Tech Tips

In case you haven't already come across them, Michael Stephens has posted his Tech Tips for Every Librarian over on Tame the Web. The articles were originally published in Information Today and cover subjects such as using Meebo for IM, Flickr for library marketing and Netvibes & RSS for an info-portal. Go have a look... right now!

Life as I Know It's Library 2.0 Roundup

Jennifer Macauley in her excellent blog Life as I Know It has created a comprehensive list of sites and citations on library 2.0. Library 2.0 Roundup was originally posted in October 2006 and it is a pretty huge list to work through. Thanks to Jennifer I've discovered a wealth of posts and ideas that I hadn't previously come across and I'm only about a third of a way through. I imagine it would also be a really useful resource for anyone wanting to chart the development of the library 2.0 idea from autumn 2005 to the present. Just don't blame me if you stay up all night reading the posts, I'm finding it rather addictive reading...

Library 4.0?!

Tame the Web's Michael Stephens has just republished an article that was originally published in the OCLC NextSpace Magazine in April 2006. The article is about Librarian 2.0 and is a challenge for anyone working in libraries to think about how they use 2.0 technology to provide a library service and what a library service should be. See Into a new world of librarians for his article. Following the link I then read the original article in NextSpace which asked a futurist, three librarians and an OCLC vice-president to comment on the library possibilites of Web 2.0 in Web 2.0 : Where will the next generation Web take libraries?

This is a fascinating article and I particularly enjoyed futurist Dr Wendy Schultz On the way to the library experience of the future where she takes us from Library 1.0 a resource base right up to Library 4.0, the neo-library: Experience, a mind gym or knowledge spa. And I was just getting to grips with the idea of 2.0!!

Technorati Claim

Decided it was time to join the Technorati world and "claim my blog"! Not sure what effect this will have but here goes...

Technorati Profile

Furl

Thanks to philb who kindly left a comment on my last post recommending Furl .

Furl describes itself as a personal web file and allows you to archive individual web pages, tag them and search your archive. It is similar to del.icio.us in that you download a link to your toolbar and then click to add pages to your Furl archive or "Furl It". I'm not sure if they are meant to be complementary or competitors but I think I'll be using them together to keep a comprehensive file of my web use. del.icio.us allows me to bookmark sites that I find useful and tag them, see how my tags compare to others and see what other users have bookmarked in a similar field. Furl allows me to finally get rid of those saved posts on my Bloglines and to stop printing out or saving individual articles that I may want to read in the future. I think it will be a really good way of keeping a list of articles I have read - may be able to use this as proof of some professional reading for my CILIP certification. I'm also going to try saving details of books I have read or want to read by saving the entries from Amazon or library websites.

Once I've tried some of this out and archived some pages I'll post a link to my Furl archive so everyone can see how I've got on!

Posts I Have Saved part 1

My list of posts I have saved to read later or the magic posts that made me hit the 'Keep New' button...

Phil Bradley's post on 11 Things to Do in Tescos One of those posts that you just 'have' to forward to your friends on a Friday afternoon :o)

Phil Bradley's Surrealism Stalks the Library This should be required reading for senior management when they try to sell RFID as the ultimate way to "free up" library staff!

Random and cold medicine-induced thoughts on screencasting From Information Wants to Be Free - unfortunately I am one of those mentioned folk who hadn't heard of screencasting but having followed some of the links I'm really interested in seeing whether we could use this for staff training.

Phil Bradley's post on Internet Detective" Promise this is my last Phil Bradley link for today! Links through to the Internet Detective site which is not just a great example of teaching HE students how to use the web for research but also an interesting reminder of just how confusing the web can be to anyone trying to sort fact from fiction!

Library Delivery 2.0: Delivering Library Materials in the Age of NetFlix A TechEssence.Info post on library delivery in the web 2.0 era. Particularly interesting for me as I work in interlibrary loans and am looking for ideas about end user delivery. Always good to think about what the Amazons of the world have to teach us in libraries.

Meme attack! Sorted science fiction Velcro City Tourist Board is one of my favourite blogs at the moment, although some of the Sci-Fi is beyond me it did prompt me to read and thoroughly enjoy Ursula LeGuin's Dispossessed recently. Now this post makes me want to go and make strange towers from the books at work tomorrow!

Book Review: ‘The Dispossessed’ by Ursula le Guin And here's the book review by Velcro City Tourist Board.

Ok this is taking some time so part 2 may have to follow tomorrow (I keep getting distracted by clicking on links!) - to be continued...