Online applications and tools

Well I watched the Google Docs video and created a (token) document to share with the slnsw2.0 email address.

The comments on the video were interesting - there are always conspiracy theorists about the amount of data companies like Google are collecting. I have to agree with many that "Google Docs Rocks" is pretty cringey.

I didn't check out the features in detail but with so many free online tools available the main thing is to know what exists and use them as needed.

Again, the applications of something like this at work are pretty clear. As some remarks pointed out, though, in a workplace, many of the same collaborative work environments can be offered on the local network (and presumably by remote login too). For a dispersed group of private users, though, this is free and really useful! And it would be a great way to prepare a presentation without needing access to Powerpoint.

I would like to know about the ownership of documents and other files created on these sites. Also, what constitutes work endorsed by the employer if it is on a totally independent platform - but that is a theoretical question that may not matter in reality.

Playing back recordings

After making a voice recording I spent some time cursing (not recorded) before working out that you play back recordings from within Recording mode, not Music mode - the manual is a bit misleading/confusing where it says on p.17: "Play back the recorded files: The operation procedure is the same as music playback (Ref. P. 11-12)". If you look for your recorded file in Music mode you won't find it.

Enter Recording mode by pressing M, press fast forward >> through the modes to Recording mode (it's after Music mode), press M again. You will now be in Recording mode and the top of the screen will show which file is selected and the total number of files e.g. 001/004 (you are looking at file 1 of 4 recorded files)(there will be no recorded files until you record one). Here you can use >> to move through the files then press the Play button to play a file.

To record a file, enter Recording mode as above (M / >> / Recording / M) and then press the Red record button - recording has started (you should see the timer start). Press the red button again to finish. Now don't go back to Music mode to play your file but use the >> button within Recording mode (when you're not recording) and you should see that the total number of files has gone up by one (e.g. 005/005 instead of 004/004). You can then move through the files using >> and press play.

Podcast files are found in Music mode - I downloaded one which is listed with the other MP3 files in music mode where you can select it and press Play.

Podcasts

Subscribed to the podcast feed from George C. Gordon Library, Worcester Polytechnic Institute Minnesota, which is listed on the Library Success wiki - the Gordon Library has put up library-related podcasts from a range of perspectives - student orientation, library science, library history. I listened to a brief resource overview of Architectural Graphic Standards which I loaded onto the MP3 player.

Compared to some of the other technologies in Learning 2.0 it hardly takes much thought to appreciate the huge potential of podcasting in a library context - instructional, tours, the library's public lecture program, oral history, are just some of the more obvious ones.

Also listened to a podcast on the British Library site of authors discussing the archiving of their own papers. The technology just makes such a huge amount of information readily available - essentially they're just recordings in another format but it's the accessibility and delivery of them which makes so much difference. I'm going to make a selection from the Online Education Database to load onto the player.

Mashups

There are of course much more high-level uses for mashups than the example on my blog ... I got a sense of this from the Superpatron blog which is referred to by Desk with a view. I found the style of this blog (Superpatron, that is) somewhat irritatingly oblique (what's 103bees? What's Hit tail?), and I have what could be an endearingly stuffy disapproval of the name Steal this Library (which is also an irritatingly oblique website), but I can see how something like this RSS feed of new acquisitions combining Library of Congress SRU service (which is apparently some type of search protocol), Amazon book covers and xISBN data is a great synthesis of information from different sources (as far as I understand it).

Week 8 revisited

I answered a question on Yahoo7 Answers, deliberately choosing a simple question as the point of the exercise was the process of answering.

Interestingly the question I chose to answer was 2 minutes old when I found it, and by the time I had created an account (I didn't have one from the Week 3 Flickr exercise) and answered, I was the third or 4th answer. Admittedly the question was "What is the capital of Australia?" (I did provide a reference for this!).

Without interaction with the "asker" in the form of some sort dialogue approximating to a reference interview, the "client" in the transaction plays a very passive role. As a strategy for raising awareness of librarians' skills, who knows, it might make a difference, but the scope for raising information literacy and client independence seems fairly limited.

Back to Wikis

I'm having a look back over the program and catching up or expanding on some past weeks - tried the "Adventure" for week 5 by contributing to the PBwiki Visitors' guide to the State Library. Added a page about Shakespeare Place which was pretty easy to do, even with IE instead of Firefox as recommended. (I'm also a guinea pig for the new SOE rollout so my PC has just been "reimaged" with IE 7 but I seem to have lost Firefox in the process).

There didn't seem to be any easy way to add footnotes to my PBWiki page so I just typed in a citation at the end of the article. had a look at PBWiki's help pages but didn't see anything pertinent.

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