Week nine- Where did that time go!

20- Now how can you not love Youtube, endless hours of fun to be had there, from nutbars wailing about the innocence of Britanny to synchronised dancing to Thriller at a wedding. Magic!
21- Podcasts. Lots of useful library applications here. I love the libraries I have seen who are posting up talks and events etc. You always have a few people who cannot make it on the night and ask when it is going to be run again. Also great for training purposes too.
22- Downloadable audio books. Fabulous stuff, we have just been experimenting with potential formats for MP3 audio collections and the idea of patrons downloading themselves is just too easy!
23- Reflection- The end! It cannot be! Well now I have experienced this whole program as a kind of sampler. I have had the opportunity to dabble in things that I had not experienced (or even heard about) before and while do not consider myself to be an expert in any, merely knowing the existance of such things is a massive eye opener. Just like a whirlwind Contacky tour I can go back and explore at leisure the places which I feel could be useful. Signing off from the very elusively named Katie the Monash Librarian :O)

Week eight

Oooo, loved the online docs! Incredibly useful for so many reasons. If you don't have the right application at home, to share documents for others to add to and so on. Am keen to go back and spend time playing with the Zoho database tool when have time.
Katie's Google Document

Poking around in the award winners, I also loved the idea of Lulu, the self publishing page. Fabulous for all those people who truly believe they have a story to tell (but cannot convince a publisher!)

Week seven

Much less grumpy about this task, do think that Wikis in libraries make a lot of sense most obviously with regard to the discussion of books! People love to share their opinions and thoughts on books and love to hear about other peoples thoughts too. A tool where people can leave their ten cents worth regarding the latest John Grisham extravaganza I think ties in very nicely with the library environment all round.

Week Six

Hmmm,
must confess was not as thrilled with this weeks tools as my inner grumpy old librarian kicked in hisssing and ranting in my ear that tagging is just not cataloging far and true. So...
#13 Tagging- inner librarian muttered that one needs a thesaurus with subject headings and marc fields in order to obtain categorisation. I did agree with a point made at some stage about the usefulness of the tools to view how people actually think about linking sites etc.
#14 Technorati- Useful if you wanted you blog to be seen
#15 Web 2.0- Very interesting ideas all round, I definitely agree with the whole idea of using these tools to see how people actually use tools etc and designing things around what people actually rather than trying to teach people to use something a particular way which may not necessarily come as naturally.

Week five

Alright, week five. Half way there.
I actually loved all of this weeks tools;
Generators are way fun for those with too much time on their hands, and the library thingo would be great for all those patrons who have little books with books they have read, want to read etc.
Rollyo was a good trick too, particularly for particular subject areas where you want to limit to reputable sites.

Feeding Katie

OK, really not one hundred percent sure I have this right but am giving it a red hot go. I think the link to my personal feeds is

Katie's feeds

let's just see what happens when I post this. hurrah success!

Now I must offer thoughts... can see would be useful to latch onto people with similar interests (eg crafty things etc) or if you wanted updates on changing information (eg stocks or breaking news items). In the library setting could be used for professional development, keeping up with interesting developments (and entertaining cartoons) as well as helping patrons to latch onto others with similar interests (either reading or otherwise). Can see a danger of information overload if not organised effectively. Onwards I go...

Thoughts on techology

Oops! Sorry here was I thinking that I had last weeks task well under control by playing with pretty photos but when I actually stop to take the time to read instructions (crazy idea I know) I find that we are in fact to offer some "technology thoughts" so here goes...
Nicely fitting right in the middle of Gen X and Y, I did not grow up having always known how to use a mouse (give me an Atari joystick on the other hand...) but was still young and cocky enough to take new technology in my stride as it came along which means it is not something that I generally give a lot of thought time to. I guess the main thing that still strikes me now though is the extraordinary rate at which new formats are introduced and are made obsolete (mini disc anyone?) but working on the theory that new technology tends to offer more whistles and bell and is generally more user friendly that it's predecessor, if forced to offer an opinion either way, would say am a fan.

Flickr Fun

And what fun it was! The application which really took me was the montager:
http://www.deviousgelatin.com/montager/image.php?image=172472546

Musings on life-long learning

Ahhh life long learning. How can you not just love it to bits? There is new shiny things to explore, new buttons to press, other people's blogs to snoop in... who could ask for anything more?