Connecting Librarian

That’s it, I’m done just lurking.

For those of you who don’t know lurking is, in this context it’s when you read blogs but don’t comment on them.

Funnily enough, I wrote a blog entry on my library’s blog today, which was deliberately aimed at seeking feedback - in this instance, for our proposed new website. The aim being to measure the success of our still fledgling blog by hopefully getting some response, but also to get some feedback on the proposed changes and maybe some things we hadn’t considered yet. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Then I went home and read David Lee King’s blog entries “Inviting Participation in Web 2.0“, quickly followed by Helen Blowers response to that at Library Bytes with “Don’t be shy… say Hi!” as part of National Delurking Week. So I dutifully responded to Helen’s call and left a comment and then realised….. I don’t generally comment and I don’t often use trackbacks (a reference back to a blog entry referenced), so how will bloggers know that I have read, appreciated and used their blog entries as a starting point to creating my own? In turn, I know I love having comments on my blog and hearing how what I have written has impacted my readers.

I am starting to write my paper for the Computers in Libraries conference in April and one aspect I am covering is Libraries building communities. How else does the bibliogosphere create community amongst library bloggers, except through comments and trackbacks?

I have posted the odd comment, but as of now, once in a blue moon is not enough. From now on, I will actively seek to give feedback to the bloggers who have inspired me and trackback to those blog entries that get me started on my own blog entries.

If you feel equally inspired, why not join me in De-Lurking month and maybe lets make it last longer than this month, lets make it a permanent thing. In the meantime, I have to go, I have comments to leave and trackbacks to organise.

I was going to take a break from this Learning 2.0 - intensive version, but in a moment of weakness, I decided to start the next lesson - image generators and got hooked! I should have known better - this learning 2.0 stuff is fun!

Here’s one - the ultimate search for me (nothing wrong with my self image!)
(from http://www.gooogie.co.uk/)

And another: (from http://www.ComicStripGenerator.com/)

This led to trying Library Thing, which I have been meaning to do for a while. I love idea of being able to see all my books with their covers and info beyond the title and author, like what Syndetics will do with our new ILMS (can’t wait!)

So it took me 2 seconds to join up and then another 10 seconds to add 10 books to my library. If only everything was so simple! Now I will keep adding to my library which will take some time, but in the meantime, I have subscribed to the RSS feed from the Library Thing blog so I can learn more about this great service, as I go. I am even planning to add a widget from Library Thing to my blog, as soon as my new additions list is not my complete library! If you want to see what I have added, go to my Library Thing account.

Finally, I have had one play with Rollyo a little while ago and also had a look at Google Co-op search, in the hope of getting a type of federated search happening on our library website. It worked OK with some of our databases, but due to the variations in validating users, it didn’t work with them all. However, now that I have been reminded, I will be getting back onto it at work. With both these products, its easy to do.

Wow - a lot to do in one week’s learning, but soooooo much fun!!!!

Yes I know its only been a day since I blogged on Week 3, but I’m fast and I’m trying to catch up!

I love RSS feeds. I already have feeds to about 50 blogs coming into Thunderbird, my email client (same guys did the Firefox browser, which I also love). I have also set up an RSS feed (with help) for my libraries blog, so I think its a wonderful invention.

This exercise required us to set up a Bloglines account. I know many bloggers who use Bloglines as their feed reader, but I hadn’t set up an account as I was happy using Thunderbird as my feed reader. However, I have set up an account with feeds from Flickr, which is new for me, as well as some other favourites. I will continue to use it, not only to stay familiar, but to help me out when I travel. I am going to Sydney in late Jan and then overseas in April for several weeks - at those times I will add my must read feeds to Bloglines so I can access them anywhere.

However, in general I will stick with Thunderbird. Its so easy to check your feeds and catch up when you are checking your email (and as I monitor 4 email accounts, that’s a regular task!).

Narre Desk
Originally uploaded by tang02.

So what happened to week 2? Well my previous post was week 1 and week 2 together. So here we are at week 3, exploring Flickr.

After reestablishing my Flickr account, which only held my Librarian Trading card, I did some quick uploading of photos from my computer - all related to my library service of course.

I chose this one of the desk at Narre Warren Library, because that’s where I work. Its not the best angle, but I only took it to test the photo uploading capabilities of our new public computers.

In the meantime, I had had lots of fun with Flickr. I used some of the mashups to create artworks and a movie poster using some of my photos. So easy to get distracted!

So I will be heading back to Flickr to do some more uploading, playing with mashups, getting a decent icon up for me etc. And I will be working with my manager to get a Flickr account started and bursting to the seams with images from my library. What fun!