We made it.Yay!!! At times Mum and I were on an incredibly steep learning curve, but we dug our claws in and kept moving forward. As we first thought, time constraints seemed to be one of the natural enemies of Life Long Learning. Let's hear it for determination! There were a few little hiccups on this journey but no major cat-a-strophes. Thank you to all of our very helpful colleagues for their support. Some of our favourite things in the Web 2.0 program were, Image Generators, Flickr, Librarything and Youtube. These are great fun to play around with. On the more serious side Mum can see the potential uses of these sites and wiki tools to expand and improve library services. She was also very impressed with Web based applications and tools such as Google docs and spreadsheets, and del.icio.us. So is this the end???? We don't think so. We are now Contemplating using Wetpaint to create our own site (something we would never have dreamed of before!). Big thank yous to everyone who made it possible for us to take part in this program. We have learned sooo much and we really appreciate all of your efforts. Curiosity never really killed cats, or people for that matter, so you are likely to hear more about Jasper 's adventures in Web 2.0.
Purr purr purr
Jasper
Friday, November 30, 2007
Downloadable audio books
Mum tells me that audio books have been steadily gaining in popularity, and not just for the vision impaired. She says that many library patrons now like to listen to them during long car trips. I just like to listen to a story while my paws are kept free for other things, like having a bath. 'Multi-tasker' is my middle name. Just recently Mum and I visited the World eBook site and listened to The little match girl from the Gutenberg Collection. By purchasing downloadable audiobooks libraries could have vast collections of them without having to worry about storage or the audiobooks being damaged (they are very expensive!). Libraries could also use this technology to make rare titles publicly available without the fear of damage to the hardcopy. It could be a great preservation tool!!. While I do enjoy listening to audiobooks sometimes, I still think nothing is better than curling up with the hardcopies of my favourite books. Audiobooks definitely have their place, but in my opinion they will never fully replace the printed versions.
Podcastalley Cat
Slinking around in Podcastalley is a real education for curious cats. The scope and sheer number of podcasts available to subscribe to is enough to give you twitchy whiskers. There are sooo many!!! For the purpose of this exercise I added RSS feeds to my bloglines account for the ABC World News and Audiobooks with Annie (Annie reads the classics). After all, I need to maintain my image of the well informed and the well educated cat. Thanks to Annie, I'm a well read cat too. Mum also found many library and book related podcasts that would be useful to her, but she thinks that we could use this technology to create our own podcasts. Perhaps for training purposes or even to podcast storytime sessions.
Youtube Cats - Great Entertainment
I chose the funny cat video for its entertainment value, and the fact that I get up to the same types of things when Mum isn't home.Please don't tell her! Mum thinks that some of the instructional videos used in the Web 2.0 program were very effective and she can see that these types of videos could be very useful for staff training and for educating library users.
Like all Cats, I'm Attracted to Wet Paint
I have explored several of the sites on the Web 2.0 awards list but I thought Wetpaint was one of the best. It was very easy for me to sign up, create my own website and even search for other sites that I could contribute to. The instructions were extremely easy to follow and the FAQ information was very detailed. I thought that this site would have many uses in the library world, and my thoughts were justified when I stumbled across Nancy Pearl's Book Lust site by accident.
Zoho is Soho Fun!!!!
Mum has been using Google docs and spreadsheets for work purposes recently.Another fab tool which allows online access to and collaborative authoring of documents from any computer. I thought I would have some fun with Web based applications too and I created an account for Zoho Writer. Using the word processing tool, I wrote my all-important letter to Santa Claws. http://writer.zoho.com/public/jaspermak/Dear-Santa-Claws/
Wikis place moggie back in the lap of luxury
Wikis are wonderful tools. The Wyndham Library Service has already set up a wiki (with restricted access) enabling all staff members to contribute to a list of ideas for the future direction of the library service. What makes this truly amazing is that any staff member can add content to the wiki at any time, from any computer connected to the Web. Now Mum can spend more time pampering me at home, and at the same time she can continue to add to the wiki whenever she likes. She doesn't need to stay at work longer to contribute. Mum also likes the Princeton Public Library's "Book Lovers" wiki.
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