Week 2 - Zamzar

What a great site! I found it to be very user friendly and so simple to use. I would recommend this to anyone who needed to convert a file. Also it was great to only need an email address. It's a pain when you have to sign up to use an application, especially one you don't use often, and then try to keep all the usernames and passwords straight. Only downside I can see in patrons using this application is, that with the converted file being sent to your email, they will have to pay to access it in the library. However it would definitely be of use to me at work and home. All in all it gets my vote.

We (b2.0) return. Week 1.

Hurrah, Web 2.0 returns. Personally I'm glad to see it back, I learnt so much last time and hopefully will this time too. My only real fear/problem is finding the time to complete the exercises, hence my late start at it, however as long as I get it done eh?
As for how a Public Library might use a blog, they could use it to;
1. Keep patrons up to date with events.
2. Book recommendations / reviews.
3. New and upcoming books.
4. Librarian ramblings / sharing their knowledge.
5. Share ideas and discuss issues.
6. Keep patrons informed of any changes or news happening in the library.
I think these are the sorts of things a patron would expect to see on a library blog but best of all, they can add their own comments and have their own say.

Crossing the finish line.

Hurrah I made it. I must confess to a few moments when I wondered if I ever would, it seems to have taken a very long time getting here. Still better late than never. On the whole I really liked doing this Web 2.0, I just feel that we could have had longer to complete it. I know some people did finish in time but all the ones I know of did a lot of it at home in their own time. However I'm too [insert appropriate word of your choice here] to do that, so did it at work only. Still the main thing is that I learned heaps of things that I probably would not have learned left to my own devices, either through lack of confidence or the fact that I didn't even know they existed. So all in all I would call Web 2.0 a success.

ebooks/Project Gutenberg

I think the premise of ebooks is great but I'm not really a fan of ebooks, mainly because I find reading blocks of text very difficult to do on a screen. Also I'm rather partial to the feel and smell of 'real' books. However I have a friend who loves her ebook reader, she finds it fantastic as she does a lot of travel for her job and finds an ebook reader loaded with several books a lot more portable also with the screen being backlit she can read in the dark (under the covers)or so she tells me.
I went and checked out Project Gutenberg - not a very pretty site to look at but free books to download so who cares? Also had a look at the top 100 titles and found it interesting that the most popular by far was the 'Manual of Surgery Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. by Miles and Thomson' with 1246 downloads. I have visions of people, ebook reader in one hand and scalpel in the other... DYI surgery anyone?

Podcast

Hmmm... Had a bit of trouble with this podcast thing. I did manage to click on the "word of the year" link and discover a new favourite word 'squick' (cause immediate and thorough revulsion: eg... "was anyone else squicked by our waiter"s piercings?") but when trying to do the discovery exercise it all turned to custard. I went to podcastalley.com and did a search for 'Book Reviews'and chose Book Snark to listen to... so far so good. However no matter what I did I could not listen to the actual podcast unless I downloaded a player which I was not going to do on a work computer. However I have listened to podcasts before on my home computer with sucess and have found them to be useful.

You Tube/ Mr Bean at the Library

I'm feeling very clever because I thought this one would be a lot harder than it turned out to be. Maybe I've been learning while doing these thingys. If you had asked me to do this before Web 2.0 I would have said, "Nope can't do that, too hard."
Just goes to show, you can teach a Library Assistant new tricks.

Web 2.0 Tools

I decided to check out the 'Games and Entertainment' winners of the Web 2.0 Awards and chose 2nd place getter 'Galaxiki' because 1st placegetter 'Zango' was blocked.

In its own words
"Galaxiki is a wiki based science fiction galaxy created, maintained and owned by its Community. As a visitor you may explore the galaxy or read science fiction and fantasy stories written by the community. As a site member you may name and edit edit solar systems and write your own science fiction or fantasy stories, post news and stories in the community blog (anything related to science, space, science fiction and fantasy is allowed) and help to build a fantastic online world.
Membership and editing community owned systems is completely free, but you may also buy your own star that will act as your personal wiki. You can name or dedicate a star, describe your planets, moons, invent alien life forms or even write entire science fiction and fantasy stories. All pages are wiki based and easy to edit."
You can also get a solar system widget of your choice. Mine is WDJ228 a red dwarf star with no planets. If you were into this sort of thing, I could see where this would be a great site to belong to.