January 25 - Instant Communication

Try some IM tools - what did I like?

I first started tweeting (occasionally) following Chrystie Hill's visit to the CPLA Conference at Tamworth in 2008. Along the side of my blog you can see where I've already linked to my Twitter page.

Lately I've probably been a little more active - though I do tend to lurk just a little and get a real laugh out of the many tweets from friends and others that I'm following. I like Twitter (personally) because for me it has that nice mix of personal touches and Library related info (like the ALIA tweets).
As an aside though, I noticed at a recent seminar/conference that sometimes the use of a mobile phone for Tweeting whilst in the auditorium can interefere with the sound system .......

I'm also on Facebook and when I've been lucky enough to be on there at the same time as another friend we have had a nice catch-up. The same has occured with a few of the Nings I'm on - though given that most of my frinds here are in the US it's often a little trickier to get us all together in the one IM space. Facebook for me is probably more about friends but I do have a few Library related organisations that I follow - A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette being just one (okay that one's mainly for the laughs).

Work (Clarence Regional Library) actually bought webcams for all our branches and 3 for HQ staff (lucky me). We subscribed to skype (free) and set up usernames, etc which reflected our Library Positions rather than our names/personalities (I'm 'Information Services Librarian'). As a Regional Library we're pretty far flung and often branch staff simply can't all come together in one space/place (for various reasons including lack of staff, insufficient training budgets, etc) so we invested in some webcams so that we could still get together without having to get in a car and drive for 2 hours. It's worked out great except that by only having a free subscription to Skype we can only video conference between 2 webcams at a time. If we link in a 3rd or 4th (or more) camera/attendee we lose visual and are left with teleconferencing only. For me it's a little bit of a bug but at HQ we work around it by piling staff into one office for a chat with another branch. For more than 2 particpants we resort to teleconferences (and now we've got our new phones and new headsets that should be a lot better - people won't be telling me they can't hear me anymore!!). A big drawback of the webcams though has been that because the mike is on the webcam and sits on top of the monitor (obviously so it can take a lovely reversed image of you) it tends to pick up some of the external office noises a bit which can make conversations a little difficult when you're in a meeting and there's crazy laughter in the background.

Would IM tools be useful in a library?

For us here at HQ obviously these IM tools are useful - webcams, Skype, especially. But I do see an advantage to have IM capabilities for Reference staff - many are the stories of Reference staff being in seminars/conferences and using IM to answer queries from their library's patrons whilst there. I'm a big believer in not being seated at the Reference Desk to answer questions - so many come in through internal LMS modules (eg, Spydus Request module), over the Internet, via email, phone, walking 'round the library, etc. The point to these particular IM tools is being available and accessible and where the user is - not hiding in a library building and demanding the user comes to you - face it, it's just not gonna work! It's the same principle as Slam the Boards - answering Reference queries where the question is being asked and highlighting public libraries while you're at it.

Let's face it, those who are IT savvy are online and asking questions, they're not walking down the road to their local library and they often don't even know where their nearest library is. Not to mention those LGA's who seem to think that having a public library is a waste of rate-payers money. If we cannot meet our community where that community is then we fail to engage fully with our communities. This is why Kevin Rudd Tweets, this is why Barack Obama had a brilliant blog which engaged with America. It's more than clever marketing, it's recognising that if I'm out there in an IM world I'm more inclined to come across someone who wants my help now and whose only access to me (for them) is via one of these many tools and then I can start a relationship with them which leads to them using and accessing my library and perhaps coming back again and again and again.

The challenge for Public Libraries and Local Councils (and their IT departments) in particular is to realise and accept that enabling libraries to go online and use IM tools is fundamental to improving service, engaging with communities, and acknowledging that the local library is an integral element in a community's identity.

January 18 - more with GoogleDocs

I love GoogleDocs.

I checked out the 100 tips and found the ones relating to Presentations to be the most helpful. Points 64 - syncing with Office, 66 - using Googledocs from my Mobile, and 74 - staging the revelation of bullet points in a presentation - were the ones which I found most useful.

One of the chief criticisms I've had of using GoogleDocs is that sometimes it just won't do what Office products can do ..... obviously changes since its inception mean that now it quite often can and the capability for fuller integration with Office products is great.

At a time when I moved from Tamworth to Grafton I found GoogleDocs to be a complete life saver in so far as it enabled me to continue to be involved in state-wide activities despite my increased remoteness from activity points - planning for a conference, seminar, meeting, etc; writing collaborative presentations/documents; preparing my own presentations which could then be shared for comment/editing before finalisation; minutes for meetings.

I love GoogleDocs.

Getting organised with iGoogle

I finally worked out the easiest way of adding a screen shot of my iGoogle page to my blog - knew my coffee-fueled brain would eventually work it out (and yes it was simple). It would be so nice if 'cut & paste' would work but then again, having to think about what it is I'm trying to do as well as looking at the ways others have achieved the same result is also a worthwhile exercise.

