LibrarytThing url

tobiascash

Rollyo action

With Rolllyo You can choose the sites you want to search or that you frequently search and a custom search engine called a 'Searchroll' will be created for you. This way you use the sources you trust rather than having to sift through heaps of irrelevant search results for your information. For students, dictionaries and encyclopedia sites can be combined into a single site so that searches are all in one place - under the topic you've designated. Have a look at some of the interesting topics such as 'Gluten-free search' or 'Ask Mr. Fix-it', or 'String theory'. A 'reference' topic could also include a 'thesaurus'.

LibraryThing

Apart from taking ages to register this is a great site. It's quite exciting seeing books that you own catalogued. I can imagine this working really with book club members who read each other's books. It's a great way to see what everyone's reading.

Though I've only added six book to the site you may like to take a look.
http://www.librarything.com/home/tobiascash

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Image generators

I played around with some of the image generators. Photoblender was fun but I couldn't save the image I created without registering. I could print which I did with amazing results as it was a moving image. I did manage to save an another image in image chef to my desktop which I posted in the photo square of the blog.

Having fun with wetpaint

Exploring Wetpaint has been great fun. It was much easier to negotiate than any of the other exercise sites I've visited. It was interesting to read the about peoples favourite, places to visit, books, films, wildlife etc on the NSL Learning site. Playing in the 'Sandbox' was lots of fun.

Wiki mania

I've only ever used Wikipedia out of curiosity and though I've seen the posts I've never been tempted to contribute. A Wiki website for the library could work quite well, where patrons and staff can share ideas, news, and great reads with each other and the wider Wiki world. An expiry date built-in to posts so they would self-delete on a certain date could work. The site may need a police watchdog to monitor the 'naughty' unsuitable contributions.

Watching the Rod Stewart and Nigella Lawson interviews on Youtube, makes me think that a link from the library home page with recent interviews with authors would make interesting viewing.

Exercise 10 - Web 2.0

Remember the days.....
when a visit to the library meant browsing the shelves, selecting a book and sitting in comfortable window-facing chairs, where you could enjoy the view while reading the beginning of your book to see if it was worth taking home?

You can still sit, read and enjoy, but life has changed momentum. Our new digital lifestyle means that whether we are at work or at play, we are constantly connected to each other and to the Web via our mobile and non-mobile devices.

Technological advances deliver instant information to us without having to move. Sites like Facebook and Flickr have shrunk the world so that the interchange of information is very quick. There's no waiting for mail to arrive to share news with loved ones. We can now share photographs similtaneously with family and friends and watch with amusement for comments, tags, and sometimes even discover some home truths we would rather have not known.

Rick Anderson's 'Icebergs'
I understand that there needs to be a balance when providing a 'collection'. Physical and digital collections and implementing ways to access the world come at a cost. However progressing too fast away from a physical collection can creat a huge chasm between the 'haves' and 'have nots'. Yes books are now being downloaded for reading online but how does this compare with sitting and enjoying a book you can hold in your hands. For recreation at least, I can't envisage this changing too much. The research field is a different matter. The changes have already made huge differences to the amount and depth of information that can be accessed and also to the time it takes for retrieval.
The vision of finding new ways to bring services to patrons makes sense if the library is to survive.