

What can I say about Wiki’s? I tend to you use one wiki site over most others and that of course is Wikipedia. I find it useful when wanting to look up facts on say a certain actor. The ability to go to the one site and to see the films dates of release and the characters played etc. to be very useful. I can recall times when I have had discussions with friends and/or work colleagues on a certain event or person and when we couldn't remember a certain film name or date I would jump on to Wikipedia to find out.

Of course I don’t just use Wikipedia for my information, but for a quick source I do find it useful and easy to use.

I found the YouTube clip View this Commoncraft video ‘Wikis in Plain English’ to be a great starting point for me to gain a better understanding of wiki’s and why they have been so popular. It is such a simple thing to do. I personally think having had a wiki for when my extended family had to organise recently my grandmothers 90th birthday would have been great. The ability to make lists of “Things to Bring” etc. would have been really beneficial especially when we had 35 people attending and each person had to bring something for the celebration.

With regards to using Wiki’s in the work environment, I think the idea of a using a wiki could be of benefit when we are doing group activities such as the library shelf check.  To have a list of the areas that needs to be checked –

Example:

Main Collection -

000-200’s

300 – 500’s

600 – 900’s

Serials

Curriculum

Reference

And so on…….

If there are a number of staff who are partaking in such an activity to have something like a wiki where we can all add and edit on the one site would be terrific. We could leave messages of where we got up to with our shelf check. In a way the wiki could be seen as an electronic “white board” where staff can leave messages of their progress made.

From what I have read a wiki is great for multi collaboration around unique content. It is a great tool for specific purpose.

I still think that there is a place for wiki’s today. I am finding that many wikis are event-driven, used for a specific event or a series of events.

I feel that a wiki is meant to be a website that anyone can edit, whereas other tools such as Google Docs are for specific types of documents. And while Google Sites has wiki-like features, it may not be quite as flexible.

In another 5 years’ time from now who knows what types of multimedia tools will be out there for us the consumer. I still think though that at the moment there is still a use for wiki’s in our toolbox.

Thing 2:

To try and post regularly and briefly to keep my skills up to date whilst participating in the 23 things program.

Setting a certain time in the week for me to concentrate on 23 things, to me is important as it can be very easy to forget  when other work pop ups unexpectedly.

My goal for the 23 things program is to gain a broader understanding of the various social media platforms that are used in day to day communication. To be able to participate in a hands on program like this will only enable me to obtain skills that i have never used before.

Thing 4:

Welcome to the world of BLOGS. I have never set up or blogged before. This is certainly new to me but i found the set up to be very straight forward (Thanks Kate). I have never really followed blogs before except for my work blog which i have found to be very useful when it comes to "work matters" Now having set up my own blog it has enabled me to have a better understanding of what it all means when people say "BLOG"

Now I can go off and look at other Blogs :)

http://www.google.com.au/blogsearch