Sandy Wiki

I felt that the PBWiki gave good hands on experience as to what Wikis are all about and enabled me to get a feel on how to actually use and be able to edit one.

Wiktastic!

I think Wikis are great - in a controlled environment such as our library service they could be of extreme value in communication in general or in working on a special project, or for subject / autor lists. As we have staff in a number of different locations - seperated by considerable distance in some cases - to have a central document that can be revised and /or edited by anyone on the working party would be a bonus. I also feel that as we would generally be all working towards the same end in this we shouldn't suffer from many "edit wars" and have to go to arbitration as must be the case in bigger Wikis... (I also thought the Commoncraft video explained Wikis in a very clear and concise way...)

Libraries and invisible technology

I think it is time for public libraries to become more adventurous in the technological world, as I believe we need to be dynamic and remain at the forefront of technology and not slip behind. I think libraries as they are now could well fade away unless we metamorphose ourselves with Web 2.0 and have some of these technologies being incorporated within libraries in an integral and what may well be an invisible way.
However we can't just accept everything holus bolus, but will have to learn to step carefully between the technologies - willingly embracing ones which can help public libraries and the people who use them and rejecting the others.
Also technologies that are simple to use and explain are important - and they are the ones that I have seen as most beneficial in the Learning 2.0 training. I think technologies and printed books can co-exist - I believe it will be a long time before books as we know them disappear - but there will be other formats as well.

Ballooning Blogospheres

I found the whole idea of Technorati rather overwhelming. The simple fact that a tool like Technorati is needed to monitor the ballooning blogosphere is, to me, a scary thought. I have blogged about this before - but the fact that there are so many people out there just doing this is crazy. I found the searches to be rather limiting and again was disappointed with the lack of Australian material - it seemed to be predominately American. However I did "claim" my blog and played around with making a watchlist.
I can see that blogs can be a powerful office / company / business tool and Technorati would be very useful in maintaining these and keeping them current.

Fan.tast.ic!

I really like Del.icio.us! I have been really frustrated with my Bookmarks recently because I could never find the one I was after and have just re-organized them (on all three computers that I regularly use)! I also would often not bookmark a site I really liked because it just increased my list and I would probably never have found it again. Now with Del.icio.us and tagging I can bookmark as many sites as I want and still find them (on any computer!) as long as my tags are standardized.
The social sharing is also pretty good - as just after a quick peek at sites others had bookmarked I found similar sites that I would find of interest. To be explored in more depth another time!
And having the network badge on my blog makes it all just handy!

Rolling my own...

For this exercise I just added a few of my favourite websites to Rollyo - so I can choose to search one of them easily. However I can see the advantage to being able to search specific topics on specific sites and if the need arose I would spend the time creating subject searches in the areas I needed.

In True Librarian Style...

I have played around with Library Thing before - and think it is a very useful tool - which (someday when I have time!) I plan to take advantage of to order my own bookshelves.