Wrap up; social networks & catch up

As an avid Facebook user - love that I've 'found' friends that I haven't seen since I finished school - I can see so many uses for public libraries with social networks. We could set up a page for the library and use it to advertise special collections, new books, reviews, events, storytelling times etc. While social networking works really well for teenagers (an audience that we desperately need to attract BACK to the library) I think that they work really well for the older audience (my generation) of the 20-35 yr old too.

Online applications & tools

I really, really, really like google docs. At the moment we share a common drive on the library server & only one person can edit or contribute to it a time. How much time would be saved in day to day word processing etc if we could all access a document at the same time? We could have our roster, for example, online which would allow our casual/volunteer staff to look at the roster online at home & not ring or come & see us to confirm work. (that's if I'm on the right track with this) or if we're all consulting on updating a policy or creating a new one, we could all be contributing ideas & editing at once. So much more convenient. Quite impressed - one question though? How secure is this? Can it be locked down so only designated people can access it?

Mashups

I enjoyed playing with bighugelabs -

this is one of my all time fav pics taken on a family holiday 3 yrs ago!!! Mashups would be a good tool for promoting children's activities - a big plus for me! I could link photo's & events & google for example if I was promoting an event away from the library so parents/carers could find it. Or create a mashup that shows the library & branches for newcomers to the area.

Podcasts

I can see how 'how to' podcasts could be useful - both as a training tool for other or new library staff AND for patrons i.e. 'how to create your own email account.' I like that you can subscribe & than listen/watch at your own convenience. In today's go at 150% ALL the time, that has to be an advantage. I'd like to see us start something along the lines of teen podcasts - for the teen users of our library by other teens. Maybe book discussions? I listened to one on the ABC which was interesting. These podcasts actually would help when someone comes in & says I missed part of a program - where can I get it?

Answer boards

I really like this - what a good PR thing for library staff!?! Customer service & PR all at the same time!!!! I'd like to see us put a link like this on our webpage - how cool would a link where a patron could input a question & one of their own library staff could answer it - like we do face to face but in this technological era, libraries need to embrace and not hide from using technology to do their day to day business. And INFORMATION is our business.

Library Thing

I've done what was required on librarything - have to say though, that I prefer Shelfari. That could be because I've used it for over 12 months & am more familiar with it. As I've already said, tags are a personal thing. As a cataloguer, I look at some tags & shudder. I know this sort of site is good for the general library user & tags would make finding their books/info easier for them but that will only work if they are looking for the same tags as the person who put the tags on in the first place. http://www.librarything.com/home/GIKate

del.icio.us

I've created my del.icio.us account and bookmarked my pages, added some tags, http://delicious.com/GIKate - while I think this is a good idea for general use, I'm a bit dubious about using tags as a research tool purely from a professional standpoint because tags are a personal choice. So, while one person may use 'dogs' as a tag another person may use 'dog' 'Kelpie' 'breed'. I think it could be little confusing - this is one of my main concerns with using librarything too.