Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is quite easy to use and it is so useful to have a central online depository for the bookmarks that one can essentially take with him/her from one Internet PC to another. For example in our library at the moment some PCs are been replaced and with a Del.icio.us account staff no longer have to worry about losing their bookmarks!

Looking at Sutherland Shire Libraries's bookmarks on the Del.icio.us and comparing it to what the Internet Explorer offers as a way of organising the bookmarks it is obvious to see how the "tag clouds" and the opportunity to add comments to each link makes it a much better and searchable experience as well as enabling the bookmarks sharing.

Have a look at my Del.icio.us bookmarks!

Taipei 101 2008 Fireworks

It took me a couple of tries before I finally managed to embed the video in the post. I copied and pasted the embed code but the video would not come up when I preview it, and then I realised the code that was pasted into the blog was not the complete code as I tried pasting the code into the notepad. At first I couldn't work out why the copy & paste command did not work in the blog and I was almost tempted to type the code before I finally noticed that I was not in the "edit html" pane but the "compose" pane all along. When I switched to the right pane a simple copy & paste does the job beautifully!!

Wikis

For this week's exercise I have looked at three wikis: Mnt Museum Library's exhibition wiki pages, Montana Historical Society Research Center's wiki and Princeton Public Library's Booklovers wiki. Of the three I am not sure if Montana History wiki is really a wiki as it is not open for editing but comments have to be emailed. I think this rather defies the purpose of having a wiki which is to promote information collaboration and sharing by providing a flexiblet and extensible information platform upon whcih users csan participate in contributing and editing entries.

I think intranet based wikis would be excellent for keeping desk diary whereby staff can continuously contribute and update each other on the daily businesses that are happening at the public floor. This can be very useful in enhancing the communication between staff coming on to the different shifts and keeping casual staff informed of One application of this could be a lost property wiki whereby staff can easily update and track the status of lost items handed in to the desk when answering relevant enquiries.

For this week's exercise I have created five RSS feeds with the RSS reader "Bloglines" including top stories from the ABC News website, entertainment updates from the Sydney Morning Herald online, Librarybytes, Powerhouse Museum's photo of the day and the Statistically Speaking blog.

RSS feeds are excellent in bringing the updates to me in a timely manner (without me having to browse to the different websites) and the fact you can customise how you receive the RSS feeds i.e. in a summary form or complete entries and also organising different RSS feeds into their different folders provides some means of information management which is critical in the present times of information explosion. I must admit I am already a bit overwhelmed by the 131 new feeds that have came through in the two days time I created my Bloglines account.

Taipei 101 Fireworks

This is a photo of the new year firework celebration at Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world (or so I last heard as there seemes to be a fierce competition from different countries to build the next tallest building). I was born and grew up in Taipei before I came to Australia.

The firework celebration at Taipei 101 is always the highlight of the town on the New Year's eve, much like the firework at the Sydney Harbour Bridge where people watch with great anticipation; it is also a great marketing opportunities as businesses can bid to have their name displayed on the building during the firework celebration.

Lane Cove Library

I can see blogs providing both an excellent tool of communication between the library and the community and also among the staff. At the moment we keep a communication book on the public desk which updates staff on the daily businesses that happen on the public floor. This is also the primary means of communication between the regular staff and the weekend casual staff. Due to the building work that's been done to our library building, we are operating from two premises and I think having an "electronic communication book" i.e. in the form of a blog will be particularly useful so all staff will be able to access the same information at a click of the mouse, and any follow-ups can be as easily updated and made available.

I am very excited to be doing the Web 2.0 course, it has certainly opened my eyes to the many new technologies that are out there that can enhance the interactions between within the library and with the community we are trying to serve, and on this note I am very happy to be able to post my very first blog to the web~~!