eBooks

Personally I don't like eBooks. I find them difficult to read either on a computer screen or on a PDA type of thing. It must be the format, it makes my eyes tired. So I'm an old fashioned paper book person.

Having said that I can see a time when eBooks will be the predominate format. Just think of all the trees that will be saved for one thing.

The industry just needs to shake down to a few different types of readers. Even amazon.com has just brought in its very own eBook called Kindle. Also the entire copyright situation needs to be worked on as well.

A couple of months ago Neil Gaiman put one of his novels up on his publishers website as a free download. He was verbally attacked from some quarters of the industry for making it a free download but there was a spike in the sales of the paper version of the book at the same time.

A lot of the spots on the World eBook Fair site were pretty bland: UN publications, US Treasury, Census Bureau... But there were also a couple of gems.

My favourite was the Children's eBook Collection with scanned reproductions of "the most popular children's books of all times". There were some old classics there like 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' and 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' plus Beatrix Potter and Lewis Carroll. Which surprises me because they would still be in copyright.

Oh well.

Second Life

I think that this is one of those things that I will really need to experience to understand properly.

Some of concepts of why Second Life is better than a webpage escape me. I had a look at the site San Francisco museum, the Exploratorium, and they had a demonstration of what a meteor impact on the surface of Mars would look like. Why is having this in Second Life better than having it on the museum's website? It's all there on the website anyway.

From the learning point of view I can see how this would make correspondence course and external learning better. Being able to get together with other students virtually would be a big asset. There's nothing better than being able to share and group-think a problem.

YouTube

I like YouTube.

Its just nice to troll your way around the site looking to see what's there. A lot of times you come up with just fluff but every now and then there's a gem to be found.

Like podcasts libraries could use YouTube to post holiday activites, talks and lectures, as well as promotional features. Why go to all the bother of paying someone to create an ad for libraries and then buying ad space on television when someone with a digital video camera can probably make something short and snappy and put it up on YouTube.

One of my favourites is with David Tennant and Catherine Tate. Combining characters from The Catherine Tate Show and Doctor Who. I've embedded the clip at the bottom of the page.

Podcasts

I had some trouble with this one. The only podcast site I could get into was Podcastally, the other two just would not connect. Then I found searching the site to be difficult, they really need to work on the search engine. Once I did eventually find something to listen to it then took about 5 minutes for it to download.

But other than that I like the idea. Although we need to be careful with the dependability of some podcasters - especially when it comes to politics and the like. Although listening to a debate between two opposing sides of politics would be OK, but listening to just American Republicans would be just plain silly.

As I write this I'm listening to a guy reviewing the novel 'Dune' by Frank Herbert. I think that as a library it would be great to have the public putting up podcast reviews, also recording public speakers that we have in the library as well.

Rollyo

A very handy little thing. A bit like Abebooks.com where one search covers many second-hand book sellers.

I set up one that covers some of my regular sites where I buy books and DVDs.

I suppose my only grumble (and its a minor one) would be that it does limit the amount of sites you search and thus one might miss a previously unknown result that falls outside of the parameters that have been created in Rollyo. Although a reliance on Google probably has the same effect.

The actual Rollyo site itself probably needs some more work. I found it difficult to figure out what I was doing and had several false starts before I found my feet.

Wikis

I'm a big fan of Wikipedia and use it all the time.

Within reason though.

The perceived unreliability of wikis is slowly being eroded away now that Wikipedia is using citations. Posting at the start of an article that if needs citations and may need cleaning up informs the user that the information may need checking.

I believe that it is a case of how much trust we put in the source. For many years World Book encyclopedia never made mention in the entry for Hiroshima that an atomic bomb had been dropped. Do we put our absolute faith that every entry in Britannica is correct and non-biased?

As long as you go into wikis with the understanding that you may need to do further research I see absolutely no reason not to use them.

The example I give people is this: you wouldn't use Wikipedia to discover the reasons behind the Iraq War, but it's great if you want to know all the different types of kryptonite.

Library 2.0

It certainly sounds good.

But it seems to me that librarians and libraries aren't quite sure what to do with the technology yet. Some people are saying "Yes! Lets use it now!", while others are saying "But what exactly are we going to use if for?".

I can see the reason for hesitating when it comes to tagging. As I mentioned last episode I'm not fond of the great unwashed doing their own tagging of books. But as long as it is done in conjunction with standardised subject headings it could be worthwhile. Although I still get some bizarre results with the State Library's new tagging on TALIS Plus.

