the end

This is my last entry for the ACL Learning 2.0 thing. How sad! I have totally enjoyed doing all of this: making a blog and discovering all these cool things you can do on the Internet - things I would never have thought of doing on my own, and some things that I wouldn't've even thought I could do! I am no computer geek but with Web 2.0 even a techno-spaz like me can do cool online stuff. Oh! The possibilities! Thank you, 23 Things. And thank you, fans!

Net Library

As much as I try to fight the robots taking over ("books will never become obsolete!" etc etc) the digital book reader looks pretty cool and I have heard from actual people that it's really quite a neat little toy. It's not nearly as bad as reading 'War and Peace' on your PC (my eyes! my eyes!) and for sheer convenience I can see its value. People actually become really attached to little machines (mobile phones, i-pods, laptops, blackberries, etc etc) as well as books. It's an interesting development, and we should probably just resign ourselves to the digitization of everything, eventually. Net Library looks really cool, and a surprising range of classic and new titles. A great tool for students, geeks and stingy people.

podcasts

Podcasts are great. I usually listen to ones off the Guardian website or the Radio NZ website. I subscribed to Rock and Roll Librarian (bit of a misnomer if you ask me!) on my Bloglines account, mostly because I felt sorry for the guy. There are so many podcasts about libraries but most of them are too personal or too American and didn't seem particularly relevant to me! But I like that there is information on the Interestingnet in all different forms, including audio.

YouTube

One of my favourite sites ever. I never look at any other video sites. It's great for watching music videos (I particularly like looking at stuff from Flight of the Conchords). For librarians, those Web 2.0 instructional videos are quite good. What else would librarians use YouTube for? Hmmmm... staying cool? Understanding the youth of today??

Flight of the Conchords - French song (Foux De Fa Fa)

I love these guys! Learn French and laugh at the same time!

Web 2.0 awards list

Like, wow, man. So many things to do! It's neat having awards for these Web 2.0 tools, then we can find the best of the best. But there is still a lot of dumb stuff too. My favourite site from the Web 2.0 Awards is Ning where you can create your own social networking site! It won first prize in the Mashups category. This is amazing. Imagine creating your own network! Goodbye Facebook! Goodbye MySpace! Goodbye Yahoo Groups! Goodbye Bebo! Hello Ning!

Google Docs

Here's a document I made on how to play roller derby. Google Docs and Zoho Writer are useful tools but don't quite work as smoothly as a boring old Word document. And the documents aren't nearly as appealing as a blog or a wiki for sharing stuff, but for serious work I can see the advantages of using this.

ACL rockin' the house

Oh yeah! Check out the link I made to ACL's Bebo page via the pb wiki. We have such diverse and fantastic taste, non?

I put my blog in the favourite blogs, because it is my favourite blog! Blog blog blog. What a lovely word.

places to make wikis

pb wiki
wet paint
wiki spaces

wiki wiki, I'm getting jiggy

This video about wikis rules! I love a bit of old-skool cut and paste. I wish my computer had a giant hand and a silly voice and all the buttons were made of paper....

Web junction is neato! This is more like what libraries are about these days. What a handy resource, and such a friendly-looking page too. It would be good to have this on one's favourites on one's work computer for quick reference. I mean, wiki-reference. Hoo-rah!

I'm a book lover too - this site is a-ok! There must be a million of these kinds of sites, but this one is particularly easy on the brain. This would be ideal for bookworms (or 'worms' for short) when looking for new books. When the 'worm' comes into the library looking for new authors, or books which are similar to something else they've read, we can look at this site. Brilliant!

This site looks like Wikipedia, it tastes like Wikipedia, it smells like Wikipedia, but it is not Wikipedia and it's weirding me out.

library 2.0

This is really a way for librarians to understand and make the most of technology in their work in the information industry. It means that we are able to find and use tools to help us locate and access information in a timely and effective manner, just as our predecessors did with print-based materials, but now the emphasis is on user education. Yay!

As for the future of libraries, people will always need them! And people will always need librarians to help! The argument about the redundancy of libraries drives me crazy! I can't even talk about it right now, there is smoke coming out of my ears.

Web 2.0

This video about Web 2.0 is really neat! I always knew librarians were cool. This is the Information Age, after all, and where do librarians work? In the information industry! The stereotype of a severe old lady with her hair in a bun, protecting dusty old tomes is so ridiculous and outdated - surely no one really believes it? Yet the stereotype persists, in spite of how savvy librarians are and how modern our libraries are.

I am KEEN AS for people to be able to find their own information. Everyone seems to think that they know what they're doing when they search on the Internet (and maybe they do) but how do they know that the information they get is reliable? Why don't more people ask librarians for help when they're looking for stuff online at the library? We get asked for help when there are technical problems with the library computers, and we get asked how to find books, but why do people think librarians know nothing about finding electronic information?

I despair, I really do.

technorati

I claimed my blog on Technorati so now I have to welcome all my new readers. Welcome, fans!

What I found most surprising (apart from the fact that there are 50,000,000 other people writing blogs!) is that Britney Spears is still a really popular Internet search. The mind boggles!

I like the different ways that we can search blogs on Technorati, it can definitely help to narrow down your eleventy million favourite blogs.

mmmmm... del.icio.us!

