Tagging, Delicious and Library Thing

This week has again been interesting but a little more difficult, I think.  I had no problem in setting up accounts for Delicious or Library Thing, but I had a lot of trouble in setting up a Widget. Thankfully, a buddy from work steered me in the right direction and I managed to set one up on my blog. 
I quite like Library Thing.  I found it a useful tool for Book Lovers like myself and also Libraries.  I could easily list some of my favourite books that I have read, and liked that I was able to be selective about the Book Covers.   It is definitely a site that I would explore in my own time in more depth and I think it is a very useful tool for patrons and staff in the Library. Some of the features I like are the Book reviews, Book recommendations and Forums. Forums for me are a great way of speaking with other like minded people about books we love. It is almost like being part of a book club without going to the meetings in person.
I found exploring Delicious interesting, although not as much as Library Thing. I believe it is a useful site and I liked the Clouds feature and the way it points out to you your favourtie subject and then suggests a number of other relevant sites. I am not really sure if I would use Delicious as much as I would use Library Thing. I tend to use Favourites for keeping track of all my favourite sites and this seems to work for me. I do like how things are Bookmarked and Tagged. It does make for easy tracking and searching. Perhaps I need to spend more time on this site and become more familiar with it. It is obviously a very useful tool to many others.

Wiki's

This week we have been learning about Wiki's.  I have to admit initially I didn't know what they were but as I read on realised that I use Wikipedia all of the time.  Wiki's are an extremely useful tool and I had great fun exploring the Learning 2.0 Basics suggested site of the Twilight Saga..
I like the way you can search for Wiki's on your favourite topics. For instance, I love photography so I did a search on Photopedia and came up with http://www.fotopedia.com/ This is a great Wiki that acts as a collaborative photo encyclopedia and online community for all those photography buffs.
I also did a search on True Blood wikipedia and found a most comprehensive and accurate account of one of my most favourite programmes. It is amazing how much information we can find on the internet. Gone are the days of leafing through mum's old brown encylopedias, world of wiki has it all.

RSS Agregator/Feeds

This week we have been learning about the world of RSS feeds.  I chose the following sites because of their appeal to me:

Daily Interesting Photos: Flickr
Kelly Trow Photography
Aussie Scrap Source
Jodi Piccoult Biography, plus links to book reviews
Entertainment

I love the way we are alerted of new information being posted on our favourite sites rather than going to each individual site and looking up anything new.  This is definitely a great time saver!!!  I hadn't used RSS feeds before but am looking forward to using them at home from now on.

I think Libraries can benefit from beeing kept up to date from other Libraries.  A wealth of information can be shared via the RSS feeds.

Sharing Images

This week has been a fun week learning about sharing images.  Flickr was suggested as the site to explore and fortunately I already had a head start on this because I have a love of photography and already am a member.  The exercise simply allowed to have a play and explore the site in detail.  How cool is that!!! 
I have posted one of one of my favourite images actually taken by a friend of mine.  It is a stunning picture of a Mandurah landscape. If you do a search on Mandurah on Flickr you will find many great images. I love the fact that you can join groups with similar interests and offer critique and suggestions to help improve people who love taking photographs. There are so many talented photographers posting on this site and it is fascinating to be able to explore images from all over the world.

 

World of Blog

I love reading other people's blogs, although have not had any experience in writing one myself.
I love the fact that a blog gives us an insight into other people's lives or experiences.  I guess that would make me a bit of a stickybeak.
I think they can be of value in a Library.  Many patrons that use our library services may not have a home computer at home and need to do their blogging or research of blogs on our computers.  For that reason it is most beneficial that Library staff are up to date with the latest technology and the World of Blogging.