Review

This has been really useful in assisting me writing up my Prof Reg Journal - lots of things I had forgotten about here. And interesting to see how many of them seem dated now, looking back to 2008!

The End of Round 2

The end of Manukau City and the end of Web 2.0, two significant events for the second half of 2010!

This Web 2.0 round was better in the time allocation given, with less pressure to complete each activity, especially for us part time staff. And it was great to visit some really useful sites such as Box.net, which will be a useful solution for customers who do not have a USB stick to save work to.

One disappointing aspect was the inability to access some of the video clips and sites due to them being blocked by Web Marshal. Made it a little incomplete for me.

This is a great way to introduce new sites and tools to staff for passing on to our customers, especially for those of us who do not use some of these.

Ready for the next round .......

Week 6: EnCompassCulture

This is a nice site to navigate and would have been a great help with Reader Advisory -- BUT .....
As of 1 November 2010 it was decommissioned! Great timing! So - yes - I would have used this site & recommended it to patrons.

I liked the ease of searching for exactly what you wanted. And the added feature of showing where you could obtain the books, anywhere in the world, with links to various websites. The Booklists were also great - for example "A Celebration of Indian Writing".

A shame it is now defunct, but as long as it is still available on-line it will be of use.

Week 5: Slideshare

Looks like a great site for people wanting to share products/ideas on-line. But I found it very slow to load any presentation - in fact I gave up after trying a few and getting getting bored watching the little circle thing going round & round. But there were quite a few interesting results for libraries, perhaps I might try again at home.

Can't really see a use for me but if a customer wanted to promote something it might be worth a try. Another useful site to keep in mind for the future.

Still having my inbox stuffed - haven't become brave enough to turn it off yet.

Week 4: Tastespotting

As expected from my last blog, my inbox is being stuffed with "news". Not sure how long I will continue but really afraid if I delete it I will miss some groundbreaking news (or some insignificant thing that is really interesting).

As for Tastespotting, the pictures are great. Some weird & wonderful names such as Snickerdoodle Pumpkin Ice Cream Sandwiches (shown left).

Neat that the recipies are from round the world, I found some in French and noticed the current glut of Halloween themed cookies etc. The site is really easy to use & search. I never knew there could be so many recipies for mushrooms (1618 of them).

This is a neat site for foodies. Nice to see something other than a book/library orientated site, but not really relevant to this Web 2.0 exercise.

Week 3: Feed My Inbox

This was relatively easy to sign up to and seems like a good way to add feeds. But I found it annoying that you had to know exactly what the url for the site you wanted to follow was - no search facility. And once you opened a window there was no back button, so using the site overall seemed a bit clunky.

Will see how it goes, no doubt it will start filling up my inbox with useless messages - not sure why there has to be a daily message, would be better just when there was something new (or a selection for a weekly update instead of daily). And I did not get any results for www.manukaulibraries.govt.nz but did get several feeds for Auckland Libraries (are we missing out here?).

Don't think there is too much relevance for our customers, it is a good tool for following specific feeds on a personal basis but we would seldom get the opportunity to promote it (we don't look over their shoulders & make suggestions).

Week Two - PiccApp

This is a neat site for getting free & legal photos, with the emphasis on free. And easy to use once you worked out how to capture the image & get it into your blog. I liked the search function as you could be quite specific as to what you wanted to see & then choose from the thumbnails.
Would recommend to others, but seldom get the opportunity to assist customers who would find this useful, most internet users know what they are doing or just want to do the minimum. Don't know if the images are everlasting as they are a web link, will they disappear in the future leaving the dreaded red cross? Could not find anywhere on the site to answer this.

I liked this photo of a British Zoo Keeper in 1940 with an armful of wee beasties. Needed the gloves!