Mmmmm, another food-themed site, and another good idea. How do they come up with all this useful stuff? It's like having your 'favourites' everywhere you go! I wonder if I would use this site if I was doing SERIOUS research. I have a tendency to not trust the opinions of people on the Internet (are they even people? It could be robots, or even marginally talented monkeys). Popularity alone does not mean it's a good web site, but I guess it's a starting point, particularly for those frivolous sites.

rollyo

This web site is pretty cool. It's a piece of cake to use and being able to put your search tool on your own web page is neato. I made a Rollyo for 'feminism', check it out, if you're (wo)man enough! http://www.rollyo.com/search.html?q=feminism&sid=322554

library thing

What an odd website. I haven't played "library" since I was 7! I am wondering aloud why anyone besides librarians would want to catalogue books. Personally, I prefer to arrange my books at home by colour. These 5 books in my virtual library are ones that also actually exist at my place right now. Honest! Either a) I have just read them, b) I am currently reading them, or c) I am just about to read them.

(See what I did here? I shared a little bit of myself! This blog is actually completely true.)

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/louisethelibrarian

Feed me!

I like these RSS feeds! How about those wee things eh? Like so many geeks trying to get your attention in a bar when all you want to do is shake your booty, I never noticed them before until I could see what they could do for ME! Here are those proverbial geeks buying me a proverbial drink:

Technorati is pretty good. It's easy to use, logical and it actually retrieved some useful information. Same for Topix.net. Keyword searching is the best! Feedster is a very attractive site. I was so dazzled by the pretty colours that I created a deeply unattractive widget to help me find... er... ads, and a bit of useless information. I won't include it here because it will spoil the beauty of my blog page. Is it wrong to judge a website by its looks? Syndic8 is ugly! But effective.

Now I have to go and look at a photo of some puppies to recover.

RSS search tools

Heh heh, actually I have formed a new opinion about Bloglines. While I still think there are too many people out there with nothing to say, the service that Bloglines offers actually helps me to sift through the nonsense and get to the good stuff. I'm definitely anti-ads (although that is what keeps the Net a living breathing entity) but anything that cuts those out has got to be a good thing for Suzy Internetuser*. Also, Google searches just don't cut it when looking for blogs, unless they are really popular, so thanks Bloglines! (I Googled my own blog but it's buried deep in the ether. No wonder I only have one fan reading this!)

*not her real name

generator stuff

These web sites are great! And total time wasters! It's awesome! I can spend large amounts of time achieving very little! But I am learning lots. This whole Web 2.0 project has really opened my eyes to what's out there on the Interestingnet. I'm learning my little heart out!

avatar

This is me - the likeness is extraordinary. I'm thinking of getting my avatar to sit in for me at work, eventually I will just be able to stay at home and eat Tim Tams all day while my cartoon alter ego slaves away...

http://www.doppelme.com/

RSS Feeds

I wonder how much of this information is actually useful to librarians? 'The "M" Word - Marketing Libraries' looked ok, but I think that the trick must be to either read the entire thing all the time OR never at all. I'll try the latter approach first! That 'Blog about Libraries' - oh man, who is this guy called Steve? And when will he go away??

This whole blog thing reminds me of the Poetry Night analogy where everyone goes to the bar to read out their poems but no one comes to listen. Says me, writing a blog. Thanks for reading my blog, fans! I love you all!

flickr, again

Here I used the 'Warholizer' to create some 'art' of John Lennon playing a ukulele. I guess he'd been Warholized before by the real Andy Warhol, but not with a ukulele!

Bloglines

I set up a Bloglines account and I have to say, I feel a bit queasy looking at the glut of information here. Talk about information overload! Looks like a good site for someone with a lot of time on her hands (not me!) although I am looking forward to improving my vocabulary by one word a day, that will be really really... good.

flickr

Hmmmm. I had a whole lot of pictures on Yahoo Photos (which recently closed). The little people inside the computer tell me that the photos are all being transferred to Flickr, but it's taking weeks! I was hoping to do something fun with some of them, but in the mean time I have been exploring Flickr and trying to understand it! I think it's a little bit tricky getting around the web site - everything seems to have to begin with a search. I like the mosaic function and managed to get it to make a 'ukulele' mosaic but it didn't stick around on the computer! Meanwhile, here's a pic of a cute ukulele http://www.flickr.com/photos/sadalit/462698536/

technology

Well... I like camera phones! (I'm not flash enough to have a video phone yet!) It's so neat to be able to snap a quick picture with your phone, send it to someone, whatever. It's funny how when people used to think about the FUTURE they always imagined that we would talk through giant tv screens, not little hand-held things. Aah... the future. I'm looking forward to wearing those one-piece silver suits with knee-high boots and eating a pill for breakfast instead of real food.

MySpace

MySpace is not unkown to me, some of the noisier roller girls I play against dominate our page. Check it out, but turn down the volume!! http://www.myspace.com/piratecityrollers

It's interesting to see how all these pages start to develop niche markets: Facebook for uni students, MySpace for bands and groups, Bebo for Teens, la la la la...

ACL Bebo page

Make a friend of the library! I am one of the uber-hip folks who works on the ACL Bebo page. If anyone is reading this (?!) have a look and let us know how we can make it even cooler! http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MID=367137231&MemberId=4428799413

Is anyone out there?

It's lucky I'm a librarian and I just love organising stuff because I have been so busy lately! I've had to organise my life down to the minute to make sure I get everything done.

I skate in an all-girl roller derby league and we're training for our second season- the games start next month, eek! It's a contact sport on roller skates and I hurt my knee the other night at practice when someone plowed into me. So I've been limping along with my trolley full of books and plotting my revenge on the girl who knocked me down! (Who said librarians are shy, retiring types?)

Check out the league's web site http://www.piratecityrollers.com/ (it's a work in progress).

I just moved house too and it's close enough to rollerskate to work!