The advantage of other Web 2.0 tech is more obvious. MySpace and FaceBook pages for libraries, post videos on YouTube of activities and talks, using RSS feeds to keep the punters informed - it's all good stuff.

del.icio.us or not

I trolled around del.icio.us for a while exploring the tags. I've come across tagging before, especially when I've been searching for new authors to read.

The uses are pretty obvious: ease of searching and a community (of sorts) to draw information from. However (and there's always an however) I've had trouble before when it comes to the multiplicity of tags that are used. What one person uses as a tag is not always going to be the obvious choice that someone else will search by.

Does empowering people to use tags really make it easier to search?

I'm sure that we as library workers shake in our catalogues at the thought of subject headings and Dewey classifications being assigned by our clients. Or even by any of the staff, when it comes to that.

Or pehaps I'm just too 20th century about the whole thing. :>

iGoogle

It all seems very nice. Creating a page to your liking, adding all those applications and personalising it. I don't know if it was the computer I was using or if there was a slow connection when I was doing it but I had a lot of trouble with the iGoogle page freezing and then dying on me. A refresh fixed it but is was annoying at the time.

Also when I went to search for the Google Book Search application it did not appear on the list till about the fourth page of results. You would think that Google would have a better search function than that. The search results are not set out very well either with the text only about 10 characters to a line.

On the whole I'd say that iGoogle sill needs some work but it is definitely heading in the right direction.

Google Thingies

Is Google the new Microsoft? Well, yes and no. Yes they are becoming a monopoly in their field. Does anyone really use a search-engine other than Google? No, because their are also many other options to Google's other functions: Whereis and other map sites, Blogspot, Flickr and others.

I can see lots of uses for GoogleDocs and the like. The ability to access documents from any computer is fantastic. No longer are we limited to staying on a network or lugging our laptops around with us. Especially good for writers sending out their work to their read-through crews. My only worry is security. If someone hacked Google what kind of security do they have?

I've used GoogleMaps before and had great fun and success with it. I especially like the satellite photo feature - I found the house I stayed at in Cardiff!

MySpace and Facebook

At last two elements that I'm already familiar with. I explored these both last year when I was trying to decide which one to use for my personal stuff.
And I went with Facebook.

I can see how MySpace is more attractive to the young folks though. It can look more jazzy (Facebook is pretty static in its appearance) and can be very interactive. MySpace can especially be useful in advertising upcoming events, latest additions to stock, and holiday activities.

My biggest grumble with MySpace is that you really don't know the real identity of the "so-called" friends. When I was trying out MySpace I had a page with a name and a couple of travel photos I'd upload - no personal information at all. And for weeks I received dozens of requests from suspiciously beautiful young women saying how they had read my profile and how we were so well matched. Funnily enough all their MySpace accounts vanished several days later.

For my use Facebook is the way to go. I've put my holiday photos there, I review books and films, I can show of some of my interests. And the only people I know can become friends.

RSS feeds

Right, so which feeds to put up.
I've chosen two news feeds - the ABC and BBC; Neil Gaiman's blog; Dark Horizons is a film & tv news site; and Calvin and Hobbes 'cause everyone needs a chuckle now and then.
I can see the advantages of the two news feeds, but the other sites my preference is to go to them and explore at my own convenience.
I guess I'm a bit of a luddite when it comes to RSS.

Library Thing

Which books to add to my Library Thing? Oh the agony of decision.

I eventually came up with my five books and they are novels that have all influenced me in one way or the other. The Grey King was my first introduction to celtic mythology and Wales; Terry Pratchett is just wonderful by Night Watch is my favourite; the Amber books by Roger Zelazny are one of the great over-looked fantasy series; and Neil Gaiman is simply the best writer there is today.

Neverwhere topped the popularity at 64, while Amber was the bottom at 2257.

Jigsaw lion

This lion is a tomb in Highgate cemetery, London.

He marks the tomb of George Wombwell (died 1850) who was a menagerist, or someone who had a collection of animals for display in London before there were public zoos.

It was the custom of Highgate that the tomb reflects the occupation of the interred.

He was 'jigsaw-ised' using FD's Flickr Toys

Neolithic public library

No, not my library but it is me by one of the Avebury standing stones in England.

The guys who put these great big lumps of rock had a writing called Ogham. Basically they would cut hozitontal lines on the edges of stones or wood and this was the language. Some of the stones were massive megaliths like this and some were bits of wood you could fit in your hand.

The Avebury mobile library never quite worked out...

Well, here we all are...

...blogging on the web. I feel so new millenium :)

Or is it old hat now to talk about the 'new millenium'?

So lets see how we all go. Will we all triumph over the suspicious new technologies, or do we become overwhelmed and float off into the darkness of the world wide web.

Let the adventure begin.