Statistics

One of the cool features of WordPress is the easily-viewed readership statistics. I last posted to this blog several months ago but am surprised to find that my readership – or people who visit the site occasionally – has changed little.

My reason for not posting here is that I am concentrating on getting the new Library blog for central TAFE up and running. It is called The Fridge (is that cool?) and we are hoping to involve library users more. Though we try to promote The Fridge as much as possible and posts are much more regular, this semi-dormant blog still receives more visitors. Are people more interested in personal blogs?

What do you think might be the reason?

Fame or Infamy

I had a look at the library blog search engine Libworm this morning and did a search for “virtual worlds“. Guess whose blog entry came up at the top of the results?

I have never been one to try to get to the top of any search ranking and was pleasantly surprised to see this. I’m currently doing research to try and find what other TAFE colleges are doing in Second Life or other virtual worlds and would love to hear from colleges in Australia who are dipping a toe in the water.

The Australian Police Force is planning to conduct recruitment interviews in Second Life which may make our management think twice about dismissing it as “just a game”. I have read that the British Police ran a similar experiment recently and, although they din’t actually employ any of the people they interviewed in the virtual world, it certaimly raised the level of awareness of their recruitment drive.

Where in the World?

You may not be looking for Wally, but have you ever looked for a library book that you know is shelved somewhere in your home collection but just cannot be found? The Shifted Librarian has some good suggestions.

Back on the subject of “Where’s Wally?”, we are experimenting with using jigsaw puzzles to attract students to the Library. The first one was a funny with a topical Olympics theme and soon had students and staff hooked – this 1000 piece puzzle was finished in 4 days. Students were torn between doing the puzzle and watching the Olympics live on the big screen set up for the purpose.The new one is a WASGIJ (if you don’t know what that is, find out). It is far more challenging but the students are again finding time to piece it together without the aid of a picture. We may be commanded to take it away soon because “libraries are not supposed to be places for having fun” but in the meantime I hope everyone gets a lot of enjoyment out of the idea.

Jigsaw

9 — 13 — 20 — Free!

The Support Alert Newsletter has merged with the Windows Secrets Newsletter. You can download Gizmo’s free e-book, 9 Free Programs Every PC Should Have from their website. I have long subscribed to Gizmo’s Support Alert Newsletter and am grateful to him for pointing me in the direction of many handy tools for my PC.

While we’re on the subject of free stuff here are some more useful lists:

13 Most Unusual Search Engines You Should Remember. These are more fun than the “Big 3” (or is it big 2 now? I’ve lost count) and all look very “Web 2.0”

20 Best Websites to Download Free E-books. How useful to have access to free e-books on a variety of subjects.

Moving House

This morning I transferred my blog to WordPress because I have seen much discussion online about various blogging platforms and want to try some of them out for myself. I have also been given the task of facilitating the library blog when my new website goes live. This is something for which I have been agitating for some time and at last the opportunity arises. Consequently, most of my library musings and discoveries will transfer to the new, as yet unnamed, blog and I can keep this one for more personal commentary.

My personal life has changed dramatically in the past few weeks. My mother, who came to live with me 8 years ago, has moved into a home and my man and I have the house to ourselves at last. Mum resisted and shed many private (and not so private) tears but the stress of having her constantly around was too much for us and our sanity. I found her a room in a retirement village surrounded by attractive gardens. Four other people share the cottage and they have all their needs provided, as well as there being someone to talk to whenever anyone is lonely, and she can keep many of her possessions in her room. At 96 mum is lucky to still have all her faculties and be relatively healthy but the time will come when she needs more care and I think she is lucky to have found such an attractive new home.

My man and I are able to do little things that we haven’t done for years such as go out for a cup of coffee, have a meal alone together at a restaurant and eat spicy foods at home. There are no restrictions on when we can go out, when we must be home or whether we can run around the house naked (though Perth in mid-winter is not conducive to that).

Technology Trends

Librarian in Black, Sarah Houghton-Jan, summarises her contribution to ALA 2008 in Sarah’s Top Technology Trends – virtual presentation for ALA 2008. I would like to draw attention to point #3 in the hope that the comments may filter through to the bureaucracy running our organisation.
I really like the way so much of the technology trends that are buzzed in Library circles were used in this presentation.

Web Taming Ringmaster

Michael Stevens’ blog, Tame the Web, has two articles this week that I find particularly thought provoking.

1. Keys to a Successful Self Check-Out Project (linked from Michael’s blog)
Our new library is under construction (it’s exciting to see progress with the new building across the road) and it would be good to consider implementing a changeover to a fully automated checkout policy. Please don’t argue until you have read the report and its answers to possible objections.

2. Brian Kelly: What if We’re Right? & Libpunk’d
Brian poses questions aimed at the detractors of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 and proposes that there are more risks involved by not accepting such things as social networking and open source technology than by adopting them whole-heartedly.

Wordle Cloud

This is fun. I Used Wordle to create a web cloud of my tags in del.icio.us (see how interested I am in web 2.0 and Second Life). Similar clouds can be created for any body of text you choose.

Thanks to Phil Bradley’s Weblog for giving me this idea.

Web 2.0 distractions

I was asked to do my standard presentation on Wikis and Blogs yesterday but “to make it fun”. Well, these workshops are always fun but I thought that I could provide a new slant on this one by running through a few Web 2.0 applications and letting participants make whatever use of them they could.

I gave everyone the following handout and we worked together through each of the activities, referring along the way to what other people (myself included) had done with the tools available.

What are we doing here?
1	Create a Google account www.google.com
2	Create an iGoogle page www.google.com/ig
3	Add elements to your iGoogle page
4	Create a Blogger account www.blogger.com Write about what you hope to achieve today
5	Create an avatar — a representation of yourself. Go to http://avatars.yahoo.com/ ; design an avatar with a funky background. (You will have to set up an account if you don’t use Yahoo!) Save your avatar and export to your blog.
6	Create a reader and add some RSS feeds http://www.google.com/reader
7	Facebook http://facebook.com Create an account, find some friends and send them a message.
8	Del.icio.us http://del.icio.us/
9	LibraryThing http://librarything.com
10	Picasa – organise your pictures http://picasa.google.com/

Participants were fully absorbed throughout and I had to get stroppy to get them to stand up after a couple of hours to help themselves to coffee and biscuits.

These are only some of the activities that we do in the 23 Things programme. I’m still thinking of rolling it out to the whole college but also struggling against lack of support for such “distractions”.

Getting ready for the New World

I am forever shouting the praises of Second Life in which I can learn, create, socialise and play. I joined a year ago today and my avatar took her first steps inworld when we studied a course in Virtual World Librarianship. This was so rewarding that I then went on to do the Intermediate course and have registered for Working with a Class in Second Life next month.

If you don’t know what all the hype is about read Second Life – what is the hype? a new post in the makeuseof.com blog. The writer claims that Education is one of the most progressive fields in SL and while I am still hoping that one day my college will see the light, I am preparing to offer training to our lecturers to get them ready for the new wave.