So what did I do? I took a screen shot of my iGoogle page and pasted it into a powerpoint document. After I'd shrunk it to a respectable size I then right-clicked on the page/image and saved the picture into the MyPictures folder on my pc. From here I then uploaded the image from my pc into this blog post. Quite simple really but I guess having to come at it from a side angle can be a little disconcerting sometimes especially when I was unable to simply right-click on my iGoogle page and save it as an image initially. A little round-about but heh, it worked.

This second screen shot shows a few of the gadgets I've added reduced to show what I've managed to add to it. I'm a bit dubious now as to whether it actually will do everything I'd like it to do so I may just turn around and explore some of the other options out there.

Later I'm planning to add a Delicious gadget as well as one or two others. I'd like to be able to add straight web-links but I'm yet to work how to do that.

This has been a fun week - it's nice to do something that broadens the brain!!

January 11 - Getting organised

Had fun with iGoogle - the sheer scope of available themes made it hard to choose just one but fun to search for and flick through what was there. I'm sure I'll be back to change my theme againa and again and again. I re-set my Googlemap to default to South Grafton and selected Coffs for my weather section (even though it's always a few degrees cooler there than here at Grafton). I've got a clock, news, and my gmail.
Next I'll just have to work out how to go about adding-in links to my various blogs, etc. Overall, I quite like this application. I can see some changes a'happening!

I checked out Ping and decided that were I far more active on Facebook, Twitter , etc then something like that or any of the 7 ways of managing social networks would be really useful - depending on what I actually wanted to do. What delays me using such tools is that generally I have a different group of friends on the various applications I use and aside from updating profile info (like an email address) across them all I doubt I'd atually want to post the same thing to the all. My use of Facebook is different to my use of Twitter. I have a different range of friends on each and I guess a different use for each. Facebook is more of my 'fun' application, whereas I use Twitter more for Library stuff - I kind of like it that way. Perhaps if my use of my various applications changed then I might make use of these other tools - it's nice to know they're there at least.

I'm not too sure about 43 marks, but I do like All My Favs. I think it's primarily the visual aspect that makes the first relatively unappealing and the other much more appealing.

At this point I'd add a screen shot of my iGoogle page but I'm having troubles with that - perhaps I simply haven't had enough coffee yet. I also have a distinct feeling that the answer is extremely obvious and simple. I know it will come to me...... soon....... maybe.........

When I work it out I'll post it to this blog.

Now I'm off to boil the kettle and pour myself another cup of coffe - I'm bound to be bouncing off the walls by this afternoon!

Dec 14 - Event Management

I've been on the receiving end of Doodle (for setting up times for teleconferences), Google Calendar (not so much though as it requires me to use Google Calendar as my regular diary and I tend to use my Outlook calendar instead, perhaps if I was doing a lot more stuff from home I may use it differently), and Eventbrite (eg, the next Readers Advisory seminar, Murder in the Metcalfe, is using Eventbrite to 'sell' tickets).
I like Doodle and Eventbrite as they tend to suit the relevant purpose. Doodle is quick and easy to use (both in setting up and replying to) and you can easily see what dates/times other attendees have selected; the same can be said for Eventbrite, though it has the advantage of also being able to provide agenda details etc.. That, and Eventbrite allows for better event planning based on the number of tickets 'sold'. You know from the outset how many seats are available and can quickly determine if an event needs to be promoted a bit more or if you need to remind people that tickets are going fast so be quick! The fact that respondents can log back in to their booking and make changes is great as is the planning usefulness of obtaining respondents' email addresses.
Within our team here at HQ we make good use of our HQ Outlook calendar to schedule meetings, events, etc. The advantage here is that once I set up an event in the HQ Outlook calendar I can invite myself or various others who also share this calendar to an event/meeting and the info automatically dumps in to my/their calendar - pretty much the same principle as Google Calendar.
(I still live with my desk diary open beside me every day and rarely go to meetings without it, but then again, I'm also a chronic note-taker)

Dec 7 - Productivity: more ways with RSS

I answered the various questions relating to this week's activity by commenting on the Learning 2.1 blog.

Overall I appreciate the broad usefulness of RSS feeds and know that depending on my work demands I may or may not use them often.

For me RSS feeds are a useful reference resource that I know is working away in the background collating information from sites I find intersting and helpful. Because I don't check my feeds all that often it can require a bit of trolling to find what I'm looking for but I do have them roughly organised and I do review them every 6 months or so - getting rid of old ones I no longer want and re-organising the ones that are left.

I use GoogleReader and as it works fine for want I want and have had no reason to try any of the others that are there but I may do should I need a little more finesse to my feeds and my use of them.