Social Networking

Social networking is a great way to interact with the community - we could use it to promote our services eg kids activities, movies we show and talks.
I currently use Facebook to interact with friends and find it very time-consuming (distracting !)

Online applications

I like the idea of using this rather than our O:Drive...it is a bit hard to explain, but our current setup for IT is very slow to acess things from the network, but this would work. Potential, potential!

Mashups

I really like this - I am definitely going to use it more in the future! What fun :)

Podcasts and Audio

This is great technology - if I had lots of time I would use it to create an oral history podcast about Yass to help record people's current and historical views.
It would also be fun to podcast storytime so that people from the outlying villages could listen to it without having to come into town.

Answer boards and social networking

I don't have a lot of faith in answer boards - who knows what responses you will get and who is responding. I think answer boards are good for people that want an opinion about something, but I notice that many of the questions being asked were about factual things. For these questions I would prefer to search for the answer in wikipedia etc.
I think it is very commendable of those Librarians taht are 'slamming the boards'.

Tagging etc

Well, I now have a del.icio.us account and have put a Shelfari on my blog (I like how this is presented as a bookshelf ).
It is becoming a bit daunting about how many things are out there that you can use...how do people keep up?

Videos Online

What a great way to let people know about your library. A bit labour intensive to actually film something and put it on YouTube, but I guess where there is a will there is a way...although I may have difficulty in convincing my staff to be in it!
I have always enjoyed the funny side of YouTube and I can now appreciate other uses for it.

Wikis

I have been to a couple of seminars now that have included information about wikis and have always wanted to "give it a go". Council's Customer Service Manager has developed an A to Z about Council using word and I have always thought that it would lend itself really well to a wiki. I think I now have the confidence to show her how we could use wiki to make her A to Z more user friendly :) It would definitely have to be a closed community and may have to be put on our Intranet, but I think it will be very beneficial.
I have also thought about putting our staff manual as a wiki...something to think about.
I liked the book club putting their reviews on a wiki...another thing to think about!

RSS Feeds

I can see the benefits of being able to receive information regularly on topics that you are interested in, but I can see how it can quickly turn into information overload. There are so many interesting RSS feeds out there that I can see myself being overwhelmed and not wanting to use any.
I think it would be important for Libraries to make sure they did not have too many items of information being pushed through the feed, as patrons may not want to know everything! It would be useful to link it to the 'What's On' section of our Library's website.

Big Steve

Big Steve
Originally uploaded by Book babe

This is Steve now! He is 4 years old and he is a big boy. Our vet calls him a 'monster'.

Steve

Steve
Originally uploaded by Book babe

Hi, this is my cat Steve when he was a cute little kitten. I had trouble uploading photos from other people, so I created my own flickr account.

Blogs

This was very stressful trying to think of a name for myself and my blog!
I am very excited about starting my own blog as I have wanted to create one for ages. It has been great watching and listening to my staff (various ages) discussing their blogs etc. I think we are all going to learn a lot from this experience.