Two Three

As a manager of a small, busy branch library, Learning 2.0 has taken an enormous amount of staff time – much more than expected or originally stated when we first embarked upon it. Some of the struggle was (and still is) not just finding the time for all staff to do the weekly tasks, but also ensuring that staff understand what each task is and why they are doing it – not just getting it out of the way by following instructions. I felt that initially there were no good clear instructions, or suggestions (eg.to keep track of your sign-ups and passwords) and people got bogged down early (eg.particularly with the RSS feeds ) and got really disheartened and pessimistic about the whole process. I ended up doing the Things myself first (sometimes at home) and then helping my 3-4 staff through the rest - so overall it took at least a few hours out of my work every week.

I feel that often one of the Things would have been enough per week not two or three, as after struggling to get us all through one, it was difficult to face up to another couple and still get our regular jobs done. I also often felt I couldn't spend enough time on one Thing, as with limited time I felt I had to hurry on to the next to be able to get them done.

Personally, I have found Learning 2.0 rewarding - even though a lot of what we looked at is largely American and still not very big yet in Australia, it is good to know what is out there and be aware not only of the way libraries potentially might be going but the way we need to direct ourselves. I found it valuable to know what is going on, and what so many people are spending their time doing - even if I do find it rather overwhelming and perhaps somewhat superficial in some cases.

I think that the practicality of the programme was good - making us have to physically do things such as blog and explore pictures and set up a Rollyo search engine etc, made us realize that these things aren't hidden away behind a big brick wall, and also made us really understand the Thing we were looking at, not just the theory of it.

So what am I going to do now with the reclaimed hours in my week? Well, think about how I can use Wikis and podcasts and blogs in my branch library perhaps...!!!

Audio of the future

I think the downloadable audio books are fantastic - particularly for classics - (easy for study). There is definitely a place in libraries for these - as MP3s are the way to go in the future. They won't replace books - they just offer a different option for people - and for smaller branch libraries it is a way to hold classics without having to have the shelf space.
It is absolutely imperative however, that libraries steer clear of the computer-generated ones as they are absolutely hideous - to listen to a computer voice (with an American accent) reading Shakespeare's "A midsummer night's dream" was just apalling...!!

Poddy Casts....

I found the podcast directories overwhelmingly American again - as I have found with a lot of the other "Things". I added LibVibe to my Bloglines - which has headlines of Library News from America - it would be good to have something like this for Australia - or Victoria...
I spent time on the ABC website listening to podcasts - which is something I have been meaning to do and haven't got around to. One thing I like about podcasts is you can have them on in the background and continue working!
Again - in a Library field, my comments are similar to my comments about You Tube - book reviews, librarian comments - anything like that on a library website could work well...

Marley on You Tube

I am familiar with You Tube and have looked at it on several occasions to find certain things that I am interested in. I find there are a lot of apalling things on there - just absolutely not worth the time - but if you know what you want, the clips can be worthwhile and for example can give action to something you are reading.

I am just in the middle of reading Marley and me by John Grogan, and it had me laughing out loud in places - which I don't often do when I read... I am now approaching the end and feel I will be shortly sobbing - so I was pleased to find some video footage of Marley on You Tube. I did find a brief bit of him at home with one of John's children in an interview with John Grogan as well, but the one I have put here is of when Marley was a film star. It is mentioned in the book that he played the family dog in a film called "The Last Home Run" that went straight to video - so here are Marley's scenes from that film.




In a Library situation - book reviews or author interviews (from You Tube) could be put onto the library's webpage - and even local librarians commenting on new items or events could be uploaded - or a snippet of bookclubs or storytime would promote the library and books and put them out there for people in an interesting way.

So much stuff out there!

I like the idea of One Sentence (http://www.onesentence.org/) - 2nd place winner in Fun Stuff - but found most of the one sentences very ornery. I use Google Maps a lot with great success - so was interested to see that it had 1st place in Mapping. Looked at Wayfaring - which was 2nd place in Mapping - but found in more clumsy than Google Maps maybe just cos I'm more used to Google Maps. Had a quick look @ Frappr (3rd in Mapping) - but seemed way to social for me at this point in time.... Got distracted and had to play Guess the Google (grant.robinson.name/projects/guess-the-google) 3rd place under Games - which was fun but was a bit disappointed they didn't tell you the answer for the ones you got incorrect.
Ran out of time to look at any more so didn't find any Library related stuff - but may come back - Lulu looked interesting...

Zoho, Zoho it's off to blog I go!

There is a huge advantage to having your documents online and being able to either work on them from various locations without transporting them (whether via e-mail, CD or memory stick), or to share them with colleagues who need access to the same document. This has already happened at work with a Google Spreadsheet being shared among staff to record in one location our donation figures from across the corporation's branches. I can see the value of this in other areas such as periodicals as well. I found the toolbars rather limiting at first - but then a lot of what I work with contains images or tables and importing these into Zoho from already existing documents didn't work that well - but there are always ways around these things...

Ochre Oasis

 

 

 

OCHRE OASIS.doc

 

I can definitely see the advantage of having documents online

and being able to work with them from various locations or sharing

them with other people who need access to the same document!