Have you heard of 2collab? It's a free service from Elsevier, and it's still a beta application.
It's designed to allow users to store and organise their favourites (eg blogs, websites, research articles) and share them with others as you choose. You can create and join groups.
More information is available at http://www.2collab.com. You can also watch or download a short video presented by one of the developers.
Update 21/11/08: Thing 11 for 2008 was social tagging and search. We had to search different sites (del.icio.us, Connotea, CiteULike, Murdoch catalogue subject search, UQ catalogue search, Google, zuula and KartOO), compare the results, and then blog about the sites.
Overall impression was that social tagging tells us how many different people view something - instead of getting just the author's and cataloguer's perspective as we do in a library catalogue. There are some imaginative sites available - KartOO displays search results visually and as you move your cursor over the image you see relationships between and among sites. Tagging (as in UQ's Encore interface) does liven up the image of a library catalogue! The downside is that being a librarian means I see all the differences (in eg spelling, capitalisation) and spelling mistakes (they are mistakes, aren't they?) - authority control has its place!
Monday, October 29, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Small thought: Using a sign generator to say something
This is cool. I can see all sorts of uses for these, eg brightening up a website, using on print handouts, making a point ...
Thinking about: Youtube embedded
Now that I know how to embed things in my blog (see the post on Slideshare, and many thanks, Kathryn, for the helpful hints), I've embedded a video from YouTube. John Howard certainly is popular on YouTube.
On a more serious note, there's a video on Youtube about the Public Library Transformation Lab from Aarhus Public Library who have been thinking outside the square on the non book focussed public library.
On a more serious note, there's a video on Youtube about the Public Library Transformation Lab from Aarhus Public Library who have been thinking outside the square on the non book focussed public library.
Monday, October 22, 2007
'The Librarians' blog
"'The Librarians', a six-part ABC TV comedy, goes to air on 31 October 2007. ALIA now has a great new blog to facilitate discussion about the show. The blog is for musing about how the series portrays us, how other media portray us and how others see us and how we see ourselves. Comments are invited from anyone interested in the show.'
See the blog here.
Details of the series are here.
Postscript: a comment from a favourite friend, "Hi Sue, Have you seen the ALIA blog about the series?
A whole lot of stereotypical librarians getting in a fuss about whether the show will have stereotypical librarians in it! Of course it will! Isn’t any publicity good publicity? People who don’t normally use the libraries might come along hoping to see that sort of behaviour and be surprised at how much good stuff there is. I reckon it will be great fun. I notice that Kathryn Greenhill is Second Lifing away with it. We all take ourselves far too seriously."
See the blog here.
Details of the series are here.
Postscript: a comment from a favourite friend, "Hi Sue, Have you seen the ALIA blog about the series?
A whole lot of stereotypical librarians getting in a fuss about whether the show will have stereotypical librarians in it! Of course it will! Isn’t any publicity good publicity? People who don’t normally use the libraries might come along hoping to see that sort of behaviour and be surprised at how much good stuff there is. I reckon it will be great fun. I notice that Kathryn Greenhill is Second Lifing away with it. We all take ourselves far too seriously."
Week 8: Fotos on Flickr (or should that be Photos on Phlickr?)
Yes, I've added some photos to my account on Flickr. And I now have a yahoo email address!
And now my husband Jack is getting keen on the idea. He's suggested that we upload some of our holiday photos while we're actually on holidays. Yes, this does depend on having internet access, and that's not always available on the sorts of holidays that we seem to take.
When I can work out how to make photos available to only certain people, I'll try adding some family snaps and make them available to just family members.
So why is Flickr fantastic? It's the sharing aspect that I like, plus the ability to decide what sort of permissions I want to add to my photo.
And you can tag photos and add to sets - great for targeting specific groups of people.
And now my husband Jack is getting keen on the idea. He's suggested that we upload some of our holiday photos while we're actually on holidays. Yes, this does depend on having internet access, and that's not always available on the sorts of holidays that we seem to take.
When I can work out how to make photos available to only certain people, I'll try adding some family snaps and make them available to just family members.
So why is Flickr fantastic? It's the sharing aspect that I like, plus the ability to decide what sort of permissions I want to add to my photo.
And you can tag photos and add to sets - great for targeting specific groups of people.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Thinks: "What is slideshare.net?"
It's described at the site as "the world's largest community for sharing presentations on the web. And it's free."
This set of slides raises some questions about the future of Antarctica.
This set of slides raises some questions about the future of Antarctica.
Week 6: Searching, searching ...
What did I find when I searched del.icio.us, Connotea, CiteULike, Murdoch Library catalogue, Google, dogpile, zuula and kartoo? Well, each site search retrieved different numbers of sites (I searched for 'libraries'). Kartoo was the only one that looked at very different as it presented the results visually. I guess any search on a 'tag' will only retrieve what has also been tagged with that tag. So 'libraries' will find x sites, while 'library' will find y sites and 'librarian' will find z sites. So a controlled vocab (taxonomy) will find relevant results, once you know what the taxonomic terms are. I do like del.icio.us. I've added some links to my site.
Week 4: What about wikis?
My wiki is here.
I guess wikis would be useful for working on collaborative projects, esp. when the members of the project team are not at the same geographic location, eg members of different WAGUL libraries.
And maybe students would use them for group projects?
I guess wikis would be useful for working on collaborative projects, esp. when the members of the project team are not at the same geographic location, eg members of different WAGUL libraries.
And maybe students would use them for group projects?
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Week 5: RSS post of the week
I've signed up for the ALIA (Australian Library and Information Association) media releases RSS feed. You can see the list of releases (and sign up for feeds) here .
One of the feeds concerns internet filtering in libraries. The release starts out by saying "the current NetAlert - Protecting Australian Families Online initiative raises significant and unresolved problems for public libraries, and for the free flow of information in our communities".
ALIA's concerns focus on the difficulties associated with implementing filtering in libraries (a figure of $3.5 million is quoted as the cost of 'filtering' just one terminal each in all of Australia's public libraries), and the Association's long held commitment to the free flow of information in the community.
Also noted is that the Federal Minister (Helen Coonan) continues to criticise public libraries for failing in their duty to provide internet access in such a way that children are protected from unsavoury content - despite the existence of long-established policies of local governments and libraries to cover access to online content.
More information on ALIA's approach is available.
One of the feeds concerns internet filtering in libraries. The release starts out by saying "the current NetAlert - Protecting Australian Families Online initiative raises significant and unresolved problems for public libraries, and for the free flow of information in our communities".
ALIA's concerns focus on the difficulties associated with implementing filtering in libraries (a figure of $3.5 million is quoted as the cost of 'filtering' just one terminal each in all of Australia's public libraries), and the Association's long held commitment to the free flow of information in the community.
Also noted is that the Federal Minister (Helen Coonan) continues to criticise public libraries for failing in their duty to provide internet access in such a way that children are protected from unsavoury content - despite the existence of long-established policies of local governments and libraries to cover access to online content.
More information on ALIA's approach is available.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Week 3: Reflecting on 23 Things
What is my first thought about 23 things? Well, it's a great way to learn something that looks daunting and far too hard to do at first sight. I've seen this described elsewhere as 'how to eat an elephant' - if you think you have to do it all at once, then of course it's too hard. If you do it one bite at a time, then you can do it. Having the programme broken down into small steps, with instructions on how to do it, certainly makes it seem much more achievable.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
