wrap party

After taking off a few weeks to reflect (amongst other things), I'd thought I'd better give my ruminations on the course.

I've been exposed to nearly all the concepts/services/things in some way before the course, and already use several for the library service: blogger, flickr, twitter, facebook, librarything, RSS feeds. A few of us here had been discussing the idea of recording and podcasting  library events for a while,  so seeing week #9-  podcasting  approaching, as well  a timely presentation on family history, gave us the final motivation to get the first Cockburn Library podcast online.

So even though the concepts weren't new, it was still interesting doing the lessons as there are always things to learn and other ideas to consider, and examples of how others are using these things which give you ways to improve your own, and your library's, use. It has also been interesting reading other people's blog posts as they progressed through the course.

It's great that Melissa and Mark @ Swan lets us barge in on their course, I know it's been a lot of hard work for them.


For those interested, Gnome Chomsky appears to have made his way from the City of Swan to our nation's capital.

all roads lead to Harry Potter

Not content with inspiring a 6 billion dollar (and counting) movie franchise, a band called Harry and the Potters ('We sing songs about books!'), and knitwear, J K Rowling has given the geocaching community the term muggle . Although I hadn't done any 'official' geocaching, I wouldn't say I was a muggle, as I was aware of geocaching as an internet phenomenon, and I have previously set-up GPS courses for others. Easter last year I organised an actual Easter egg hunt using GPSs . Participants had to correctly answer a question related to what they found at each waypoint, which lead them to the final location, which had the actual cache - the easter eggs.

Looking at the  Geocaching Australia website, I found that there is only one geocache in the suburb of Mt Lawley.  Moving on, I was intrigued by the GeGnome Project. It appears that Gnome Chomsky  is currently hiding in  the City of Swan. Hopefully one of the City of Swan library staff finds Gnome Chomsky and relocates him to one of the City of Swan Libraries.

Getting the library involved in geocaching could be part of a larger whole of council initiative. Hiding caches at significant local sites, including some of the libraries would be an interesting experiment.  It could have been a great way to celebrate the 30th anniversary the City of Cockburn, but alas that was last year - why didn't someone think of that 18 months ago?

Does adding the library to foursquare.com  count as the library participating in geocaching?

hear ye!

Sue Lawley presented Desert Island Discs on BBC radio for 16 years from 1988 - 2006. Unfortunately she retired from the show before the first podcast of the show was available, which according to wikipedia, was the 29th November 2009 episode which featured Morrissey.  Podcasts of recent episodes can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/did. For an actual lawley related podcast, check out the audio tour of the library at ECU Mt Lawley.

Cockburn Libraries have just started on the podcast journey with an audio recording of a recent genealogy talk held at Colbellup Library. It was a bit like that Beck song -  '...two turntables and a microphone' (minus the two turntables, and with the addition of a laptop). I see our podcast has been added to the week #9 course material.... right at the top of the list - thanks City of Swan Libraries.  Technically, should we wait until the second event recording is out to say we are actually podcasting?

It seems, to me, like a no-brainer recording and podcasting events held at your library. You have already done the hard part; arranging the talent to appear, then it only takes a little more effort to record preceeding, thus allowing a whole new audience to experience the event. Sometimes it just not possible to get to the library at 11am on a Tuesday, no matter how interesting the event sounds.

...and another (library)thing

My previous comment about library thing may have been a bit brief (or not actually a comment) so here is a bit more. All libraries should add Librarything for libraries to their online catalogues. These catalogue additions enhance the catalogue immensely, adding user generated tags to complement the existing subject headings and giving access to book reviews.

The Cockburn Libraries catalogue has the ability for users to add comments/reviews to the book records, however even if lots and lots of our members did this (so far the up-take isn't great, or good even), you would still be working off a very small population base. This is why librarything reviews are so much better, as you drawing for a huge population of readers to get your ratings, reviews and tags.

At Success Library we set up a librarything account for the book club so we could create a widget  to display the book club books on the book clubs' page on the library website. Cockburn Libraries also have a staff current reading account, so we can display a widget of what staff are reading on the library's blog .

"why are you here listening to me, when you could watch a video of it later?"

Typing 'lawley' into youtube gives you lots of videos of a guy (Chris Lawley) doing Yes covers in his lounge room (he must really like Yes) and  ...well...a sort of christian vs atheism video war with the anti-'leftist', anti-atheist rantings of a fundamentalist christian (Brock) Lawley and seemingly everyone else ranting about his rantings. Best not to get involved, though you get to hear 'lawley' in an Amercian accent.

