#23 Is this really the end? Or just the beginning...

Well here I am at the end of my long trek through cyberspace. Just like the crew of the starship Enterprise I feel that I have explored new worlds and civilisations. Now I think I probably need to go back, take a closer look and spend some time getting to know the locals.

As an awareness raising exercise this program has been invaluable. I now understand terms which were meaningless to me a few weeks ago. There are so many exciting possiblities out there and I'm now prepared to explore some of these.

#22 Audio books

I've known about Project Gutenberg for a long time but I wasn't aware that you could also download audio books. I listened to "Peter Rabbit". The available titles all seem quite old but I guess that's because they're out of copyright. Then I wondered if more current titles were available. So I "googled" "The kite runner" and mp3. I rememberd a colleague saying that her son had downloaded this and there it was.

I'm sure downloadable audiobooks are the future. Imagine no more chewed up tapes and scratched discs!!! The only problem will be making it as easy for people (especially the elderly) to browse online as browse the shelves.

#21 Podcasts, Smodcasts!

I found Podcast.net the most user friendly of the directories listed. My major difficulty, however, was that the network speed made actually playing the podcsats problematic.

I did find the sirsidynix site during one of my searches and it seems to have a huge variety of library related podcasts. It caught my eye as we use their Horizon libray management system. I added the feed to my Bloglines account and hope that I'll be able to get some of them to play.

http://sirsidynixinstitute.com/podcast.xml

#20 You too can YouTube

The most frustrating thing about YouTube is the time it takes for the video clip to start playing. The longer clips are almost impossible to access from a PC using dial up. Nevertheless I enjoyed the little clip below. Something we could do to keep ourselves amused on a quiet day!!!!

The library could use little clips for publicizing events or to train patrons and staff to use use new services.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwihz7iZlx0

#19 Discovering Web 2.0 tools

I chose to look at http://www.begreennow.com/
It is very topical but then I discovered that it's American and so doesn't work for Australia. It would have been interesting to be able to calculate my carbon footprint.

I then found http://www.alldownloadgames.com/ and installed the jigsaws. It's a lot of fun, a bit like playing solitaire on your PC. But there is a catch. You only get a limited free trial and then you have to pay. Probably not very applicable to libraries but you could get addicted.

#18 Web-based Apps : They're not just for desktops

Zoho writer was just like using Word with a few extra features such as the smiley faces and most importantly being accessible anywhere. But I couldn't work out how to publish to my blog.

I wish I had known about Zoho when I had to turn away patrons wanting to access word processing because we haven't got word installed on our internet terminals. I wonder now whether the library shouldn't just direct users to web based applications from now on and not bother to install Office on our machines.


http://writer.zoho.com/jsp/home.jsp?serviceurl=%2Findex.do

#17 playing around with the PBWiki

After the usual diversions (because I don't seem able to follow instructions) this Trekkie has established an outpost on http://plcmclearning.pbwiki.com/Favorite%20Blogs. Not sure what I was supposed to do with the square brackets. Also not sure why my link is in a larger font.