We also get  Liz Lawley, appearing again in this blog,  giving a Google TechTalk:  The Evolution of Expertise (Abstract: Does Web 2.0 represent a triumph of the wisdom of crowds, or the tyranny of mediocrity? The truth--as truths often do--may fall somewhere in the middle....) . Included in the talk are such topics as:  an expert in tying shoe laces, delicious, world of warcraft, librarian trading cards, information gatekeepers, librarything,  and at one point Liz asks "why are you here listening to me, when you could watch a video of it later?"

It goes for an hour, so I have chosen not to embed it here, instead here a video of New York band,  The Pains of Being Pure at Heart with their song Young Adult Friction. They played here in Perth earlier this year at the Beck's Music Box during the Perth Festival. (Keeping the library/literary theme going,  at next year's festival,  New York folktronica duo The Books will be performing at the Music Box)




I could say some stuff about using video in the library, but conveniently this week's episode of This Week in Libraries is Video Killed the Blog Star - so you should just watch that instead.

the space between blog and email may or may not be an f and six asterisks

Week 7 - it seems things are  heating up...


A fan, a fan, my kingdom for a fan
......or as Fugazi's  Guy Picciotto put it in 1995 -  Do you like me?

Big news in the unsocial media last week when the Queen launched her facebook page. The page is actually "the official Facebook page for the British Monarchy, offering updates on Royal news and events" rather than a personal page for the Queen  (and please don't confuse that page with the page for Queen). If you think about how social the Queen really is -  she has snipers stationed outsider her house - and then compare that to what a social place a  public library is; so if even the British Monarchy have a facebook page, why doesn't your local library?

Like the British Monarchy | Like the Cockburn Libraries
(and I'm sure you could find me on facebook if you wanted to)

I tweet therefore I am

Love it? Hate it? Not sure? ...though more of a tweetee than a tweeter , I would guess I'd lean towards the love it,  for the amount of really useful and interesting links that appear in my twitter stream . Choose your followees, then immerse yourself. Someone already had lawley so I'm lawley_y (but folllow him, he's probably more interesting).

Cockburn Libraries tweet, though at the moment it is really only sending out information, rather than creating connections. This is part of the twittersphere that, tweeting as libraries, we should embrace more. In reading  26 Twitter Strategy Tips and Tricks for Success - Active - Be Honest - Click –  Don’t Worry! –  Encourage –  Follow Wisely -  Global Connections - HABITUDES!  Ignite Dialogue –  Jump into the Fray  - Kindness –  Listen –  Manage Yourself –  Name –  Outside Your Field –  Proclaim –  Question - Relationships –  Start Now - Tweet with purpose - Unlimited Potential - Visualize your PLN- (Personal Learning Network) - Wise –  X-tra Efforts Matter. - You!  - Zweeeet! -  there are definitely points for our library to act on, though I think they were pushing it a bit with Zweeeet! 

tag, you're it!

On delicious, 37 bookmarks include a tag of lawley . One of the bookmarks is for social consequences of social tagging; a posting by Liz Lawley on the site Many 2 Many - 'a group weblog on social software'.  The post is from 2005 and in it Liz makes some interesting points about the word choice used in social tagging of images/websites (bookmarks)/books etc.; 'Knowing that your descriptors will change how people can access your content can’t help but change the way you use the tags—just as knowing that people will read your blog influence the way you write.'

Social bookmarking and libraries.
In the olden days libraries used to have pages on their websites with lists of links, usually sorted into subject groups. The problem with these was that the had to be constantly checked and updated and required a lot of time compiling.  And every library had a small collection of these links which would often have much the same links as all the other libraries around, and not many people looked at these links, as they were a bit out of the way and once you had search the library catalogued  to see if there were any relevant books, you would then do a internet search, and probably find most of the listed links anyway. Libraries should either have important websites listed in their catalogues, with full MARC records, so that users searching the catalogue can find them along with other resources - or/and utilise social bookmarking sites, such as delicious, to have all their bookmarks tagged and easily accessible to everyone. A good example of the latter is how  SLWA's geneology section have set a delicious  account for genealogy websites;  check out their tag cloud .


Librarything
I have added a widget from my librarything account to this blog. Some books I have read.